My chances of getting into MIT, Caltech, Harvard etc...

Rika

But you can network power elite there which is worth all those money.

twofish-quant

Yes and no. I've actually never gotten anything directly from anyone that I knew in college. Watching the "power elite" in action, was useful.

Also, one mistake that people make in networking is networking with the wrong people. Unless you are someone's cousin, knowing the CEO of a company isn't that useful. The people you really want to network with are "tomorrow's power elite" which are your classmates from today. If you can't get into a preexisting network, then you need to build your own.