<p>I was accepted to CMU's CIT and plan on studying Computer Engineering there. It is and has been my top choice for months including hypothetically getting into Princeton (I didn't) because it just felt right somehow. </p>
<p>I got zero in aid from them, most likely due to the fact that my family can pay with zero difficulty whatsoever. Our EFC was a hilariously high 240K, which considering we live in one of the lower cost areas of the country is probably fair. We have NO expenses at the moment either. I can't see turning down a fantastic school for about 1/4 of our EFC due to money as reasonable, especially due to the obscene starting salaries of CMU engineers.</p>
<p>My parents see it as the exact same education as at a decent public school, and several times more expensive. They want me to attend Ohio State, where I would be paying only 7k tuition and am in the honors program. While I would be not want to pay the 200K out of pocket as that is a crippling amount of debt, I honestly believe that paying for the school will pay off financially with a better starting job leading to a career of better paying jobs and I have seen studies that prove this.</p>
<p>I'm considering several options at this point, including trying to save hard for 2 years of OSU and transfer in somehow when I can afford it and offering to split the cost which my parents will not agree to as they will not let me take out the loans. Before I even opened my big CMU letter my dad said "You know you can't go" and I prayed it was a trick and I had been rejected so this wouldn't happen. </p>
<p>I just feel as if I'm going to regret this for years, and I'm already starting to resent my parents. I have been raised being told "you don't have to worry about paying for college" and knowing this I chose to focus on things like swimming and taking harder courses than getting a job during the school year to start saving and now I feel lied to. What can I do? May 1st is coming quick and I don't know anymore.</p>
<p>Your only option as I see it is to go to a local CC and save them their money and then transfer in on your own dime to CMU. You can’t afford CMU on your own.</p>
<p>let me correct myself: you will save yourself some money if your go to a cc first, then if you can transfer in, you might have some money saved to pay for CMU.</p>
<p>I don’t know really what to say to you. Assuming every single thing you have laid out here is true, it’s still your parents’ choice as to what they do with their money. It’s THEIR money. They have every right to spend or not spend it, as they please. It appears that you knew this was a possibility. It does not appear that they supported you through all of this and then pulled the financial rug out from under you when you got the big envelope. As smart as you must be to get accepted to this program, you must have had some inkling that if you were going to go anywhere other than Ohio State or a school at that price range, you would have to get pretty much a full ride or whatever OSU was going to cost. If you’d done a little research, like peruse CMU’s scholarships on their web site, you would have known that the chances of getting any merit money, much less a substantial award from them is a big fat goose egg. Yet, you still applied. </p>
<p>Most kids don’t know what financial issues might be lurking in their parent’s lives. Not that it matters, as your parents have that right to decide what they should contribute to your college education, not you. A lot of parents feel that state U is the way to go, and I’ve known well to do parents who insisted their kids commute to nearby schools to save on room and board when they could have well afforded to have paid that bill. It’s not where and what they wanted ot spend their money on, is the bottom line. Again, their money. When you finish school, you can go whereever you achieve acceptance as a grad student and borrow the money on your own whether your parents approve or not. That door is not yet open to you. You are dependent on THEM pretty much even for the entitlement loans as a signed FAFSA from them with all of their financial info is needed for you to even take that out. </p>
<p>Though you see the CMU opportunity as one well worth it, it’s not YOUR money that would be going into that channel. And your parents simply do not want to put their money there. Their money, their right. So since you cannot come up with the money yourself, the answer is quite simple: you go to OSU and do the best you can there and go to CMU or wherever for grad studies. You’ll be loan free which is better off than a lot of college kids. OSU is hardly a school to put one’s nose up to. Most every study I have seen has shown that those who have been accepted to an elite school but go elsewhere, do as well as their peers who did go that highly selective route. </p>
<p>The reason I started my post so conflicted, by the way, is because if you were my child, yes, I’d ever so want to pay to send you there, and though in all appearances we should be able to afford it, it would cause a lot of financial stress and pressure. Our kids know this, and have never pushed about it. They have accepted what we have said we could pay without a murmur and all college accepts that needed more from us went right off the table. But I can tell you, it hurt me terribly as I’d love to pay for them to go where ever they want regardless of cost.</p>
<p>Your only option as I see it is to go to a local CC and save them their money and then transfer in on your own dime to CMU. You can’t afford CMU on your own…you will save yourself some money if your go to a cc first, then if you can transfer in, you might have some money saved to pay for CMU.</p>
<p>This isn’t even really an option. How can an 18-year-old hope to save enough money in two years to afford to attend CMU? Two years there is likely to be close to $120,000. You can only borrow $15,000 of that without a co-signer. Your parents are probably not willing to co-sign that kind of debt with you, nor should they be. Even working full-time, there are pretty much no jobs you could get that would give you enough money to pay living expenses and save up $100,000 over two years to try to pay for CMU.</p>
<p>Honestly, your parents aren’t quite wrong. There’s no reason to believe that the education at Carnegie Mellon is significantly better than one at the Ohio State - better enough to be worth the likely $200K+ it will cost to send you there if they are paying out of their own pockets. And I can certainly see why they don’t want to shell out that kind of money when you are in the honors program at an excellent public university like tOSU. Most studies I’ve seen on the issue have stated the opposite of what you say. High-achieving students who got into top schools, but attended less-prestigious schools (for whatever reason), had little difference in starting salaries or career trajectory than their peers who went to the prestigious schools. Besides, we’re talking about Ohio State, which is a very well-reputed public research university and engineering school.</p>
<p>I really doubt that you will regret it for the rest of your life. If you go to tOSU, you’ll form warm memories and bonds with friends; you’ll get involved in activities and you’ll get a great education at a fine engineering school. There are many students who have to go somewhere other than their first choice for college and psychologically, they turn out fine.</p>
<p>OP would have trouble even getting the Direct Loans without parents filling out FAFSA. </p>
<p>CMU is quite the prize for the program the OP wants, and I do understand how he is feeling. I, would have a tough time swallowing this one. But, it’s not the OP’s money, and he will soon be an adult, so there is absolutely no obligation on the part of the parents to support him at all anymore. It’s all gift from this point on. What they want to give is up to them. You are highly unlikely to find anyone, any institution that will lend an 18-22 year this kind of money to go to this program, as prestigious as it might be. Not prestigious enough, not good enough to invest money even in this capitalist society of ours. Once a grad student, that’s a whole other story. At age 18 not worth the risk, and believe me, if it were, there would be dozens out ther offering up the funds to invest in this.</p>
<p>I guess I should elaborate a bit. Up until it came time to apply I had been led to believe for years that cost was a non issue, and at the time I believed we were a lot worse off than we are as I had only the evidence in front of me (we live in a smallish home, drive our entry-level cars into the dirt, we don’t spend much money really)</p>
<p>Then I saw something change in my dad, he started pushing hard for me to attend UCF on their NMF full ride, and then every time he saw an opportunity for big merit $$$ he pushed me there with no regard for the institution. I was shocked at the schools he pushed me into going to including: Miami of Ohio, UCF, UA, ASU, Oklahoma State, WVU, Gannon, and Florida Tech. Still I believed that if I got into CMU (or Pton or Cornell or UPenn etc) it would happen, or at least it would if it didn’t involve something we couldn’t afford.</p>
<p>After the applications were out, he changed his mind and a top school was 100% not a possibility. Other than Princeton for raw prestige he told me he wouldn’t pay. I put my hope into Schreyers Honors College at PSU for a top level education and was rejected there.</p>
<p>I only found the real numbers out by snooping on our CSS, I figured with a fairly highly ranking executive and an engineer as parents they were making more but I can honestly say that CMU wouldn’t involve any real sacrifice. My parents plan on retiring at 55 years old, and maybe that is what is causing them on not being able to pay but that’s a pretty raw deal for me. </p>
<p>I can live with OSU, US News puts them in the top 25. Knowing that I miss this opportunity hurts pretty bad though.</p>
<p>I also want to add that if it wasn’t for CompE, I would 100% not want them to pay. CMU is THE school for CompE up with Stanford and MIT. Mechanical, Civil, even Electrical it wouldn’t be worth it but for CompE and CS its hard to do better.</p>
<p>I think it was very clear when you started the app process that your parents did NOT want to pay for cost of a private college, and wanted to pay as little as possible. Though it’s their money, and they owe no one an explanation or rationale as to not wanting to pay whatever amount, I want to tell you that the financial forms don’t have a spot for debt. Or for what they are paying to maintain the lifestyle that they want. I pay an obscene amount to live where I do, in the house we have and we made that decision deliberately for the comfort and well being of many family members. There is no place on the fin aid forms that ask for my mortgage payment. And when you get used to living at a certain standard, the pressure is even heavier to make sure you save your money so that you can continue living at that standard in your old age. A quarter million dollar hit for the kid’s college can do some serious damage to the status quo, not to mention the future, I assure you. That’s what you are asking them to take, and they don’t want to do it. You are asking for a quarter million dollars from them, bear in mind. </p>
<p>I agree that CMU’s CompE may even be the best in the world. I know it well. But it does have a nasty attrition rate because of that–the whole danged school does not do well in terms of who gets out of there with degree in hand in 6 years. Not a sweet place, I can tell you, and I know CMU well. But still, as a parent, I’d so want to give my kid a chance, so yes, it kills me to be writing these truths. I know exactly where that emotion is, kid, cuz I’m feeling it too, But I’m older and wiser than you and am giving you the facts, and separating the emotion out of them. </p>
<p>And a major fact in all of this is that regardless of what you believe, it’s a bit much to ask someone, even your parents to pay out a quarter million dollars for that belief, when they do not want to do it. Think about what you are doing. You are asking for a quarter million dollars and are upset that they don’t want to pay it. </p>
<p>Perhaps something changed in your family’s financial situation that you’re not aware of - perhaps they looked at their retirement accounts and saw that they were lacking; maybe investments didn’t do as well as they’d hoped, or maybe there’s roughness at work that you’re not aware of or something else. Your father’s abrupt about-face indicates to me that something did happen that they just want to shield you from.</p>
<p>That said, I wouldn’t call your parents fully paying for you to go to a top 25 engineering school as a “raw deal.” Put things in perspective for yourself. I mean this in the nicest way - it can lead to you feeling better, overall. Of course allow yourself to “grieve” a little, if you will - feel sad for a bit about not being able to attend CMU. But after that point, you have to get yourself really psyched up about the opportunity that’s ahead of you.</p>
<p>I would recommend attending OSU for undergrad at $7K/yr, and CMU for graduate school. With so much uncertainty with job security, and ageism, perhaps your parents are trying to be careful. There is a difference between being able to afford. and willing to spend the money; sometimes cost benefit analysis may tip the balance. </p>
<p>Thanks all for your truths here. I won’t pretend it this doesn’t suck a good deal, but the wrong response would be to allow this setback to get me down. I know what I need to do these next for years to be CMU '22, and so for now OH!!!</p>
<p>I’ve paid for 2 full pay students at private colleges. I’m not going to defend your parents. </p>
<p>If you were my kid you’d be going to CMU. </p>
<p>I sympathize with your situation, but it is what it is. </p>
<p>1) Resent your parents and make sure they know that you do.
2) Go to Ohio State and do your best
3) Move as far away as possible when you graduate, and make sure they that you will. </p>
<p>OP, though I sympathize with you, and really kinda side with with ClassicRockerDad, as I laid it out, you have no right to dictate how anyone spends money that is not yours. Not even your parents. You can let them know how you feel and give it try to see if they will change their minds, but if they don’t , you can’t pry the money out of them. As for resenting them…that’s an emotional thing. Sure, you probably do resent them right now. Can’t help that. You are hurt, I know. But you do the best with what you’ve got and deal with things the right way as they come up. Good luck to you, and hugs from me.</p>
<p>We know a lot of kids who ended up at OSU honors who never thought that’s where they would go - ALL of them love it - even the ones who planned to go to much smaller schools. I’m sure its incredibly disappointing after all the hard work you did in HS to end up at the same college as kids who probably didn’t work as hard, but that wasn’t wasted effort. You will be much better prepared to do well in a hard major. And you will probably have a much better time at OSU than you would have had at CMU and there is value to that as well. You only have four years of college, its ok to enjoy them.
Congrats on your acceptances to good schools and good luck with your decision.
Oh, and don’t move away from your parents. I’m sure they love you and have good reasons for their decisions, even if you don’t agree with their choices.</p>