<p>Assuming my daughter makes NMS Finalist (and we believe she will) a couple of schools have already told us that they will offer her a free ride - tuition, room and board, etc. We have friends who accepted this offer last year and their student is banking money.</p>
<p>One of the schools is on my daughter's list, but it's not her first choice. Her first choice offers some NMS money, but not much.</p>
<p>My wife and I are in a bit of a disagreement on this.</p>
<p>My wife feels that our daughter should go to the school offering her the best finances (even if its not her first choice), then use the money we set aside for graduate school. And we'll have money available for her to do things like summer research and international studies if she desires.</p>
<p>I think my daughter should go wherever she will feel the most at home for the next 4 years and her first choice is a really good school. Clearly better than the one offering the large scholarship. Doing this will use the savings we set aside for college. But then she'll (we'll?) have to figure out how to pay for graduate school.</p>
<p>Are there other things we should be considering?</p>
<p>There are too many variables involved for anyone here to give you a useful opinion at this point, parker. Just how much difference is there between the schools; is your daughter in a position to get some additional merit scholarship money from her first choice–or another school; will she fit in at the lower-ranked school socially; will there be research opportunities so she can get to know the profs whose recommendations she will need for grad school; and so on.</p>
<p>One thing you might consider: many graduate programs (most often doctoral, but some masters) finance graduate students through TA or RA positions. That is, students are offered a waiver of tuition and fees and receive a stipend for living expenses. This varies by school and field. It is hard to factor this in at this point, because she may not remain enamored of the field she now thinks she wants to study. </p>
<p>FWIW: my son did accept a very large merit scholarship from a school that was not at the top of his list going in. However, it is still a very highly ranked university (it was not a NM scholarship, although he has one of them too). Before he accepted the offer, he visited twice, spoke with a lot of profs and others about research opportunities, classes, programs he could participate in, and so on. If he had not determined that it was a great fit academically, he would not have accepted. He is a bit less picky than many about the ‘social atmosphere’, so that wasn’t a big factor, but if your daughter is less flexible about that kind of thing, you might want to keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Of course, there is the option of transferring out after a year if she accepts the scholarship school and does not like it, but transferring can be disruptive.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about making this decision now. Apply to several schools, plus 2 or 3 free rides, visit the campuses, and see what pans out. By spring, a winner will emerge! :)</p>
<p>My DS1 (a NMF) took the free ride at Alabama. He’s in the Computer-based Honors program there. He loves UA. My second son goes there now, too. DS2 got the presidential scholarship (free tuition) & the engineering scholarship ($2500 per year). </p>
<p>We will help DS1 with law school or grad school (hasn’t decided) and help DS2 with med school. There aren’t usually any tuition waivers/TA positions for med students or law students. If DS1 gets such funding for grad school, then we’ll help him in some other manner (down payment for a home???)</p>
<p>We felt that as long as they went to a good national university for undergrad, they could go anywhere for grad school, med school, or law school. So far, the UA students that we know who’ve graduated have all gotten into the law schools (including Harvard and Yale), med schools, and business schools that they’ve wanted (including ivies).</p>
<p>Have you visited any of the free ride schools? Do they offer any “extras” - such as honors colleges,</p>
<p>I would take her to visit the free ride schools and see if she can summon up some enthusiasm for them. Where she thinks she’ll feel most at home right now doesn’t mean a whole lot. If she has a free ride at a decent school that will probably allow her to have reasonable grad school prospects, she will likely make friends there and it will become “home”.</p>
<p>Every year on cc we read about kids who are crushed because they didn’t get into their first choice school. They go to a school that was further down their list and even though they are supposed to love their safety, they really don’t…but they end up happy in spite of themselves.</p>
<p>I agree with that…DS1 fell in love with Alabama after visiting ( and he didn’t think he’d like a southern school! We’re native Californians.) It’s beautiful and awesome. He didn’t need to “summon up” any enthusiasm. :)</p>
<p>Which schools have offered her free rides? </p>
<p>BTW…you don’t have to wait until a school offers a NM scholarship. If a school lists a NM scholarship on its website that is available to all NMF students (like UA does), you just apply…you don’t need to wait until the scholarship is offered…you just apply.</p>
<p>For example…on UA’s website…</p>
<p>You must be admitted by December 1 of your senior year in high school to be considered for this scholarship (this would include completing the application for admission as well as the scholarship application).</p>
<p>National Merit Finalist
Value of tuition in-state or out-of-state for 4 years
4 years of on-campus housing (this includes the new honors dorms)
$1,000 per year University National Merit/Achievement Scholarship for 4 years
One time allowance of $2,000 for use in summer research or international study (after completing one year of study at UA)
Laptop computer</p>
<p>I think that UA is the highest ranking National university that gives this scholarship to all of its NMF students who apply on time.</p>
<p>If you go to the thread, please note the corrections/additions that I made in later posts. I didn’t realize that I didn’t do some of the links correctly until it was too late to fix. So, please forgive some of the “oddness” in my first post. :(</p>
<p>Push is subjective. I would bring up the benefits. Don’t know how pushy most people would think I was being. None of my kids picked the college I would have picked for them, and they well knew it but had no trouble voicing their preferences and going with them. And I let them.</p>
<p>Maybe it depends on how different the options are, and how much (in terms of utility) this difference costs you. </p>
<p>We have a similar sort of situation facing us and I’m not sure what we will do when the time comes. Our D could go to an extremely good school for free (because we teach at it). It’s reknowned in a field she thinks she wants to major in, but alas, it’s boring to her and too close to home (literally and figuratively). So we are more than happy to let her venture to consider other Canadian schools (we are in Canada) because the tuition is only about 5-6k at any of these schools. And now we are also letting her consider schools in the UK and the US…which as you know would be quite a LOT more expensive for us. It might be worth the difference in tuition for some schools, but not worth it for others. We’d pay that hefty differential if we could see it is objectively better in terms of experience, education and opportunities (clearly defined); but for us, the differential is not worth it if it’s just her general “dream school”. We aren’t willing to pay for pretty dorms, or weather, or a brand name among teenagers and we could not possibly care less about USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>we didnt have the full-ride vs 1st choice selection in front of us. but we did have a good merit aid vs first choice. our approach was to run the numbers and give D the following choices: </p>
<ul>
<li> attend the college offering merit aid and graduate with no loans and we’ll leave your savings alone (effectively full-ride for her ) </li>
<li> attend 1st choice and graduate with stafford loans and we tap your savings to help with the costs. </li>
</ul>
<p>she chose her 1st choice, and so far it certainly looks like the right choice for her.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Have you established a family policy on contributing to the cost of graduate school? Some families are willing to contribute; others feel that their obligation has ended when the student receives a bachelor’s degree. </p></li>
<li><p>If you are willing to contribute to the cost of graduate school, are you willing to say to your daughter, “If you take the free ride school now, we will contribute the money we would have spent on your undergraduate college to the costs of your graduate education”? If the answer is yes, this could be a powerful incentive for the student to choose the free-ride school.</p></li>
<li><p>How likely is your daughter to go to graduate school, and what kind of graduate school would it be? Some students’ aspirations do not involve graduate school. Others plan to pursue Ph.D.s or research-oriented master’s degrees, in which case they usually don’t need their parents’ money (most Ph.D. students and some students in research-oriented master’s programs have teaching or research assistantships that pay their tuition and give them a small stipend to live on). Still others want to go to medical, law, or business school or to get some sort of professional (non-research) master’s degree. All of these students almost always do have to pay – and pay a great deal – for graduate school (a few instances where employers contribute to the cost of a master’s degree are exceptions).</p></li>
<li><p>Is the prestige of the college your daughter graduates from important to her future plans? Often, schools offering free rides are lower down the academic pecking order than those offering less money. Sometimes this matters; other times it doesn’t. If the free ride school is fairly highly ranked, the sacrifice may be minimal. Several of my daughter’s high school friends accepted free rides to our flagship state university; this is different from accepting a free ride to a school that nobody has ever heard of. </p></li>
<li><p>Would your daughter have to take out loans to go to the non-free-ride school? Graduating without debt is very attractive, regardless of whether the student plans to go to graduate school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think this is a personal family decision. We did NOT push our kiddo into taking a VERY good scholarship at her number two school. The simple fact is…it would have been financially “nicer” for us, but we were able to pay for the first choice school. </p>
<p>We made the finance decisions BEFORE any applications were sent. If we didn’t think we could afford to pay, we did not allow our kids to apply to a school.</p>
<p>In any event…did your family tell your daughter about any financial considerations BEFORE she applied…or are you now looking at this after the fact? I personally think that if a family is going to insist on the school with the best aid amongst the acceptances…the STUDENT should know that before they send their applications in to the schools. BUT that is just my opinion.</p>
<p>I advocate for the values I thought important. In the end, my son did not choose the school I would have, but did choose the most affordable. </p>
<p>He is a NMS, he did not even apply to Alabama or Oklohoma (sp?) – We just knew these weren’t going to work for him. OTOH, he DID apply to several schools just because I lobbied (including the school he eventually chose!) him to. I wouldn’t rule out schools before applying because of cost-- but I would be honest and direct about what I was willing to contribute.</p>
<p>I pushed kid #1 to go for $$. H allowed him at choose favorite school with no financial aid (based on our financial situation at the time–which then changed for the worse).
Kid is a senior in college, and we still disagree about it. Once you make the choice, there is no way of knowing how the other choice (choices) would have turned out. Kid just loves his school, I love what it has done for him as a person, but it has been a HUGE sacrifice for our family. (Did I mention that I’m not really happy about that?) Grad school?-- He’s on his own. </p>
<p>Kid #2 had more limited choices (as will kids 3-7–due to kid #1’s choice). However, we still let her choose her favorite school–which was more expensive than others. I was very happy to allow her to do this, because I could see that the school was a MUCH better fit. (In S’s case, his school was a poor fit for him academically, but an excellent fit socially/personally.)</p>
<p>You have to ask yourself–How much better “fit” is the first choice school than the one offering $$? What kind of grad school–law? med?–you might want to save up for. Others would likely pay a stipend for teaching/research. What is your overall financial situation and do you have younger kids? If you’ve saved for this and have the $, I’d be inclined to let her choose her college.</p>
<p>For my family, it will be a financial decision in the end, and my DD was well aware of this before she applied to any schools. My hope is that she is offered enough financial aid to have a choice between schools - but we do have a financial safety on the list if all else fails (she is not in love with the financial safety school, but would go and commute home).
If you can afford it I would give your DD the choice, but make sure she is aware of any ramifications (loans, etc) before she makes it.</p>
<p>It helped us to talk with the financial aid department before our son accepted at the college he went to. We asked whether what we had so often heard was true: that we should save any money we had for grad school, where it counted, and not pay all our savings out for undergrad. We told financial aid that we wanted to make sure on this point, before our son enrolled and then had to transfer for financial reasons.</p>
<p>They assured us that paying for grad school would not be a problem because he would get fellowships and teach.</p>
<p>This may depend on major, of course, and I’m sure law and med school are very expensive out of pocket.</p>
<p>This topic comes up every year on CC and it really is such a personal choice. Our oldest D (not a NMF, but an excellent student) went to our state school with good scholarships. Her ENTIRE education did not cost us what one year of younger D (who WAS a NMF) is costing us. Two very different people wanting very different things out of their undergraduate experience. We did take younger D to visit schools that were offering her amazing four year free rides because of NMF status – some totaling as high as $140,000 for the four years. In hindsight, the trips were a waste of time. The schools were not what she was looking for for her undergraduate education. She wanted to be challenged to the max. She wanted to be surrounded by a student body that blew her mind with their intellect. She got all that and more. </p>
<p>Older D is now in graduate school hundreds of miles away. Her graduate school is completely paid for by the university – oos tuition, generous stipend, insurance, etc. We call her our “cheap child”. Younger D is a junior with her sights set on medical school. We will try to help her with that dream too. This is our “expensive child”. I sometimes lament to my H that maybe she should have taken one of the free rides. In his ever present logical way, he reminds me that she is where she belongs. </p>
<p>On the ride home from the airport last December, our D was chattering on and on about this incredible student she met, this experience she was able to take part in on campus, etc. All of a sudden she became very tearful. She said that she felt that hadn’t adequate expressed to us her gratitude for allowing her to attend #1 choice and not making her attend the free ride schools. She said that she tries each and every day to do her best (dean’s list every semester!) in order to be worthy of the sacrifice we are making to send her to this school. WHEW! Talk about a moment! It’s still a moment that costs us close to $50,000 a year, but it is so nice to know she understands and appreciates what it takes to make it happen!</p>
<p>Here are a couple of old CC threads that hash and rehash this topic. Again, I think that if you are able to fund the private #1 choice, if it is what your child wants as their undergraduate experience, then let them go that route. If funding the “full freight” school is a burden, if your child doesn’t really have a strong preference one way or another, then go the free ride direction.</p>
<p>The above policy should definitely be reevaluated if a child takes a full-ride or similar. </p>
<p>Also, shouldn’t there be some kind of dollar amount determined for college expenses overall - no matter if it’s for undergrad or grad??? </p>
<p>If first child chooses pricey private, and the second child stays home and goes to local state, it is NOT fair to tell the second child…“Oh, you need some help paying for law school, well we only pay for undergrad.” That would just be stupid. If the parents spent $200k educating child #1, they should be willing to spend $200k educating child #2 - even if some of that is for law school.</p>
<p>I know that some parents have the rule that they will pay for the amount of an in-state public for undergrad, but that’s all. That’s a fine rule, but if one child takes a free-ride somewhere, the parents should be willing to help with grad school (using the same amount of money).</p>
<p>We had our NMF son apply to 12 schools all within the top 50 and a top LAC. Generally as you went down the USnews list he received more and more merit money including his full ride at our top 50 state U. Most were not dependent on his NMF standing…just his stats. So he had lots of choices that were much less than full pay.</p>
<p>I suggest doing the same and seeing where the chips fall with the merit offers.</p>
<p>I do agree with everyone who says let her know up front how much you can afford.</p>
<p>“Push” is probably not the right word…I think discuss…persuade…suggest…are more likely words that describe what some parents do.</p>
<p>My SIL had to suggest to her NMF DD to take the full-ride because SIL was pretty sure that her next child (1 year younger) would not get any merit $$, even tho D2 is a good student. SIL knew that they couldn’t afford to pay full-freight (or nearly) for 2 kids at the same time. Her husband had just started a new company, and they also have 2 other kids (4 total).</p>
<p>Thankfully, SIL’s D1 was happy to go to the full-ride school. She’s now in a top 20 graduate school - which is being paid for by the university.</p>
<p>I think students and parents sometimes need to look at the whole thing as a whole - and weigh the pros and cons. If there are few to no cons to taking the full-ride and the kid likes the school, then what’s the harm?</p>
So, please forgive some of the “oddness” in my first post. :(</p>
) </li>