<p>UWyoming may not be a legitimate option by itself; however if it is coupled with appropriate study abroad, and international internships, would it then make OP’s daughter a competitive applicant for graduate school such as GW, Georgetown, Harvard,…? Can the amount saved in UG be better spent for graduate school, assuming OP’s daughter would still then aspire to work in Foreign Service?</p>
<p>Just as a side note, the general Return on Investment, per PayScale (2014), based strictly on undergraduate education tells a different story. </p>
<p>@Trinity7, if I’m reading those numbers right, they are referring to the “sticker price” of the colleges and don’t control for majors, careers, etc.</p>
<p>Trinity7, that doesn’t apply here because 1° most Barnard and Rhodes students continue on with grad school so payscale excludes them from computations and 2° neither Barnard nor Rhodes have engineering, nursing, and other preprofessional majors that lead to immediate higher pay. Regardless… payscale is just partial, self reported data, so it doesn’t really reflect much.
In the end, for foreign service, it helps to be in specific schools or in specific areas. It’s not just a matter of study abroad (although that does help - what really helps is studying a critical language intensively and spending time abroad there.) Same effect for art history and Williams, or film and USC or Tisch, languages at Middlebury, etc. It’s like for IB: you could study quantitative economics all you want, it still wouldn’t matter if you weren’t in a target or semi-target. However for ABET-accredited engineering, the college doesn’t matter. For CS, as long as the offerings are good, it doesn’t matter much. For premed, it doesn’t matter at all.
Note that pretty much everyone’s talked about Goucher and Rhodes: we understand the need to contain costs, but also the specific career OP’s daughter wants. Keeping costs low must be balanced with career opportunity - spending money for a degree that will not lead to the career wished for (or not without extensive accrobatics that are very risky) is not a good way to spend money.</p>
<p>Overall, I feel for OP and her/his daughter because this is a difficult situation to be in.The financial particulars may not have been discussed at the start of the college search (or the net price calculators not run), so the daughter is now pushing for the expensive options, the kid may feel that she had the “rug pulled from under her” (ie., you said we’d make it work, I did all that work to get into these schools, etc…) and the parent is stressed out about the effects that 50k or 60k spent on college would have on their lifestyle, their retirement funds, etc.</p>
<p>Speaking of risky, what sounds risky to me is going to a school just because of one major. This is an undergrad degree. Presumably D has not done any study in the area. How many majors wash out at the “good” schools? How many completing the major don’t get jobs in that field or wash out of the career in less than five years? It’s a gamble of a lot of money on a foreign service career for this teenager. It’s a lot to count on for any teenager unless she’s very well connected.</p>
<p>Doesn’t U Wyoming have any relevant majors that could prepare her to take the Foreign Service exam and maybe do a master’s degree? Or is it really like the whole foreign service corps comes out of three or four undergrad pipelines – and if then, there are still the questions in my first paragraph.</p>
<p>@warriordaughter, the #s are for colleges without financial aid; one can run the same with financial aid, which will improve the ROI for Rhodes. </p>
<p>I am sure this kind of discussion is happening across the country; in our household we are definitely looking at all options for our D. I agree that the parents need to be upfront about the extent to which they can spend over the next 4 years, and whether they are willing to co-sign any loans, and under what conditions (if at all). </p>
<p>University of Wyoming has a well funded International Studies department. The whole University is well funded, because the state government has a surplus. Lot’s of oil and gas royalty taxes. One of the reasons for their high ROI is that they turn out lot’s of petroleum engineers.</p>
<p>I also agree that it’s risky to expect that a 17 year old will be able to design and implement a 15 year plan that involves taking out huge loans and paying them back with money from a great job. Some kids are ready to embark on that road, but others need to explore life a little bit. I think the point of a liberal arts education is to expose yourself to a variety of areas of study. Your original focus might be reinforced, or you might find a different passion. </p>
<p>It’s international studies, not international relations or international affairs, and even though UWyoming is well-funded, it just isnt recruited for foreign service or even on the radar for International relations/international affairs/national politics. (It’s important for local politics but that’s not what OP’s daughter is looking for.)
I actually recommend UWyoming for some majors (engineering, energy, environment, adventure/outdoors-related).
But it’d be doing a disservice to this kid to make her attend there based on her career goals.
Would you do petroleum engineering in DC? I mean, that’s the same idea. For petroleum engineering, there are a few very strong programs in TX, LA, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, etc. If the kid was admitted to one of these schools which serve as pipelines for many jobs in the field, as well as at UNH, it’d be disingenuous to say that attending TAMU, LA Tech, UHouston, and OU, would be the same as petroleum engineering in New Hampshire. It just isn’t and that choice of college makes breaking into the field that much harder for the college graduate. (I know, UNH has various engineering majors but not that one. Which is my point since UWY doesn’t have international relations/affairs either.) Now, keep in mind that engineering is not school-based or prestige-based, unlike foreign service…</p>
<p>Hopefully she’ll be taking 1/3 classes in a variety of subjects at a strong college and 1/3 classes in a field actually preparing her for foreign service, plus interning in DC and studying abroad. If she changes her mind along the way, the colleges she’s considering won’t make things harder for her.
(Note that Goucher has mandatory study abroad and provides a stipend to pay for it; students admitted to the International Scholars program get special stipends for their study abroad and special perks.)</p>
<p>5.5k in loans her first year, for a total of 27k (the federal limit), is manageable for an undergrad, and it sounds like the daughter wouldn’t have to borrow more than that for at least some of the schools. I hope it’s doable for the family. 62k for Barnard is not sustainable for instance, no matter how proud they must all be that OP’s daughter got into that fine school. Fortunately there are two schools that are affordable (34k probably stretches the budget but is very close to 30k) and will not be a problem for her chosen career so it’s win-win. The difficulty probably is that the daughter has her sights set on Barnard and GW, not to mention Eugene Lang, which are all too costly. I can’t imagine what this family felt when they saw EFC 64k when they imagined something like 30k. They must have fallen off their chair.</p>
<p>OP: are you still seriously considering all choices or are some already out of contention in the discussions with your daughter?</p>
<p>LACs such as Rhodes & Goucher do offer personalized learning; however it is not known whether OP’s daughter may change her major & commitment to Foreign Service as she goes through her UG education. This is a risk that may increase the time to graduate. Also consider the tuition inflation (3%-5% year over year)) over the next 4 years. Increasingly a specialization masters is the new norm for entry into many fields. </p>
<p>^Actually, because of their structure, it’s very common for students at LACs to switch majors without increasing time needed to graduate (the opposite would be engineering, which has a prescribed path). Essentially, picking a school that’s good for her current career goal will not close any door if she changes her mind.</p>
<p>A question OP may want to ask at all colleges is what percentage (or what number) students get Fullbright, Rhodes, and other fellowships; what percentage get teaching posts abroad; if the Peace Corps traditionally recruit at the university and how successfully; whether the college participates in the “semester in DC” class&internship program organized by AU, whether it’s competitive, and what number students participate. </p>
<p>That assumes you have not been saving significantly since your kids were born for college. We socked away several thousand dollars/year for each kid in their early years (put those pre-tax daycare refunds right into the college accounts to the tune of about $5,000/year). And made a couple of stock investments as well very early on that turned out well. We paid 2/3 of sticker price for one kid (who came out with no loans – we could have paid more, honestly), and are at 5/6 of sticker price with the other (but will likely go to full pay her junior year).</p>
<p>OP, your school guidance counselor really gave you poor advice, and now you are stuck with a D with unrealistic expectations. She could have applied to a couple of expensive schools with the expectation set that the money would have to be $X for her to attend. But instead she applied to a slew of them, and now just has a slew of too-expensive options tugging at her headspace.</p>
<p>One of the other things that is important to someone who wants to spend time in the foreign service is ability to adapt to new environments and cultures. The foreign service exam includes some pretty stiff interactive/group activities that require a lot of poise, ability to read people, and ability to communicate with/persuade people who aren’t much like yourself. Honestly, staying home at your in-state university in most states isn’t a good recipe for building that skill set. Going to another part of the country and adapting to it is going to be a lot better practice for this than staying at U of Wyoming. </p>
<p>All choices are still theoretically on the table as we await responses from appeals, but the focus of our discussions at this point are University of Wyoming, Goucher, Rhodes, GW and Barnard. Our budget has been made clear to D since the beginning of the application process, but she is very determined and not about to let a little thing like money get in her way. We didn’t do a great job of saving dedicated funds for college. I didn’t get a college degree myself and didn’t place a high value on it. Our state school is such a good deal that it didn’t seem too daunting to make sure that she had a place to land. I was caught off guard by both the recession which cut our savings in half, and my daughter’s ambition which quadrupled the price of college. Languages are not her strong point, and that may be a road block for her in trying to get into the foreign service. She does have extensive travel experience including 10 months abroad during high school.</p>
<p>If she is expecting to borrow 35k per year to go to school, you will need to cosign her loans or borrow parentplus loans. I am not sure what the rules are but if she is unable to pay after graduation, I understand you may be liable, especially if you have assets.</p>
<p>I am not certain that one has to attend a specific program in order to get into foreign service but OTOH, you may go to a specific college and still not make the cut. I know of people who learnt Hindi in University of Texas and ended up in consulates in India. Others have landed in other consulates in India which require languages that are not taught in any university in US. They had to undergo special intensive training. From what I understood, these kids did plain old liberal arts majors. </p>
<p>I have another kid who will be a freshman in 2019. I would like to try to offer him the same budget, though I suppose inflation will wreak havoc with that plan. </p>
<p>So this is the point where as a parent you just need to say, ‘No’ to the highest priced options, especially because she has a brother who will also need to attend college. Let her know which options are realistic (probably the bottom 5 on the list) and allow her to choose between those.</p>
<p>That’s where we’re heading unless we can cajole more money out of the high priced schools, or someone gives me a compelling argument about why the financial recklessness of paying for GW or Barnard is worth the risk.</p>
<p>Is there any possibility that she could attend U of Wyoming for the first two years with the intent of transferring later on? Transferring is not always the best option for someone in need of financial aid – but since you seem to be looking at full cost, 2 years at Wyoming will certainly bring down the average cost per year – and she could be using that time to get through a lot of introductory-level courses. A side benefit might be a GPA boost – typically the grades from college #1 transfer to college #2, but the degree is from college #2. </p>
<p>Alternatively: maybe a gap year would be the best option, especially if she could spend the gap year abroad --thus bolstering her international-living credentials, as well as language skills. In that year, maybe she could spend time looking into some less-selective colleges which offer international relations programs, but may offer prospects for merit. I’m wondering whether she might be a candidate for substantial merit aid at a school like Seton Hall. </p>
<p>If languages are not a strength of hers, she should make a case that this will not kill her FS career ambition. It’s bordering on insanity to spend an extra $100,000 of money you’re too old to earn again, in the mere hope that she can get into a career relying on something she is not good at. It seems from the State Dept. link that this career is something that can be studied for, in Wyoming as well as in the “hustle and bustle” of DC. And if she develops her skills, she could transfer or better yet, finish at Wyoming then get a Master’s from one of the DC schools. Then she might even get points for geographic diversity when applying for a State Dept. job.</p>
<p>You did a fine job, don’t go all soft now because she seems not to care too much about your retirement security (by your own words.). You raised her to the point that she has options for college. If you had more college savings the colleges would just want that money in addition to what they plan to charge you now.</p>