<p>Modadunn - I’m with you on this one. I feel stupid for having started saving for college for each of our kids from the day they were born and driving around in 10 year old low-end vehicles with 150,000 miles on them to fund their college accounts.</p>
<p>Should have just gotten a new high-end car every few years, gone on expensive vacations, let the DW spend whatever she wanted on a new kitchen, and not saved a penny for college. Then, I could have been subsidized by the ones who foolishly sacrificed to save for college.</p>
<p>In the old days you were rewarded for “doing the right thing”; now you’re the fool.</p>
<p>BCEagle - Don’t think I specified new/used. The same price spectrum applies to used cars–and indeed, the analogy of small/large luxury works well. It’s a large luxury to attend AWS on a generous need-based scholarship. It’s a small luxury to receive FA, of any type. It’s a basic want to attend the local flagship U over the CC if the CC is significantly less challenging academically (from what I hear of numerous different secondhand accounts, our CC fits this unfortunate description).</p>
<p>Endowment money was created, fundamentally, from private donations. Donors can make restricted or unrestricted gifts; if they allow the college to do as they please with the money, then the college is perfectly free to allot it in the same pool as the restricted-to-FA money.</p>
<p>Worrying solely about reality is the mark of a fledgling society that can’t afford scholars, e.g. people who think too much. I would hope that the U.S. never regresses to such a state where social justice is dismissed as unnecessary anxiety.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone “needs” to attend a small LAC. But I think it qualifies as a “small,” not “big” luxury, to attend some LAC (not necessarily a prestigious/elite one). The social intimacy of a small LAC can be very valuable as well. That is the very essence of “fit”–and most of those students with “best-fit” LACs would also thrive at a larger school, it’s just not a strong natural “fit.” Thus I distinguished between finding a great fit and a great education.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you were addressing me, but I can’t speak to the international students question because I’m not an intl student, only an intl citizen. I grew up in Canada and agree with its political leanings, but in many ways–indeed, by most conventional measures except self-identification–I am more American than Canadian.</p>
<p>I do think, with my own biases, that FA formulas should not penalize savers as much as it does. Perhaps a more equitable but difficult to implement system would be to look at many more years’ tax returns (like, the last decade) and give more generous aid to those who only recently attained X income. The issue of gaming by moving assets around an extended family remains, but ANY system will be gamed.</p>
<p>That’s what honors colleges are for. I have a friend majoring in Journalism and she loves the small classes and group discussions. This is at a flagship public.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I just checked the spring enrollments at my son’s school for his major. Upper division courses range from 4 to 19 students. I may be unusual but I think that large lecture halls are part of the challenge of college. So are TAs that barely speak english and professors that are hard to find. There is a little (or sometimes a lot) of this in real life and part of the learning process at schools is to deal with adversity.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I checked the University of Alberta and they offer general international merit scholarships and country-specific merit scholarships (China, Germany, India, Mexico, US). I didn’t see any hints of need-based aid.</p>
<p>This is really similar to the mortgage bubble. You buy a house
with nothing down, it goes up a few hundred thousand, you do
cashout refis and consume the hundred thousand and then declare
BK when the party is over.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>It’s implicit in what you wrote. You were making a value judgement on
expense vs seating capacity. That comparison only makes sense on a
fixed price basis. If you’re talking used, then you can find both
models at any price making your value judgement moot. Maybe you do need
those small discussion groups.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>College is a luxury, regardless of how or whether it is paid for.</p>
<p>This is probably totally off topic, as I am new to this thread, but why is it that we aren’t hearing more of students applying for outside scholarships? Ther are lots out there for kids with demonstrated need. Yes, it takes, time to research, apply, fill out forms, send FA information, get letters of recc, write essays, what have you, but if a student has a high desire to have choices in what school they attend, IMO they should open the doors by looking for non-institution based FA (scholarship $$) as well as institution based aid. Thats where I think some people feel students feel “entitled”. I am all for students with need getting aid, but where I get frustrated is with students who think it should just be handed to them. There are lots of big, small, renewable, non-renewable, etc scholarships out there, and they can certainly help to open doors for students in need. I also know of several students who got good scholarship money from their employers (Chick-fil-A, KFC, Wal Mart, to name a few) for college.</p>
<p>A lot of those scholarships are for relatively small amounts so it’s a fair amount of work to piece them together. Some do put a lot of those together to put a big dent in the COA.</p>
<p>You can’t find both models at any price in the similar condition (or can you? it would surprise me very much to find that a used Corolla costs the same as a used Mercedes when both are of the same age and condition)–another implicit aspect of my argument, since obviously any comparison would be made with all other variables held equal.</p>
<p>College is a luxury that society has placed a high importance on AND thankfully has supported funding to make it possible, to the highest degree of quality as possible, for as many people as possible and especially for the highest low-income achievers.</p>
<p>Thats exactly my point, BCEagle. Yes, some scholarships are for relatively (comparatively) small amounts, but $500 here and $1000 there does add up. My older s filled out a bunch, and got about $6k in scholarship money (non need-based- if he qualified for need based, he’d have applied to lots more.) Some schools will reduce their FA offer by the amount of outside aid, but some do not, and some schools will leave the grant $ alone and reduce the work-study or Staffords. And as I said, some employers are VERY generous to their student employees. Then of course there are the ROTC scholarships, and other, similar scholarships (eg DOD type ones) where a certain # of yrs of service is required as a committment in return for school funding. Students need to open their eyes and look at what is out there rather than just expecting the college to pay for their education. JMO</p>
<p>We were discussing Beetles and Corollas. Cars are a large market with those selling
them in various states of motivation. Let’s take a look at houses. In Detroit, you can
buy houses for $100 or less. I heard that someone bought the Superdome for half a
million. In my area, there was a huge office building owned by a once great computer
company. I think that they spent about 50 to 70 million building it. They auctioned it
off and the highest bidder was a group of guys that mortgaged their homes for about
$400,000 and bid on it. My guess is that the rent from the first year was considerably
more than what they paid for it.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Your statement is full of holes but it would require a discrete analysis to do the poking.</p>
<p>I guess this is why there’s a childrens table.</p>
<p>My son picked up a few too but you don’t want to go back to professors
too many times for recommendations.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I had 3/4 of my undergraduate and all of my graduate degree paid for
by employers. Yes, it is nice.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I think that there are lots of ways to scrape across the money for
college. Much of the population has been sold the myth that there’s
tons of money out there if you work hard in school to the point that
you can go where you want to. That results in a lot of disappointment
that pushes people towards loans.</p>
<p>^ Good points, BCEagle. I also think people wait too long before they really look into the COST of their education, and many miss great opportunities and important deadlines for $$ that is out there. </p>
<p>Understand about the concern for pestering people for letters or recc, but its often quite possible for the letters of recc to be written in a generic format so that they can be used with many applications, and many come from people other than academicians who are often willing to print of several copies for the applicant to use/reuse. Also, thank heavens for word processing. Just a few keystrokes and “Dear National Science Foundation” becomes “Dear Betty Crocker cookoff scholarship” .</p>
<p>Agree, there are lots of ways to fund one’s education-- it doesnt have to be with loans, or dependent solely on the school-based aid.</p>
<p>BCEagle - Er, weren’t we discussing Mercedes and Corollas/Beetles? You corrected me that Beetles are marginally more expensive than Corollas (or the other way around, something along those lines), and said that they would be better for tall people; I conceded my ignorance of car prices but pointed out that my original example focused on the impracticality of a two-door vehicle for a family regardless of height.</p>
<p>Your condescension is neither constructive nor polite, or even particularly witty. Please do poke holes in my logic, though; I am always glad to improve my reasoning skills if proved wrong, or else to practice them in pointing out the errors in “a discrete analysis.” (Pray tell, what is the difference between a discrete and continuous analysis?)</p>
<p>Society does a pretty poor job of making higher education accessible for the sake of education (not everyone qualifies physically for ROTC or wants to major in a hard science for the DOD scholarships, although they are wonderful opportunities). Eliminating need-based aid would merely exacerbate the problem.</p>
<p>I have no particular comment on outside scholarships, since it seems that many people don’t apply for them. I suggested one to a friend and he responded, “Only if you email me the specifics.” (The state issues a compendium of local scholarships every year, which is distributed at my school to all seniors.)</p>
<p>The comparisons between attending a dream school vs. living in a dream home or driving a dream car seem off to me because the dream school depends on both money and talent/effort/achievement. If you want to buy a house in Malibu or a Lamborghini, all it takes is the money. If you want to go to a tippy-top school, you need the stats AND the money. </p>
<p>Students understandably focus on the GPA/testing part of the equation, because that’s what is most under their control. It’s also what US culture emphasizes. College admissions is perceived as a purely merit-based enterprise. Fancy cars, not as much. Having that nice Mercedes primarily signifies that you are wealthy, not that you deserved to have one (though I’m sure that all Mercedes owners reading this of course are deserving ). That nice couple with the lovely home might have scrimped and saved and put in massive hours at work to achieve their success…or they might just have been given a down payment by their parents.</p>
<p>keilexandra,
While I am less familiar with the scholarship monies available for those, for eg pursuing History or English, there are lots and lots of funding resources out there, DOD and ROTC just being a few off the top of my head. Then of course there is always Questbridge. I tried to do a quick search for some of the other minority or low income grants (I am blanking on the name of one well known one, and its gonna frustrate me til I find it!) but in my search I stumbled into the Tiger Woods Foundation :eek: To his credit, the scholarships (at least the ones I looked at) were need based for students who had demonstrated committment to community service.</p>
<p>QB is amazing. I don’t qualify for it (middle-class) but it has changed the lives of so many CC students and one very deserving person that I know personally. However, it only applies to a very small percentage of the low-income HS population.</p>
<p>Other than QB, Gates Millenium, and a few other ultracompetitive foundation scholarships, I don’t know of any scholarships like DOD or ROTC–which are competitive but not nearly as competitive due to a larger number of scholarships awarded–which don’t have significant restrictions on course of study (or physical fitness, for ROTC). Maybe there are some for future teachers that require only intent, not a major, to become an educator?</p>
<p>Keilexandra - I don’t think you should write off flagship universities. Many of them have honors programs which tend to be like a LAC within a large university. The kids live together, take classes together, get first choice a course selection and are assigned top advisors. For example look up the University of Minnesota. <a href=“http://honors.umn.edu/[/url]”>http://honors.umn.edu/</a></p>
<p>Something that I find annoying is high-school students that try
to talk to adults at what they think are adult levels. They lack
life experience and the ability to do complex analysis.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I will let some college professor try to teach you in a small
LAC setting.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>You could consult Rosen or Copi.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I think that society does an excellent job at it but the parents and
students have to work pretty hard for it.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>My son’s school has a list of several hundred outside scholarships and
most of them require transcripts, letters of recommendation, a resume
and maybe an essay. They are worth looking at and I’d guess that a lot
of students apply as the school takes in a ton of low-income students.</p>
<p>The amounts aren’t bad if you’re going for a state school.</p>
<p>A thousand or two off a ten-thousand dollar bill isn’t bad. It isn’t
much for a fifty thousand dollar bill though.</p>
<p>The tax-credits get you quite far for a state education. Only a small
dent for private schools.</p>
<p>Why didn’t I know about the skateboard scholarship before now?!?!?!?!
</p>
<p>And keilexandra
There are a ton of scholarships out there for normal and weird things, many with few or no restrictions like the skateboarding one I just mentioned. Sure that example happens to only offer a handful of shcolarships, but there are many, MANY others out there. Carpe Diem is a great scholarship. People write it off because there is a small application fee, but its great and renewable for 4 yrs. And you can also apply once you are in college. With jsut a little bit of reasearch, the world opens up.</p>
Whereas you only lack the patience. Come on, dismissing someone’s thought and then saying you can’t be bothered to show your work is the cheapest kind of cheap shot. Who really belongs at the children’s table here?</p>
). That nice couple with the lovely home might have scrimped and saved and put in massive hours at work to achieve their success…or they might just have been given a down payment by their parents.</p>