<p>Great Topic and I wish parents, gc’s and others outside the cc community would wake up to this. What truly disturbs me is the effect these decisions will have on this generation of college grads for a long, long time. So many of my children’s peers have taken out loans over and above stafford loans. Even if they are able to get a job, servicing $80,000+ of debt will limit their ability to buy cars and homes in the future. Son was fortunate to get a full time job over the summer outside the music field and learned quite a bit from his coworkers and bosses who had graduated from undergrad and grad programs within the last 5 years. They were burdened with loan payments so replacing broken car parts and even eating protein regularly was a stretch. These hard working young people had graduated from top state and private schools that are the subject of much discussion on other forums here on cc. Hopefully. the economy will improve and they will move up the economic ladder so their loan payments will be less of a burden.</p>
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</p>
<p>I was at CMU right recently (business trip). The bathrooms in their halls (where classes are held) are better than the bathrooms in my newly constructed (upscale) home. During my conversation with professors, some mentioned that ** unfortunately ** they have to teach classes - which amounts to a whooping ** one graduate-level class per term **. No wonder the tuition is so expensive at CMU.</p>
<p>lerkin,</p>
<p>If these are research faculty, they barely have time to breathe, let alone prepare for and teach a class. All their energy is sucked up by supervising their current crop of grad students, and by writing grant proposals in the hope of keeping their research team functioning. In most cases the research groups are expected to be money makers for the university rather than a cost.</p>
<p>Happymom,</p>
<p>All tenure track profs at CMU are research faculty. I know how grants work. They don’t cover their regular (non summer) salary. The salary and benefits are covered by tuition revenue. </p>
<p>I don’t begrudge the profs for their attitude. After all their it is their ability to get funding and graduate PhDs that gets them tenure. I begrudge the system.</p>
<p>it is sad story! But the kid maybe OK.</p>
<p>GC need to talk to students not just about Safety schools, but *financial * safeties. Had a meeting with D’s GC this morning to go over post-HS planning. She is one of the few students with a mostly finalized list. His first impression was that her list looked scattershot, until we explained. We started with about 100 schools, full range of safety through reach, and let he scratch at will, making sure to keep some of each. He is a new GC (her old one retired in June), so we knew we might have to step up. He did ask why a couple of schools were on the list when they don’t seem to “fit” with the others. They are financial safeties - an OK fit, D is willing to attend, and if nobody else comes back with aid, they will be very affordable (enough so that money “saved” from what we’re willing to pay can be saved toward grad school). He did not ask about family finances, but had mentioned that tuition is pretty steep at almost every school on her list, be we have checked NPC and know that most will still be affordable (those that clearly won’t have already been chopped from the list).</p>
<p>At least some of the kids at our HS will be guided in the right direction.</p>
<p>wow… noted</p>
<p>We insisted our sons put financial safeties on their lists. Both boys were told how much Mom and Dad were willing to pay, and that anything above that amount was on them. We allowed them to apply to any schools they liked, but there had to be at least one on the list that was a solid financial safety. This gave us huge peace of mind going through the process. In the end, both chose private schools that were generous with merit aid, but both would have been happy at the financial safety schools, too.</p>
<p>@lerkin:
Universities keep a lot of the external money that come for faculty research. Some universities get around 65%. This means that if a professor gets a 1Million grant, with $50K allocated to the professor’s Summer Support, the university nevertheless get $650K.
At top research universities, many professors make more money for the university by doing research than by teaching classes.
Some people on this forum seems to get upset about this. My view is that if families don’t like this model, then send their kids to an LAC or a more balanced university. Does anyone really think that CMU’s, MIT’s, Stanford’s, Berkeley’s, etc. reputation comes from great teaching? No, it gomes from the pathbreaking research that is produced there.</p>
<p>NotYourBusiness,</p>
<p>As I said before, I know how grants work. So I understand that Us keep some percentage. It is usually around 20-30%. There is no way Us can get away with 65%. They have to disclose their rate structure. The government will never agree to 65. </p>
<p>I don’t really need education how the system works. I know how it works. My point is that the system is broken.</p>
<p>
How many are you down to at this point? D has her list down to 15, but I would like to cut a few more. OTOH, when you are looking for merit, I think you have to cast a broader net.</p>
<p>Lerkin:
You know how grants work, I also know how grants work.<br>
A university I have first-hand experience does keep around 65%. This occurs because it forces the researcher to include admin costs, facility costs, overhead costs, etc. in the research proposal. This means that many times a researcher is supporting a facility that is also used to educate students and/or support other researchers who are in the initial/application stages of their projects.
Regarding if the system is broken or not, can you clarify your statement? I believe that it is very clear that a research university prioritizes research over teaching, while other institutions, such as LACs and CCs prioritize teaching over research. Why is this broken?</p>
<p>I don’t think guidance counselor’s actually have to inquire about family finances in detail enough to violate any privacy issues in order to get the point across about financial safeties and to offer advice. The first 3 questions my son’s GC asked at our first was; do you know where you’d like to apply (he didn’t), do you know what you think you’d like to study (he did) and how important is FA in the final college selection. In our case, it basically took precedence over everything else and I told her that. It is my understanding she asked the same questions of all the kids in the class. Some who had plenty of money and were prepared to pay full freight said they didn’t care, so who could pay full freight, said, merit money would be nice, some like me told the truth, and yes, I’m sure there were those who were too embarrassed or proud to admit they needed FA, so they lied, but that’s not the GC’s fault. </p>
<p>In our case, I was very grateful for the help. Since this was my second time around, I knew enough to look for schools where son’s stats were at the top end, and to find a school that I knew would be afforded with nothing but the needbased aid that I knew he would get and any possible assured merit monies, but I had no idea about the schools that meet full need or very close to it. She suggested Tulane and SMU, 2 schools she knew were generous with both merit for kids around his stats and need, but 2 schools I would looked at the sticker price and concluded that even with possible FA, would have been out of the picture and he wouldn’t have even applied. Once she explained how FA worked at some top schools I did the research and ruled out any schools that didn’t meet an average of at least 95% of need, and I paid attention to the no or limited loan schools, another area I was not aware of . I didn’t expect her to do all the research. </p>
<p>Then when son was wait listed at Lehigh and Lafayette and he took the wait list option, she was the who talked to him about going with a school that really wanted you right off the bat, instead of adding the pressure of wondering if you’d get in off a wait list, when you should have been excitedly making plans for the fall. Neither of us thought about it that way, we just kinda assumed you took a wait list option, but once she pointed it out to him it made sense and he removed his name about 2 weeks after he joined the wait list. </p>
<p>What I don’t get is educated parents who make middle class or better salaries not knowing how much these colleges cost. I mean, I can get people who don’t understand about the Profile, NCP, self-employment and those who don’t know about meet full need and no or limited loan schools, but I don’t understand parents who let their kids apply without at least looking at the COA. I can get them mistakenly believing their kid is going to get is going to get a large scholarship, but heck, at some point I would think they would look and realize; OK COA is $60,000 a year, even if our kid gets $30,000 a year (and common sense is bound to tell them that getting even 50% isn’t not common) we’re still going to have to come up with another $30,000. </p>
<p>Do they really just not look until after the acceptances are in and admission deadlines have passed or do we have that many parents who think their student will get a $50,000 yearly scholarship. </p>
<p>The other thing I don’t get is; if you’re like my family and money is what will count bottom line, tell your kid up front, help them find realistic possibilities, and then let them throw some wishful thinking choices in there. If you know money does matter a lot, why limit your kids to 3 or 4 apps? </p>
<p>My kid applied to 17, which might be a little excessive, I didn’t think he’s get into as many as he did, but the thing is, he was wait-listed at 2 and rejected at 4, meaning he got into 11. But some of those 11, which looked promising for FA offered almost nothing (2 said depending on what the legislators did, there could be more money, but they couldn’t promise yet), some offered mediocre packages and then the rest were all within $1000 range difference. But if I had limited the apps, I could have just as easily limited it to those that didn’t offer decent packages and then where would we have been. </p>
<p>So, to my way of thinking, if you need the good FA package and you have a kid who is an odd mix of stuff, it’s nearly impossible to guess, so those students need to cast a really large net. </p>
<p>My question on the OP student, is what happened, after the student got the early admission to U of Mich, the parent just assumed the money would be there and the kid withdrew his applications elsewhere or just didn’t apply anywhere else? Do most parents not want to compare offers (merit or need), I’m not real clear how these kind of situations come about. I thought if you applied for ED, whether it was binding or not, you got an aid package early, so there was still time if it wasn’t affordable to make other apps. I’m not real clear on that, neither of mine applied ED.</p>
<p>"My kid applied to 17, which might be a little excessive, I didn’t think he’s get into as many as he did, but the thing is, he was wait-listed at 2 and rejected at 4, meaning he got into 11. But some of those 11, which looked promising for FA offered almost nothing (2 said depending on what the legislators did, there could be more money, but they couldn’t promise yet), some offered mediocre packages and then the rest were all within $1000 range difference. But if I had limited the apps, I could have just as easily limited it to those that didn’t offer decent packages and then where would we have been. </p>
<p>So, to my way of thinking, if you need the good FA package and you have a kid who is an odd mix of stuff, it’s nearly impossible to guess, so those students need to cast a really large net."</p>
<p>I totally agree with this strategy. I remember discussing this with some of my colleagues who indicated that I was wasting money paying for application fees. In my son’s case, he applied to nine schools. He was accepted at seven schools but only three of these schools would have enabled him to graduate debt free. The school (Cornell) that he was least interested in turned out to be the best option. He will graduate in May with an engineering degree and has recieved a great offer from a top company. He will also graduate debt free whereas many of my colleagues kids will graduate with thousands of dollars of debt.</p>
<p>NotYourBusiness,</p>
<p>First, I think we were talking about two different things, I was talking about fee (profit), you were talking about overhead. I don’t see a problem with either. I also think it’s absolutely fair that the overhead is included in the rates, because after all the faculty is using the admin support, facilities, etc to conduct their recearch. The overhead fee also includes graduate RAs benefits, such as health insurance and tuition. That is why it is so high.</p>
<p>However lets not forget that Professors non summer salary is not covered by grants. It is separate and is covered by other revenue, i.e. tuition. With starting salaries at top Universities @90k and with Professors only teaching 1 class per term, yes I do the system is broken. Why should we pay these outrageously high tuition fees, for classes that Professors don’t really want to teach because it’s not really their mission, while being paid pretty hansomely to do so.</p>
<p>And please don’t say that I have a choice to send my kid to non-research college. Their fees are outrageous too. I am not sure if it’s because of granite in their bathrooms or beacouse they follow a suite of their research counterparts.</p>
<p>By the way, one professor at CMU told me that majority of their US grad students come from state schools now. These are smart kids whose parents could not afford to pay large tuition at CMU. Since grad school is free to these kids (TA, RA, etc), now these kids can finally afford to go to school they should have gone to for undergrad.</p>
<p>NotYourBusiness,</p>
<p>due to some weird time synchronization issues my reply is posted above yours. But it is their, if you are interested…</p>
<p>Most parents who have had college as a “must” for their kids do know what the private colleges cost at the high end. There has been a lot of talk and media coverage of it, so it is not easy to miss. It’s also easy enough to look it up. Where the problem is, lies with the myths of how easy it is to get those costs reduced. I have heard comments like “no one pays full price” and the bragging on how much so and so gets, but few parents like to say that they could not afford any of the schools on their initial lists. THe talk is not so loud about those things. It’s often put in the terms of XYZ college is not worth double what ABC College costs, so he is going there. My DH has a business associate who became very quiet at decision time only to resurface deriding some schools that he had been so pro about and his son had gotten a really good deal at Binghamton and at that price, of course he went. Well, Binghamton does not give merit money, so what he was saying was that he could not swallow the close to $60K price tag of Tufts and Brandeis, and they did not offer a dime reduction in cost, something he was counting on happening as his son did very well on the standarized tests and had great grades. </p>
<p>So you hear about the offers and how others are managing to swing it, when the way they are swinging it is with loans that may not be a wise thing to be taking, and in some cases a big problem. </p>
<p>And no, counselors, no one HAS to tell you anything. That is why the status quo is as it is. For whatever reason, with 4 kids having gone through this, and seeing how a number of “good” public, private, parochial schoosl handle the college information session, I’ve yet to see one that gives the directed, yet impersonal, general advice we give in one post here at CC. </p>
<p>A lot of parents also don’t see the numbers the way they should. If 20% of the accepted kids at ABC University get a merit award and the average award is $15K per kid, alot of parents figure their kid is in the upper echelons of that group, since when has s/he not been. You really have to look at what the test scores are and where your student falls,and also how typical your kid is. The fact of the matter is that schools use merit money to “buy” the students they want, so if so many kids in your area apply to a given school, it is probably not a good sign for your kid to getting a big award. If s/he is similar to all of the top kids in the area, and it is a hot school for those kids, the school does not have to pay to get any number of those kids. But they probably want some geographic diversity, so the money likely goes for that. I’ve seen that many times. Why pay for a student type that is typical for that school? Also a number of schools give a lot of small awards to a students, with generous awards to the kids they really want, skewing that average figure badly. My kids got a bunch of small merit awards that didn’t make a 10% dent in the cost. Most of us who need money for college are not interested in those tiny sweetners. We are looking for the $10K bites off the price. THe little awards are nice for those who weren’t expecting money, and often come up in talk without the actual amounts being mentioned. Nice to say Jr got money from ABC COllege, makes for an ego boosting remark. No need to say it was for a thousand dollars and ABC’s cost close to $60K.</p>
<p>Cpt,</p>
<p>I did have college in mind for my kids. However I did not realize how expensive privates are. Only since I started to read stuff here, it occurred to me to look at the prices. I also did not realize that top privates do not offer merit aid. </p>
<p>I think if the parents did not go through this themselves, they don’t see the clear picture until it is too late. I am very glad that I figured everything out before it is time to apply for colleges. </p>
<p>For my son, I don’t think I will waste the money on app fees to top schools. He will be applying to state flagship. If he gets merit there - great. If not, then I know I can afford to pay for it. Once he gets an undergraduate degree, if he is so inclined he can go to a top grad school for free (which is very much possible for a US citizen pursuing engineering degree). </p>
<p>Regarding ego boosting remarks - what bothers me the most when parents boast that their kid got a scholarship to go to a top college, but then they conveniently omit that it is not a merit scholarship, but simply need-based financial aid. Last year, somebody posted on John Heald’s (Carnival’s top cruise director) facebook wall, asking him to send their child something special to their cabin because that child got a full ride scholarship to Stanford. What they forgot to mention that it was not a merit based scholarship, since Stafford does not give those. I was peeved, if the family can afford to go on a cruise, then they should be able to afford to pay at least partially for their kiddo to go to Stanford.</p>
<p>The term “full ride” is often misused. Also, “scholarship” can mean a lot of different things from financial aid, to a local scholarship, an employer’s scholarship, ROTC scholarship, athletic scholarship. Also people lie. I found that out with my first child going through the process, Lots of fish stories out there. ALso people don’t tell you what they went through to get a given award. My oldest was an athlete and when I asked for specifics from older kids who had gone his route, very few had an easy path, and many who did get some nice awards, got them from school where they may have gotten the same even without the sport. Looking for the right school for the child and also taking into account a number of other factors, really narrows the range for merit money, especially sizeable awards. </p>
<p>My son just came back from a Carnival cruise that cost him $295, so they can be very inexpensive especially if you jump aboard the last minute. It could have cost him even less had he done that, as he did so last year. Half that. A far cry from what a Stanford education costs.</p>
<p>My cousin frequently says her son has a full scholarship which is not full and she omits the ROTC part most of the time, though readily brings it up if further conversation ensues. A kid just the other day said he went to XYZ college because “it’s free” for him. It is—his parent works there and it’s one of the perks, but it is free tuition, not a full ride. All of this feeds the myth that there is a lot out there even at the competitive schools in terms of money. Nope. We got a lot of little merit awards, but the biggies were rare. And one biggie, well it was disheartening that even a $30K award which is big bucks, still means $30K to pay.</p>
<p>Don’t be too quick to set your son’s path. My one son went to an LAC that did cough up some money for him. More when he asked for it. Totally unexpected. It was an off the path school and should not have made his list. He loved it when he visited, and he loved going there, and in this case, I have to say, it would have been worth borrowing if it didn’t wreck us for him to go there. It was a game changer for him in ways that most schools would not have been. So keeping options open is always good.</p>
<p>Often, I emphasize things because they will not make an impact with people so set on a given path, unless that is done. Loans are not ALL bad. There are many exceptions to every rule cited here, even the best ones. But it scares me when I see folks not even aware of what the most common pitfalls are and believing in what is pure myth thinking it is fact.</p>
<p>"NotYourBusiness,</p>
<p>due to some weird time synchronization issues my reply is posted above yours. But it is their, if you are interested… "</p>
<p>I saw it. I will reply to it some time soon. I just want to write a cogent response, so I want to do this in the evening or tomorrow.</p>
<p>BTW, there is nothing personal in my arguments. I just enjoy the discussion and since I have first-hand experience with both research and teaching universities I want to add my 2 cents.</p>