Reading this thread is interesting because I’m seeing the different approaches some families take to the college decisions and budgeting.
When I made my post near the beginning of the thread (where I said that I don’t think ND is necessarily “worth” the price for engineering), I was assuming that the whole family would have a nuanced discussion where they weighed the pros and cons of various schools/programs and cost/benefit. That may indeed be the approach OP’s family will take, not sure.
That’s the approach our family has taken. We told our kid our budget was super tiny. Spouse and I get tuition benefits at our employers. Our son has been fantastic about it, has worked really hard in school and at his job to help with merit aid and cash. Although he knows the choice is his and his alone to make, he truly sees it as a family effort, and is very price conscious with everything. We were surprised to discover that going through this “adult problems” process with us absolutely vaulted his maturity level (a silver lining we didn’t expect).
The unintended effect is that now it’s hard for him to focus on anything BUT price. We recently increased our college budget to $30K/yr due to some upcoming housing/employment changes. He’s been struggling to not base his choice solely on what’s cheapest. Now we’re telling him to disregard price entirely (as long as it’s within budget). He has like 10 schools at <30K to choose from right now. I don’t think he’ll struggle too much to choose, but watching the gears turn in his head has been interesting.
The approach wherein the kid is told that they can attend any school full-pay regardless of cost is different. That is an amazing gift for those kids and I wish we could have done that for ours. Maybe we’d still be having nuanced discussions about the pros/cons and costs/benefits with our son were we in that situation. Or maybe it would be more of the “we promised and kid is holding us to that” situation. The kid we currently have wouldn’t be able to disregard cost entirely, no matter how much he loved the school and how much money was in the 529. But maybe he is only that way because it’s been an important factor since day 1.
I’m just interested by observing the dynamics at play. My kid has only one full-pay friend and is watching their thought process with interest. It’s quite different than his.
So the choice that OP’s family makes will be influenced primarily (I think) by which approach they prefer to take for these kinds of decisions. I don’t have a judgement that any approach is better than the other. Each family takes the approach that is appropriate for their situation and their relationship with their particular child.
Some posters here are guessing about which approach the kid/family are taking, and assuming the daughter will feel like the parents have broken a promise. I didn’t read that into OP’s post, but I’m coming from a different perspective. So maybe I’m the one who is wrongly assuming that OP’s kid would obviously be fine with a nuanced cost/benefit analysis. My son wouldn’t feel like the rug had been pulled from under him at all in these circumstances, but that is based on our particular family. I hope OP and family are able to come to a nice resolution that satisfies everyone.
Please note that the first outcome that I said suggested be optimized for is happiness – not money, or career or anything else. And I’m not sure if you were directing that frustration(maybe not the right word) at me specifically… but I said and meant that this process is individual for each family. I strongly believe people should spend the money how they want – the only time I would pipe up is if someone is low-income and would require lots of debt at variable interest rates - and then only to provide strong caution.
At some point, if you are saying you are going to spend $100K more for school A over school B, then you are quite literally trying to buy something you think school A will give your child that school B will not and you have valued that thing to be worth greater than $100K. And that $100k is not worth the same as it is to someone else who may be either significantly richer than you or significantly poorer than you.
I think it makes sense to try to apply some optimization strategy to what is an often emotional process.
“The only card I see is to let her pick between undergrad or money for grad school.”
I think that this kid needs to have some “skin in the game”.
I had a kid at Caltech. We paid full freight for his experience where he ended up questioning the small school environment whereby the professors lecture, but are too busy doing research, to actually teach. The GA’s run the courses.
Our middle child went to med school. We made her take out school loans that were also “repayable”.
Although we had saved well, for all three of our kids educations, with 529’s, we made them take out school loans to “help” to cover the costs.
Although I have retired early, I always have the option to return. My husband can retire at any time, but they would take him back in a heartbeat, so we’re not in the same career situation that you’re in.
Of course with your older “entitled” one, You should do what @Blossom’s suggested and bring her down to earth about reality and working with people who are in dire circumstances.
I was not that concerned with my kid’s “happiness”. Frankly, if the purpose of college was happiness, all of mine would have gone to the local state college, been with their friends, eaten sushi and lived on fancy lattes. And concert tickets. I know what happiness looks like to teenagers and I wasn’t interested in funding it.
So, that is definitely not what I’m talking about in choosing things to maximize happiness. I’m talking about choosing things to have a happy life overall - not the “in the moment” sort of temporary dopamine dump.
And a happy fulfilled life looks different to different people – some people will need a high powered corporate life to feel fulfilled, while others will think that sounds like hell.
Optimization also suggests one consider the opportunity cost of the money used. Personally, I told my kids I would rather spend the $200k cost differential on a 4 year extraordinary college experience than a 6 hour wedding ceremony, so they should plan accordingly. I do not regret the money I spent for their education or the trade-offs we made as a result.
Yep, absolutely. Basically, for me, I think of it in terms of what I’m buying for $X for option A over option B and does it increase the probabilities of the things I care about enough that I deem it to be worth it.
It’s very much individual… but I do think it helps (at least for me), to explicitly think about the things I care about, what I think the outcome differences will be and why, and what the trade-offs in my (or my kids’) life will be… and then go from there.
As a parent of a current ND student, ND is EXTREMELY generous with FA. It is definitely worth a phone call to the FA office… just to see. There are so many scholarships under the FA umbrella rather than the few true merit possibilities.
It is the only school that we even qualified for FA for S20. We even asked for more FA (after initial offer) to come close to some other schools merit offers… and they gave even more.
I’m with you on this. Our decision to fund any college of interest has nothing to do with ROI and everything to do with finding a place where our kids can be happy and intellectually challenged. They are free to major in what interests them; paying for college isn’t contingent on their following a certain career path. If we didn’t have the resources we do, the calculus would be different, but regardless of budget I like to think we’d encourage our kids to follow their passions in college and worry about a specific career secondarily.
I agree, and for us, we involve our kids in discussions of at least some of this. Certainly not when they were little, but increasingly as they get older. Even the stuff that spouse and I unilaterally decide is pretty transparent to our kids these days. It’s hard for me to imagine kids that are “in the dark” (so to speak) except for what the parents choose to share. Again, not saying one way is better or worse. Just different and based in part on family values. Independence ranks pretty high for us, so our process make sense in that context. Others may highly value giving their kids the most amazing opportunities without stressing them out.
We also involve our kids in the process, as part of the transition to adulthood. I think my kids should have a say in their own futures, but I also have the final say when it comes my (and my wife’s) money. So far, our kids are not wildly divergent from our line of thinking so we haven’t had to have the conversation of “I don’t want to go to college, I want to start a beekeeping business in Patagonia” yet.
Riiiight. Yes, YMMV depending on family finances and kid ideas. We would say “great, have fun paying for that!”
We also had our kids do more chores and stuff than some families, who prefer to allow the kids to focus more on school. For us, having our kids help cook food and do their own laundry starting in elementary was more important that making sure they spent that time on studies/activities. I know that’s not what some families do. It follows that we include them more in family finances than some other families would. I do think that all our kids seem to turn out fine in the end regardless
Learning what it takes to put a meal on the table (not just cooking; cleaning up, making sure you have the right ingredients, allotting enough time) is an important life skill.
Communicating expectations, sharing our parental thought process and listening/acknowledging their concerns/desires has worked for us. Our hope is this approach will assist our kids when they have to make tough decisions. Long term happiness is the phrase we use.
Dayton is Marianist. Notre Dame is Congregation of Holy Cross. Ironically, College of Holy Cross is Jesuit.
At all these schools, non-catholic students attend and are welcomed. There are other catholic schools where that isn’t the case and, with few exceptions, the students are mostly catholic like Ave Maria, Benedict, Franciscan.
The difference is the order of priests who run the schools, their missions, their style.
The OP is trying to justify the cost. As many have said, it is a personal decision. Notre Dame is a school where I would have tried to justify the cost because everyone I’ve ever known who has gone there has loved it. It is a lifelong community.
I was going to ask the same thing – have you filled out and submitted the FAFSA and CSS Profile to see what they will offer? Although I’m not sure when the deadlines are. My ND senior son received very generous ND financial aid. I once joked I didn’t realize how poor we actually were until we saw how poor ND considered us. That said, we don’t have the kind of money you seem to be talking about either.
I have a son who is in Engineering at ND. He was admitted to more than one ivy and our state university (Penn State). He has friends in engineering at GT, CM, UPenn, Penn State, etc. My overall impression is that all their engineering programs are rigorous and similar. Notre Dame offers students more agility among programs than any of those schools to the best of my knowledge. It also offers a collaborative community, rather than a cutthroat environment, and a unique college experience. Our son is happy with his decision to attend ND, and we are happy about that because we are full-pay working professionals (put ourselves through grad and prof school, etc.) No doubt a student could come out of Purdue or Rose Holman every bit as competent an engineer. But, after this, there are not many aspects of your daughter’s life where you will be able to make a decision that makes her happy. Ifthis is an opportunity to do that, you may want to consider taking it. ND is a place like no other.
