<p>We took a trip from Houston up to OKC in May 2011 for the Softball World Series, and incorporated our first college visits. D was interested in a small LAC, so I lined up visits to Oklahoma City University, Southwestern College (Kansas), and Friends University in Wichita. D was going to be a junior, had a 4.1 weighted GPA, and had already taken the ACT once with a respectable (for a sophomore) 28. Small LAC's are a lot of fun to visit in the summer; they really showed a lot of hospitality. The other thing they had in common was their "drive out" price. You know, when you go to the car dealership, that SUV or truck is stickered at $55,000, but just for you, they will knock off $15,000. Wow, what a deal!!! Or maybe you just overpriced it to begin with? All three schools offered generous academic money, with D rating at or near the top tier of money awards. Drive out price: $16,000 a year for all three schools. Since then, D has bumped her ACT to 29, has the same GPA, and is still looking for a small school. Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, Centenary in Shreveport, Howard Payne in Brownwood, TX, and Regis University in Denver all have similar themes. There are (depending on the school) 1-5 full rides each year that you can travel in to compete for, but otherwise they will "mark down" your annual price tag to $16-20,000 a year with academic scholarships. I guess the reason I am commenting on this is I see multiple posters commenting on "generous scholarship" money at some private schools. Personally, I just need to know what the "drive out price" is, not what the sticker price was.</p>
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<p>Yes, the net price after financial aid and scholarships (= discounts) is what students and parents should focus on when considering costs.</p>
<p>It isn’t just “some private colleges” – most colleges use financial aid and scholarships as a form of price discrimination.</p>
<p>They all do it. But, not everyone gets the biggest discount. Some go free or nearly free. A few have to pay sticker. Most fall somewhere in the middle . . . you never know which you are until the FA package comes in.</p>
<p>“They all do it”, meaning virtually all of them offer some variety of financial aid. However, only a relative few colleges (about 50 selective schools) cover 100% of determined need; many of those don’t offer any merit aid at all. Some schools guarantee specific merit award amounts for specific stats. Others are more vague about the merit amounts, or award them based on a holistic evaluation of the applicant’s qualifications (not just GPA and test scores).</p>
<p>At the most expensive, most selective private schools, roughly half of all students pay full sticker (and none get merit aid). The rest pay an amount pegged to the Expected Family Contribution. At some slightly less selective schools, 20% or more of the students may be getting a merit discount (in varying amounts). Details on number of awards and average amounts are covered in each school’s Common Data Set file, section H.</p>
<p>I don’t know that private schools are “overpriced” considering that state schools get a pretty hefty subsidy from the state to operate. The price to educate kids is about the same overall, it’s just that the state pays the first whatever percentage of that cost. Look at the OOS costs at state schools and it is at or above most private school costs–without the generous merit aid.</p>
<p>I would say that if she is qualifying for those large scholarships that you are targeting the right schools. You will find that most LAC’s will have similar scholarships, give or take, for better students. That is how they get the best and the brightest. For the scholarship competitions, keep in mind that those are limited, maybe a handful at most so don’t bank on getting one but if you do, NICE. </p>
<p>Our kids applied to mostly LAC and the net price after merit aid and other non-financial offerings are coming in between $6000-10,000 for the most part, net to us, because of good grades and test scores.</p>
<p>The Kiplinger site shows aid amounts (both merit & need-based) for 200 private schools, and need-based aid amounts (in state & OOS) for another 100 public schools.</p>
<p>[Best</a> Values in Public Colleges, 2011-12](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/]Best”>Best College Values, 2019 | Kiplinger)</p>
<p>Nothing comes in for free. Those schools are paying for your kid’s academic achievement. Your kid would make their schools look better.</p>
<p>I remember my hubby’s frustration at one of the (admittedly overwhelming) college fairs we attended a few years ago. When the rep from School A offered him a packet, he flipped right to the tuition and fees, and audibly gasped. The rep was very quick to say, “Oh, but ‘no one’ pays the full price…there are scholarships and grants and aid…” To which my logical husband asked what it would cost for D to attend his school…and he shrugged, saying no one really knows until the packages come in.</p>
<p>That was very frustrating for us all. D was a high-stats kid, so on some of the school’s websites (and this was a couple of year ago, before the net price calculators were up and running) she could plug in her stats to see about guaranteed aid. But what about talent scholarships, based on her audition? Nebulous. Competitive awards? Other aid?</p>
<p>We ended up keeping a separate spreadsheet with columns for “sticker price” (yes, we used that term, too), then guaranteed awards offered for stats, the potential for competitive awards, etc.</p>
<p>In the end, her packages from each of her schools varied widely. The big thing for hubs was the uncertainty of needing to wait until packages came in (loooong after academic and artistic acceptances, in some cases) for d to really finalize her decision.</p>
<p>One school, which had been on her radar for a while, started to pursue her in July with unsolicited offers of more scholarship aid. (Ironic, because she contacted them before rejecting their original offer, to see if they could up their scholarship offerings, and was told no. So she committed to the school she now attends, where she was awarded one of those highly-sought-after competitive scholarships. and which is so right for her. As she returned home from freshman orientation, she opened her mail to find a letter, suddenly awash with more talent scholarship.) </p>
<p>I feel your pain. Keep your spreadsheet, and update it as offers/awards come in.</p>
<p>It is called tuition discounting. The schools call it merit aid to make the parents and families feel better. All but the top LACs do it. If they did not, many of these LACs could not even come close to filling their freshman quota.</p>
<p>The average tuition discount for the LACs in the stae of Iowa is 60%, highest in the country. None of these schools have large enough endowments to cover the lost revenue from the discount. But they have no choice, either offer these discounts or close up.</p>
<p>D. has applied to several UGs (but it was about 6 years ago), one of them was expansive private. At that time tuition at this school for UG was about $33k/year (currently, it is about $38k/year). Our tuition balance after Merit award was $5k /year. However, she has chosen to attend a different UG, in-state public where she was on full tuition Merit + some more for all 4 years. Money were NOT a decisive factor though, it was admission to a very selective program that had only 10 - 15 spots at each school. D. ended up with great UG education and overall college experience.</p>
<p>mommafrog–we also have a spreadsheet, created more out of a reality check for the kids than anything but it has been very useful. We have the full price listed along with columns for automatic merit aid, potential merit aid (DD is a recruited athlete and DS has some offers of “minimum” awards but not sure what the max is on that award) and what the NPC says. It’s the unknowns, the competitive scholarships, that will make the difference and we won’t know those for DS until Feb at least. He has invites to Scholar days at all the schools he applied to so hopefully he will get something. DD will have pre-reads done at all of her choices by Nov 1 so that will be nice!</p>
<p>Learning in February for a competitive scholarship is good. Harvey Mudd doesn’t announce their Presidential Scholar until mid April (or didn’t this past year).</p>
<p>It really isn’t all that hard to figure out the whole tuition discounting/merit aid thing.</p>
<p>Just use the Kiplinger data base cited above or the more recent database in the NY Times. You can quickly identify the schools that play the merit aid game and those that don’t. Looking for a LAC in Ohio with merit aid? Steer your kid to Denison and Oberlin. Kenyon – not gonna happen.</p>
<p>Then look at your kid’s stats. Merit aid goes to kids that will improve the college’s stats. If your kid is above average or higher, you can expect some money. If you kid is very above average (say above the 75th percentile on that school’s SAT/ACT range) you will get a bigger award.</p>
<p>Having done this with two kids in the past couple of years, the results were pretty predictable. They got money where we figured they would, and didn’t where we figured they wouldn’t.</p>
<p>If you are talking about need based aid, then that’s a separate analysis you have to do.</p>
<p>But since your every kid is going to be above average at some school, you don’t have to pay sticker price. Unless you and your kid focus primarily on reach/dream schools. The reach school for admissions is not the place where you are going to find merit money.</p>
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<p>No, this misstates the economics of post-secondary education. These days many public universities get a state subsidy that represents just a fraction of the value of the tuition discount the universities give to in-state residents. They make up the rest through a combination of endowment earnings, recapture of a fractional share of research grants earned by faculty, intellectual property licensing fees, and cross-subsidies by OOS and international students.</p>
<p>It’s also not the case that per-unit (i.e., per student) costs are the same. Faculty salaries vary widely. Faculty-student ratios vary widely. Research universities generally require much larger libraries than LACs, but at both the research university and the LAC level, there are substantial differences in acquisition and operational costs depending on the size of the collection, but those costs, once the size of the collection is established, are more or less fixed, and can be spread among a larger or smaller number of students depending on the size of the school, introducing opportunities for scale efficiencies. Land costs and construction costs vary widely by community, as does the prevailing wage that must be paid to maintenance, custodial, clerical, and technical employees. Building operational and maintenance expenses vary widely, depending on the age, design, configuration, and energy-efficiency of the buildings. Large universities may be better positioned to negotiate more favorable employee health insurance rates; and/or to reduce health care costs by integrating their employee health benefits with their own medical schools and hospital services; and/or to self-insure, thus “eliminating the middle-man” and paying health care insurers only a paperwork management fee and not a premium based on the insurance company’s exposure to the risk of loss.</p>
<p>For these reasons and probably a hundred more, per-unit instructional costs are not uniform. Far from it.</p>
<p>bclintonk–whatever–it was an illustration for the OP who, like most people, was looking at their net cost at a state school and I was pointing out that there is a state subsidy that brings that net cost down. You forgot to take into consideration that the costs at a large state school are spread out among a LOT more students so the individual cost difference is not that great…</p>
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<p>I’m always happy when someone posts first the same thing that I was thinking.
We’re still fairly early in this process but the quote seems to be correct.</p>
<p>But this also raises a quandary
does D decide to go to a less competitive school because shes in the top 25% and will get more money?
Or go to the more selective (i.e. better) college and pay more?
I dont know the answer.</p>
<p>Re: #14</p>
<p>Per unit instructional costs also vary on the level and subject studied. Courses with lab, art studio, etc. have costs or facility constraints that can be more expensive than courses that just have lecture, discussion, and/or seminar in a classroom. More advanced courses that must be taught in smaller sections by the subset of faculty in the subarea of the subject cost more than introductory courses that can be taught in larger sections by any faculty member in the subject. Note that state universities often have a model of accepting many junior transfer students who took the introductory courses at lower cost community colleges.</p>
<p>re Post #16, that’s your call. It’s a family choice as to what to do. I do know studies have shown that students who were accepted at Ivies but selected less competitive schools did just as well as Ivy grads after graduation. This implies it’s more about the individual than where they learn.</p>
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<p>Oh, absolutely yes, i agree.
I’m aware of the studies and even if I wasn’t I’d still believe that 100%.</p>
<p>“But this also raises a quandary … does D decide to go to a less competitive school because she’s in the top 25% and will get more money?
Or go to the more selective (i.e. “better”) college and pay more?
I don’t know the answer.”</p>
<p>Golf – full sticker private college is now $250k per kid and rising. So price is a factor for a majority of the 1% and 100% of the 99%. Studies say that the two primary factors in college decisions are (i) academic reputation and (ii) price. My advice is to pick the schools you apply to carefully so that you and your kid will have a good group of schools to choose from at varying price points and varying academic reps.</p>
<p>In my second go-round, I did a much better job in helping my kid develop the list of applications. We intentionally went light on stretch dream schools and bulked up on match (academic and financial) schools. With the Common App and $50 app fee, to me it made sense to throw lots and lots of match-ish schools into the hopper so we’d have choices.</p>
<p>Because of that approach, kid got into 11 of 12 schools applied to. We had three $50k schools, two schools in the 40s, four in the 30s, one in the 20s and one in the teens (home state U as a safety). Kid picked one of the $30k schools.</p>
<p>So if your kid is interested in LACs in Ohio, apply to Kenyon and Oberlin and Denison and Wooster. If that comes back as Kenyon at $55k, Oberlin at $47k, Denison at $36k and Wooster at $31k, then it becomes much easier to contemplate what is/is not worth paying for for your particular kid.</p>