I considered Poly as well. I chose MIT. My best friend went to Poly. Aside from not being next door to my best friend for four years, I can honestly say that go

I considered Poly as well. I chose MIT. My best friend went to Poly. Aside from not being next door to my best friend for four years, I can honestly say that going to MIT was, by far, one of the best decisions of my life. You'll make the money back. Once out of school, you'll make far more money (by default, and whether this is "right" or not is arguable, but that doesn't make it any less true) coming from MIT than from Poly. Your yearly salary will be higher, as there will be more competition for your "talent." This all, of course, presumes you do _well_ at MIT, but if you were admitted I suspect that you would. If you haven't already contacted the MIT Financial Aid office, do it now; I presume you have. Send me a personal email (email in my profile) and I can try to put you in touch with some people. Having had my best friend go to Poly, we basically went through school together; talking almost daily. The classes he had were significantly easier, and far less interesting. Whether this is a plus is arguable, but I certainly don't think it is. While I was learning about Red-Black Trees, he was learning about binary search; shit at MIT just moved faster. The people you meet (again, having met people at both places) at MIT are also going to challenge you more; though not necessarily more intelligent, they are more self-selected to be self-starters and curious/inquisitive minds. They _will_ challenge you and you'll have more fun. My $.02: You should go to MIT if you can. Think of it as giving up a little bit of equity in your life; life is short, if you come out better for it in the end (i.e. had more fun, learned more, opened up more opportunities, whatever you choose your metric to be) it'll be well worth it.