A Hermès Birkin bag can comfortably cost $10,000—sometimes even more. But when you break it down, the raw materials behind that price tag—leather, stainless steel, maybe a bit of gold—rarely exceed $1,000. So, what are you really paying for?
The answer, of course, is the name. The brand. The story. The aura of exclusivity. That extra $9,000 buys you more than just a handbag; it buys you a status symbol. An identity. A way to signal to the world that you belong to a certain class, that you’ve made it—or at least want to look like you have.
I have no intention of ever buying a Birkin bag, but lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to assign value to a name.
A few weeks ago, I was incredibly fortunate to be accepted to both Princeton and Carnegie Mellon, along with a handful of other schools. It’s a privilege I don’t take lightly.
Princeton—a QuestBridge partner—feels, in many ways, like the Hermès bag of colleges. Beautiful, prestigious, world-renowned. But while CMU has offered me a generous aid package that would make attending almost free, Princeton’s financial aid would still leave my family with a hefty five-figure contribution each year.
And here’s where the metaphor starts to matter.
Carnegie Mellon is an amazing school, especially for CS and AI. If you asked the job market or the research world, they’d tell you that CMU carries real weight. But I’ll admit—I was leaning toward Princeton. The culture of intellectual curiosity, the gothic castles, the allure of the name —it all pulled me in.
Now, I still believe the culture and environment at Princeton are real draws. But the name? The prestige? That part has started to lose its shine.
Just like I don’t think I could ever justify buying a Birkin bag for a girlfriend or wife, I’m realizing I can’t justify asking my parents to stretch themselves financially just so I can carry a “brand” on my diploma. Because in both cases, the real value should lie in what something does for you, not in what it says about you.
And maybe that’s the lesson here: to see through the polish, past the prestige, and ask—what am I really paying for?
Comments (0)
No comments yet.