<p>Let's say you are a good student with a FAIRLY high (but not Ivy league good) GPA and SAT score. You've been working hard all high school and your dream is to get into a top ranked, selective prestigious college and you don't desire to go to a college that is easy to get into.</p>
<p>But you apply to some "bad" (less selective, less prestigious) safety schools just in case you don't get into your top choice.</p>
<p>You also apply to the really expensive, fancy prestigious private schools and go. If you attend you will enjoy a gorgeous campus and prestige but it will be really expensive.</p>
<p>The less selective school gives you significantly more money.....</p>
<p>But your dream, tough to get into school gives you an insufficient/weak financial aid package.</p>
<p>Where would you realistically go? The fancy private school or the cheaper school you could have gotten into with all Bs' and C's? Is it better to be a "big fish in a small pond" or a "small fish in a BIG, FANCY prestigious pond"?</p>
<p>Well…you have to be able to pay the bills. And paying the bills for the fancy school completely with loans is foolhardy.</p>
<p>There are lots of schools in between “bad” and “fancy schmancy”. </p>
<p>If you really are a competitive admit for fancy schmancy school where the price is too high for your family, you likely would qualify for merit aid at a number of schools.</p>
<p>When you say “bad”, what do you mean? Your state flagship? A local community college? </p>
<p>I will say, I do NOT feel the idea of a “dream school” is worth considering if your family finances, with aid received, don’t support your attending.</p>
<p>I’m also not a fan of chasing prestige while going into significant debt.</p>
<p>There are thousands of colleges in this country and not all are in the top 50. There are tons of other fine colleges out there.</p>
<p>Your most important schools are the ones that will most certainly take you and that you can afford, and that can meet most of your educational needs and desires. The “bad” label is really a simplistic and inaccurate way to describe such schools.</p>
<p>My son was accepted to a school that is not selective in admissions and was also offered a nice tuition award that basically made it free if he commuted. I know many, many kids who graduated from there and are doing very well, much better than their peers who went to some of the most selective schools in the country. I just went to a dinner there honoring a Rhodes scholar from that school. So, bad? I don’t think so. There is a lot one can get out of most any college, and those who are intrepid will make most any school a good experience.</p>
<p>Buggie…the OP,said,attending the prestige school would be very expensive. This, to me, means that this student doesn’t qualify for need based aid. If they did, the prestige,school,would NOT be expensive.</p>
<p>Many families have incomes that the calculations say can afford to pay for these expensive prestige schools. Some students feel their families should take out huge loans for these schools.</p>
<p>In my opinion, going into huge debt to pay for college is not a good idea. Sorry…not,when there are tons of other options.</p>
<p>If you have gotten Bs and Cs then maybe you wouldn’t be able to get a scholarship at the bad school and it wouldn’t have been cheaper.</p>
<p>You need to be able to afford any school you want to go to. On the other hand, cheap is not always good. Wasting 4 years at a school which couldn’t add value to your academic growth is something no one could afford.</p>
<p>thumper, I was taking this as a completely hypothetical situation, not something where the student is actually stating his current situation. </p>
<p>In the case that there is a large price tag difference between the “good” and “bad” school, I’d generally go with the poorer school, unless job prospects from THAT SPECIFIC IVY were so good in that major that they’d be suitable for paying off 5 figures worth of debt.</p>
<p>For 99.9% of majors it makes NO difference where you go for undergrad. I’ve been hiring manager for >25 years. Your undergrad degree is simply a check box on the app. No one even looks at the name. What matters is what YOU do with the degree. Note that this does not apply to for-profit schools like Kaplan though. Those degrees are worthless. </p>
<p>Don’t fall for the hype. Go to the least expensive school.</p>
<p>Needblind doesn’t mean that 100% need met of course! they can admit you needblind but not give you much aid and that’s still considered need blind!</p>
<p>I would go for the school you ocan afford unless you are affluent enough to not require loans!! Only stipulation is that if you have a choice ebtween a school that gives you a bunch of 1-year scholarships and nonrenewable aid for frshmen only – some low tier schools od that and you get screwed sophomore year onward! If that’s the case check that out before you say yes to offer! Read read read!!</p>
<p>*“Bad” college that gives you lots of money or “good” expensive college?
*</p>
<p>The problem is the OP’s premise. I doubt it’s a “bad college” that’s offering “lots of money”. It’s probably a “good college” that doesn’t have the high ranking. This doesn’t mean that the teaching and courses are bad. </p>
<p>Academics is only 40% of ranking. The other 60% is dealing with things that don’t affect the teaching in the classroom. There’s a good school near my home that isn’t ranked very high. It’s excellent for engineering, nursing, the sciences and business. It’s fine for English, History, and some other basics. It’s probably not that strong in some of the less popular majors. So for the student who gets handed an engineering scholarship, that student would be making a mistake thinking the school is a “bad college”.</p>
<p>You’re right about the aritcle but what it doesn’t get into is how need is calculated. people think that “need” is asssessed by the student but it’s really a school’s determination and THEIR estimate of how much the family can pay is often not in line iwth that the family believes they can afford or can comfortably pay off. There are literally dozens of threads here on CC about families who fill out that FAFSA or the CSS Profile and are BLOWN AWAY!! by how even schools on the “need blind and meets 100% of need” list think they can afford. What ends up happening is the family has a high income or even high assets but they either have large expenses (which are NOT always looked at by the college – such as paying for the retirement expenses of a grandparent who lives abroad or having a huge wad of cash that as earmarked for the purchase of a new house or something) or the money is otherwise earmarked/socked away/stored away for a reason unrelated to college. </p>
<p>The end result is that the family has what is often called “sticker shock” even at schools that promise to meet full need because they don’t realise that it specifies FULL DEMONSTRATED NEED which means that the school decides how much you need without really considering your own personal issues with their estimations.</p>
<p>*I’m a senior and I’m freaking out. I don’t know where to go.</p>
<p>I want to major in something related to media/screen studies or public health (I need a good major that makes a lot of money.</p>
<p>My GPA is 4.2 and my SAT Score is 1900, which I thought was pretty good.</p>
<p>However, I live in Boston and just got rejected from my top choice (Northeastern U).</p>
<p>I’m really upset. I don’t know where else to go. Umass amherst does not have a film major.
I’ve looked at college matchers online and no college really has what I want except for the IVY leagues, which are out of my realistic options.</p>
<p>However, I’ve been accepted to the University of Vermont (which accepts about 80% of their applicants). I feel like I could get into so much better and prestigious schools with my stats, but UVM has what I want.</p>
<p>QUESTIONS:
Is it “bad”/will people look down on me for going to a less selective college even though I could get into so much better?
Do you have any college suggestions for me?
Could Northeastern have rejected me because my family is poor???*</p>
<p>If you’re calling UVM a “bad college” then you really don’t know what a 'bad college" is.</p>
<p>Another thing…UVM has a super high OOS cost. Yes, the NPC indicates that it will give you merit and need-based aid. However, the “net price” for you would still be too high for a “poor family”. The “net price” is almost $20k per year after aid. </p>
<p>I don’t know of any poor families that can pay $20k per year. So, if your family can’t pay that much, then UVM won’t be affordable even if it’s giving you a good bit of aid.</p>
<p>(UVM is really playing smoke and mirrors. It’s COA for OOS is $50k. So, a low income good-stats student might be given $25k in need/merit aid…which sounds like a lot…and psychologically can be hard to decline. But where is a low-income person supposed to come up with the rest?? I strongly suspect that the 65% OOS UVM students are largely affluent white kids…lol)</p>