Will gaining admission to one of the nation's elite colleges guarantee a prosperous future -- or just a mountain of debt?

Every striver mother and father knows the rules when it comes time to shop for a college. These are so deeply embedded in the subconscious of affluent, highly educated parents that their wisdom is rarely questioned.
If your kid is bright enough, you shoot for the Ivies, Stanford or MIT. If those are out of reach, you aim your child at other prestigious private institutions -- Duke, the University of Chicago, Georgetown or some other brand-name, liberal arts college that doesn't let just anybody in the door. If all else fails, you might consider a top-ranked state university, but only as a last resort.
Money should be no object, not when it comes to something as important as your child's education. Paying those tuition bills may sabotage your ability to save for retirement or necessitate a second mortgage on your house. But, in the end, your goal should be to send your kid to the most exclusive, impressive option available. The payoff is obvious: In a society that likes to think of itself as a meritocracy, the Ivies and other selective private schools offer a shortcut to the top. They promise an instant pedigree, future wealth and an opportunity to mix with the country's next generation of movers and shakers.
But what if all those calculations and assumptions are wrong? What if all those Ivy graduates whose parents shelled out $150,000 or even $200,000 for their undergraduate degrees could have done just as well if they'd gone somewhere else? Somewhere much cheaper?
Research implies that is actually the case. According to these recent studies, when you do a cold, hard analysis -- removing family dreams and visions of class rings -- the Ivies and other elite private schools simply aren't worth the money. The answer isn't conclusive, and there are skeptics -- at the Ivies and elsewhere. But at the least, the research should give parents pause and prompt them to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before steering their child to an elite private college.