<p>Certainly you need to look at the student when considering a private school. Our son excelled at a highly ranked largish public HS with absolutely no hand-holding. He seems to have the chops to slice through the bureaucracy at a school like UCLA or Berkeley. But maybe this is the time to invest in the special opportunities privates like USC can provide.</p>
<p>MaineLonghorn,</p>
<p>I wonder what your friend considers a decent undergrad school? Was it an indictment of the specific school or the cost of the elite LACs?</p>
<p>SoCalGal09:</p>
<p>As you know, one problem is that in addition to the potentially $100K higher price for the private vs the public, if the student goes on to med school or law school, there’s a lot more expense ahead.</p>
<p>Another way to value it for your S - would he rather go to USC or would he rather go to UCLA/UCB plus have a new sports car, plus a new plasma TV, plus a trip to Europe, plus a new gaming system, plus…? It isn’t that he would actually get any of this (except maybe the more affordable study abroad depending on resources), but if that pile of stuff plus UCLA was sitting there behind curtain number 2 and USC was sitting by itself behind curtain number 3 which would he pick?</p>
<p>“We invested in them by allowing them to apply for & sending them to private school – paying substantial tuitions where they did notice a significant difference in the culture of the school towards education and the joy of learning.”</p>
<p>But HiMom, isn’t westerndad talking about college, not K-12? I agree with your reasoning when it applies to compulsory education, but different factors come into play for college, when theeoretically anyway students are there by choice, or at least remain by choice. I made the same decisions as you did when it came to pre-college. But for 4-yr colleges, really the “attitude toward education” is pretty much a non-issue. And even if 75% are slackers, peer pressure to join up with the slackers is not even close to what exists among immature high school students.</p>
<p>So for college, ambition to learn and standards of learning are comparable between an outstanding public and a peer private. Heck, some public engineering and pre-med schools/departments are considered “insanely competitive” by those who attend.</p>
<p>I hope I’m not misinterpreting you. Apologies if I am.</p>
<p>Actually, our experience is that there is a significant difference in “attitude toward education.” S took a summer college statistics course locally after his 10th grade year and found it to be easier than his 6th grade math course. D started out in our state CC and found it very isolating as she did not relate to her peers. I’m sorry to say that currently, while there are some outstanding elements and profs at our flagship U, the budget cuts and other issues, as well as a lack of campus life make it a much tougher place to get the rounded college experience we want for our kids (as was confirmed when we conferred with a former dean from flagship U).</p>
<p>We really have to know our kids. My kids really do work harder in the right environment and are more sensitive to their environment than I was at their age. I was able to create the environment I needed to thrive. I am happy we can afford to allow them to choose an environment where there are more options for them and it is easier for them to thrive without having to work as hard as I did creating a niche.</p>
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<p>Thirty-eight percent Asian means 62% everything else – with variety within both the Asian and non-Asian populations. Sounds pretty diverse to me, in fact, much more diverse than many other colleges.</p>
<p>We have friends of the family who felt exactly like the OP. He and wife were both happy, successful graduates from Big State U, they lived in a state with a fine Big State U and a number of other state school alternatives. Why on earth should they pay the big bucks for college?</p>
<p>And they did not and did just fine with their first child who graduated summa cum laude and went on to law school. Their second had some troubles, however, and a lot of the issues were because he just was not as on the ball as his sister and had trouble with the bureaucracy of a big school. Also with the big classes. He became a lost soul. When it came the third and fourth (twins), they knew that one of the twins would likely not make it in a big school. He just needed a lot more attention to have the best chance. They put him in a small LAC, something they swore they would never pay for. He has been doing very well there, though has had mishaps that would have been big problems at the State U. His twin is fine at State U. The second kid never made it through college, and the parents regret to this day that he did not have a smaller college environment. He just might have made it. Maybe not, but when looking at where the problems were, a small LAC would have made a difference. </p>
<p>My son so preferred the programs offered at the school of his choice to any of the state choices he had and really wanted to go there. That desire played a big role in our deciding to pay the difference. He is so happy and doing so well there. He was tired of school by the time senior year was done, and is now rejuvenated. I think going to the school of his choice and having some special things that he liked there made a big difference to him. The smaller environment is also a big plus for him. His professors all know him, talk to him, advise him, like him. No TAs there. When he got a bad cold, they were concerned and helped him out. With such small classes, this sort of attention was possible. I cannot imagine a big school with big freshman classes able to do this. He signed up for a math course that was a bit too easy, and the prof moved him to another, overseeing the transition to make sure it went smoothly. He has gotten some internship opportunities and all kinds of suggestions about what he may want to do. He is bursting with happiness.</p>
<p>Also, the residential dorms and freshmen being together has been a boon for him socially. The kids tend to all live on campus and spend their time on campus things. He is a bit shy, so this has really helped him in getting to know everyone as he did not know a soul before going there and he is far from home. A lot of kids come from elsewhere too, so there were no preformed groups among the kids.</p>
<p>Re Post 45:
But California is not Hawaii. Yes, I’ve heard about different attitudes toward education at the flagship U’s of some states. You will tend not to find that at Berkeley. Westerndad is comparing a world-class public institution to an Ivy. Very different comparison. You cannot compare just any public U to Berkeley, and that’s not what westerndad was comparing. This has already been stated by at least one parent here: VA, Michigan, CA may be on a different level of publics than most other states in the Union, although I’m sure there are also some additional exceptions.</p>
<p>Yes, students choose Berkeley not just for its’ profs, resources, reputation, but also because the vast majority of the student body there “really does” “work harder.”</p>
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<p>This phenomenon, I suspect, is not unrelated to the high proportion of Asians in the Berkeley student body – something that someone was complaining about earlier in the thread.</p>