Should I Transfer Colleges?

Will transferring from a T10-15 University to a slightly more expensive T5 University ($160k vs $220k) for real estate be worth the effort (grinding for a 4.0 freshman year)? Specifically, I want to be a real estate broker in the luxury market. 

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I'll chime in to agree here, where you go to UG rarely matters that much. If you "need" some better degree, might was well save the cash for grad school, will be more beneficial (personally, unless you just have the means or whatever, paying a ton for a fancy UG degree seems pointless in the majority of situations). 

As others have noted, if you want to be a residential broker, you don't even "need" college, I doubt anyone will care at all if you just had a HS diploma. Only "maybe" value of the degree "prestige" would be the network, but honestly, I wouldn't count on that at all in starting a brokerage career (and I wouldn't try and pay more to get it!!).

 

Yeah I am mainly going to college for the network - the advanced education & real estate knowledge is a bonus. The thing is I plan to work in New York so I was thinking transferring to a college like NYU will be more beneficial than attending a college in the midwest (IU-Kelley)

 

Well, personally, I'd put that 60k savings towards an NYU master's degree vs. paying for the UG degree. I'm not in the luxury world of real estate brokerage, so I won't say if it would or wouldn't matter (my guess is won't matter..). But, that $60k gets you pretty far in covering an MSRE or MBA at NYU or elsewhere in NY area, save it for that or just your exceptionally high living expenses in NYC. I will add IU-Kelly is a great school with TONS of alum (in CRE and elsewhere including the big I-banks) in NYC area, I wouldn't switch! 

 

I don't know too much about the residential luxury market, but I'm not sure if that's the best play. It will be years or decades before the frat bros you were with in college are going to purchase a house. Being a residential broker for luxury properties is fairly hard to break into, especially by yourself. Most likely you'll have to work at another place first then try to build up your own book after a few years. Much less stable of a career path than working at a traditional large institutional real estate developer/investor but also more upside if you do want to become the next serhant. 

 

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