Dilema: Full Ride vs $140K for Prestige

<p>I’ve never heard of either school! Now if you said Rowan vs Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, etc then you should consider. In the case Rowan vs Lafayette the difference in prestige is not worth the $</p>

<p>Marie, in the engineering world, Georgia Tech is indeed elite and prestigious. Doubt anyone would scoff at that.</p>

<p>Type the word quote in brackets, paste the actual quote, and then type /quote in brackets behind it.</p>

<p>The problems is what people understand by the word prestige, which is relative and hard to define. As someone above said, there are actually only a handful of schools that have automatic, door-opening prestige. If I had a kid who got into MIT, I would cut my arm off to enable her to attend. Beyond that, it comes down to family finances and the kind of experience or environment you can afford or want to buy.</p>

<p>Would you take a late-model, well maintained yet dowdy car that you inherited from a relative, or would you splash out for a brand new luxury model? Both will get you where you want to go. If it’s really, really important to you that the experience at Lafayette be “worth” the extra 140K in ROI terms, then frankly I would go with Rowan. If you can let that 140K go without (too much) pain, then Lafayette is a lovely place to spend 4 years.</p>

<p>^ MIT told me I can keep my arm. S was declined last week.</p>

<p>Good post#56, chardo. It will be interesting to see what your s’s choices are when all is said and done. As for the current 2 in the running, the college experience will be very different at UA than Tech. Does your son know where he wants to be after graduation? Tech has a wonderful alum and career placement network, and I’d say “down here” a degree from Tech will open more doors than UA (I dislike the connotation of the term “prestige”) even with the full ride scholarship (though that is certainly impressive). Fortunately in this economy opportunities for engineers are still quite good, so in the long run it may not matter if he goes to Tech or UA.</p>

<p>Which brings me back to the issue of college experience, which wasnt a question asked by the OP. My s spent a summer semester living with friends at Tech, taking classes and doing an internship. I wish there was a way for him to put Tech on his resume, as I think it would be helpful, but credit for the classes was transferred to his home school. His comment, though, when I asked how he liked Tech was that while he enjoyed it and the classes were well taught (and he did well), he much preferred his home school and this helped confirm to him that he made the right choice as far as the kind of academic environment he wanted to be in for 4 years.</p>

<p>I must admit that I agree that even being from the NE and familiar with many schools (including Lafayette), I would agree that its name alone wont be swinging doors open wide. But if he much prefers it and the cost is NO ISSUE, then I’d let him choose.</p>

<p>BTW, we know kids that go to Centre They love it.</p>

<p>** edit* Sorry about MIT. Save it for grad school.</p>

<p>Chardo, absweetmarie, Haystack… all good stuff and things I’ve thought of myself already : ) I agree that the school doesn’t matter that much for Engineering major. I agree that there are schools “more prestigious” than Lafayette. And I agree that the “full ride” is certainly prestigious in itself. I’ve gotten more "WOW"s from people when I mention full ride than I do when I mention Lafayette. But it does come down to the whole experience and how you feel about yourself and the choice you make. </p>

<p>P.S. An arm is worth WAY MORE than a degree from MIT.</p>

<p>OK- its time for the bumper sticker/window decal test. Which would you/he prefer to drive- a beater car with a Lafayette decal in the window, or a spiffier car with a Rowan decal? I know this sounds reductionistic, but it kinda comes down to this. Where does the name of the school matter most, and is the money better spent on a nicer car. Just a different perspective to consider. :)</p>

<p>jym626 - Not to hijack the thread here, but if your son’s classes at Tech were Tech classes, not some kind of dual-enrollment thing where students enrolled could choose which university to enroll through, he does have, and will have for the rest of his life, a Tech transcript. And every single time he applies to a degree program at an accredited college or university in the US, he will have to request an official transcript for those credits from Tech. Not to mention that “Summer internship with Dr. Important at VTech” is perfectly fine to include as a line-item on his resume straight out of college.</p>

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<p>But the MIT kid can design a better arm for dad.</p>

<p>(I used the quote feature)</p>

<p>I would not pay one cent more for “prestige” alone.</p>

<p>If I did have the money, I would be happy to send the kid to A (twice the cost of in-state public B), because when we visited it was as though the heavens had parted to let the light shine directly down on A. Except for the cost, it was a perfect fit.</p>

<p><quote>But the MIT kid can design a better arm for dad.</></quote></p>

<p>LOL! A bionic arm might be cool! I’m trying out the quote feature to see if I did it right.</p>

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<p>I do get that, Chardo. And I’m not scoffing myself, that’s for sure. In fact, I was just google-mapping the other day after I learned about a young friend who got into Tech, calculating the distance from the school to different cool places in Atlanta and imagining what a great education she’d get there and what a great time she’d have in the bargain! That said, I’ve been surprised by people’s reactions to all kinds of schools. And, frankly, though I shouldn’t be, I’ve been surprised at how visceral people’s reactions often are when these questions come up.</p>

<p>busybeemom,</p>

<p>What you want instead of these <> is these []. And you need to close with

[/quote]
to end the quote.</p>

<p>You’re welcome. ;)</p>

<p>asm</p>

<p><quote>test 1</quote>

</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Now my posts will look cool like the rest of yours</p>

<p>It entirely depends on whether the parents want to pay for it or not. As long as the parents feel it is worth their hard earned money, thats all that matters.</p>

<p>My kid has a bunch of scholarships from several schools and could easily graduate with about 50k cost from several of those schools (we get zero money for FA). </p>

<p>OTOH - We are going to be paying fullfare for a top 10 private school the way it looks at the moment.</p>

<p>happymom,
I’ll have to check with DS as to how his tech classes (yes they were official Ga Tech physics classes) transferred to his home school. All I know is that the letter grade didnt transfer, just credit for taking the classes (whcich are only accepted if he got a B or better), required for his engineering major. He was considered a “transient student” or some such awful terminology, but he was enrolled, had a tech ID and we paid a LOT for those 2 classes.</p>

<p>The internship was not at tech- it was at a chemical engineering company in town.</p>

<p>ok, back to topic. Whats the result of the window decal test?</p>

<p>Your results may vary.</p>

<p>[Revisiting</a> the Value of Elite Colleges - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/revisiting-the-value-of-elite-colleges/]Revisiting”>Revisiting the Value of Elite Colleges - The New York Times)</p>

<p>*My son DID get a FULL TUITION PLUS ROOM & BOARD scholarship at one of our top state schools (Rowan), which by the way is rated #2 behind TCNJ as the top regional public university in the North. Remaining cost about $3K per year! Did you lose sight of my original post? *</p>

<p>No, I didn’t “lose sight” of your original post. I think you missed my point. My point has been that you made the choice between 2 schools.</p>

<p>1) School with some merit and high family contribution that provides full college experience.
This school’s remaining costs are more than YOU want to pay, so your child is expected to come up with $8k-10k per year with work (and now loans which you wanted to avoid.)</p>

<p>2) Regional public with LOTS of merit that may likely be a commuter/suitcase school that will NOT provide a full college experience.</p>

<p>My point was that your son should have applied to a few MORE schools that would have ALSO provided the full college experience and ALSO provided VERY BIG MERIT that would have left your family with an affordable amount to pay without any loans for your son.</p>

<p>*I’m also curious about how people seem so intent upon correcting busybeemom on the notion of Lafayette College as prestigious. What’s that about? Y’all know, don’t you, that there’s no agreed-upon meaning to the word “prestige” in this context? *</p>

<p>Because the initial post sort of indicated that this was a real debate between an ELITE school and a state school for engineering…such as MIT vs New Mexico Mines</p>

<p>There are a number of people that would think it’s totally fine to spend $140k on MIT and forego the free ride at NM Mines or some other state school. (not picking on NM…lol)</p>

<p>But then we found out that the pricey private is not an elite school (Lafayette is a very fine school, but who would call it elite??). So, naturally people pointed out that since the school isn’t elite that fact changes whether people would spend $140k or not.</p>

<p>My concerns have been:</p>

<p>1) Child wants LC because it sounds better to his pals at school. Too many of the “average kids” from school are probably going to Rowan. </p>

<p>2) Rowan may be a commuter/suitcase school which means the student will get bored on weekends and be angry that he’s there instead of a residential school.</p>

<p>3) Too much attention/focus was put on rankings and not enough was put on the full college experience and funding.</p>