[sntax]

It is not the fact of choosing between UVA, Virginia Tech, and William and Mary. Anyone of those schools is highly likely to give you a return on investment even if you get a non-stem degree. Why is this? They all have strong brand recognition. They are very selective; even the least selective of those three (VT) has an average GPA acceptance of 3.92. [1] It gets confusing for people who are not the best and the brightest. if you have a 3.0 GPA and 1000 SAT (median scores for high school) you might think it is a good idea to go to a school like Radford University. [2] Both cost about the same but one will vastly decrease your chances of making a return on investment. Now it might not be a bad idea to attend Radford if you plan on staying in southwest VA and you got a marketable skill. However, there is a large number of people who go to Radford get a history degree and move back to Richmond Virginia. Now your six-figure investment is worth about the same as the paper it is printed on. My parents always told me "It doesn't really matter where you go to school or what degree you get, you just have to make sure you get a degree!". This might have been the case at one point, but it is nowhere near the case anymore.

[1]https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmp... [2]https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmp...