Balancing "fit" vs. debt/financial aid in college choice

Perhaps it would be useful to go back and recal the reasons for putting this college on the application list. Surely the denominational affiliation was known at that time. Did it make the list solely because of the possibility of the big scholarship even knowing then that there was a potential conflict? Or has the daughter’s religious inclination shifted somewhat since she first became interested in that college?

It seems like the better fit schools, assuming is it as good or better academically as school A, may be worth the extra money, assuming your daughter is willing to take on some debt. Many kids don’t go to the full pay private school, but also may not go to the absolutely least expensive school either. Many families don’t pursue the schools that might offer the most in merit aid because those schools don’t work academically. Thus, choosing better fit over the absolutely least expensive option is not unusual. Most kids on CC don’t start with community college, for example.

The academic fit is also important. Make sure that whatever school she chooses will provide an excellent education, in addition to the atmosphere she wants.

The bottom line is figuring out what you (and she) are comfortable paying and borrowing and then she can choose among the affordable options. Hopefully, that will include the better fit school.

I think on the religious front it would help your D to do an inventory of what is meaningful/critical, what is a “nice to have”, and what is tangentially important to her. I am a pretty engaged member of my own religion, and have lots of friends and close colleagues who are engaged members of their own faiths/denominations. I have found that it’s easier to navigate a religious world which is not my own, than the purely secular. A company I once worked for established private prayer rooms in a couple of facilities for Muslim employees/contractors/visitors. (especially handy during Ramadan). A lot of employees objected… but many Jewish employees went to bat for their Muslim colleagues. Why? They could use those small rooms for mid-day prayers when they weren’t in use by their Muslim colleagues-- so a win/win for them too even though they had not requested the space (they’d been using empty conference rooms).

Your D may find that being in a religious environment- even not her own- is preferable to a non-religious environment. Or the reverse. But she needs an inventory of what she’s looking for.

@My3Kiddos that is true too – my one daughter is a D2 athlete (with a demanding practice, game and travel schedule) and part of the fit of her school is that she is a good student in a place where she is yes one of the top students. She has HS teammates that are a tad over their heads academically making it very stressful for them,.

In questions of fit it comes down to your kid specifically as much as it does the school. Under what conditions does your kid thrive or wither?

I agree with a lot of what has been said above, in particular the idea that for a person serious about their faith, being around others serious about their faith can be more important than agreement on details. As long as there is respect for differing opinions attending a school from a different branch of Christianity may make your daughter reevaluate her own beliefs and strengthen them in a way that just going to school with people who agree with her does not.

On the flip side dating can be an issue of concern. Dating with a serious eye towards marriage is a key part of the culture at many Christian colleges. How does she feel about that?

Debt should be evaluated with future plans:
A pre-professional major such as engineering or nursing will almost always provide a healthy income immediately after graduation. Paying back 20-30K in a small number of years should not be a hardship for a 20 something graduate.

Carrying undergraduate debt while in graduate, medical or law school is not advisable. Will you need to fund a graduate degree or is the 5 year post-graduation plan to get a PhD with a stipend or an employee funded masters degree. Those are very different paths.

Total cost is determined by the number of years in college and any lost income by spending more than four years. What is the 4 year graduation rate of each institution?

Fit matters more for preschool than college. If your child has learned to challenge themselves from a young age most schools can fill their needs.

Needing more than 8 semesters is more related to the student than the college. A 4.0 / 36 ACT student is more likely to finish a BA/BS in 8 semesters than a 3.0 / 21 ACT student, regardless of the college.

One of my kids entered college with 3 credits from AP, the other with none. The one with none is in engineering, took the classes they told her to take in the order they told her, and she’ll graduate in 8 semesters this May. She did have to take 18 credits last semester to get in one class she didn’t take as a sophomore.

The other, with some plotting and planning by me (really, why can’t advisers not look at a schedule and see that taking one class that is MWF with no other classes on MWF is not a good idea, and one request to a professor to get into an upper division literature class on T-Th), will graduate in 8 semesters. She doesn’t have to, but will probably take one class this summer at a local college (the dreaded math class she has been putting off).

It can be done. It takes some planning and hard work.

In my opinion, fit is everything, and finances are a part of fit. I’m not saying every kid should go to his dream school, quite the opposite. But some kids will just thrive more at certain types of schools. It’s easy enough to say “suck it up, buttercup, you’ll find your people if you put yourself out there and join clubs” but college is hard enough – why make it that much harder?

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say their kid has to choose between large inexpensive state school and an expensive private small school, and they never applied to an inexpensive private and/or small school. (Or vice versa, small schools definitely aren’t for everyone). There are things in between, and it’s okay (smart even!) to apply to more than one safety to compare financial offers.

Anecdotally, I’ve got statistically similar twins at statistically similar schools, and each of them would be absolutely miserable at her sister’s school. Vibe is real.

But how can you really tell the “vibe” from a few visits? One of mine did an overnight and it was not great. The kid he stayed with had a test the next day and was not friendly. The class he went to sit in on was cancelled for some reason that day. The weather was lousy. Based on the visit, he might not have gone, but he went and had a great experience, once he found his people.

I think there are very few kids that need a particular kind of college. Most kids can find their way and their people at most colleges. As someone said above (and I have heard this as well), kids can have a harder time at the smaller schools, even if they appear to be a great fit at age 18. As the kid matures, maybe not so much.

The most important aspect to fit is the academic. Is the program the kid wants offered? Is the academic level high enough to challenge, but not so high to be frustrating.

My kids were convinced they wanted smaller schools. One wanted really small, about 2500 kids, but she decided the public school with 10k would be fine. Now she wishes her school was bigger and said just yesterday that she likes some of the large lecture classes best. There are two classes she was looking at and they are capped at 24 students.

My other one is at a school with 3500, but she’s in one of the smallest department. After she’d been in school just a few weeks she went to visit some high school friends at the flagship and said “I could have been happy here.” Originally she was overwhelmed with the size of the flagship, but at the time she was looking, she was 16. At the much more mature age of 17, she realized it wasn’t so scary and was kind of fun and exciting.

I really think my kids would have done well at most decent sized schools, but not the small, remote ones.

Factors like fit and prestige are super complicated and it’s really hard to know if you are making the right choice when you are evaluating schools with your high school senior.

Part of it is that you never know what road your child might want to pursue post graduation. My oldest D wanted to study Vocal Performance/ MT. Luckily, pursuing this path helped her receive talent merit aid, that would not be available to her with another major. (She did not qualify for financial aid.)

My D is a strong student and only looked to programs that offered good academics in addition to good performance programs. She wanted a school where she could pursue strong academics outside of her music major.

In the end, NYU was the best fit because they gave her a decent talent scholarship and allowed her to take classes outside of her BM requirements. She ended up with a Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology minor and an English lit minor. She liked NYU because it had a good reputation both in the arts and in academics.

As it turned out, going for a more expensive/ prestige school paid off. NYU’s reputation and networking opened doors for my D in the entertainment industry in NYC. MY d decided to pursue the business of entertainment rather than performing herself. Five years post graduation, D ended up pursuing her MBA. She wanted a highly ranked full-time MBA program, but hoped for scholarship $.

After researching and pursuing scholarship programs for MBAs, she was awarded full tuition scholarships at both NYU Stern and the Kelly School of Business.

The fact that she went to a more prestigious school helped tremendously. When pursuing a full-time MBA at top 20 programs, where you went for undergrad is very important. Those applying from most state schools are unfortunately at an unfair disadvantage.

So while we paid a lot for NYU vs. a state music program, years later, it paid off with her being awarded the equivalent of a $160K scholarship towards her MBA.

It’s no doubt true that 4-year graduation rate is primarily a function of the students, rather than the college. However, the college does still have some degree of influence. For example, Georgiatech is a great school with great students, yet the 4-year graduation rate is under 40%… lower than all other colleges I am aware with a similar caliber of students. One of the reasons the graduation rate is so low is because Georgiatech has the largest voluntary co-op program in the country. Having increased opportunities for co-ops is not a bad thing, even if it does decrease graduation rate. Similarly Stanford’s 4-year graduation rate of ~75% lags well behind other schools with similar types of students. One of the reasons Stanford’s 4-year graduation rate is relatively low is ~40% of Engineering/CS students do a co-terminal masters, working towards both a BS and MS at the same time. Again having increased opportunity to pursue a co-terminal masters is not a bad thing. I’d make similar comments about schools that have lower graduation rates due to a larger portion of students pursuing various other special opportunities or higher load majors. In short, it’s good to try to understand why the graduation rate is lower/higher than expected, rather than basing decisions on the number in isolation.

This is a long process that ideally starts when they are little. Kids need to understand money, how to get it, what to use it for, sacrifices you make that can result in more or less. By the time college application come, there should be no surprises.

Fwiw, my kids are very pragmatic. They entered senior year with a lot of work experience as well as covering some of their own expenses. Applying only to schools that came in within budget on net price calculators made perfect send to them. Eldest did not go to the cheapest school which was a huge in-state public. She did choose to stretch our college budget as far as it could go to attend a small private school across the country. She will graduate in May with 6k in student loans. However, we are all happy with her choice. She’s thrived. She’s had paid internships and 6 months living abroad. She’s made connections I’m not sure she would have made at the cheapest school. She did the right thing.
Current HS senior will probably make a similar choice and we will support it. Of course, we are talking a couple grand off a year (with no debt for parents.) 10k a year before loans… it just could never happen for us.

@uskoolfish Where you went to undergrad really isn’t that important for MBA admissions. Graduates of flagships with top grades, scores, and experience are not at a disadvantage at all. That’s a complete myth.

@itsgettingreal17 I disagree, having seen the process first hand in the last few years and seeing my D’s results vs. those who are coming with undergraduate degrees from most state schools. I would say the U of Michigan, University of VA and UNC are exceptions with perhaps a few others thrown in if it’s coupled with experience at a prestigious firm. And I’m not talking about all MBA programs–I’m specifically talking about top 15 full time MBA programs.

To be honest, I was stunned to see that kids with strong GPA’s, truly excellent GMAT scores, good work experience and recommendations couldn’t quite overcome not going to more prestigious schools for undergrad and were not getting the acceptances one would expect.

Applicants who went to state schools like Binghamton were just not getting the acceptances others were. Wish it was not true, but it seems to be. And I have many friends who are regretting that they held their children back from going with offers from higher ranked schools to save money. These are parents who thought I was crazy for spending money on NYU and now wish they had taken advantage of merit offers at privates.

Just found these 2 articles that touch upon the issue:

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/07/top-feeder-schools-to-whartons-mba-program/
http://fortune.com/2011/08/08/wharton-admissions-as-elitist-as-youd-expect/

Re: #56

Doesn’t elite MBA program admission does depend a lot on post BA/BS work experience? Perhaps attending an elite undergraduate school helps by making it more likely to get a job in consulting or investment banking that may impress elite MBA admissions more than a more common type of job?

@uskoolfish The analysis in both of those articles is very poor. Way too many unexplained assumptions are being made and explanatory factors other than undergrad degree not being controlled for. Meh

@itsgettingreal17 I agree and I am not truly convinced of the need for a fancy expensive MBA - I have been in business a long time and most of our highest executives don’t have that – its the work you do that matters