Limiting College Choices to Free In-State Publics?

Parents Forum
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Some states offer automatic scholarships for in-state tuition to a large percentage of recent high school graduates (Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana are three states that immediately come to mind). Then there are students with particular circumstances (sometimes as dependents of disabled veterans or of military members killed on duty, or as wards of the state, or other possible circumstances) where students are granted free in-state public tuition.

My questions are:

  • How many families in these situations limit their children to considering in-state publics because of the financial savings, even if they would have ordinarily contributed a designated amount for tuition if no such program existed?
  • For students in states like Georgia where admission to the top public schools like U. of Georgia and Georgia Tech has become significantly more competitive, do the families provide an “out” for students who don’t get into one of the top two schools to go elsewhere, or do the students go to one of the less “prestigious” colleges?
  • Do people find that there is generally at least one (or more) public schools in their state that is an appropriate fit for their student?
  • Do people feel differently based on the qualities of the student (i.e. whether it’s a hard-working student with top grades, or a student who was more lackadaisical in the schoolwork habits, or a student with health concerns, or a particularly shy or outgoing student, etc)?

I acknowledge that this forum skews higher income and higher academic stats and that can definitely impact a poster’s perspective. But I look forward to hearing any responses, whether of what your family has done, what individuals you know have done, or what you would do if you were in these circumstances.

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It would not be surprising if many students and families had finances that exert strong pressure to choose the cheapest possible college.

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We don’t live in a state like this, but if we did my kids would be attending one of them. They all ended up going to schools where their stats put them near the top for merit as it is. NJ offers free community college for the top 15%, I think it has to be the student’s CC and they are not measured equal.

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I wouldn’t intentionally send my kids to a community college, but free in state 4 year? That would be impossible to pass up. We are fortunate to have the means to pay for our four kids to go to college debt free, but I could definitely think of other things to do with that half a million plus dollars we will have spent, even on affordable schools. All of the states you mentioned have well regarded in state publics, so I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. If the public schools were poor quality, I would think differently. We’re trying to stay in state public mostly due to the cost, but public colleges here are costing us 120-160k per kid for undergrad.

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My daughters certainly had friends who needed to take the least expensive choice when choosing which university to attend.

One friend who was a very strong student went to community college, and then transferred to the local public university with a (well deserved) full tuition merit based scholarship. She lived with her father the whole time which saved quite a bit. In her case she was academically strong enough to attend a university that was way higher ranked than where she went, but she was constrained by budget (her parents were divorced, her mother remarried, and her father ran a small business). This particular friend was not quite the top student in her high school, but was close. She was very constrained in terms of where she could afford to go to university. She did however graduate from a good university with a very high GPA and a very practical major that can lead to a good career.

Several other friends were constrained by budget, but not as far as “free”.

Our kids were similarly given a strict budget. However, the budget was larger than the cost of the in-state public university. It was what we could afford with no debt and no undue hardship. It did rule out some private universities. One graduated right on budget but with two bachelor’s degrees. The other graduated way under budget. Both found a good fit.

My youngest probably did not have a “good fit” that was affordable and in the US and nearby. Our in-state flagship public university is much larger than what she was looking for. Top private LACs in the northeast (she was very academically qualified) were way out of budget. However, we live in the northeast of the US and have dual citizenship. Anything in Canada was therefore very affordable for us (significantly cheaper than the in-state public flagship) and there were several “good fits” up there. The hard part was choosing between them.

Yes, budget is very often a constraint. In our case it ruled out the really top schools in the US for undergrad because the way that they compute “need” does not always match reality. I was an older parent which did not help.

There are a tiny handful of top schools that meet full need. However, the way that they calculate need does not always work. The cases that we have seen involve divorced parents, a small business, farmers (which really is a form of small business), landlords (ditto), and parents who are at or past retirement age before the kids start university. There is also a “donut hole” of people who make too much money to get need based financial aid but do not make enough to be comfortable paying $80,000 per year per child (the vast majority of people we know are in this “donut hole”, but then we work in fields that require a great deal of education which impacts who we know). There are quite a few students who are academically very strong and just cannot attend the top ranked universities for financial reasons. However, this just sends them to in-state public universities. There are definitely quite a few very strong students graduating from our in-state public universities. After they graduate I have worked with many of them (although I am retired, I do a bit of consulting and still get to meet a few of them).

And of course there are many students who do not belong at the few top schools that meet full need. Many of these are constrained to attend in-state public universities.

Yes. I think that for most students the budget does impact where they can go for university.

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With four kids, you could certainly go way past $500,000 if you did not choose the relatively affordable schools. You could most likely get past $1,000,000 relatively easily, even without graduate school.

ouch.

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We did not limit my D’s application choices, but we made it very clear she had to apply to UGA and GTech and that cost would be a deciding factor on where she could ultimately attend undergrad since med school is a possibility. This influenced her application list as she concentrated on “fit” (as she defined it) schools that offered merit. As someone else said, our thoughts may have been different if we did not have two strong in-state (free tuition) options. But since we did, our priority was preserving funds to pay for med school.

We were a bit naive about how competitive admissions to UGA and GTech have become. Luckily she was accepted to both, but we found out after her EA applications were submitted that UGA was not a safety as we thought, even for high stat average excellent kids like her.

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Absolutely true. We have two kids graduated from college so far and we’ve spent about 250k. One went to a WUE school and one to Cal Poly slo. Our daughter was a very competitive student. We gave her a budget of UC or less, which was about 35k or so a year in 2017. She had options out of state with merit scholarships, but ended up choosing cal poly. Some of her acceptances just weren’t affordable because they didn’t come back with enough merit and we do not qualify for any need based aid.

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It would be hard to turn down a free good public U - we would have sweetened the pot by spending more on study abroad opportunities.

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For those states like Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana, do these scholarships also cover room & board and other expenses or are they just tuition? I imagine that would impact my thinking.

If the state tuition scholarship doesn’t include those other expenses, I am not sure what the advantage is to limiting the children to in-state publics over limiting the children to a specific total budget. In the latter case, I could see the budget being that the total cost of attendance at the alternate college can be no more than the cost that the instate public is charging for room/board and other expenses.

FWIW, I definitely. think that there are public schools in our state that could be good fits for all of my kids, but at least for my eldest with financial aid, her private options did not cost more according to the NPC. But I was very clear about the maximum that I was able to pay.

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I can speak for GA, that many of the students that dont get into the flagships go to some of the 2nd tier schools and sometimes they do then transfer to the flagships. For example Georgia Southern , Kennesaw, GA state, univ of N GA , GA college and state.

There is another set of kids, that get the equivlent of free (alabama) or same cost as GA instate, for out of state schools in S. Carolina, Alabama, FL.(UCF as example).

The final set of kids are those who want out of the south so fast and look for merit /financial aide elsewhere.

For those that get into GA Tech/UGA, some of them also get into Ivies and other top 20’s . One I know got into Duke with QuestBridge. Another got into MIT and got enough money to make it worthwhile to go there instead if the full tuition at GA Tech.

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Edit to include the quote I was responding to.

For Georgia, the Hope/Zell scholarships cover tuition, not R&B etc. We did not restrict our D to only GA schools but used that as a loose target budget wherever she ended up. We were full pay but full pay at a private would not have left much if any to pay for med school… so she went merit hunting.

But that’s because our D wanted to go OOS for a different experience. That’s not the case for all students, even those where budget isn’t as much a factor. There are GA families that can afford most any private or OOS public but do not see the cost/benefit over the value of our strong state publics (not only the flagships but others mentioned by @sdl0625).

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For Florida, Bright Futures is just tuition.

My youngest son originally applied to schools as a Math major. After applying, he changed his mind from wanting to major in Math to Engineering. Of course, the only 2 schools ranked higher than UF that accepted him don’t have Engineering departments. He is now in the Honors College at UF majoring in Engineering tuition free. He is likely going to apply to transfer after his Sophomore year (if he can keep up his 4.0). Even if he gets in to an expensive Top 20 (we will get no financial assistance) I will only be paying roughly half for that degree compared to paying the full boat all 4 years.

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During the app process there is no limitations on what school you can apply to for my children. I do/did tell them that we have to make the money work on the final decision. I am a believer that things can happen and you always want to have options. Also I had some strategy in play as well. So D19 ended up applying to 17 schools.

We don’t live in a state where you can get a full tuition scholarship from an in-state. If we did it would be a requirement to apply to that school for sure. Keep the options open.

D19 ended up getting some solid offers with her solid stats. Her #1 choice didn’t come in quite as well as we would have liked. It was going to cause us to have to take out loans at some point. That was after writing them a letter getting them to up their offer by $5k per year. So we sat D19 down and put out all the facts and figures. She came to the decision to go where she almost had all tuition and fees paid in an OOS. Ironically she got the last bit of tuition & fees dealt with by a department scholarship soph-sr year. Now going into her senior year she is happy that she will graduate with no debt which will allow her to have more options post graduation.

Basically we try to guide our children to the best decisions and have rarely ever had to step in with a heavy fist.

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I felt very fortunate to have the in state options in Ga provided by Hope/Zell, and both of my kids knew they were likely going to be choosing one of them unless a “better fit” option worked out financially. Many of their friends have attended UGA or GT, and for strong students who did not get into either, I saw several of them choose flagship schools from surrounding states if their parents could afford it (Auburn, Tennessee, Clemson, S. Carolina, Alabama), but cost difference can be substantial. Many of them wanted the SEC college experience, but UGA has become quite competitive for admissions. Of course there are several other good options in GA, but keep in mind that even with full tuition covered by Zell, the fees and room and board can be higher than some families anticipate.

Both my kids got into UGA honors and one applied to and was admitted to GT. They were fortunate to receive enough financial aid to attend out of state schools that were smaller and better fits for them. However, I was sure glad for them to have acceptances to those great schools in hand, and know they would have benefitted from their experiences at either one.

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In Louisiana, it just covers tuition, not room and board. Depending on the academic stats of the student it may also include either $400 or $800/year for books.

Several years back there was political disagreement in the state legislature about the costs of the program, and I think as a result the public universities have been keeping tuition largely the same, but increasing the amount of fees, so the Louisiana program isn’t as good as it used to be.

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With a free in-state public option, that would be really hard to pass up.

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I don’t see why the question is any different than do you go to the cheapest school that you were accepted. My DS had acceptances from nearly zero to 80k net cost. He is attending a school that was in the middle of the net cost ranking.

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If a family in one of these free tuition situations sets a budget (say, the cost of fees and room & board) and then allows their children to apply to colleges with the knowledge that this is the budget, then that might not make much of a difference.

But in a different thread someone was talking about a family who could afford $80k/year, but just didn’t think that higher ed was worth paying more than $50k/year. Similarly, if a family can pay room & board only (say $15k) for an in-state public education, do they think that the value of a different experience is worth the difference in price.

But that makes it sound like it’s all about the final price. It’s also the college search process. Is the family going to be spending vacations visiting colleges all around the target geographic area for campus visits? Plus spending all the mental and emotional energy on the application process and waiting on pins and needs to see if a school is going to hit a very low equivalent budget? Or would it be easier not to have the paralysis of choice and know that, hey, these are the 5-10 options to choose from (or however many state schools one’s state has). Will the very process of looking at other schools and their potential benefits then make the student disappointed to “only” be attending their in-state public university?

That’s one of the main reasons why I think it’s more than just a question of finances.

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DD’19 would not have liked being limited to UIowa/ISU/UNI. Only 3 publics here and two are too big for our tastes. None of them had her major either. So if it were a case that those were tuition free, it would have been a hard sell.

I feel like Iowa could use one more 4 year public, in the west half of the state.