<p>and D still undecided between Macalester and Kalamazoo. Money is the overriding issue in that we do not have enough to send her to either school, and the aid from both, while helpful, nowhere near covers her costs. Thoughts, anyone, on either school, on amount of debt a liberal arts grad should consider incurring. Financial aid packages nearly identical, Mac promises student employment while K does not...however Mac considerably more expensive.<br>
All comments welcome! We have weighed pros and cons, discussed gut feeling ad nauseum and still she is completely on the fence.
If money were no object, Mac would win out over K....but money is an object. I guess the question is, is the additional debt worth it to go to Mac over Kalamazoo?
Thanks!</p>
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<p>I’m sorry but I don’t see why your D is choosing between two schools that you cannot afford. How much debt are you considering?</p>
<p>Mac’s going to be around $10K a year more, right? Where is that $40K going to come from?</p>
<p>And come to think of it, marite is right. Where’s the money for K going to come from, if she goes there? If you can’t afford it, how can you do it?</p>
<p>Could you lay out how much debt is involved at both schools and who would be taking on the debt–parents or kid or both? Sounds like you don’t have the cash in hand or cash flow to pay for either school out of pocket and would need loans?</p>
<p>that was my question, too.</p>
<p>neither is a good choice if you can’t afford either one.</p>
<p>She will have to borrow about $6,000/year for Kalamazoo; roughly 13 for Mac. After looking at many other posts, this seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the debt others are willing to assume. She’s not sure Mac is worth the additional debt so was looking for opinions on the colleges, and whether or not incurring additional debt to attend Mac was warranted.<br>
Can you tell this is our first experience with this?</p>
<p>Is this on top of work-study? She could earn around $4000 during the school year, plus whatever she earns in a summer job.
Both are great schools, I don’t have any advice on which to choose.</p>
<p>S currently a junior at K College and having an excellent all-around experience. If work/study included in FA package, plenty of on-campus jobs. Can PM me with specific questions if you’d like.</p>
<p>Have you contacted the financial aid office at Mac and told them how much your daughter would really like to attend, if not for the better offer at Kalamazoo?</p>
<p>Both schools have similarities in the student body. Both schools are I think of pretty equal caliber. I would think that the cost would be the determining factor. If $6000 is before the Stafford loan, then K is very doable with a summer job and/or a part-time campus job. There are also airports in both towns and Amtrak runs through Kalamazoo, I believe. St. Paul is a bigger city than Kalamazoo but Kalamazoo is also nicely situated half way between Ann Arbor and Chicago for the occasional get-away weekend. K’s got the really great foreign study opportunity. I’d vote for K.</p>
<p>Amtrak does run through Kalamazoo. The station is within walking distance of campus.</p>
<p>We visited both schools. I loved Macalester, situated right in the city with a busy street running through it. I figured good restaurants would be a stone’s throw away and being in a state capital would be an advantage for my politics-loving son. Macalester’s food is fantastic. It’s somewhat more well-known, and certainly tougher to get into, than K, so it wins on prestige. My son reported the class he sat in on, which I think was about Latin American revolutions, was engaging.</p>
<p>My son, though, fell in love with Kalamazoo. For him, the compact campus is a plus; whereas Macalester is plunked right in St. Paul, Kalamazoo’s beautiful little campus is in its own little neighborhood on the side of the hill, so even though it’s in a city, it feels a little more separate. My son liked that everyone goes abroad, so the whole school is set up to expect that. He’s looking forward to LandSea, the pre-frosh camping trip. Having sat in on two history classes and having spent a long time chatting with the head of the History department, he’s confident that academics are strong and demanding at K. </p>
<p>Both are good schools. If money weren’t an issue, I’d say she should pick Mac since she likes it better, but since K will be $40K cheaper, she should think hard about whether she could be happy at K.</p>
<p>My son is a sophomore at Kalamazoo, my niece is a junior at Mac. They grew up within a few blocks of each other and went to the same high school, were both great students, and stay in touch regularly. So far in comparing notes they are both very happy, very challenged and have had very similar experiences and opportunities. </p>
<p>That’s my way of saying that these are two wonderful schools, much more alike than they are different. As CF says above, K has a distinct campus but it is still situated in a city, albeit one much smaller than St. Paul (but also much larger than the towns or villages where most LACs are). I suspect Mac has a more geographically diverse student body, but my son has made friends from all over the country at K, too. Both schools have a very strong international study focus. My niece is studying in Morocco right now; my son will be in France next year. Mac probably leans a little to the social sciences and humanities, K a little more to the hard sciences, but my son is strictly a social sciences policy wonk and he is very happy and getting a great education on that side of things at K.</p>
<p>There’s no right answer, but I would observe that an additional $28,000 in debt will feel like a gallon, not a drop, four years from now. </p>
<p>Anyway, good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you all for your sage advice and honest opinions. We just wrote the check to Kalamazoo and everyone feels really great about it! She is going to go on the freshman backpacking trip (that kind of thing is right up her alley, having done SCA volunteering for the past two summers)-I think that opportunity was one of the things that clinched it for her! I don’t think she knows anyone else from her large-ish HS who is K-bound and that was appealing to her as well.</p>
<p>Again, I really appreciate the thoughtful responses to my manic question last night and wish each of you the best as you make these decisions with your kid(s). I’ll be lurking around this site (which I just logged on to last night for the first time at 11:00PM) for the next couple of years until D2, a freshman, begins her journey. Such an interesting, funny, experienced group of parents. </p>
<p>Cheers!
Meg</p>
<p>Meg, glad to know my son will have another CC kid in his class! Maybe they’ll meet on LandSea. He’ll be the tall shy kid who is funny once you get to know him.</p>
<p>Congrats on your D’s choice! My S is a freshman at K and the $6k/year debt is worth it in our opinion. He has a work study job and it is perfect for him. I thought once that they had said if a student wants a campus job, there are some. </p>
<p>My S did LandSea last summer. It was an unbelievable experience. He is doing an externship this summer in Germany for three weeks. The opportunities are wonderful, the staff and professors are incredible-we have nothing but good things to say about Kalamazoo.</p>
<p>I work on campus at a large university and today talked to a student who had actually heard of Kalamazoo! I think that’s one of the reasons I hesitated; nobody has any reaction when I tell them where D is going, unlike Macalester which everyone has either applied to, gone to or has some knowledge of. So to hear from you who have kids going/already enrolled gives me a little shot of confidence about this choice that I dearly need (still, obviously-since I keep rereading your posts!) D still very okay with decision, which, ultimately, is what this is all about.</p>
<p>Meg:</p>
<p>In Cambridge, MA, not only have I got to hear about Kalamazoo, but I’ve met one or two graduates. Very impressive, all of them. I did not think your child could go wrong at either K or M.</p>
<p>Meg, Wonderful! Congratulations to your daughter!</p>
<p>Meg, I had the same fears when my son was accepted early to K and announced he wouldn’t apply to any more schools (Mac, where I thought he had a good chance of acceptance, was one of the schools crossed off the list). Nobody has ever heard of Kalamazoo, I thought. </p>
<p>I talked to two local Kalamazoo grads, one of whom has a son at K and a daughter at Harvard. Both were hugely successful people who had nothing but good things to say about K. One said, “Most of my friends were accepted at every grad school they applied to. I was.” He has a graduate degree from Stanford (law or business, not sure which).
Interestingly, both of these men had married their college sweethearts. Good thing the prospective first-year women at K seem sweet and smart; one could be my daughter-in-law ;)</p>
<p>As a K alum, so glad K got chosen! I have to say that even though it is 30 years later, the Land 'n Sea kids from my class still keep in touch. There are so many things that K was ahead of the curve on, and many colleges have copied. K has always been well known in academic circles if not so much on internet forums. I have close friends who went to Beloit, Earlham, Antioch, Oberlin, Kenyan, Macalester, Carthage, St. Olaf’s as well as Harvard, Dartmouth, Colby & Mid and we all feel that we got a “quality education” and I dare say we fight still 30 years later about who got the “best” undergrad education.</p>