<p>My daughter never scored well on SATs, Math is not her thing. She taught herself Japanese at 9, knows Korean and learned some Chinese in HS then went overseas on Dept of State Scholarhip. She has 3.45 GPA so not good but she is missing her entire Junior year because she was in China. I did not want her to take a year off because of the same reason I worry about CC. I worry she will lose her edge and lose some of her fluency. I don’t think working at the mall and sitting at home is going to her much good. We could not afford the gap year programs, many wanted around 11,000, if I had that she would be in college anyway.</p>
<p>Oh and she had originally wanted to get into Linguistics because it is her life goal to meet Noam Chomsky. She had no chance of MIT due to her Math scores and she is better at foreign languages than English. So her grades were not going to get her anything, we had hoped to latch onto her year in China to get her some work study or small scholarships.</p>
<p>I just don’t know who to talk to because everyone thinks community college is ok.</p>
<p>It sounds like you are surrounded by people who understand your dilemma and want you to feel comfortable with your daughters choices. How is that a bad thing?</p>
<p>There are a lot of choices for a gap year if she is dead set against attending a community college.
City Year, Americorps- both will earn her an educational award to apply toward college tuition or loans. My oldest did City Year.
She could work 6 months to save money for a 6 month gap program- that is what my youngest did.
Im sure you can think of other ideas.</p>
<p>There is always the military. They’ll pay for everything and all you owe is time.</p>
<p>She really sounds exceptionally talented, especially with her language skills. I just feel very confident she will ultimately be successful no matter where she starts out next year. Linguistics is a great field, and no matter where she goes to school she can pursue graduate school etc. and get some financial aid. The most important thing is for you to not burden your family with too many loans.</p>
<p>I have been attempting to craft a submission to this forum for what is like - days. And, instead, I just keep reading because, well, so much good stuff has been said already in threads.</p>
<p>But here - my heart goes out to you. </p>
<p>You sound like a great mom with a good kid; I can’t tell you how you’ll get there but my gut say you are already doing the right thing, and will help her make the best choice…</p>
<p>Sounds corny but I’m in your corner and will say a little prayer for ya’s.</p>
<p>What city are you in. If she goes to community college, she should use her language skills to tutor, translate, etc. Many non profits are always looking for people to help with translation. Police department, womens shelters, schools, there are many ways she can take her skills and hone them while at cc, and at the same ti e building her resume for when she graduates. I have a friend who makes 20dollars an hour etching Spanish one on one. I would bet even the cc might need help.</p>
<p>Is there a Chinese, Japanese or Korean paper or center where you live? Any immersion schools? </p>
<p>If her passion is languages, she should do whatever she can to get out there and use them, and whatever advantage she might have had at a university will be balanced put, and she will be a very attractive transfer student if she chooses that path</p>
<p>My D’s friend who is at a cc also nannies. Perhaps there is someone out there who would love a multilingual nanny.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with CC. CC is a bargain. You often get lower quality facilities and students BUT you get better quality learning environment and comparable instruction. </p>
<p>In my experience:
The 1st two years of college @ a 4year are often taught in huge lecture halls with 200+ studnets by graduate students. In CC, you’ll get ~30-50 students per most classes taught by Master’s graduates; much easier to ask instructors questions and learn better & with less distractions. Besides, you don’t need a PHD to teach entry lvl classes. </p>
<p>Furthermore, most of these classes, whether at a 4 year or a cc, use the exact same book and go over the exact same types of problems. </p>
<p>You do not lose an “edge” by going to CC for the first two years. You may lose some of the college “experience.” But i doubt that experience is really worth +10,000 or more a year much less 90K. </p>
<p>AND when she graduates in 4 years (after transferring), in the world’s eyes she will be a gradate of her graduating/4 year institution. NO different from any of the other graduates.</p>
<p>State Dept employees come from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of colleges, some you have never heard of, and some with the fancy names. It will be more important for your D to take advantage of every opportunity where ever she attends school. Look on the government websites to read about what they look for in candidates. It says nothing about the name of the college you attend. It’s all about what you did. We have family friends working in all sorts of government departments in DC and elsewhere. They graduated from small, no name schools, top schools, and everything in between. Your D will be fine. Even if finances dictate that she attend school part-time, she can look for internships while not attending school to add to her overall experience.</p>
<p>The State Dept. would look more favorably at a candidate with no debt. Huge debt is not a good thing for anybody who needs a security clearance.</p>
<p>I agree whole-heartedly with the CC to in-state college route. That would bring any debt down by half. And your child could take out Stafford loans for Jr and Sr years to help.</p>
<p>I know it is very late in the game, but I wanted to make sure your daughter knew about the Chinese Flagship Programs and several of the universities throughout the US. All operate differently and offer different amounts of financial support. The purpose this intensive language program is to bring the student to the superior level in reading, writing and speaking Mandarin Chinese. Ohio State has one of the Flagship Programs. I am most familiar with the Flagship at Ole Miss. It may be too late for this year, (and I don’t know your daughter’s stats) but it may be something she could set her sights on as a transfer student while she attends CC. Ole Miss currently offers financial support for a summer abroad and a fifth year (half at a university and half internship) as part of their program. With your daughter’s background, I bet she would draw attention from these programs.</p>
<p>The program is intense…only for serious learners…</p>
<p>Feel free to pm me if you want anymore information.</p>
<p>I think she should start off at Ohio State, possibly with the Flagship program described above, and stay there. Ohio State is highly respected, will have great faculty and peers, and it would seem that it will be affordable. She doesn’t have to live on campus ultimately and can save money living off campus and cooking for herself.</p>
<p>The teaching at CC’s, in our experience, is excellent, much better than the teaching at some prestigious colleges, classes are small and there is a lot of support. However, I do agree that motivation can sink in that environment, for some kids, and since you seem to see CC as a personal failure, some of those feelings may be picked up by your daughter.</p>
<p>There are other options, such as taking classes online, or at another university or college that is closer to home, through continuing education or as a non-matriculated student. If she takes a lot of classes this way, she will be a transfer student rather than a freshman, which can have financial aid and scholarship implications, but it can be a more affordable way to start accumulating credits.</p>
<p>Thank you. YOu know I think you might be right about that. I was so focused on what college she would attend that I never thought about clearances, but that is a huge issue.</p>
<p>My daughter has been the Ohio State Flagship program through her high school. The problem is that Ohio State did not give any scholarships or grants. So we did the math on the bill and we would have to pay, as parents, 511.00 for 25 years if we borrowed on the parent plus loan and she was told she had to get 22,000 in loans. So we threw Ohio State out even though that was her top of the list because of the language program.
I am sure if she played football she would be doing great right now…</p>
<p>Could you share her SAT/ACT score? I think you posted her GPA earlier…</p>
<p>If she really wants to continue in a Flagship Program, there are several more to choose from. But I’d need more information from you.</p>
<p>Tmom, I’m addressing your last remark first. The % of those kids playing high school football doing great in terms of college money is very, very small. I believe at my son’s school, that has a good football program and has about 3-5 kids playing at the D-1 football level, rarely gets one that gets money for playing. The ones playing right now are at Columbia (no money), and two D1 schools that took them, but again, did not pay for them, even though those schools do have athletic scholarships. It’ s not that easy getting a football scholarship that pays full freight, and at your D’s first choice school, OSU,…well, that’s one heck of a lottery ticket.</p>
<p>She can take a gap year, work and do some things to keep her skills up. A gap year is not necessarily a fixed program. It’s just taking off the year instead of going to college right after high school. Now that you have learned first hand, how it works for college funding, you can look at some schools where she might have a shot at a full ride or close to it. Look at Momfromtexa’s thread on full ride scholarhips. She isn’t going to get them at schools with name you are likely to recognize like OSU, but there are schools out there that might be willing to pay for your child.</p>
<p>Now the situation as it stands, is that she is accepted at OSU, and it would cost you and her $20K for the year, right? $5500 in Staffords and where is she picking up the extra $2K in loans? Does that then leave you with $12500 to pay for the year? Because if that is the case, it might be doable. What exactly are the numbers for next year only? What did OSU offer her? Forget the PLUS loan for a moment.</p>
<p>We are sending our kids to college by paying some out of savings, ours and theirs. They work summers and during the school year and use that to bring down the cost further. We also designate a portion of our paychecks towards college. And we borrow. With 5 kids, we came to the conclusion that we could borrow so much per child and pay per child with adjustments as situations change. That one child, for instance, chose a less expensive state option, got merit money and worked as well, cut down our costs and left more for the others. That we went over budget, for another, cut things back. So it is a flexible budget that changes as things change.
$22K in loans for your daughter is not a unusual amount for 54 years for kids, and may be worth it for her to take.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine lives in Ohio and was hurt and disappointed that her girls who went to OSU, top students did not get any money either. And one was a NCAA athlete for the school–not a dime in scholarship money, however. The parents and kids both borrowed, they all scrimped and worked harder those years and got through it, but, yes it hurt them. College is expensive, and yes, you are expected to have saved for it, cut back from current expenses for it, and borrow for it.</p>
<p>In our case Cancer happened, and even community college would have been difficult. Yes, it broke my heart to watch my D sacrifice to get top grades, all the while I had to evade and avoid her questions about “money saved for college”, and “do I have a college account.?”
We were lucky-she was matched through QuestBridge. Before QuestBridge though, I felt enormous guilt and was very depressed about the situation. My D did her part, but I failed to do my part. When she was a junior I tried to steer her toward the military academies but this was a no go.</p>
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<p>You seem to think that simply getting into the “right” school is a ticket to a career and getting to the top. It isn’t. Almost everyone who has posted here has pointed out that a serious student at a CC can get a very good education for two years at a low tuition. It’s the student–not just a particular college–who ultimately determines his/her future career path. </p>
<p>Another example of a CC success: My H started at a CC. (He came from a family of steel workers.) From there he went to Univ. of CA and then to Harvard for a doctorate. There are many examples of folks who are highly successful who started out at CCs. It’s not as if one is marked as a failure simply because he/she started out at a CC. I would think about the message you’re sending your D given your negative view of CC. A positive attitude goes a long way. </p>
<p>I thought MDmom had a great suggestion for getting the best out of a CC experience–find a good advisor and ask for help to find the most rigorous courses, profs and also to get as much info as possible on future merit aid.</p>