<p>Op, you might like this thread. It seems somewhat similar to your question </p>
<p><a href=“How did you justify paying for a reach over a financial safety? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1650031-how-did-you-justify-paying-for-a-reach-over-a-financial-safety.html</a></p>
<p>my son took the full ride path (not willingly at first) had quite a variety of merit awards to decide from. his top choice at the time would have meant about 40K put of pocket each year… vs the school he went to, he actually came out with money in his pocket. he of course had the arguments you read on cc every year… “this is my dream school”, “i will hate it here”, " i want to go out of state", " it is ranked higher", " it must be better, it costs more".<br>
think about it, how do they know its their dream school, they have never attended. They have no idea what the professors will be like, they have no idea what their workload or classes will be like, they have no idea if they will make friends, be able to do research, do well gpa wise, etc etc… it is all (at that point) a vision and dream in their heads.</p>
<p>so how did it go?? wonderful… great research opportunities, wonderful professors, wonderful friends, good gpa, won national scholarships, had experiences he actually wouldnt have had at that dream school. ALL those things that he felt he wouldnt have (in his 18 year old brain) if he didnt get to go to that dream school.</p>
<p>luckily he actually got to see both sides… while interviewing for a program at the dream school prior to college selection, he interviewed with an incredible professor, and between his freshman and sophomore year had the opportunity to go and work for that professor for the summer. Again, he loved the dream school, but came home knowing that he had exactly the same opportunities available to him at no cost… the dream wasnt worth 160K debt.</p>
<p>@kmywest Please read post #19 of the thread by link by @Newsie2015. It has valuable insight of post college decision and its ramifications. </p>
<p>@parent56 I think you made the right decision. It is my belief after having had the need to evaluate colleges for my child that there really are only two factors that generally determines the quality of education for ranking purposes by the likes of USNWR et. al. It is the quality of the incoming students and the amount of $$$ that a college spends on each student. The higher of those two factors, the better the rankings and the notion that one school is better than another. But I have come to the conclusion that the quality of a school boils down to just the quality of its students assuming sufficient $$$ are spent on instruction and infrastructure. From what I can see, the latter is pretty much satisfied by at least the top 300 schools on USNWR rankings and similar ranking entities.</p>
<p>So if one gets a near full ride to a top 300 school like University of Arizona there should be no hesitation that a student would not receive a quality education vs going full pay at an “elite” university such as CalTech. Is the educational experience going to be the same? No. But any difference would not justify the cost difference in my opinion.</p>
<p>i agree voiceofreason… sometimes you have to dig a little… for example … my son’s school is ranked about 147 i think but at first glance graduation stats were dismal… big red flag? well with just a bit of digging…pdf available on the schools site… those that had gpa’s /acts similar to my son’s were graduating within 4 years with the same graduation rate of his dream school. the state school had much lower stats for admission which meant that some students were not well prepared, dropped out etc. Rankings should always be looked at with a grain of salt… </p>
<p>The state schools usually have honors programs… that means students can be with similar well-prepared classmatess. </p>
<p>agree colorado mom. again honors programs should be reviewed as all are not created equal… some are just a “title” that all with certain gpa’s are accepted to but not necessarily a cohesive group of similar minded students… others are topic specific and the students will actually form a group and have classes together as they have the same interests</p>
<p>This is my first post, though I’ve gained a lot of knowledge reading CC over the years. We are going through the same thing as many others on this thread. Daughter is a NMSF and has a lot of free rides open to her. She is planning on applying ED to an IVY. We will get very little aid should she get in, but we’ve lived our lives to be able to afford it if she does bc SHE wants it and has always been competitive academically.
But-check out this speech below by Malcolm Gladwell. Yes, there are questions that are still unanswered after the speech, but it is good and very relevant to the OP’s question. He is saying-DO NOT go to the top school you can get into if you want to graduate with a STEM degree.
I showed this to my daughter. I told her that I wasn’t trying to influence her one way or the other, but she’d be top dog pretty easily at a ‘second-tier’ honors college whereas she’d have to work her you-know-what off at an IVY.
I know from experience. I went to one and had no study skills to speak of. First semester was a big wake-up call for me bc I was no longer the smartest kid in the class. EVERYONE was smart, and a lot worked harder than I did. They can’t hand out A’s to everyone.
I don’t know about other parents but I think it is ridiculous that kids like my daughter couldn’t enjoy HS bc they want them to take 9+ AP courses-college courses-in HS to be competitive for the top schools. I’ll be honest with you; I hope my daughter decides to go to a second tier school and has fun bc she certainly hasn’t had time to have much fun in HS.
Anyway, check out the very enlightening video by Mr. Gladwell: <a href=“Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube”>Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube;
<p>4 - You make some good points. Please think long and hard about ED… it’s binding and allows less time for the family to talk things over. </p>
<p>Malcolm Gladwell’s “sample” was flawed though, and what he called “second tier” was in reality first tier by most standards … so listen to his advice with a grain of salt :)</p>
<p>Selectivity is misleading. Some schools are self selective so they may actually be better schools, but aren’t high ranked because they don’t pride themselves in breaking 95% of their applicants hearts.</p>
<p>@4formom…your thinking and family situation sounds very familiar to ours of last year…my son also applied ED to a top 10 university but (at this point I think thankfully) got rejected. He ended up getting significant merit $s at 3 second tier schools and accepted at a few elite schools RD, but at fullpay status. In the end he got a full tuition scholarship at one school (Tulane) that seemed to offer a good fit for him, was small enough to allow him to come in confidently going into pursuit of ECs and a challenging STEM curriculum. And yes, the David & Goliath book was read during the college ordeal last winter and so far, for S, it’s going well…achieving As on all his assessments thus far in his first semester.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a STEM degree. You can’t compare one college’s program in electrical engineering to another college’s program in neurobiology. Your kid may not find it a cakewalk to study bio at your state flagship because she is interested in a career in genetics research but the “competition” in every bio class is ruthless because everyone else is premed and the U tries to “weed out” the kids who won’t make it into med school to make the statistics on med school admissions look better. It’s a myth that the competition is easier if you go down a notch in selectivity in SOME of the scientific disciplines- in some universities, it’s actually harder. More kids competing for lab jobs. More kids vying for a spot on a professor’s research team and fewer spots to give. Harder curves in grading. Only the top kids get to compete for the summer lab jobs. Etc.</p>
<p>And STEM- it’s handy to talk about but not really helpful. Study mechanical engineering at MIT- you can be in the bottom 25% of your class and have better employment prospects than studying it at a second tier school without the sophisticated labs and research opportunities and oodles of grant money to do cool stuff and getting a better GPA. Study nanotechnology at Cornell and everyone knows the grading is brutal-- but you’ll be better situated (if that’s what you want to study) than at a second tier school which doesn’t even have the kind of facilities and investments in faculty that a top tier school has.</p>
<p>Which STEM discipline? That helps narrow the pile.</p>
<p>Grad school admissions committees aren’t as gullible as Malcolm Gladwell.</p>
<p>vandyeyes, thanks for the feedback about Tulane. It’s one of the schools that she is thinking of bc Dad went to Loyola and had such a good time there, (as well as learned how to think-thank you Jesuits) that New Orleans has always been intriguing to her.
blossom, very interesting points, worth thinking about. She’s interested in materials science but not sure about it and wants to explore other options as a freshman.</p>
<p>@blossom:</p>
<p>This is true. Grad school admissions are pretty sophisticated. They’re sophisticated to know that a good number of talented kids go to a state flagship rather than an Ivy because of money or other reasons. That’s why, by sheer numbers, 10 of the top 13 and 17 of the top 22 undergraduate schools who send the most kids on to get science and engineering PhDs are publics (obviously, in percentage terms, most Ivies would beat out most publics, though Cal beats out Dartmouth, Columbia, and Penn even in terms of the percentage of the student body who go on to get science/engineering PhDs): <a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/</a></p>
<p>In the end, the cream will rise to the top.</p>
<p>It depends on the student and their individual circumstances. It may work out better for some to go to the full-ride for undergrad and use their funds for the highly selective grad school. </p>
<p>For others, it depends. Is it better to pay $260,000 for a bachelor’s degree from Harvard/Yale/Etc than regret not going their the rest of one’s life? That choice is variable. </p>
<p>In your case, financially speaking, it’s a no-brainer…unless you are super rich so that $50,000 a year is not a big deal.</p>
<p>The $5,000+ figure is the amount that my wife and I will be on the hook for at least in the first year. Actually, in the final year, we will have another kid in college, so we might get to pay LESS in that year for my daughter…time will tell. My daughter WILL take on $15,000 of student loan debt by graduation time which I think is reasonable, and then she will have to earn ~$2,000 a year that she will also contribute (she has the first year done already). So, technically, you are correct, it is about $11,000 that our family will shell out per year…basically room and board. She would have to get a full-ride scholarship at most places to do much better than that. She’s a good enough student to apply for such scholarships (at schools that aren’t to the same level as the one she is planning to attend), but nothing is guaranteed of course.</p>
<p>“For others, it depends. Is it better to pay $260,000 for a bachelor’s degree from Harvard/Yale/Etc than regret not going their the rest of one’s life” - Unlesss the further academic and proffessional experiences might tell a person that there is NOTHING to regret about, nothing, zero. It may happen if they become surrounded by grads from Harvard / Yale/ Berkeley / Etc. and realize, oh, I am not inferior at all to these people, I am just as prepared academically to my next step in life as they are, I actually may have had more opportunities at my state public to grow personally and as I took chance of all those opportunities, I may be ahead of these very academically focused crowd and BTW, it was pointed to me by my superiors at many occasions…and at the end I am actually at the top opf the game just as I was at my public state UG. </p>
<p>Different choices might be made by the same family for different kids. Our 3 sons were all NMFs. Oldest turned down full rides for full pay LAC (where he got off waiting list in May. . .he was already planning to take the scholarship at big public u.) It was dream school for S, and H said, “My money. I want to pay for it.” H and I still, years later, disagree about this decision. S did have a good experience at his school. Next, our D had a merit scholarship to another LAC–she had better merit options, (including “Presidential” full-tuition scholarship at lower-ranked school), but we let her choose more expensive/preferred school. (Looking back, a decision which probably changed her life/path/plans dramatically, and not for the better. Hoping it turns out for the better in the long run, though. . .) Younger sons took the rides. 3rd kid is CS major, doing very well in good program. I have no doubt about his employment prospects. Freshman S just started at same school. Unfortunately, Freshman S’s dream school was the same one our oldest kid attended, but he knew from the beginning that we would not pay for it, and didn’t even apply.(Cost of that school has gone up a lot since oldest S started 8 years ago. . .H still dreams of freshman S transferring to that school, and has been negative about the school both sons now attend.) But we had to get realistic about our finances. Paying for the first two kids was too much of a strain on entire family. We have always lived modestly, have good income now, but had setbacks (or zigzags?) over the years that prevented us from saving. Not everyone has a straight career path from 22 on. . .(We want to pay for our kids’ educations. We refuse to take out loans or make them take out loans–that is another personal decision. We also have 3 more younger kids and our own retirement to consider. . .) We did promise our sons who took the rides that IF they made grades/kept scholarships/graduated in 4 years, we would then give each a car. Fwiw, H is a top ivy grad and has no illusions about what that kind of education can do/not do. H didn’t want our kids to apply, and chances are, they would have been in that 90% who were rejected anyway. </p>
<p>I’m on your side, @atomom. Life throws curveballs, but one principle I’m going to try to stick to is the same amount of money (or opportunity for money) for each kid (whether it be $80K or $250K or something else). If later on, I can afford to contribute more, then everyone gets some extra for grad school. If that means everyone has to get full-tuition merit scholarships or attend CC, so be it. I don’t want to get in to the situation where we stretch to send kid 1 to a school, but then have to tell kid 2 that he can’t attend that school or a better school because we spent all our surplus money on kid 1.</p>