<p>We live in a State with pretty decent public Universities and we very reasonable (relatively) tuition. Our daughter is a Senior in High School and wants to attend an well known, Southern, Out of State, top 100 University that has a beautiful campus and a football team. With OofS tuition and room and board, we would expect about $40,000 for the first year (I assume the second year she would qualify for residential tuition?) Alternatively, she could go to our own State Universities and the cost will be much, much less (especially because we prepaid for her instate tuition when she was a baby). </p>
<p>She will not qualify for any merit scholarships and there is no chance we will get any sort of financial aid so we will be full pay. We can afford it, but to say 40K will not hurt would be inaccurate. I am looking to retire and this is not an added expense I want to worry about.</p>
<p>Our daughter is bright, but she is not elite college material, nor would she likely qualify for our State Honors programs. She would likely be considered middle of the pack with regard to her high school credentials relative to other Public School Universities. We would pay for her to go to an elite school, but that is not realistically in he future. She may or may not qualify to get in to our State's flagship, which has a very well known football team, but she will likely qualify for one of our State's Directional Universities where the average SAT for critical reading and Math is over 1200 per the statistics on the University website (I assume this also includes the honor students)</p>
<p>What does she want to do? She is not sure, but she would like to get her degree . . . maybe in business or communications, and then move to a very large North Eastern City (if not California). My advice to her is go to the State School . . get her degree . . . if she chooses to go to Grad School in the North East, we will be able to help her out, but that the goal is to get her degree and get out of College with zero debt.</p>
<p>The issue: My wife thinks we should spend the money for the Out of State School if that is what my daugther wants My daughter has never visited it . . but is attracted to the School's reputation of being a beautiful and fun place to go to school. I on the other hand am thinking of the cost savings if she stays in-state and being honest, think she will far better off staying closer to home (a few hour commute vs. a whole day commute to get to the School), and since the degree from either school will likely be of close to equal value in the end, it is really difficult to justify the added expense. I feel somewhat guilty about my position. Anybody have any advice? Thanks.</p>
<p>First, pre-paid state scholarship programs usually transfer, but that’s not the entire point. Your daughter has the option of going to school debt free–and that is a huge gift which she probably doesn’t fully appreciate. Your daughter is asking to go to a school that she wants to attend–maybe very badly–on a whim. She hasn’t visited, it doesn’t have a program that is specific to the school. A lot of public universities have increased the number of OOS students in order to boost their tuition revenue, especially because most universities have faced significant budget cuts. Furthermore, a lot of state universities, including Washington, have made it impossible or very difficult to get state residency. An obvious option would be to pay up to the cost of your in-state tuition and ask her to finance the rest with a job and loans. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense. I would frankly rather pay for my kid to go to a less well known private college with smaller classes and potentially better professors rather than have him be a revenue source for an OOS program where program quality has probably suffered due to cost-saving measures.</p>
<p>If the out of state university offers a desired course of study of particular appeal, either because it isn’t available in-state or isn’t as well regarded in-state, I could see sacrificing financially, but “beautiful and fun” is hardly a reasonable criterion for choosing an expensive school. Look, if you want to indulge your kid, that’s a decision many parents would make, but that doesn’t mean going the other way is “stingy”. And don’t be so sure your D would qualify for any kind of in-state treatment after freshman year. That isn’t typically the case, so you’d need to check with the school.</p>
<p>Unless the OOS school is significantly superior academically, I say she should go in-state and be happy that you would be willing to help her with grad school. This is assuming that you have accurately represented your D’s not-very-good-IMHO reasons for wanting to go there.</p>
<p>I generally believe in going to the best school one can get into, unless it is going to cause financial hardship. In this case, it sounds as if the schools are about equal academically and similar in other respects too, except that the OOS school represents getting out of Dodge. I sympathize with that desire, but your D will also be away from home at the in-state school. If I were you, I would not lean heavily on the closeness of the in-state school. Say that it is far enough away to be different, and you will not pester her! :)</p>
<p>BTW, you would probably get the best advice if you break down and identify the schools involved in this choice.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is stingy to have your daughter make a choice that is the best value for the cost. That’s a real life decision. Unless there was some very compelling reason to choose an OOS college over a good in state college ( such as specific program of study) I would choose the in state college.</p>
<p>Beautiful campus and football team isn’t worth an additional $20+ K a year. That is enough to pay for study abroad, travel, and graduate school if she’s interested. If she attends a state directional, surely she will have friends at Stat U and can visit for a couple of football games. </p>
<p>No, she would probably NOT quality for residential tuition the second year. Read the fine print on the website, but I’ve not heard of a public college granting residence tuition in a student’s second year simply because a student returns for sophomore year.</p>
<p><<<
I assume the second year she would qualify for residential tuition?)
<<<</p>
<p>NO…she would NOT. YOU (her parents) do not pay taxes there. She would be “living” in that state with the intent to go to school…that does NOT count for residency. </p>
<p>Her prepaid plan will get used towards tuition, but it will only cover a fraction of it. You need to look into that. </p>
<p>You are not being stingy. </p>
<p>What school is this? what are her stats? Maybe she would qualify for some merit.</p>
<p>This sounds like a case of greener grass to me and I don’t think you are being stingy if you don’t feel it’s a good value or a wise financial decision. If you look around on this site, it’s easy to find posts about kids who went off to their dream school and want to come home after a week, or are miserable. I’m not saying this would happen, but it just shows that it can be hard for the kids to know what they want or what the school will actually be like, even if they do visit, and she hasn’t even done that. She doesn’t know much about this school and neither of you can know whether she would actually be any happier there. Is that something you want to bet, what, $80K on? If she wants to work in California or the NE after graduation, then picking a Southern college doesn’t seem like the best choice either.</p>
<h1>1, if you are considering paying $40,000 per year vs. a lot less, HAVE HER VISIT the campus!</h1>
<p>If you are talking about whether she is happy or not, and it’s 40K vs. 10K or 20K, spend a thousand bucks to fly her to the “school of her dreams” and be a thousand percent sure that is where she wants to go.</p>
<p>My son is very serious about two schools that are 35K per year for us, and there are two schools that are 20K per year for us. He has visited three of the four, and if he gets into the fourth, he’ll visit there.</p>
<p>IMHO, if I were her, and you wouldn’t even let me visit both places and compare, that would torque me off. I have a friend who was forced to go to a state school because her father wouldn’t pay for a private school she managed to get into, and he could afford. It scarred her.</p>
<p>But this is different, she hasn’t even seen the campus in person!</p>
<p>FWIW, my father paid for college undergrad for us kids, but paid zero of grad school. Maybe you would consider a gambit - if she really really REALLY wants to go to the 40K school, then tell her you won’t be able to pay for grad school. She’d have to get a job and go part-time wherever she would want to go.</p>
<p>Oh, and would it hurt for her to apply to both, and see on paper what kind of FA she would be offered, and the difference?</p>
<p>Yep, tell her that you have a fixed amount of money to spend on her education. She can choose the pricey OOS (which she should visit first) or go in-state and have money for grad school.</p>
<p>Now, if she is a typical teen, she’ll choose the instant-desire option first (even if their desire changes after a week), so try to get her to imagine being 40 and work backwards. What difference would having to struggle to pay for grad school vs. not make? Are people in the North or West Coast able to differentiate between the two schools (it may come as a shock to her that most people outside the South think, for instance, that UGa and 'Bama and UAB and UAH are all the same quality).</p>
<p>Are you really worrying about paying for grad school for an average HS kid with average grades, no particular intellectual interests, who is looking for a pretty campus?</p>
<p>Cross that bridge when you come to it. She’s 17. All over America, highly motivated young people in their 20’s and 30’s are in grad school and have figured out with a combination of fellowships, loans, employer payments, and their own savings how to pay for it.</p>
<p>Let’s get your D to the highly motivated part of her life- at which point she will figure out grad school payment without any help from you-- and not worry about that right now.</p>
<p>I think the advice to have your D visit the dream school is sound. I’m not sure you’ve posted anything that suggests it’s a good idea to “stretch” financially for the dream school, so treat her like an adult- let her visit- and then sit down and map out all the reasons why this is where she wants to go. And perhaps figure out how to get some skin the game from her (calculate summer earnings, campus job, etc.) which will be devoted to her transportation costs and her social life???</p>
<p>Adding my voice to the choir. NO, your daughter will NOT NOT get instate tuition the second year. She will still be OOS of you reside in another state. So…your costs will be upward of $40,000 for future years, as costs increase annually as well.</p>
<p>I would not pay for a school based on reputation alone (yes, that includes the Ivies). My kid would have to have a much more compelling reason than reputation and pretty campus.</p>
<p>You and your wife need to get on the same page about this. Find out why she feels that it is OK to indulge your daughter this way. You may decide that you agree. Personally, I think that something in the range of $80k (difference between in state and out of state) over the course of four years is a pretty big indulgence. There are other places I’d rather spend that kind of money.</p>
<p>Thanks all. I feel better now about setting my foot down. Yes, we live in Florida. DD wants to attend Auburn. 26 k tuition alone vs. Tuition in Florida which was paid for long ago. So financially, auburn simply makes no sense. If she moves to nyc after college, she can get residency up there and struggle along with all of the other kids struggling there…but hopefully she will have a degree and no debt when she gets there.</p>
<p>Stingy like a fox. Truly, you should not feel guilty. Your DD (and possibly your DW) don’t really understand the long term financial consequences here. </p>
<p>Actually my daughter was the stingy one. I urged her to go to the school and see if she liked the school and she didn’t want to. She decided without visiting the OOS. She picked the local school.</p>
<p>Right, makes no sense, and it’s not like Auburn would open more doors than UF in the North or West or something like that.</p>
<p>With the money you save, she can afford to spend a week in Europe every year and you’d still come out ahead.</p>
<p>Plus, there are many options in FL. Not only UF and FSU but also New College of Florida (the best public LAC there is and the only public LAC comparable to good private LACs in alumni achievements) + UCF, USF, etc.</p>
Say that it is far enough away to be different, and you will not pester her! :)</p>