It’s pretty incredible that only 41% of the Tufts’ admitted students receive financial aid. They’re exclusive enough to draw an incredible amount of full pay wealthy applicants.
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And therein lies part of the challenge - the more “full pays” you admit, the less space available for those in need (while keeping all of the administrative bloat in the budget).
They don’t have a problem drawing wealthy kids - they have a problem redistributing that tuition money back to poor students.
Or full-pay-and-pretty-well-off but-we’re -gonna-work-to-make-it-happen folks (which would have been us, if my D22 had been accepted). We are one of those high COL, high HHI families—I never expected financial aid from any university but I also knew we’d be making some different choices if her Ivy/Tufts dreams had come to pass.
As it turns out, she’s going our flagship public and thrilled about it (UCLA). And our bank account is thrilled about it too. After spending hours calculating the budget for 80k a year, UCLA’s 30k is a dream.
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Congrats on the ucla - great school! We’re in CT and have one flagship. It’s a very solid school, but our state is tiny and so we don’t have 5-10 great state schools to choose from. As a result, many kids with options and good grades don’t want to go to it because it’s going to have 50-100 kids from their graduating class, which doesn’t give you that going off for a fresh start that so many kids crave. So they go out of state instead. But you can go to UCSD if you’re from San Fran and it’s like going cross country, or ucla from sacremento, etc.
Ucla is also huge. UConn has about 18k undergraduates, ucla has 31k? So better chance of feeling like it isn’t your same HS.
For sure, there are tons of great CA public schools to choose from. Though 17 kids from my D’s high school senior class went to UCLA, and she does see them sometimes around campus, it does not at all feel like high school. (Her roommate is from San Diego and says that hundreds of kids from her very large high school class went to SDSU because of an arrangement the high school has with the university, so what you’re describing does happen here, too).
Hopefully the reciprocity program is helpful in your area? Seems like it might help get OOS kids into some great state schools, like UMass Amherst and UVM.
Reading some of these comments reminds me of a post a few years ago in the Yale forum. A parent of an accepted student was wondering about the chances of negotiating financial aid from Yale. If they had to pay the full COA they would have to lay off some of their household staff.
That parent did not get many sympathetic responses.
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I hear that good help is hard to find… so the idea of letting go your housekeeper and then trying to rehire one in four years-- gosh, that sounds painful!!!
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It may have changed recently - but historically the only state flagship around here offering equal tuition to CT residents was U Maine, which is a B ranking at Niche and #219 usnews. Basically a huge drop off from a UConn or UMass.
UMass, UNH, UVM don’t offer anything, in fact a huge money maker for them is NY and CT students going out of state. UVM is insanely expensive at 44k tuition out of state, and an additional 15k for rook board and fees, putting them at 60k a year. My oldest was accepted there and they offered zero merit even though 9 other better schools offered merit to her. UVM has also slipped from an A to an A- and now a B+ on niche.
There is a program where if your state flagship doesn’t offer certain majors you can go for a matching cost, it’s a New England program. But as you can imagine it’s limited to unusual or uncommon majors that don’t exist at UConn. So it’s not quite used.
In the end, the state school world in New England is basically - one flagship per state, which everyone in the state applies to, and is extremely hard these days to get into for local residents. And the private schools make a killing in the northeast because the state programs are not great and hard to get into. The opposite of a place like Florida or California which has an wide array of good state schools. UCF for example is behind FSU and U Florida, but arguably better than any of the New England flagships.
You are falling for the ranking trap.
And there are many OOS publics, flagships, if you want a deal and your student has the stats, you can score a GREAT deal.
Do you really think an employer cares if you went to UC Davis or Michigan State or Alabama ?
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Tsnba- trust me, Southern CT State is not the CT version of Michigan State or UC Davis. The regional public colleges in CT (and many in the rest of New England except for Rhode Island which is tiny) are mostly the former state teaching colleges, which have added more majors over time. But no reputable guidance counselor would suggest studying engineering at Western/Southern or the other directionals for a kid with the chops to get into the flagship. Kid wants to study communications/PR? Or early childhood? Fantastic. Great place to be. But mechanical engineering? nanotechnology? No.
Before you accuse anyone of falling for the ranking trap, you need to understand the local options. The former teachers colleges in CT do NOT have the facilities, faculty, or budgets to support complex and capital intensive majors. They each do a dozen things well. Period.
Hank is falling for nothing. He’s dealing with the reality that after years of paying state taxes, his own flagship is absurdly expensive AND hard to get admitted to.
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I didn’t say directionals. I said you can find low cost state flagships. Alabama. U of SC. MS State. Mizzou, Arizona. etc.
Prob for less than your flagship.
Going from Sacramento to UCSD on a distance POV likely not far off from Boston to wherever.
These schools draw nationally. They buy the kids in.
But when you quote Niche grades and US News rankings, then yes you are falling for the trap. Imho of course.
And short of a few schools they are likely not helpful other than for selling things and bringing stress to people.
This is a total aside, but back when we were living in Greenwich CT (many years ago) we went to church on Easter and part of the sermon was reminding folks to think of their household staff at this time of year. A real eye opener . . .
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Strange reply. Not falling for any traps, just very well attuned to colleges and placement options. Alabama and MSU are great options. UMass too. My point was that U Maine, which was the only tuition match to UConn, was considered by employers to be in an entirely different stratosphere by employers. The CT state schools are fine, one of my kids goes to one for International Studies, but for most majors employers would pass it by in favor of state flagships or better private schools.
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By the way, I push my firms HR department to not only cherry pick from the top 50, but they ignore me and won’t look at a kid outside of that.
The rankings do play a role- even if both you and I despise them. I like Niche better because it’s more larger bands (As and Bs) than silly numbers (18 versus 28, like that matters, both are excellent).
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In my experience - and it’s only my kid and my employer -it’s meaningless. My son has crushed it in engineering at Bama.
It’s the kid. He’s hustled. He’s going to make solid $$. They aren’t ranked.
My company - you have a Fairleigh Dickinson leading the charge. Sure we have Vandy…but we have W Georgia over them…had never heard of them. Lots of Kennesaw State for example.
My old company - a lot of Long Beach State and Cal State this or UC that.
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I agree that there are many fewer strong publics in New England. I’m in MA and the number of elite schools in the state outnumbers strong public options by a wide margin.
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I agree—when we were on the hunt for OOS publics for D22, we noticed the lack of really strong northeast options. So many tiny states and so few schools—they really should be obligated to make reciprocity a realistic option. I’m sorry it’s not!
So interesting! Thank you for sharing. I had no idea Tufts was that extreme in their lack of economic diversity.
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They aren’t all tiny population wise. Would it benefit Mass to take student from CT, VT, Maine as instate or at a reduced tuition when a like number of Mass students don’t want to attend the public schools in those states? Such an arrangement has to benefit the citizens of each state equally.
That’s why only a few schools in California are part of WUE. The benefit is there if it is limited to just a few schools.