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[QUOTE=oldfort]
We told D1 we would pay for the best school she could get into. There was no discussion of which school was worth it and which school wasn’t. As far as we were concerned, any school that could give her the best possible education was worth it.
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<p>Spoken like old money. Would that everyone had the same good fortune. Presumably this did not require your giving up anything else in life such as housing, other childrens’ education, or eventual retirement.</p>
<p>We told both our kids how much we would/could spend per year for them for (four years of) college. We also told them they could finance/pay for more than our annual contribution themselves, but we would not allow them to borrow more than $5,000 a year for four years.</p>
<p>S got a full-ride offer and acceptance at our (lower) Tier 1 state U, and he would have been happy attending there – and he could have earned his UG degree there in less than three years. He also bought a couple “lottery tickets” by applying to a few tippy-top schools – and was admitted. After a couple admitted students weekends, he said one particular Ivy was the school he preferred attending, if it was OK with us. Its cost after finaid was within our parameters, so we were OK with it.</p>
<p>And so far, so good. He loves the school, the people he has met, and the fantastic opportunities it has provided him. And while it’s not free for us, it is affordable within the limits we had outlined prior to his application there.</p>
<p>Our second kid will be a senior in the fall, and we have provided these same parameters for this child. It takes a lot of the stress off us, and puts the onus on them to choose a school they will love and that will be affordable. Make sure the kid picks out a state school that they love that fits within the financial guidelines without finaid or merit scholarships as a safety school, then let them buy a couple "lottery tickets.’ If the kid is accepted and the school meets the financial guidelines established by the parents, it’s the kid’s choice.</p>
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Remember that state schools have honors programs to meet the needs of their best state students, there will be many HYP caliber students in them (HYP et al only have so many spots- there is a surplus of high caliber students needing to go elsewhere).
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<p>I am under that impression, and again, I found State U’s honors college quite impressive. The attitude and faculty felt just like an elite little LAC in the midst of a big research university. Very reassuring!</p>
<p>Not just old money. I’ve seen families scrape and scrimp and overspend to pay for their children’s choices in college. I can tell you it is very much worth it if the experience works out and is not worth any savings if things do not work out at the less expensive choice.</p>
<p>As to how many years a student stays in his UG school, the optimal time is really variable. I’ve known kids who were glad to be out in 2-3 years, and others who wanted to stay longer. All depends. </p>
<p>Some of the ones I’ve known who are in some high paying jobs now even in this economy, went back to school–community college, tech, vocational, schools for some courses to qualify them in certain job skills. That is a powerful combo with a solid BA or BS degree in any area. Those kids didn’t have the slightest idea about occupations when they were undergraduates but were directed thereafter to get specific training in fields. One is an air traffic controller/manager at an airport, another is directing medical scanning at a facility, and another working at a blood bank, another in medical billing. All earning 6 figures at a young age with very general UG degrees.</p>
<p>As an employer, as far as I can tell, the only people coming out of school with specific, useful skills are community college/trade school graduates. To me, that is an argument for getting your bachelor’s degree in whatever truly interests you. You will graduate with the same practical skills as your peers (i.e., none) but have a mind full of ideas, fascination, and dreams, plus the mental faculties to work your way through whatever problems you face. For the “big money” jobs, I’d rather have someone like that. They can pick up the specific job skills later, but if they don’t leave college with a high-functioning mind, they’ll probably never get it.</p>
<p>This is why I have so much respect for a college like St. John’s College (MD/NM) and the employers, grad schools, and professional schools that take their graduates. They understand that college’s most important function is to teach you to think, not how to do a job.</p>
<p>Nothing old about our money. It’s all hard earned in this life time. It’s the best inheritance we will leave to our children.</p>
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No - engineering/computer science grads come out of universities with specific useful skills which is why they typically receive the highest starting salaries. I expect accounting majors and some others graduate with specific useful skills as well.</p>
<p>Hello…I’m a speech pathologist. Folks with a masters in that field will have a very marketable skill.</p>
<p>Re: the “old money” comment. We do not come from old money. We had savings, current earnings and loans (in the kids’ names) that paid for college for our kids. We were fortunate that we did not have to put a financial constraint on their college choices. BUT we did give them the amount we were WILLING to pay per year (which actually was close to the full cost of attendance minus the Stafford loans). We did NOT tell them we would only pay for certain schools…the school choice was THEIRS (after all…they were going to college, not us). We didn’t say we would pay for prestige schools but not lower level schools. We gave a dollar amount. But that was our family decision.</p>
<p>Just callin’ it like I see it. I am an engineer myself and can tell you that nearly all of the knowledge I use on a daily basis was learned after graduation. Of course, my education lay the foundation of basic knowledge of the principles of my field, without which I could not have progressed in my career. But I have yet to hire a just-graduated engineer who can contribute anything significant the day he walks in the door. (Talking undergraduates here; graduate degrees are a different story.) I feel they’re being paid for their potential future value, not their actual value upon graduation.</p>
<p>Just my opinion! Surely there are exceptions! Your mileage may vary! I have not met every engineer on Earth! And other disclaimers!</p>
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<p>I agree that an undergraduate degree is often of little practical use on the job, and that its chief value is foundational knowledge. I’d imagine that you don’t doubt that many State U’s and other non-elites can give your student a very good basic education. So I’m wondering – why the emphasis on Prestige? Just curious.</p>
<p>My husband would fully agree with you as an engineer himself. He says any engineering program that is ABET accredited will have very similar and challenging coursework. It doesn’t have to be an Ivy League school. Once an engineer graduates, they will have a lot of on the job training specific to their area of expertise. </p>
<p>Now…having said that…there are a bunch of those “second tier” very fine colleges with excellent engineering programs that are costly, but good. I’m sure that is the case with many other majors as well.</p>
<p>Computer Science majors can definitely hit the street running with immediately useful skills upon graduation with a BS degree. In addition, most of them have a summer or two of internships under their belt by the time they graduate so they also already have some real world experience as well. Of course they’ll hone and focus their skills depending on where they’re employed and what their assignements are but so would someone with more experience typically (or even someone with a MS or PHD if they enter industry).</p>
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<p>I am not emphasizing prestige. My position is that, all other things being equal, prestige is better than no prestige, and that prestige is worth some amount of money. I don’t know exactly how much. If it comes down to Princeton for $2 per year or State U for free, the prestige of Princeton is worth the extra cost. But if it’s Princeton all full price or State U for free, the prestige is not worth the extra cost. There is some number between $2 and full-price that marks the cutoff, and I have no idea what that number is, and probably won’t for some time.</p>
<p>This seems completely rational to me. Isn’t it?</p>
<p>Now, let’s look about 30 or 40 places down the US News list (just to have a list for convenience) from Princeton. Now I feel it’s a whole lot harder to place any tangible value on prestige. The “prestige” of UC-San Diego, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, and NYU is not going to wow me into shelling out tens of thousands of dollars when an equally good education is available for free. Again, I don’t know exactly where the cutoff is, but it’s way lower than the cutoff for Princeton.</p>
<p>As has been pointed out, much of the prestige associated with HYPS derives from their graduate schools, Wharton MBA, Harvard Law etc. Since grad school is 95+% probable for your son, I would suggest you try and maximize his chances at getting into a prestigious grad school.</p>
<p>I assume that the State U - Honors program will give him access to the top professors with chances for internships and publishable research. It seems to me that type of experience along with continued academic excellence would be far more attractive to graduate schools than “only” having an undergrad HYPS degree.</p>
<p>There is one more thing to consider. There are many high school students with academic awards, high GPAs and near perfect test scores. Those that get admitted to HYPS suddenly find themselves on a campus full of students with similar profiles. In short, the moment they arrive they change from extraordinary to average. While all of us hope and assume that our straight A sons and daughters will maintain that pace, the reality is that someone has to populate the middle and bottom of the curve. Getting into HYPS is one thing, getting to the top and staying there is something else entirely.</p>
<p>A better grad school strategy may be to become the big fish, with cash reserves, in the StateU Honors pond and not risk being just another minnow in an admittedly prestigious pool.</p>
<p>Put another way, who would you rather have operating on your mother? Dr A with a Harvard Bio undergrad and a degree from an average medical school, or Dr B with undergrad from State U Honors and Harvard Med? </p>
<p>Finally, we’ve heard a great deal about what you want, but very little about your son’s position. Does he share our feelings about the potential choices?</p>
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<p>A good education is worth some amount of money. There are students who would NOT be happy and would therefore not do well at those prestige schools. No amount of money would make them happy there. </p>
<p>We paid a goodly amount for the #60 ranked school. It was perfect for our kid who went there. I will add that our instate U did NOT offer a competitive program in his major at all.</p>
<p>We are paying another goodly amount for the #2 Masters university in the west for kid two. Believe me…if you live on the East Coast, this is a “no name” school. The program she is in is outstanding and is actually ranked 30th in the NATION. Not bad.</p>
<p>I will also add…we knew NOTHING about the rankings of these schools until WELL AFTER our kids were enrolled. Rankings smankings…find schools that are right for your kid. If you are fortunate enough to be able to pay the full freight at an IVY…then the door will be open for many, many fine colleges. </p>
<p>If you are not willing to pay for a school below XXX ranking…you will have the potential to miss out on some wonderful schools that might…just might…be great for your kid.</p>
<p>There are a number of posters on this forum who have kids at those “lower ranking schools” who turned down Ivy offers because of other fabulous traits these “lesser” schools offered. </p>
<p>If all you want to pay for is prestige OR the state U…I think you really could be missing out on a lot.</p>
<p>But again…that is YOUR family’s decision.</p>
<p>Do you consider Wisconsin or UCSD more prestigious than your state school? Both are public universities. I have not investigated how much they would cost for OOS students. Would the cost differential between them and your state U be as much as between your state U and a top ten university or LAC? That is what’s at stake isn’t it? It’s not necessarily $0 at state U vs. $200k at another school. </p>
<p>Another consideration: a student who might get into HYPSM is likely to get merit money elsewhere. So, again that would bring the cost differential down, but not all the way down to zero.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone who is posting here, but PLEASE stop asking me why I’m hung up on prestige. I am not hung up on prestige. It is one of several factors to consider AFTER finding schools that are a good fit and affordable for our family.</p>
<p>Mantori, you provoke people into asking the prestige question when your posts imply that paying OOS for Georgia Tech or Purdue or UIUC would not be “worth” the money for a kid interested in the sciences. Or that paying full freight for Cornell (which has some outstanding programs in the sciences…) wouldn’t be “worth it”. So you’re being a challenged a bit to identify what “worth it” means to you. That’s all.</p>
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<p>This is a whole other topic that I’m sure is familiar to many, many, many poor parents. :(</p>
<p>One of the reasons I’m fretting over my position so much is that I can’t get him to state his own position. We have taken him on two trips to visit a total of eight colleges. Some were public, some private. Some huge, some small. Some prestigious, some not. Some urban, some rural.</p>
<p>I’m still waiting for him to say, “After visiting all of these colleges, I’ve decided that what’s important to me is X, Y, and Z.” But he doesn’t seem to be getting any closer—at least, he doesn’t say he is—and now that the Common App is available, it’s starting to worry me.</p>
<p>So, I guess my worrying about paying for HYPS (or whatever) versus not paying for State U is my way of dealing with the ultimate decision of where he should attend, in case he never gets around to making that decision himself. I don’t want to leave it to chance and have him end up at State U by default. If he goes there, I want it to be because he seriously considered other colleges but chose State U for good reasons (the balance of cost vs. fit vs. prestige vs. the height on the grass on the quad vs. the hotness of the girls vs. whatever). (Notice how I buried “prestige” in the middle of a list of factors, so that I wouldn’t be accused of being hung up on prestige?)</p>
<p>Anyway, maybe that gives you a little insight into why I’m fretting over this topic at this time, and why you’re hearing only my perspective and not his.</p>
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<p>That’s fair. But I can’t quite define it yet. It’s intangible, and so many factors are involved. Yes, prestige is one of them, but there are many others, and for me, fit is number one (assuming we can afford the one that’s the best fit). I view prestige as more of a tie-breaker, a legitimate one.</p>