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<p>Mixed messages like “we’ll try to make it work” or “let’s see when financial aid comes out” is like kicking the can down the road instead of setting clear expectations when it counts (i.e. when making the application list). A clear statement like “we will spend only up to $X” leaves a lot less room for misunderstanding between the parents and student.</p>
<p>OP, you seem to know more than the average kid knows about their parent’s finances and maybe that is adding to your frustration. Glad you are looking forward to OSU !</p>
<p>There is no one size fits all when it comes to finance’s. Hopefully the child/student and the parents have a relationship based on honesty and trust. There are a lot of variables in comfort level and sacrifice when it comes time to make these decisions. If a family is immune financially to unexpected circumstances then they are extremely fortunate.
I am not completely trusting of a 17 or 18 year olds view of his families financial circumstances, and I mean no disrespect saying this.
The lions share of the decision of where the vast majority of students go to school is predicated on finances. This is made clear to me over and over again in conversations with our daughter as she shares where her classmates have committed to and why.
Maybe the OP’s parents are looking down the road and know that they will be in a better position to fund graduate school or assist him financially as a young adult until he is solidly on his own two feet. None of know any of these things nor should we presume to. Coming out of a good school with no debt is something that any young person should be very thankful for.</p>
<p>I have some friends who love their children dearly, raised them with just about every luxury and privilege, but when it came to college, it was just state U or they had to get scholarships. And this was 10-15 years ago, before the costs have sky rocketed to where they are today. One of my DH’s colleagues, who is very well to do, certainly wealthier than we are, made the comment a few years ago, that his son’s choices were Brandeis for $45K or Binghamton for $15K, so “that should be easy”. I thought he was being sarcastic as he was ever so indulgent with his kids in terms of vacations and all sorts of things, that we don’t , can’t give our kids., and assumed the kid went to Brandeis. Nope. Binghamton. I put my foot in my mouth, maybe a year later when I saw the student and asked how Brandeis was. He said he would have loved to have gone there, but the parents made him go to Binghamton. So it’s not just the OP’s parents who feel that way, and who’s to say they are wrong? I don’t agree, but then I’m not doing all that hot in life with the wonderful resources provided to us. </p>
<p>This is much less about how much money the OP’s family has and more about them being responsible teachers to their children. While they may have the cash to write a check for unexpected expenses, they also live frugally which is why they have the money to handle emergencies. While CMU may be a better school and starting salaries may be slightly higher than at OSU, the simple math will show that it would take years to pay off the loans using the difference in pay. Over time, the difference in pays shrinks. It is simply not possible in the aggregate to call going to the ‘top schools’ a good financial decision. Most of the kids on CC that are learning this lesson are coming from families that truly cannot pay. And, yes we would love to be able to tell our kids that we have enough that the can go anywhere. The fact remains that by doing so, we fail our kids by teaching them that ‘brand’ means more than substance.</p>
<p>I am very proud of the OPs parents for helping a kid learn a hard lesson. Way too many wealthy parents just write the check and say yes. The kids get a ‘great’ degree and then wonder why their boss does not defer to them like mom and dad did. No one said parenting was easy. Just because you can do for your kids does not mean you should.</p>
<p>I am also proud of the OP. His later posts make it clear that he is starting to get it. Your parents did not become well-off because they threw money at their problems. They have money because they spent what they had wisely. Give them a hug. Thank them for all they have done for you. Enjoy OSU. I am not a Buckeye fan, but they are a top school. Every Big 10 university is part of the Association of American Universities. Check it out sometime. No shame at all in going to any of those schools, especially in the honors programs. Get your degree. Put your energy into being good at whatever you do. And I cannot stress it enough…someday you will understand how hard it is for you parents to love you enough to say no.</p>
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<p>We disagree on the definition of inferior then, and our priorities are different as well. You’re transferring from a school ranked similarly to OSU for one ranked similarly to NYU. CMU is ranked just a few steps above that. Does that make it better? It depends on your goals. If your primary goal is to attend the highest ranked college that you can, I suppose it does. If your goal is to get a solid education that will enable you to have a rewarding career while incurring minimal debt, maybe not. </p>
<p>Life experience (working in a factory, as a waitress, in ad design, as an assistant manager of a major corporation) made me appreciate the value of higher education. Many can’t afford any, much less the luxury of quibbling about the differences between top 50 schools as determined by US News & World Report.</p>
<p>I’ve attended 4 colleges (2 privates and 2 SUNYs). Most you probably never heard of; none were ranked higher than the top 10 regional schools in the NE, and heaven only knows what they were ranked in the dark ages when I attended. I’ve worked for national broadcast networks making the same union salary as those who attended schools ranked in the top 50, those who attended cc, and some who never attended college at all. Where you went to school didn’t seem to matter. </p>
<p>But people are different. If young people want to take on a lot of debt for college, they’re welcome to, I suppose. I preferred to not carry debt. It allowed me to graduate nearly debt free. Within a year, my loans were paid. Within two, I bought a house. Ten years later my mortgage was entirely paid off. Not carrying debt has given our family freedom. I was able to quit working to home school my children. Our expenses are low, so we live pretty decently on my husband’s salary. But we’re also fortunate. I know families whose situations changed drastically due to illness, divorce, job loss, or death. It’s easy to plan for things to go well; I’ll attend that college, get that degree, earn that starting salary, and have that career. But life doesn’t always work that way. Once you’ve spent that cash in hopes of living Plan A, what happens when life saddles you with Plan B?</p>
<p>@austinmshauri</p>
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<p>If your goal is to get a good quality education and make friends with / be surrounded by / highly motivated students than it makes a HUGE difference. If your goal is to graduate from a run of the mill diploma farm so you can have one extra notch on your resume, which is what it seems like college is for you, then it doesn’t make a difference. I’m not saying goto a higher ranked school as a prestige hound, I’m saying it because there is a noticeable difference at the ~top 30 universities. </p>
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I don’t think being debt-free is really an accomplishment or worthwhile pursuit in life. No offense but you sound like the people I am trying to get away from by transferring. The unmotivated people, those that are living life without passion, with no goals or purpose.</p>
<p>diploma farm, worthwhile pursuit, unmotivated, no goals or purpose? Wow you are just loaded with compliments.</p>
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<p>Really? And what difference is that? Do you imagine highly motivated students can only be found at the highest ranked colleges? There are no highly motivated people at colleges ranked lower than the top 30+/-? What about people who can’t afford college? Are there no highly motivated people amongst them? If highly motivated people can only be found at the top 30 colleges, then can I assume that every single one of the professors at those top 30 colleges graduated from one of those top 30 schools? Or are you going to be taught by grads of a “run of the mill diploma farm”? I’ve always been surrounded by intelligent, highly motivated people. Several of us, as far back as high school, received results from a test that indicated our IQs were a handful of points below what was deemed “genius” level. High test scores didn’t impress me then and they don’t impress me now. Some people are naturally better at testing than others and I suspect highly ranked colleges are full of them. It doesn’t naturally follow that they’re any more motivated than everybody else. I’ve known plenty who were pretty lazy, actually, because testing came so easily. A person can be highly intelligent without being highly motivated, and vice versa.</p>
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<p>Perhaps being debt free isn’t a worthwhile pursuit to you. Money isn’t everything; freedom is. I have enjoyed the freedom of raising my own children, of providing care for my parents when they could no longer live on their own and giving them the comfort of dying at home instead of in a hospital room, of teaching my children, and arranging the schedule of my family as I see fit. “Unmotivated”? “Without passion”? I suppose in your world I am if, to qualify as motivated and passionate, people also need to keep a running debt. Being debt free allows me the time to interact with the readers of my websites, run election campaigns, meet with my state representatives, and accept invitations to work on committees that I’ve been invited to serve on simply because I am so motivated, passionate, and vocal about what I believe in. Had I accepted admission to one of those top 30 schools and taken on the debt that required, I wouldn’t have been in a position to do any of that. I may have not attended a top 30 college, however, that didn’t stop me from earning very good money at one of the top 10 networks in my industry. And that’s my point. If you’re clear about what you want, you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money to get there. </p>
<p>I agree with whomever above said these parents are frugal. Full stop. Not just about education. For themselves. In their house and cars etc. </p>
<p>These are savvy parents, who saw their child’s numbers and found all the NMF scholarship schools. They had to know they were never going to pay for CMU ever since they started researching. CMU’s lack of both merit and financial aid is well discussed on this board and elsewhere on the net.</p>
<p>I think the real error of the parents is that they decided to gamble on the likelihood that their child would not get admitted to the CIT program at CMU.</p>
<p>To the OP, you did the equivalent of getting into Harvard, Stanford or Oxford by getting into CIT. Congratulations, whether you go there or not.</p>
<p>Congratulations, OP, also on the big scholarship you got to Ohio State–I noticed in your original post that your parents are paying only $7k/year in tuition, so you have really gotten a great scholarship there, and really have earned part of your education by your grades and test scores. I’m pleased with the choice you made including the one to move forward with your life because Ohio State is a good school. I encourage you to follow all of MYOS’s advice in terms of contacting professors right away etc for research and other opportunities. Best to you!</p>
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<p>Yes, it appears that somehow that they did not make it clear to the OP that the OP can only go to CMU if it were cheap enough after scholarships, leading to this “let down” situation. If they had told the OP last fall that “you can apply to CMU, but you need to get a scholarship to bring the cost under $X to go”, then there should not be a “let down”.</p>
<p>what you should do is find a reason that makes CM significantly better than ohio state. Give your parents a reason on to why it is much better and why you need to go not just that you want to go</p>
<p>“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>To be fair to the frugal parents, it sounds like they DID tell the OP in no uncertain terms before he applied that he could not go to CMU on their dime. They hadn’t even received the fin. aid package yet – so it’s obvious that they weren’t expecting any scholarships/FA to enable the OP to go.</p>
<p>Sometimes even when parents say straight up that they won’t pay for an Ivy/expensive private, kids ask to apply just to “see” if they’ll get in. Perhaps that’s what happened with the OP – and then he was shocked when the parents wouldn’t change their minds. Not sure that we can blame the parents for this one.</p>