Help with College Choices for Uber-Opinionated but Poorly Informed Daughter

Parents Forum
1

Hi All:

New poster and overwhelmed parent here,

We are in the midst of college decisions/applications with my 17 yo daughter,

Specifics:

Small rural high school in Minnesota with very few AP classes offered. They do offer CIS classes in Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Econ through St. Cloud State.

GPA W/4.07 UW 3.87
ACT 30
Courses: AP English and History in 10th grade (the only time they were offered)
Class Rank: 8 out of 114. 93%
EC: Nothing really to stand out. Softball, peer tutor, prom committee, works part time

So, she has decent but not spectacular stats. The issue of course is $$$$ vs the stars in her eyes.

We are willing to contribute 20k/yr toward her college expenses. I feel this is adequate and I refuse to go into personal debt for her degree. She can borrow a maximum of $5500 freshman year, and she has saved about $3000 through her part time work. I think our tuition/housing budget would be about 25K/year give or take.

She wants to attend a small to moderate sized school and would like to be near a big city. She has these dreams of going to school on the east coast (seems exotic to a young woman from Minnesota I suppose) but they are financially out of reach.

So far she has applied to:

Northeastern (I let her apply to humor her, she is aware this is financially and possibly academically out of reach)
Macalester (See above, does have the benefit of being closer to home…benefit to me, negative to her)
University of Minnesota (safety school and I feel really affordable for the quality of education one receives)

We are headed to Chicago tomorrow to visit UIC, Loyola and Lake Forest. I think she could get into any of them, but merit aid would need to be significant.

I would like her to consider UW Madison as they have tuition reciprocity with MN and it looks like a great school and a relative bargain…she is not interested. I can’t even get her to visit. She feels the town is too small, and Wisconsin is too conservative (seriously…I can’t make this stuff up).

Does anyone else have advice on colleges in or near large cities that would be affordable to someone with her stats.

Or, any advice on how to reason with an obstinate teenager? I realize the “too bad kid, I am footing the bill and this is where you are going” approach seems most reasonable under these circumstances but this a kid that requires a bit more finesse.

Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide.

2

Any clue what she wants to study? I find it hard to imagine two more different schools than Lake Forest (enrollment 1500) and UIC (enrollment 30,000). I went to Loyola myself but fighting off the dinosaur attacks between classes made the experience rather different that long ago. :))

Also note that Lake Forest is 30 miles from Chicago, but does have Metra trains to the city.

3

Your daughter is correct about Wisconsin. But please tell her this, also accurate (except that the city is now larger): “Madison is 30 square miles surrounded by reality.”

4

Here are a couple of threads for her to take a look at. Her stats put her in the range for some of the scholarships, and might make the getting-out-of-Dodge that she wants possible. Have her check all of the links to see which scholarships are still available this year.
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

5

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1651944-very-low-cost-oos-coa-universities-less-than-25k-coa-for-everything-p1.html

6

Have you and she run the net price calculators on the various schools in question to see how their net prices compare to the budget?

7

There are many schools out there with merit $$ for stats such as hers-- especially with your contribution as well. I would put the onus on her to research some of them and come back to you with a chart. This is what I did with my daughter who is also a 2017 and is playing lacrosse but we also had to add only schools WITH coach interest.

Missouri State, West Texas A&M, Tiffin University, Alabama State, Central Michigan U and Grand Valley State are a few that come to mind that were on my girls list. I also think University of Alabama and LSU have some fairly good merit programs too. Our kids are only allowed $12k out of our pockets per year and came up with some good options. Problem is my eldest missed some scholarship deadlines being stubborn like you describe and limited some of her options.

We basically told our obstinate one if she cannot find something within our parameters that community college was okay with us - that seemed to light a fire under her a bit.

8

Why doesn’t she like U of Minnesota?

9

A number of schools that are both popular on this website in/near East Coast cities that offer some merit scholarships the following, in addition to Northeastern. Some of these may not be affordable, but you would have to check out each school to see if they work for you; PA (`Pitt, Temple, Villanova), MD (Loyola MD), DC (GWU), NY (Fordham), VA (URichmond) and UMiami (FL). Good luck.

Can she take the ACT again in December and try to raise her score?

10

Have you run a NPC to determine if you will get any FA or do you know you will not be eligible?

11

I feel for you OP. I am pretty much in the same boat. My son seems to only like small private colleges here in the Northeast with a cost to attend exceeding $60k per year. His favorite is $65K/yr. I am willing to spend around the same amount as you and have to constantly inform my son that huge debt for undergrad is not a wise choice. I am not willing to cosign but I may lose that battle to the wife. hahah.

These kids need to understand that a good education can be found for $25K a year. There is no need to pay double that. It is so much like other aspects of our consumer economy. Wants vs. Needs.

There are no answers here. You just have to try to do what you feel is right for your DD and your family.

12

If you are eligible for FA, son had many friends who went to GW (in DC) this year bc they received much more $$ than in state at Rutgers would have cost.Her stats fit for GW.

13

Would the west coast be exotic enough for her? The University of Puget Sound and Lewis and Clark College might be possibilities. Again, run the NPCs to see if they’d be affordable.

14

I have a D16 who had a very, very, very hard time accepting the reality of what we could afford. I kept adding affordable schools to her list, and she turned her nose up at them.

No doubt she was influenced by the atmosphere at her private prep school where it seemed most of her friends got to choose where they went to school without apparent budget restraints. A couple of her friends whose parents are poor got to go to top 20 privates. It was hard for her to swallow.

We cannot afford our EFC. The NPCs were not kind, especially once we accounted for the older kid being out of college. It was unpleasant during application season, and unpleasant during acceptance season. In fact, she says she is STILL not happy about be forced to go to the school that gave her full tuition plus a room and board stipend (!!!).

There’s only so much you can do to try to reason with them, explain what those big numbers mean, or get them to accept the cards in their hands. Our D may forever think it was “unfair” and be bitter about it, I don’t know, that’s out of our control.

We felt wobbly about it for about a week when an acceptance came in that surprised us all. I partook in the Kool-Aid and momentarily thought selling a kidney & a life of extreme deprivation was a reasonable option after all! But, when spell wore off, we were determined to stick to our guns and NOT over-reach financially, and also determined to give her the space to be unhappy about it, to not agree with us, and to not let it poison our relationship.

Make sure she has affordable choices on her list, even if those are “parent’s picks”.

We never did get to “Love Thy Safety”, but got to “The Safety is Begrudgingly Acceptable Because There is No Way I’m Staying Home and Going to Community College”.

Life goes on.

15

She is on the cusp of getting in to some very very good schools that offer both need based and merit based aid. OP, you have not shared enough of your financial situation for us to tell if she might qualify for sufficient need based aid at the various full-needs met schools, such that we could tell.

OP, I agree with the others who suggest you run the NPC’s at several of these schools. With her GPA and rank, she has a good shot at a lot of merit from Fordham, especially as I have heard they are trying harder to be seen as a more than a regional school.

And I have heard lots of “obstinate” teenagers end up doing very well there. Same for the Philly schools mentioned above. While Amherst, Williams and Swat are often interested in students from the Midwest, they might be reaches for her, but she might have a better shot at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore).

Kudos to you for raising an opinionated daughter. And good luck wherever she might end up.

16

Here is what we told my daughter regarding our state flagship. She didn’t have to apply but she had to go on an official college visit. She did and liked it well enough to add it to the bottom of the list but she applied. She is currently in her second year there and absolutely loves it despite the fact that it was everything she thought she didn’t want in a college.

Given that Madison is essentially instate for you if there is any way you can get her to visit it I’d try to. If at all possible send her without you (at least on the college visit part) because she needs to experience it without seeing you love it. Maybe you could offer to fund and enable a road trip with a friend to visit.

On other thing that made a ton of difference for us was a chance conversation at a church potluck with a young man about five years out of grad school and working my daughter’s dream job. He listened to her list of the schools she had applied to and basically told her she would be a fool to turn down state flagship if she got in. “It’s a great school, maybe some of those others have a slightly better name, and I understand wanting to live some place cool, but man you can not underestimate the value of coming out of college low debt or debt free.” He then proceeded to tell her what life was really like living with a huge amount of student loan debt.

He didn’t say anything we hadn’t been saying but she heard him where she hadn’t been able to hear us. We got lucky but if you can creatively try to arrange something like that it might help.

17

“Or, any advice on how to reason with an obstinate teenager?”

Well, if I knew the answer to that, I would be a billionaire. But, seriously, I told ours to apply anywhere they wanted, but they had to include (1) the state flagship and (2) a fabulous LAC (often mentioned on this board, in fact) located about 30 minutes away that, if push came to shove, is within commutable distance without need for room/board.

18

I wanted to spend about 30K per year.

For my eldest, I said “pick out some colleges and we wil go visit them.”
She had the gamut from State Flagship up to Ivy.
I had a parent pick for her based on her other choices (SUNY Binghamton, because it has a good OOS cost and she was applying to other State Flagships.).
Once she was accepted to colleges, we eliminated the two private colleges because they were at $45K even with scholarships. That left the 22-29K schools. She ended up at SUNY Bing. which was the most expensive but still in my budget (but she was able to graduate 1.5 years early due to IB Credits)

For my youngest, she asked me to help her do research. We visted the State Flagship and a smaller excellent State college that I thought she would like and she clearly loved the smaller school. She gave me her desired radius from home (1-2 hours) and I helped her come up with a list. She ended up applying to TCNJ (the small state college) because she like that the best and I said that why bother with the rest if you would pick that anyway. She got a 10% scholarship but that was also in the budget.

So they were two for two in the parent pick!

So I guess I would try:

  1. Appealling to her sense of herself…see what college she can get the biggest scholarship from
  2. Try to find what is appealing about the schools she picked and find other cheaper options
  3. Ask her if she is genuinlely happy going to her financial safety as that is the most likely scenario unless she picks more affordable options. If she is, then let her be.
19

Not in a BIG city, but Drury U. in Springfield, MO is a small private school where your D would automatically qualify for enough merit aid to bring down the full cost to about 19K including room/board.

20

Similar situation here: very stubborn and opinionated daughter. We have a FAFSA EFC of 0 and I refuse to take out parent loans. Many good small private colleges would be affordable based on the NPCs. No, they are all “too small”. Even the moderately large (14,000 undergrads), affordable state school she originally was happy with and to which she has been accepted is now “too small”. She’s fixated on the very large public university which is currently her “dream school” and I’m secretly hoping she isn’t admitted there, as it will probably be unaffordable. She would take on any loans she is offered (Direct, Perkins) to be able to watch D1 football games! When I try to reason with her about student loan debt and its effect on her post-graduation lifestyle, she says she’ll marry someone rich. The attitude is driving me crazy.