[tzs]

Only around 1% or less of graduates from top schools (the Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, etc) end up with 6 figures of debt. In the Ivy League about 80% graduate with no debt. At top non-Ivy League schools average debt ranges from about $13k (MIT) to around $30k (CMU).

Even when you expand to include all schools instead of just top schools, 6 figure debt is rare. Average is about $27k for public universities, $34k for private non-profit universities, and $40k for private for-profit schools.

If someone has 6 figure debt from school they odds are overwhelming that it is from law school or medical school.

I wonder how many excellent students from non-rich families who could easily get into a top school for low cost or even free don't even bother applying because they have heard that myth of widespread 6 figure debt?

[somenameforme]

Those numbers are wrong. Here [1] are the latest data from the government. The average debt is $40k across all borrowers for Federal loans. Federal loans are about 90% of all loans, so you can easily bump that up to $45-$50k after also factoring in private loans. And most of that lending is done at predatory rates, even from the government, with the average well above 6% for undergraduate loans, and significantly higher for loans beyond that. So you're looking at $45k debt with compounding interest at 6%+ rates in the average case. And the average case is obviously not people going to higher end and more desirable institutions, where the degree is going to be much more valuable, but the debt is going to be much higher.

The reason debt is low at the most elite institutions is in part because the student body comes from disproportionately wealthy families and in part because most/all of these schools offer tuition free learning and other non-loan assistance for students from "low-income" families. At MIT "low-income" is defined as less than $200k. Any student who's viably able to be accepted to such institutions would be well aware of such things, but 99% aren't - so it's largely just as irrelevant as their debt figures.

[1] - https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/fsawg/datacenter/...