I’m not sure whether this counts: I went to the University of Cambridge, which is (especially for mathematics, which is what I studied there) probably the best university in the UK, with a worldwide reputation, but unlike top US universities it doesn’t charge enormous fees. And I didn’t put any particular effort into having a vast range of impressive extracurricular activities, I was just very good at mathematics. So the costs for me were very different from those for someone attending, say, Harvard. (Also, this was 30+ years ago, when even Harvard was much cheaper than now.)
Anyway: yes, definitely worth it for me. I went there to learn a lot of mathematics, and that’s what I did; some of the people who taught me were world-class mathematicians (though it will probably surprise no one to learn that being a world-class mathematician does not imply being a world-class teacher of mathematics); a lot of the people around me were super-smart or super-interesting or both. (Also, and not to be neglected, I made some good friends there and did a bunch of other enjoyable things, but that would probably have been much the same at any other university.) And, though it wasn’t particularly why I chose to go there, I’m pretty sure it was good for my career—though for obvious reasons it’s hard to disentangle.
I’m not sure whether this counts: I went to the University of Cambridge, which is (especially for mathematics, which is what I studied there) probably the best university in the UK, with a worldwide reputation, but unlike top US universities it doesn’t charge enormous fees. And I didn’t put any particular effort into having a vast range of impressive extracurricular activities, I was just very good at mathematics. So the costs for me were very different from those for someone attending, say, Harvard. (Also, this was 30+ years ago, when even Harvard was much cheaper than now.)
Anyway: yes, definitely worth it for me. I went there to learn a lot of mathematics, and that’s what I did; some of the people who taught me were world-class mathematicians (though it will probably surprise no one to learn that being a world-class mathematician does not imply being a world-class teacher of mathematics); a lot of the people around me were super-smart or super-interesting or both. (Also, and not to be neglected, I made some good friends there and did a bunch of other enjoyable things, but that would probably have been much the same at any other university.) And, though it wasn’t particularly why I chose to go there, I’m pretty sure it was good for my career—though for obvious reasons it’s hard to disentangle.