“hooray to an affordable debt free high quality education.”
Huh?
LOL @Sybylla I thought the OP picked one of their more affordable options. My kid committed to a flagship with scholarship/honors after getting accepted to high end private schools that are just not worth 10-40K more a year IMO.
I am hoping the OP left something out about being able to cover that gap!
Pitt without any aid and UMD with the merit award were close in yearly net cost.
For families who have leeway and other resources, a $4-5k gap is doable. Though, in this case Even Pitt costs meant some belt tightening, work and loans.
It’s the low income families that are on edge even without the college expense, that cannot be cavalier about even $500 in unanticipated costs. A lot of bitterness I saw on a family where, it just isn’t possible for the student to live on campus. Or to get a car to commute. If she doesn’t get a ride to school and back each day, she can’t go there. The budget was too tight, and some unexpected costs have made it undoable. She may not even be allowed to register for classes next since she owes the school money.
Congratulations, OP!
Yay! Congratulations!!! She’ll be in great company!
Hopefully you agreed that if she loses the $12,500 scholarship for any reason, she will have to come home and attend a local school.
I would concur, and if she plans on changing major along with the loss of scholarship. Make sure this is clear because the chances of this outcome is high. If she felt HS really was hard work, college eng is a real grind. Have a clear view of what the 4 yr instate back up plan looks like. Have an idea of what is going on grade wise during the semester not just at the end of the year. Have conversations about this.
I think my daughter thought her engineering major took about the same amount of time and effort as high school. She worked pretty hard in high school, did a lot of homework, and was active in sports. In college, she pretty much had the same routine with more athletic workouts (on a varsity team) and more science and math, but about the same amount of time put in. College is different than high school and there are fewer classes but more work, but overall about the same number of study hours for her. She is an extremely S-L-O-W worker, so even in high school she’d spend 2-3 hours on Sunday morning working on chemistry and in college just about the same.
I know everyone says engineering has a high drop out rate, but I didn’t find that to be true. Those who know they want engineering finish in engineering. Those who were ‘thinking’ about engineering or trying it out didn’t. This was true for my daughter and all her friends, my nephew and all his friends, all the kids I’ve know who went to Colorado school of Mines and other tech schools. It was even true for my sorority sisters many years ago as we had an unusually high number of engineers in our house and they all finished when there weren’t that many women engineers.
My daughter did know that if she lost her scholarships she’d have to transfer and those scholarships did have gpa requirements. Never came close to losing them.
Engineering DOES have a high drop out rate. Not from college but from that program. Those are are hard statistics.
I’ve always been a fan of LACs and thought perhaps the engineering programs there would be a bit more supportive and nurture more of the engineering majors than the big schools. I was surprised that Swarthmore, with its very able students has about a 50% drop in their small and very versatile engineering program.
Each family has to make decisions on how they handle these less than ideal situations. We stretch a little, maybe more than a little , maybe too much for the school our kids want. We might not pull them out of school if they lose their scholarships. Hopefully, we don’t go too far and do more long term harm than good. For families who do have done wiggle room, it’s doable. The ones who really get hurt are the ones who are so way off in costs and ability to pay, that I shudder that anyone would lend them that money. No prospect of repaying unless they hit the lottery big time.
My daughter’s scholarship wasn’t something ‘a little wiggle room’ in the budget could make up. It was big money, and if was gone, so was she.
Honestly, if she had had to transfer the world would not have ended, but we couldn’t afford a $55k school without the merit scholarship or without the athletic scholarship - needed both to make that school work. She accepted that fact of life when she accepted admission to that school.
Wow. That’s a ton of debt, any way you slice it. I feel fortunate to have good in state schools. My S18 is at NC State, for $21/yr, and he’s taking out $5k loan each year so that’s $20k debt. My D20 is looking at UNC, and that costs about the same. She did love Georgetown, but we found out it had no merit money, and our EFC would be about $65k per year. So she crossed that school off her list.
@chb088 smart move!