<p>" Both cars (Hondas) have over 150k miles. " Wow new cars! I don’t start talking about my cars until they approach 300k miles which they are.</p>
<p>You know, after reading how much parents are sacrificing for their kids-in terms of retirement, lifestyle, extra work and debt…I hope our kids will TRULY appreciate this and not just take it for granted. If there are any students out there reading these posts, I hope they understand what their parents have done for them. Our generation, I believe that most parents gave us very little-or nothing at all towards college. While it was much cheaper, there were no expectations that parents were going to sacrifice a single thing.</p>
<p>This is another HUGE reason to have the conversation early about what you can or plan to afford. While it is admirable and totally your decision whether or not to pay full price for your child’s education, the student should totally understand how the finances will work and be a part of the discussion. We are in the application process now and, while it would be great to attend something like Yale or even CMU or Wake at full pay, for our family it just doesn’t make sense. Many high earners/accumulators have gotten this way by being frugal and it just goes against the grain to not take a merit offer at a slightly lower tier school. It takes a bit of discussion to get your child’s and your own head around being graceful that you are in the position to be full-pay, while others who through bad decisions or no fault of their own can attend these schools virtually free, especially since you’re not supposed to say that out loud.</p>
<p>At this point for us personally, DS is flattered and relieved to have the chance to attend a few schools where the majority of the tuition is covered by merit aid. We’re proud that he understands the value of hard work and how money works. We’l see how it ends up though, when he gets in to his couple of dream schools and we have to make the hard decision.</p>
<p>Thanks for the frank thread… we need to be able to discuss this somewhere.</p>
<p>Oh, I think we’d all probably do it again. Once I got used to the shock of the cost and what it meant for us, I was really upset and thinking it was a dumb decision. But as time goes on I really see that my son is gaining a great deal from the experience. Maybe there’s truth to the old saying, “You get what you pay for.” Yes, the education is terrific but the real value that we are seeing is the intangible within him - the self-confidence that really only comes from testing yourself and succeeding in an environment like this type of college offers where everyone is ridiculously smart and it takes so very much to stand-out.</p>
<p>^ Agreed.</p>
<p>Probably. Perhaps they shouldn’t spend money on the new benches that they’ve scattered around the campus as they are in such a financial crunch.</p>
<p>I could think of quite a few things that they spend money on that they shouldn’t. I guess that’s true at most schools though.</p>