<p>Why isn't the University of Mary Washington as good as the other school?</p>
<p>You continue to mention graduate education as being more expensive and thus requires your help? There are many jobs and fellowships, TAs so much is available to offset the expense of graduate school. Is your daughter incapable of offsetting graduate school expenses through effort of her own? Probably not.</p>
<p>dstark,</p>
<p>I like it better. However, the other school is Dickinson College which my daughter also likes.</p>
<p>hazmat,</p>
<p>I worked my way through grad school. It was long and painful. She could do it, but while I'm able to help, I'd like to.</p>
<p>Also, if she chooses a professional school, I'm not sure there are as may ways to self-finance aside from assuming a heavy load burden.</p>
<p>We had the same discussion at this time last year (well, actually in April). Our son knows he plans on post undergrad education, possibly law school. That would be very expensive with no liklihood of financial assistance. The massive undergrad debt wasn't worth it to him and he is happy and comfortably free of debt at the public school. Hopefully, we will be able to help him with graduate education later since we saved now. Also, many people need to consider the future needs of younger siblings as well as retirement savings.</p>
<p>Maybe the private has more perceived value, maybe not. But no way is $6K going to approach $30K, no matter how many incidentals you add on. (A big merit scholarship might help you though.) We even went so far as to compare salaries of graduates from the two schools and found that it would take decades to make up the difference in tuition debt.</p>
<p>We may be a little "gun-shy", but it was difficult to live our young adult lives in debt and it really had far-reaching implications. We'd just like our kids to have it easier.</p>
<p>Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>I agree with mini. I do not see anything wrong with discussing the finances and your preferences with your daughter, especially considering grad school. It is easy for kids to lose perspective when thinking about different colleges. There is not just 24,000 poker chips difference between the annual costs, but 24,000 actual dollars, which as others have pointed out is about $100K after four years. I like the idea better of having her consider using some of the money toward grad school, rather than spending a lot of it on a nice car. If she ends up going into science or engineering where she can manage to pay for most of her own grad school, then if you wished you could always help her start out in life after grad school.</p>
<p>Do you have any other children? I am not one who believes that children are "entitled" to your maximum EFC contribution, nor do I believe that parents must necessarily spend the same amount on each child's college education. You may need to consider the needs of your other children as well. As her father, you also need to teach your daughter financial responsibility and how to make wise choices. </p>
<p>I completely disagree with parents who leave it up to the children to make the decision (unless they are so wealthy that it genuinely makes zero difference). It is, after all, your money. Your daughter can hopefully visit both schools are articulate to you the pluses and minuses of each school as she sees them. Then YOU need to take her preferences into account and, if she wants to attend the more expensive school, decide how much of the difference in cost you are willing to pay. </p>
<p>I believe there is nothing immoral about a parent factoring cost into the decision-making process, especially if it can be used as a learning tool for your children.</p>
<p>My old college roommate had a similar dilemma.</p>
<p>His parents told him that they would pay for undergrad but not grad school. He was considering graduating early from undergrad.</p>
<p>His parents said that they would transfer the funds set aside for the last semester of undergrad to the first semester of grad. My friend graduated early.</p>
<p>That IMO is the right approach: give her a financial stake in the decision. </p>
<p>You can make the stake as large or as small as you want. At one extreme, you could tell her that you will apply all of the difference to grad school or, if you wish, to a down payment on a house. But if you think that amount of money will be too tempting for her to make a sound decision, then you could, say, share half of the savings with her. Whatever specific approach works for you, IMO the idea is for to her share, somehow, in the extra costs of the expensive school. Then she will ask herself: "is the extra cost that I have to pay worth the benefit that I expect from the expensive school?"</p>
<p>Other possibilities, some I believe already mentioned above: go to the cheaper school and:</p>
<p>-not have to work during the school year; and/or
-not have to work (or be able to work less) over the summers; and/or
-be able to travel domestically or abroad during the summer.</p>
<p>Or, ask her: what reasonable project or proposal would you have in mind if you go to the cheaper school? </p>
<p>You can set the parameters, in consultation with her, and then you can feel more comfortable letting her make the decision.</p>
<p>As someone who needs to quantify big decisions, I made a spreadsheet to help in this decision. The logic is flaky, but it did make a point -- I was trying to help my son see that there is a point where cost is not the most important issue, but that it still must be considered. I ranked each school according to USNWR, and then ranked them by net cost. I added these two numbers and came up with a value index of sorts, and ranked them again. For all of you analytical types, I know it doesn't really make sense, but in the end, it did break down into some pretty clear categories. The top few schools on the list were either extremely selective or offered tremendous merit aid. In the end, it became clear that he would be happiest at a more selective school, and we decided to decline the merit aid. The factors we considered included the idea that he would take unsubsidized loans, and we would take some PLUS loans. For us, it means that we will have what feels like private HS tuition payments for 10 years, as if we had had more kids. </p>
<p>Some of you have mentioned that there is a lot that one can do with an extra $100k. That's certainly true! But would the parents really hand that over to the student if the less expensive college was chosen? I think that for most kids it's a question of how much debt the parents are willing to assume. And I do understand the grad school issue -- but who knows what will happen in the next four years, and what experience would you rather see your daughter have? Finally, the point about future spouses seems important to me. There are nice kids everywhere, but I have found that my son is just surrounded by bright, well-mannered and charming kids -- I would be delighted if he ended up with one of the girls I've met so far.</p>
<p>In my previous post, I did not mean to imply that your daughter could not make the ultimate decision as to which school to attend. Only that you need to make some financial decisions and set some guidelines and parameters. ADad's approach seems quite reasonable.</p>
<p><a href="The%20following%20is%20a%20re-enactment%20of%20a%20true%20story,%20tho%20not%20my%20personal%20experience">i</a> *</p>
<p>Parent: Kid, you have 2 choices:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>College A plus your bicycle</p></li>
<li><p>College B with a new BMW</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Kid: I think I will take College A (which is ranked 5 places higher by US News)</p>
<p>Time and time again the kids select the higher ranked college and leave the merit money on the table.</p>
<p>"But would the parents really hand that over to the student if the less expensive college was chosen?"</p>
<p>Well, that really comes down to whether you think you are paying for "college" or for "education". $100k plus a reasonably good college (like Mary Washington) can purchase A LOT of education. But it requires thinking outside the bun.</p>
<p>Every family has to do what seems right to them. I have promised myself that my son will graduate debt-free. I just think college debt is crippling to a young person and I believe he will want to go to grad scghool. That meant I had to tell him he couldn't apply to GWU (50K per year!) or NYU. It forced us to closely research what was out there, and what schools give good merit aid. There are some excellent public schools that are reasonable even for out of state students - UMich and many others. Canadian schools are excellent value. Our goal is to keep it under 40K per year. It has been good for him to participate in these discussions, and I know he'll end up at a good school somewhere (already accepted to Rutgers OOS and Case Western with merit money). I don't think the point is whether you would give the money to the child otherwise - I'm in my 50's and whatever I spend on DS is money that would otherwise go toward retirement.</p>
<p>How about these two choices?:
1. Flagship Public, ranked 50 by US News, full tuition scholarship, huge school with lectures of 700 kids, college town but not much else, run down dorms (for Freshman only), Easier to get good GPA, nice weather
2. Large Private, ranked 60 by US news, 42K/year, Boston, notorious for grade deflation (think Grad school), long cold snowy winters, guaranteed 4 yrs dorm, BOSTON</p>
<p>What else are you buying with the saved $120k? (or would your family have plenty of spare money anyway?) How much loan indebtedness? What are career plans like? Are there opportunities you can access with the $120k that won't be available to you otherwise?</p>
<p>Comparing schools is only a small part of the equation, and not necessarily the most important part.</p>
<p>In our case, money is not necessarily a problem ( but I still feel that it should be considered since our financial situation could turn on a dime). Would my child make better business contacts at a private verses public university? Where would she meet more "bright, motivated young men (future spouse)? Where would she be most successful socially and academically?</p>
<p>Lots of "depends". If your kid expects to work in his/her home state, s/he is much more likely to make better business contacts at the state university (this is true for government-related work as well, and local/regional politics, etc.) (Future spouses are a dime a dozen!)</p>
<p>Where will she most successful? Who knows? She might respond to more challenge if the public or private university is significantly more difficult than the other one. She may be in the top 10% at the easier place (public or private) and get more research, mentoring, and other opportunities as a result. Or she might really like big lecture classes. My older one loves her LAC; my younger one wouldn't be caught dead there (she wants a BIG school.)</p>
<p>mini: good points, thank you.</p>
<p>Just a word about debt-- in our case it was probably a good thing. Spouse and I had to delay a lot of things our peers were doing when we got married (renting ski houses for the weekends; buying nice furniture; eating at trendy restaurants, etc). We wanted to buy a house some day and knew we had to pay off some of our educational loans before we could do that.</p>
<p>Fast forward 25 years-- we took our loan payments and stuck them in college savings plans for the kids once we'd paid back our own loans. We were used to doing without the money so it was a painless way to save. We live debt free and are happy to spend a long weekend reading or going to a movie-- don't need Vail or Aspen. Our ugly hand me down furniture will go to our kids first apartment and we'll replace it w/nice stuff. Both of us have had to make hard decisions about taking interesting, lower paying jobs vs. boring higher paying ones...and we seem to have done all right-- life is full of tradeoffs.</p>
<p>If your kid understands money, credit, etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with allowing your kid to own some of the debt of her education in addition to owning the upside.</p>
<p>I think some variation on mini's approach (which the OP seemed to like) and mominva's suggestions seem to fit the OP's needs and predilections, at least as they have come through in this thread. </p>
<p>By this I mean, go beyond <em>discussing</em> the trade-offs with your daughter to <em>investing</em> her in the trade-offs. I would think along the lines of creating a financial sacrifice on her part, were she to choose Dickinson, somehow proportional (at least symbolically) to the sacrifice you will be making for that school's tuition. If she chooses MW, she graduates debt free, for example, and can use her summer earnings for "extras;" perhaps with you providing a moderate monthly allowance for normal student expenses. If she chooses Dickinson, she needs to take the Stafford loans, but I would go beyond this as I think kids often don't really <em>get</em> or feel future debt. I would say she needs to work term-time -at least after the first semester/year and summers with no allowance from you. I'm not a fan of the immediate materialistic bonus for the cheaper school (eg, the BMW), but something like that is an option, too. </p>
<p>Bottom line, without being punitive, have her FEEL the choice, not have it be purely hypothetical to her. It's not just hypothetical to you.</p>
<p>We told our children all along that we'd pay the full price of the state school tuition and that anything else would have to be paid by them through either scholarships, work or loans. </p>
<p>I'm glad she chose the state school as I think taking on debt would be a bad choice and we're convinced that the value of the education at a large Big 10 school will set her up well (since my wife and I both went there).</p>