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<p>Agreed. We were happy that we were able to do this for our kiddos. And because we were in the position to be full pay…we let the KIDS choose the colleges they attended. We were NOT disappointed with their choices.</p>
<p>Some of those FA kids are from striver professional class families. Not everyone has maintained previous earnings in this economy. I know people in this situation. One friend, a highly-educated professional, was laid off after her organization lost a federal grant due to budget cuts. She has a child in college. The FA is nearly all loans and work-study, and her daughter has worked 5 part-time jobs this summer to help pay for school. And some have other circumstances. Another striver professional class family I know (dad a dentist, mom a lawyer) will likely have kids on FA due to family size and mom stopping work to care for younger child with Downs. I could go on…</p>
<p>Are the “goodies” the schools boast of only available to FA students? I didn’t get that impression from our recent week of visits. At one richly-endowed LAC, we were told that the college provides summer research grants for any interested students; no mention was made of a FA qualifier. All of the schools boasted of their study abroad programs, and at least a couple pointed out that study abroad is often cheaper than staying on campus for the same time. I suppose that depends on where the SA happens; Tokyo and London would likely not meet that criteria.</p>
<p>I haven’t read every post, but I will just say that as somebody who does sometimes hire people, I would be just as impressed by an applicant with a degree from Williams or Amherst as one from Harvard or Yale, and I think that you get a great education at any of those schools–they are just different kinds of schools.</p>
<p>cobrat,
I hope you have learned from your experiences not to mete out offensive generalizations about anyone based upon their income or financial situation.</p>
<p>Re: being full-pay</p>
<p>While we feel fortunate to be able to afford our kids’ colleges, my interpretation is that this thread is about value for the cost, not happiness about having the cash to pay.</p>
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Thank you, wjb! This, to me, is the crux of the matter. I’ve never been to Europe, and I’m going to be very crabby on my deathbed if I never get there. But I’d still rather provide my kids with great educations than have the undoubtedly wonderful experiences we’ve given up to pay for for those educations.</p>
<p>(And we fit into the subgroup of parents who are deemed full freight but said to our kids “Sorry, but here’s our limit - spend it how you will.” They’ve done splendidly because of the diversity in great American schools - need-only LACs and unis, merit LACs and unis, in-state publics, OOS publics. And we didn’t go full-freight but still can’t afford Europe!) </p>
<p>It doesn’t benefit me at all to take note of what other people have that I don’t - my situation is invariably unchanged if I do. I think we are damned lucky to have been in the income category that allowed our kids to live in a great school system, have high-quality dance and instrument lessons, and enjoy many of the other benefits of an upper-middle class life that helped make them attractive applicants to top-tier schools. I wouldn’t trade having to pay less, or nothing, for college for what we gave our children when they were young.</p>
<p>Gotta ask…do the financial aid students at Harvard wear tags that identify them as such? How would another student KNOW who is receiving financial aid and who is not. My kids did NOT find this a subject of general conversation at their schools. My guess is there were kids working in the dining halls who were NOT receiving financial aid…and actually some kids receiving need based aid who did NOT work on campus…or off. My kids never discussed finances with their college friends. Same way as we don’t discuss finances with our personal friends here (you guys know more about my college costs than my neighbors).</p>
<p>D’s roommates knew who was on financial aid because those on aid complained bitterly how the university was nickel and diming them (not paying for EVERYTHING apparently). D’s opinion: “Yeesh, show a little gratitude!”</p>
<p>My experience is 40 years old, but I still bear the scars of roommates and housemates NOT discussing financial situations. My friends would order pizza every night, and I’d escape to my room - because I simply couldn’t afford it, and didn’t want to feel like I had to live on the charity of others. For my first three weeks of school, while my roommates and suite mates had jacket-and-tie sitdown dinners, I waited on them in a white waiters jacket (that didn’t fit.) (I worked my way through college in hotel dining rooms, and there was no way I was going to do that with my college mates. So I worked BOTH college bookstores. I can go on (I should also report that while I spent four years in relative discomfort, I learned HEAPS from that experience, and, looking back at it, it was probably the most important aspect of my college experience, for which I am most grateful.) (In some ways, I felt like I was there for the benefit of my wealthier classmates, and the college basically said as much.)</p>
<p>mini,
So you would have preferred that your roommates discuss your financial situation? In good company, that would have been rude. Also, how would you have preferred the scenarios went? No pizza for anyone because you couldn’t afford it? No jacket and tie dinners allowed so that some people wouldn’t feel bad?</p>
<p>I would have preferred that people were all on the up-and-up, and that these profound differences in the way we had learned, through our experience, to deal with the world, could be explored, respectfully, and with the maturity of which gifted college students are capable. (If class issues can’t be explored while in college, when could they?)</p>
<p>I remember clearly - in my white, Jewish (then), lower middle-class (then) self - being made the spokesperson for the “ghetto”, for in reading Malcolm X, I had actually visited Harlem - once! </p>
<p>I wouldn’t think anyone would have to change their behavior one bit. I do think we (all) missed a very substantial opportunity to expand our consciousness.</p>
<p>As I have written before, I think the single most important thing I got from my LAC was a decision that I made, only semi-consciously at the time, that my aspiration was to “live the life of a rich person, only without the money.” I appreciated many of the parents of my classmates greatly - they started foundations, headed publishing houses, did interesting exciting work in Africa and Asia, wrote books, etc. And (I feel) my life has been totally successful in what I set out to do - started three foundations, founded a very successful publishing house, do interesting, exciting work in Africa and Asia, wrote a dozen books with more on the way (and have a great family!). I chalk that up very much to the excellent foundation I got at my LAC, and especially my experience of really wealthy people (not sort-of-wealthy, upper middle class folks, but really wealthy ones.)</p>
<p>I am very grateful, but there could have been more.</p>
<p>(And P.S., as I noted, ALL students at my LAC are on financial aid, even if they don’t recognize it - the difference is quantitative, not qualitative. We should ALL show a little gratitude.)</p>
<p>I was a full FA student. My first work study job was in a cafeteria. It lasted 2 weeks because I hated the work. I ended up working as the assistant to the director of student activities because I was a very good typist. I also made very good money typing papers for some students. </p>
<p>My husband was a full pay student. He went to one of those New England prep schools. He had a falling out with his parents and they refused to give him any more spending money. The only job he could get on campus was in the dining room as a server, that’s where I met him. He used to give me extra steak or lobster on special dinner nights, it was before we started going out. My friends used to wonder why I got more food than they did.:)</p>
<p>My small LAC education was the turning point for me, not because of its outstanding education it offered. It was where I learned “proper American manners.” It included on how to hold a glass, use silverwares, what to wear, and how to carry on small talks, all of that came in handy in my adult life. I knew which of my friends came from money. Maybe I was just too stupid or insensitive, but my friends never made me feel inadequate, I was invited to all of their outings. I worked 20+ hours a week, so I never had to ask my parents for extra money, not that they had any to give.</p>
<p>re mini’s post: Everyone is made to feel bad by some people at some times in their lives.</p>
<p>How do you rank LACs? </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Figure out what is important to YOUR kid in choosing a college </p></li>
<li><p>Pick a subset, based on location, cost/FA, and chances of acceptance. </p></li>
<li><p>Do the research necessary to evaluate each school in your list against your criteria. Include “feel:” would I fit in here? Visits are critical.</p></li>
<li><p>Come up with your list, making sure there’s a financial safety or two. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Because, IMO, there is no valid way to rank LACs as a general proposition. They are simply too diverse. </p>
<p>DD’s criteria were pretty simple: offer Russian at least as a minor, within six hours or so of home, not too religious, not in Iowa (don’t ask!), at least 1500 kids - plus the acceptance and financial issues. </p>
<p>We came up with a list of 10 schools. Only two are true LACs, but three more are small universities with LAC feels. Three are midsized universities, and two big state schools. We did go outside the six-hour limit for one reach school (sometimes marketing works). </p>
<p>We’ve finished our first round of evaluation on six of the schools, including visits, and D has them pretty well ranked. So far, none have dropped off the list, though one is close. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>I think LAC’s are worth $200K, just as much as schools that are known for their graduate schools ( like HYP) are worth $200K.</p>
<p>However, if that is not in your budget, there certainly are public LACs, master’s universities that are midsize as well to consider.</p>
<p>My oldest attended an LAC on FA, she utilized work-study, but most people didn’t know she was on FA ( my impression), the ones that did, didn’t care. ( she did have enough money to chip in on a pizza ever once in a while)
My youngest is attending a master’s university where she is full pay & campus jobs are reserved for work-study- which is fine, but it sure would be nice if she could find a job close to where she lives. ( she doesn’t have a car & the weather here precludes using a bike year round)</p>
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<p>Unless the university admins at said tippy elite schools fall flat on their faces multiple times, I doubt it. </p>
<p>Moreover, with the exception of some elite universities like Princeton, Dartmouth, UChicago, etc…most of the elite universities’ reputations were built upon the quality of their graduate schools, published faculty research, association with government/scientific/medical/industrial research, and long histories of being associated with wealthy families and prominently successful alums. Their failure to admit many more from the “striver classes” as opposed to wealthy or FA/scholarship students is quite inconsequential in the greater scheme considering the undergraduate schools tend to ride the coattails of the abovementioned factors. </p>
<p>Only benefits to more merit awards is that the perceived quality gap between the elite universities and the merit schools may shrink over time…but the elites will still likely be on top barring some dramatic cataclysmic event.</p>
<p>Back to LACs and value:</p>
<p>Earlier this week, my D and I looked at three different well-regarded and nationally ranked institutions (one mid-sized university, one large university, and one LAC) in the same geographical area. They all cost exactly the same (55K). One thing that struck me was that only the LAC offered guaranteed housing for four years on campus; only the LAC included study abroad for full credit in the tuition price (no extras); only the LAC offered subsidies to all students (whether on FA or not) to accept unpaid internships; only the LAC offered a flat meal rate to be used as little or as much as the student wished; only the LAC guaranteed that the freshmen would not be taught in huge lecture sections by part-time adjuncts. All campus activities, concerts, galleries, gym facilities, and even golf lessons are free. For our family (and we will be full-pay), the LAC is a better value that the comparably priced bigger universities.</p>
<p>As far as guaranteed housing for LAC, it is nice, but because D1 had to live off campus, she learned to deal with the landlord and to manage her own food money. For some students, off campus living was cheaper than paying campus housing and food. For D1 it was a nice gradual growing up process.</p>
<p>I agree guaranteed housing is very nice, since in some areas housing can be difficult to find.
Older D lived in campus housing all four years, including living just off campus in some town homes the college had purchased.
Younger D however just lived on campus one year, not because dorms weren’t available, but she likes living off campus better. ( the price is a toss up, but I think you get more for the same dollar living off campus at her school- she is very excited about her window seat ) :)</p>
<p>Both of our kiddos went to expensive colleges. Both of them worked while there (one on campus and one off campus). We expected them to work. Both had guaranteed housing on campus and both chose to live off campus for two years. The costs were comparable as both were in expensive areas. But living off campus had other intangible perks…like learning to budget and prepare meals, paying the rent and utility bills on time (yes, we provided the funds but we did not make the payments), learning to use utilities with care (DS learned to turn the thermostat down in the winter…and DD learned to turn the AC temp UP in the summer to save money). It was a good transition, I agree.</p>
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<p>The LAC/residential Uni guaranteed housing can also be a double-edged sword depending on the school. </p>
<p>Some schools make it nearly impossible for you to live off-campus unless you have some exceptional emergency mitigating circumstances. The campuses with such policies say it is to “foster a closer residential campus community”. My cynical side feels it is a way for these institutions to make more money off their students in the form of room and board fees. The latter is especially lucrative considering the markups they charge.</p>
<p>In running my calculations of per/meal charges at my college and those of some friends at other colleges…the board charges are such that one can sometimes eat-out every meal daily at some decent restaurants and still come out ahead.</p>