There is a thread up, titled “full ride state school verses Ivy school”. It is an old thread but it touched on an issue I have been pondering. I am bringing down this discussion a notch; which is how to weigh a full ride scholarship at a respected state school (not flagship) with an honors program, against a prestigious (but not ivy) liberal arts college after aid. How much more is a degree from a top 50 school worth then from a school in the 200’s per say Forbes rankings. Obviously if money is no object then always get the best you can get, but is a prestigious degree worth going 10,000 in debt for, 40,000, 100,000? We really have no money for college as a family. My daughter does have her heart set on a prestigious liberal arts college. I am hoping to start a discussion on this topic.
There are so many threads on this subject…I’ve read about six in the past month. If you can’t find them let me know. Read the ones comparing GT…or some of the Ohio state threads comparing to other schools. Many arguments for both sides…we’re thinking about it too…prestige vs free ride at a state school…we’ll drag it out til the end I suspect.
There are very few career ambitions your daughter could have that would require her family to go into debt if she has the option to go to college debt-free.
Where is it written that families owe their children any amount of money to put them thru college? We support their ambitions with money because we can, not because we must.
On the other hand, where is it written that a daughter can expect her family to go into any amount of debt to put her thru college when she has a full-ride somewhere else? Children have an obligation to temper their college ambitions to the size of their family’s wealth.
Where is it written that a college education from X is of any greater “value” than a college education from Y? Rather I would say that it matters much more what you do as an undergraduate than where you go.
Suggest to your daughter that you love her and that in a perfect world you would happily send her to Prestigious College, but that in the world she lives in her family cannot afford to send her there.
If she’s mature enough for college and you have done a good job bringing her up, she will understand reality. It’s the same reality that dictates that some of the kids at her high school drive luxury cars and others take public transportation. It might take punching a pillow or being mean to a sibling, but she will understand. Trust your daughter.
What are the concrete numbers?
The kid who has a top-50 LAC mindset may not fit in at a state school ranked in the 200s. There’s the matter of fit as well as outcomes - an English major from Kenyon simply doesn’t have the same experience, classes, and opportunities as an English major at Kent State. Cheapest is not always the best value.
On the other hand there’s value and there’s unaffordable. The federal loan limit is fine. Parent PLUS loans, probably not.
So, What schools are we talking about and what amounts of debt?
And that’s where the state Honors colleges come in. A small school within a school for those elite high flyers. A few schools treat them as athletes…first to pick classes, nicer dorms, special seating at football games and many added benefits.
It depends on how much aid and the total bill. IF you have NO $, obviously anything over the Stafford loans is going to be very hard. My two older kids went to a private college, great scholarship, but still owed about 20,000$/year. We let them take the Stafford loans ($5,500 1st year, 7500 /yr after that.) and paid the rest out of pocket.We paid most of the accruing interest, but they are still saddled which $340/month in college loans for 10 years. We are paying that off for them, but if you are unable to take a parent plus loan, or pay any diffence, the interest is what really kills you. Take the public school. Son 3 is planning on doing that, on his own accord, thankfully, I think because he saw us paying for college for the last 10 years while older siblings were in college and grad school.
@Rdtsmith, you really need to examine honors colleges carefully (as some are mostly marketing schemes). Also, you need to see what the concrete benefits are. For instance, many offer extra research opportunities or travel-abroad opportunities, which may matter a lot. But while being able to register first and seating at football games are nice, if most of the classes for an English major are still ones where she is bored out of her mind or with disruptive students (because most of her classes would be outside the honors college), you have to ask if it is worth it.
To the OP: It all depends (on goals, family circumstance, personal attributes, difference between the schools, etc.)
Now is the time to develop your strategy, as you are already doing. It might be a good idea to really clarify what you can manage financially. Are you saying that your family has a $0 EFC? Have you run net price calculators? Have you looked into opportunity programs, or do you live in CA (ie, UC system)? What are her stats? How far away is she willing to travel? If she wants a LAC, and has the stats, can you identify not one but 7 or 8 of them with good financial aid, where she would be likely to get in? If net price calculators show that these will not be affordable, by all means, tell her now! And by all means yes, find honors programs which she would love, as well.
Another question is the difference between the students stats and the university’s average. Op specified it is not the flagship’s honors college nor the flagship itself so the situation is quite different.
OPs other posts indicate that some of the colleges applied to include Smith, CUNYs (and honors program), Brandeis, Grinnell, Wellesley, and Fordham, and that the OP’s family lives in New Jersey.
Yes all honors colleges are NOT equal. Somewhere I have a bookmark comparing the different honors college programs. I did not mean they are all on equal footing! You do have to dig into each one.
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We really have no money for college as a family.
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Well, there is a huge consideration.
Are you saying that you have no college savings?
OR…are you saying that after paying for household expenses, you have no money leftover each month to put towards college? If this is true, then I don’t mean to sound harsh, but then that means that you can’t afford to pay back loan payments either. Loan payments have to come from somewhere, right?
Or were you thinking about co-signing for big loans for your D to pay back? (bad idea!) And would you qualify each year for these big loans?
Tell us more…
Have you run any schools’ NPCs to see what you’ve be expected to pay?
Are you low income? Are you modest income (like $55kish)? Are you middle income (like $85kish)? or more?
Does your child have a non custodial parent?
What are your child’s stats?
What is her major and career goal?
How much will she be earning upon graduation?
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My daughter does have her heart set on a prestigious liberal arts college.
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I have my heart set on a cute impressive convertible…
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There are very few career ambitions your daughter could have that would require her family to go into debt if she has the option to go to college debt-free.
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Where is it written that families owe their children any amount of money to put them thru college? We support their ambitions with money because we can, not because we must.
On the other hand, where is it written that a daughter can expect her family to go into any amount of debt to put her thru college when she has a full-ride somewhere else? Children have an obligation to temper their college ambitions to the size of their family’s wealth.
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Exactly.
Unless your D is going to work on Wall Street, the name of her school means nothing.
I see that your D is a current senior and has her heart set on Smith. Well, what does the Smith NPC show that you will have to pay?
How much of the “family contribution” would you have to borrow each year? How much can you pay out of current income (from your words, it sounds like you can’t pay much or anything).
This may seem harsh, but I don’t mean it to be. I mean it just as sort of a “is this what’s going on” sort of thing…
If your family has a good income, but nearly every dollar is already dedicated to bills and debt, and therefore little is available for college, then is it possible that your child has gotten used to not really considering family finances because family spending has been sometimes impulsive?
Obviously, I don’t know you. I’ve just seen this sort of thing happen…and families who aren’t used to saying “no” to their kids, have kids that expect/demand unaffordable things, and families take on debt …rather than say, “no”.
The question, kind of, is where is the cut off. In truth a college that the grant aid is 40,000 short of the cost is just not happening for us. But hypothetically is it worth borrowing 10,000 a year to go to a “prestigious” school. Personally I have had a questionable path in life that has left me with a BA from an Ivy league school and a BA from a, at the time, unranked state school, so I personally have real perspective on this. A degree from an Ivy league school is useful. It can be name dropped, is something I can fall back on if I need a ego boost, it can get peoples attention, and the network is there if I ever tried to make use of it. . As far as the actual education goes the sciences are more rigorous at the Ivys, but the humanities, well writing a paper is writing a paper and it’s just as hard to think of something no matter where you are. And the teaching, personally I thought is was better in the state school, it is the proverbial: a great researcher does not necessarily a great teacher make. In the state school the teachers were much more approachable and down to earth. Of course this is probably as much about size as about reputation, and my little state school, Stockton State College btw, had a Pulitzer Prize winning poet on staff who actually was a great teacher. Most schools have their gems. My situation actually is that my daughter is set on going to smith but she has been invited to University of Mary Washington to interview as a finalist for their really truly full ride scholarship but I am still trying to convince her to go. She probably could have gotten a scholarship at a New Jersey state school but she insist on going out of state. Her grandfather is an eminent professor at the aforementioned Stockton State after all where my son turned down a full ride scholarship. Our expected family contribution is about 8 k via fafsa a year but we are actually on the verge of bankruptcy with medical bills. So far Grinnell has given her lots of money but plugging the numbers into collegedata says that it is still an out of pocket of 23,000 a year. So now that you have my life story it is still a universal question; should a student go an extra 10 or 20 k in debt to attend a more prestigious school? What is each century down in the rankings worth in dollars? No full ride scholarship has materialized at this point, it is about getting her down there as a finalist, and there are a couple of other schools that asked her to apply for full scholarships. Most of the real numbers on aid have not come in at this point, I personally told her a prestige school was worth like an extra 5000 per year to our budget.
What are her goals? A CS major likely will be more employable than a psych major. A philosophy major may eventually catch up decades later, but graduating with over $40K in debt with that major is chancy (and even that may be too much of a burden when starting out).
It’s nice that your daughter wants to go out of state for college. How does she plan to pay for it? She can only borrow $5500/year and, if you’re on the verge of bankruptcy, it doesn’t sound like you’d qualify to borrow much to help her. Even if you could borrow for her freshman year, there’s no guarantee you’d qualify for the other 3 years. You can’t give her money you don’t have.
I don’t think going into debt is wise if it can be avoided. I have a sibling working at a major television network alongside people who graduated from NYU. My sibling graduated from a cc but earns the same as everybody else. Expensive colleges aren’t always necessary and they don’t always work out anyway, and that’s okay. My son qualified for >$20k/year grants at some nice colleges. Unfortunately, because I’m a SAHM we can’t afford to make up the $15-40k difference so he’s going to commute to a state school. When I go back to work, my salary will pay for his grad school. Maybe you could do something like that with your daughter. Pay for what you can afford now and, if finances improve, help her pay for grad school.
She isn’t 100% sure. Most applications she has put in as anthropology which appears on list sometimes as the 10 worst majors. I am trying to talk her into a major in game design and electronic media because her passions are art and gaming but she is to shy of her art to show it in public. We have been talking about a duel degree in archeology and geology. She is open to a geology major. I am not worried about federal loans as she will be required to pay back 10% of whatever her income is. I assume she is going to want to go to grad school and I have been saying it might be nice to start that debt free. There is a small amount of cash for college. I sold the classic car I thought I was going to restore someday. My father in law is a college professor. His opinion is that if it’s Harvard Princeton or Yale do it no matter what, but after like the first top ten schools it is not worth going the extra mile and it is more a mater or GPA and go with the money.
In any case she should go to the UMW competition and apply to all the scholarships.
She might fear that if she wins, you’ll take Smith off the table. You might want to promise her (if you can) that if Smith is affordable she won’t be forced to go to UMW even if she wins the full ride, but she needs to have that choice and try it, and keep alternatives open if Smith is unaffordable.
If she refuses because she thinks you’ll “have to” pay for her to go to Smith if she has no full rides, say that if Smith is too expensive and she doesn’t have other choices, she’ll have to take a gap year and work.
I think that $30,000 in debt is doable.
$40,000 (that is, your taking about $3,000 in debt every year, since the rest would be carried by herself a federal loans, or $3,000 taken from your budget if it isn’t “lean” already) is pushing it but it depends how she leverages her degree and how $3,000 in debt or taken of your annual budget would affect your family.
Anything above 40K would heavily depend on the major AND likelihood of success in said major (ie., CS or engineering or analytics or bioinformatics would make it more likely possible up to 50K probably as long as the student is committed to that major and has shown good likelihood of success via APs or other rigorous courses). I’d be very very hesitant to go higher than that no matter what the major.
HOWEVER if you’re on the verge of bankruptcy because of medical bills (for humans - “for pets” doesn’t count, and don’t laugh it’s happened that families appealed FA awards because of pet medical bills) you can appeal the award. Start documenting the medical bills and their effects. Start looking for the “financial aid review” form on the Smith website (it’ll be hidden but google is your friend). As soon as the package is sent, be ready to send the review info if need be (speed is of the essence).
hey thanks, by about to declare bankruptcy I really mean we can’t take on any more debt, fortunately we are not like about to get kicked out of our house but we already have way to much debt that is border lining on being unpayable but we have not exhausted our credit. I was through this with my son who is in Vassar which gives the best financial aid hand down. I renegotiated initial financial aid offers form all his acceptances and about 50% gave us better offers. She says that she will go down to UMW and check it out. Personally I talked her into applying to UMW because I thought it was a great fit to begin with. A big part of this is that she is burned out right now on the college application process and the UMW event involves a competitive interview which she is scared of. We are both on the same page when it comes to no Rutgers type schools, no huge bureaucratic monoliths. She has anxiety problems and such would be to overwhelming. Thanks for replies though. I am a little scared that UMV sees this and they think she is not serious about the scholarship. I think she might like UMV. By just participating it becomes a full tuition scholarship but my son is getting more then that at Vassar. Fortunately her hard work in high school has put us in a position to have these choices. This is all hypothetical at this point but thanks for the replies. I really think she would like those Virginia winters more then those Massachusetts winters.
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I am not worried about federal loans as she will be required to pay back 10% of whatever her income is.
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That is only for the basic student federal loans. That is for a small amount…about $27k total.
YOU were asking about $40,000 and $100,000 worth of debt. That 10% rule doesn’t apply to loans of bigger amounts.