I wouldn’t take one kid’s college fund and give it to a sibling. It would be unfortunate to send a child the message that you don’t think they’re college material. And I wouldn’t plan on one starting at cc so another can have the full college experience at the school of her choice.
Any loans above the federal are the parents’ loans, not the child’s, so I wouldn’t even offer that as an option to make up $5k/year. The parents will be responsible for that $20k+ loan if the student can’t handle those payments on top of the $27k federal student loan. With 3 more kids to launch I don’t think OP wants loan payments on top of tuition payments.
That’s why I said RIGHT NOW, kid #1 has her funds for the 4 years and has to decide if she is willing to work more to make up the difference or go to Pitt. Things could change but right now, the choice is Pitt with the funds that are there now or use more of her $100k in the early years ($30k) plus her own loan $5500, and work $3k, with the understanding that she could run out of money for year 4 (only $10k left in the 529 plan).
That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Engineers can make good money in the summers but it requires some sacrifice (no beach vacation, maybe hot and sweaty Oklahoma, maybe hot and sweaty NYC).
Everyone talks about engineers getting weeded out, but you have to know your kid. I knew mine would finish because that’s her personality. All the friends she started with finished as engineers. My nephew did and so did his girlfriend and all their friends. I don’t know how serious those who quit engineering were to begin with but the ones I know who were serious are engineers. My nephew even got a D in a class and had to retake it, and he stayed with it.
The only kid I knew who was weeded out was about 20 years ago. He somehow convinced his parents that engineers only take 9 credits per semester because it is so hard, and he finished just 2 semesters, took time off to go to Egypt, and never went back to school. He wasn’t serious.
I must have missed how UMD is financially possible. The math doesn’t add up. OP, please don’t saddle your kid with a ton of debt. She has no understanding of what that will mean for her future. Be the adult and say no.
I am always so amazed when I read a lot of these postings year after year. For sure not a slap to the original poster or anyone in their situation. Many people going through the process just do not know how it works or does not understand it. The process basically works the same for all of us. Whether you have a high stat student or an average student.
EVERYONE should look as SAFETIES before going through the process. Safeties schools are BOTH schools that one is able to get in and able to afford. Lots of schools have their merit qualification posted on the school website. A high Stat Student who does not have the means for a top 40 school which usually offer very little merit if any at all should be looking at schools ranked 50 to 100 or 150. There are so many excellent schools who offer excellent merit and a wonderful opportunity to excel. Students we lower stats can look at schools ranked between 100 or lower.
Take for example the University of Michigan. It is a well-known fact that if you are an OOS, UM’s tuition is close to $50K or close to $70K including all expenses. Michigan is not known to offer any merit to OOS. Anyone applying from OOS is really looking at $280K for a 4-year degree. This is an INSANE amount of money for the opportunity to attend. Insane! Obviously is money is not an issue, then nothing is ever an issue. But for the majority of it is a very real issue.
I am in the middle of the process with a current Junior and based on the information we have in our hands (grades and scores), we are putting our list together. He will only apply to schools where I can afford to pay without loans and schools known to provide a good amount of Merit. Perhaps, he might have a chance to get admitted to some higher ranked schools, but knowing that we can not afford them, we will be passing on those.
All the schools the Original Poster listed are excellent schools. Affordability should be the number 1 concern. As an engineering major, it is very difficult to keep up a higher GPA in order to keep these merit scholarships. This is really something to keep in mind going forward with whatever decision you make. You might still have time to apply to some great schools with guarantee merit. Engineering majors are always in high demand whether you go to Michigan, Mizzou, or any other University. Once, you get past your first job, I am not sure how important the school is. By the end of the day, it always comes down to what you make out of it.
Weeding out- yes, a function of personality. But also a function of how strong the HS prep was (which some kids don’t understand until they get to college and get thrown in the deep end), or how strong the parental support/laddering was (professors don’t yank you out of bed to get to that 8 am lab on time but some parents are still helping their kids get to school on time senior year), or how lenient the grading is in HS (extra credit? sure. extension on a paper because you’ve got another test this week? sure.) And I’ve seen the kid who was gung-ho on engineering decide that life sciences is truly their calling- except that pay for bio majors with only a BA or BS is not that high, and paid internships after freshman year in life sciences are very, very rare.
So you’re making a lot of assumptions about how much dough the kid is going to be making the summer after freshman year, during the year, etc. If engineering is exactly what she thinks it is, and she soars, and is able to land high paying work during the year and summers, then taking the extra loans is a great idea. If she discovers that her true passion is disorders of the brain, ( a very cool topic by the way- chem, bio, behavior, psychology, genetics- it has it all) then high paying work after freshman year is going to be a struggle-- these jobs are very competitive, and the pre-meds are happy to take them for subway fare and a recommendation.
@got2laugh This has been an eye opener for me. I had no idea. Its hard to know what you do not know. My friends kids are just now going to college as well and we are all feeling our way through. I assumed incorrectly that if you had a high end student that colleges would throw money at you. I now know differently. It really sad because we bent over backwards for our daughter to make sure she had all the tools and opportunities to grow. I would have cut off my arm and now at the moment of truth. She gets screwed. When we had the talk this week it went much worse than I expected. “I made myself miserable for 4 years so I could get out of here and go to the college I wanted to” “Why did you let me apply to a college I could never go to” . At one point I had to remove a fork that was in front of her. The look on her face when it sunk in, I will never forget. I feel terrible. I know she has opportunities…we all do right? But she is a teenager and right now her life is over. She sees kids that didn’t work as hard as her getting into the same schools (although not for engineering) and they get to go. That is like a punch in the gut. Whether this makes sense or not the feelings and pain are real.
The grass is always greener. Always. Wallowing in self pity for a day or two is just fine but after that it’d be a good idea to start being positive about her options and what that means for her future.
She’s not screwed. Sounds like she will be well prepared for college. And that’s because of all you’ve done over the years.
If she ends up at Pitt in engineering, it won’t be an easy ride. Calc 2 in particular is a bear for many Pitt engineering students. She’ll have plenty of great opportunities and will be with a bunch of serious students.
Really? If she had known as a freshman that she couldn’t go to a school out of state, would she have taken basic math rather than calc? Would she have skipped school every Friday to go shopping (or shoplifting), never tried out for the school musical, or rewritten a paper to get a better grade? This is high school drama. If she hadn’t worked hard in high school, she wouldn’t be deciding between Pitt and UMd, she’d be looking at community college or a PA regional (and I think those as great schools too).
I really doubt she was miserable studying in high school, and if she was she should reconsider college because it is a lot more work than high school
Right, if she is sulking over what seems like a pretty nice option, college engineering is going to suck. That might be something you should all chat about. In engineering she will be far from a top student. She knows that?
Honestly, her options are still really great. Plenty of smart and motivated students don’t have the financial privilege to consider the options she does have. Some may never get to attend college at all. Grieve and be mad for a day or 2, but then move on and embrace the fabulous options that may work.
My kid got accepted to an elite LAC Friday with 30K merit. YAY! Still too expensive. He has a 34 ACT and a 4.0 DE GPA. Oh well, moving on and grateful or the options that may work. Many of us are playing the same game. CC in particular seems to skew toward families with a lot of financial privilege in this process.
Yes, it’s terrible for kids to realize suddenly that they applied to colleges they wanted to attend and now these colleges have admitted them yet are more out of reach than they ever were. They feel betrayed. The rug is yanked from under their feet. It’s especially hard for middle class kids, whose parents have rarely said “we just dont have the money”.
You didn’t know that you didn’t know but it doesn’t help her.
Does she work right now?
The ability to attend residential college is a luxury. The ability to attend a solid school that has a good program in the major you want without substantial debt is a luxury most kids in this country don’t have. They’re at their local cc or commuting to the nearest state school. How is your daughter “screwed”?
My kids from day one knew they had to pull high grades and take the most rigorous courses and they were going where the money was for merit. Most schools were disregarded due to economics. We also consciously chose to live in a state for its flagship schools. This is the reality for countless students. Ruined life? Definitely not. No college education is worth 70k a year even for an engineer unless you have money to burn.
First of all, she’s not screwed, get that mindset out of there. It’s over and she has options. That’s really good news.
I had a nephew who royally screwed up and didn’t even really have any options except a low level directional school. He went there and that didn’t actually go that well either. But he changed majors and got into his first choice graduate school. Now he’s got a job, a really good job. A great life and a wonderful girlfriend who adores him. Life has a way of working out.
My niece really wanted to go to Villanova and had the same problem. No aid, full sticker price. There was no way she could go there, her parents couldn’t afford it. She didn’t get into her reach either, that school wasn’t going to be affordable either but if she had been accepted, I think her parents were willing to make it happen. I am so happy that she didn’t get in. She went to a school that is on no ones radar here on CC. A school that isn’t highly ranked but was in a city she wanted to be in.
You know what? She made so much out of her 4 years there. Got an internship which she networked into an even better internship in Europe. A year abroad. Numerous awards at senior day. Graduated with high honors. I almost forgot about the Wall Street summer internship that turned into a full time job. In IB, doing things I can’t even explain.
And you know what, life has a way of working out. College admissions is the first time many kids get there first taste of rejection. But if we gave up after that, it would be a sad short unfulfilled life.
Both my nephew and niece that I mentioned worked really hard in high school. Both went to colleges that “everyone” else could have attended. She is selling herself short that she can’t make the most of these next 4 years and be and do great things. Or maybe do what she wants, just in a different path than you and she envision
Screwed in the sense that the adults in her life were clueless and let her believe she had a real chance of going to a school that was her #1 choice. It’s like …hey…go climb that mountain and I will give you XYZ…then they get to the top after an arduous journey that they did not enjoy and you say oh sorry you can’t have XYZ…it was never possible. She is full of HS drama right now for sure. I am hoping that after a week or so that she will settle in with her choices–which are fantastic and offer the same opportunities but for a reasonable price tag. I think her misery came from the fact that she took a different path from her peers at school and missed out on some of the fun. She is going to be surrounded by engineers and like minded peers at college. Plus she has the internal drive and interest. Another factor is that I went to Nova and my parents paid the full ride. Of course in 1989 is might have been more affordable. She did go out with her friend this weekend that is going to PITT : )
The 2 mistakes made here is not understanding how FA works (if she had applied to a different set of schools, she could very well have had enough merit $$ to attend at low/no cost) **and ** allowing your child to believe that only certain Us are worthy of a student of her caliber and that her hard work did not develop her academic strengths and abilities for her own personal mental growth, not for college admissions.
By far, more tippy top, high performing students are limited by finances than not. (Most families don’t have $$$ sitting around to spend on college.) That means that by far more of those students are going to be found on your affordable campus than students, especially the ones (and their parents) hanging out on places like CC, want to accept.
I can share that as the parent of top performing students who have attended very avg Us and have graduated from those colleges, that they have had awesome opportunities on their campuses and have gone on to have great careers/attend tippy top grad schools (which are fully funded, so at no expense to us.)
To put things in perspective, we had a child graduate from high school ready to take 400 level physics as a freshman. He attended a U ranked not even in the top 100 (and according NICHE, ranked somewhere in the 150s.) He attended on full scholarship, had great UG research experiences, and was surrounded by a great peer group. He is now at a top grad program in physics. One of his close friends is in Harvard’s MD/PhD program. His engineering friends have gone on to great jobs, etc.
Our oldest ds is a chemE. He went to an equally low ranked school. He worked in one of the chemE labs doing research during the school yr and did a full yr of co-oping. GPA, research, and co-op experience are what mattered, not school name. He had numerous job offers at graduation. He has a great career and has had multiple promotions. When he was a new hire, he was hired right alongside students from engineering “powerhouse” schools. They were hired in at the same level/same pay. Promotions have had absolutely nothing to do with the name on their diplomas and have been strictly based on job performance.
Your dd is not scr*wed. She is at the first step of the process to a demanding degree. Any student who thinks that they are going to step on a college having wasted time in high school b/c they were disciplined in how they learned and mastered academic skills is in for a reality check—she is going to be glad she knows how to study and how to learn b/c it is going to take that and even more discipline than in high school to make it to graduation with an engineering degree with a high GPA.
