A nurse who graduates from Cal State Stanislaus — a regional public most people outside California couldn't find on a map — earns a median $119,000 a year and pays about $6,000 a year to get the degree. A nurse who graduates from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school, earns $81,000 and pays nearly $29,000 a year. Penn's nursing program ranks 229th out of 875 by return on investment. Georgetown ranks 737th. Villanova, 728th.
The entire top of the nursing ranking looks like this: Cal State and CUNY campuses, one after another. The famous private names are buried in the bottom half. It's not close, and it's not random.
The reason is simple: hospitals hire nurses on their license, not their letterhead. You pass the NCLEX, you hold an active RN license, you get the job — and your pay is set by the local market (California and New York's unionized hospital systems pay the most in the country), not by the prestige of the school on your diploma. A BSN is a BSN. Paying Ivy tuition for one is, in pure dollars, lighting money on fire.
But this isn't true for every major
Take the exact same school. In nursing, Penn is 229th. In finance, Penn is #2 in the country, with grads earning $123,000. Same university, opposite answer. Because finance isn't a license — it's a signaling-and-network game. Wall Street recruits from a short list of target schools, the brand gets your résumé read, and the alumni network is the job pipeline. There, prestige pays for itself.
So “does it matter where you go?” isn't a philosophy question you settle with anecdotes. It's a math question, and the answer flips depending on what you're studying:
- Licensed / skill-verified fields — nursing, teaching, accounting, engineering. The credential is standardized and employers check your competence directly. School prestige barely moves your paycheck. Buy on value.
- Signaling / network fields — finance, consulting, big law, elite tech. The brand is the filter and the network is the job. Here, prestige can genuinely pay off.
If you're headed into nursing, the data gives you permission to be ruthless: find the cheapest strong program near where you want to work, and don't look back. If you're headed into finance, run the math the other way.
Where you go matters. It just matters a lot less often than the sticker price would have you believe.