Harvard or UC Berkeley with Regent Scholarship

Parents Forum
101

<p>ParentofIvyHope – your thinking is so… BINARY! for you it is 1 or 0, off or on. I think your child should do very well at MIT – so long as the logic needed in a class is binary in nature.</p>

<p>The OP is trying to decide whether taking $120,000 in savings earmarked for retirement can be “worth it” to get H vs. UCB.</p>

<p>We cannot give an opinion on that because we don’t know: amount already saved, amount ultimately needed, age, probability that current earnings will continue (some careers are more volatile than others), health, and a few other factors.</p>

<p>For some, the $120,000 will not jeopardize their retirement to the point that their children might have to assist, and for others it will.</p>

<p>I like the post about five pages ago… paraphrasing now “the greatest give a parent can give their child is the knowledge that the parent will be secure in their retirement and not need the child’s assistance”.</p>

<p>It’s a bad spot to be in when one is trying to provide the best for one’s children and immediate family, and barely accomplishing that, to then find oneself needing to significantly divert those resources meant for children to aid an aging parent – an aging parent who raided their own retirement resources for that very child’s private, full pay education!</p>

102

<p>I’d suggest the OP to give people here enough info if he/she really wants a good advice. This is an anonymous site; you don’t have to withhold that much info.</p>

<p>This thread is getting ridiculous in the sense that some are assuming just too much. Just because Harvard doesn’t give them any aid doesn’t mean the family can actually afford it comfortably. The FA determination is not an exact science. Diffrent schools having the same policy on paper often end up giving very different packages.</p>

103

<p>Let’s not make assumptions about POIH child based on what her parent(s) say on CC.</p>

<p>OK, back to our regular programming - Cal with money vs Harvard with no aid.</p>

104

<p>I would say go to Berkeley. Normally, on all these state u with full ride v. ivy threads, I usually side with the ivy. However, Berkeley is a top university and internationally renowned. The quality of the education at Berkeley, I’m guessing, is very comparable to what you’re going to get at Harvard. Berkeley is very different from other state schools. I attended my local state university while in high school and there is a world of a difference between that and a top school.</p>

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<p>Be sure to come back and let us know the decision, baymom.</p>