Hillbilly Elegy

but not poverty level, either. That student
would pay ten thousand for one of the
less selective branch campuses of the
University of Wisconsin but would pay
six thousand at the school’s flagship
Madison campus. At Harvard, the
student would pay only about thirteen
hundred despite tuition of over forty
thousand. Of course, kids like me don’t
know this. My buddy Nate, a lifelong
friend and one of the smartest people I
know, wanted to go to the University of
Chicago as an undergraduate, but he
didn’t apply because he knew he
couldn’t afford it. It likely would have
cost him considerably less than Ohio
State, just as Yale cost considerably less