<p>We had a good idea our guy would thrive with the deeper academics, etc, and thought it worth the cost. We were correct and have no regrets. His best (similar caliber) peer chose the free ride. Over Christmas they were comparing notes and both thought my guy has the far better academics and opportunities (both of which he’s taking advantage of). I’ll admit to feeling sorry for his peer.</p>
<p>However, it’s important to note that I suspect both will “succeed” in life AND the “better” school is not necessarily worth high levels of debt. Some extra payments and debt, yes. High debt, no.</p>
Before a kid actually matriculates at a school, how would you know if he/she is going to scrape by with C’s at a more prestigious college? I think what OP is asking - If a student were to get into an expensive reach and financial safety (not necessary academic safety), how do you justify in paying for the more expensive option. </p>
<p>I think you have to take into account whether you think the expensive reach is honestly a school where your child can do well. I’ve got one coming down the pipeline, who has been contacted by very reachy/expensive colleges (athletic recruit). We know that statistically she would be at the low end of the admits, the kind of kid who wouldn’t stand a chance of admission based on her (solid but not stratospheric) statistics. We decided not to pursue those schools, and have focused instead on colleges that are statistically matches for her. We don’t think it would serve her best interests to be the “she only got in because she’s a jock” kid.</p>
<p>On the other hand, one of her older siblings could have handled the academics at any reach school out there, so “can he handle the academics of the reach school?” would never have been a factor in an expensive reach decision for him.</p>
<p>Oldfort - I interpreted the OP’s question to be straightforward: “what factors” were considered – and when my daughter was admitted to more expensive reach colleges, I certainly did give thought to whether I thought she would do well there. I’d already been through a situation with my son attending a costly private college that we considered a match - and not only did that represent a sunk cost (money gone to pay for 4 semesters when my son only ended up with transferable credit for about 3 semesters, and no possible way to finish at the original school within 4 years) – but it was a significant lost opportunity for my son, who had given up state U. spots to attend the private college. (The state U. would at least have been more flexible in terms of making up coursework, and more affordable if he had required an extra semester or year to graduate).</p>
<p>So when my daughter was accepted to prestigious reach schools at a cost of double or triple the spots she also had at various state U. campuses: you had better believe that I thought long and hard about whether she was up to the task. I knew my daughter well enough to know that she would be much happier socially at the state U – and quite frankly, her high school wasn’t all that challenging. Sure, she got A’s…but I didn’t see much evidence of her working particularly hard to get them. </p>
<p>We went with the reach. My daughter changed. She became a more studious, more intellectual, more serious, more focused person… but a little bit of the joie de vivre was gone. Maybe that’s part of the process of growing up. The education she got was incomparable. I got my money’s worth. She got her $18,000 worth of student loan debt worth. So its fine, we made the right decision. </p>
<p>But not without factoring in whether the academic demands of the reach college would be overpowering. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that dollars spent on a college that doesn’t work out are dollars that are no longer available if it doesn’t work out. Parents can’t predict the future, but we know our kids – we have a sense of how they handle stress, how they respond to pressure, how they choose to structure their time, etc. The “dream” school is not always the best fit. I didn’t expect my daughter to get admitted into those reach schools – I worried more about the issues I might be facing if she wanted to go to a more expensive private school over a state U. that was at least an academic equivalent. Would I really have been wiling to pay thousands of dollars for her to attend Northeastern rather than UC Berkeley? </p>
<p>So when the reach admissions came - I did have to think about issues that I had not really spent too much time thinking about before. It wasn’t a matter of the dollars – it was a matter of me trying to do my job as a parent. Sometimes that means figuring out when to say no, even when we very much want to say yes. </p>
<p>Once we determined what we could pay, we left it up to our kids to pick. So no arguments about what was worth more. The available dollar amount was put on the table, and if our kids wanted the money after getting a degree that was fine too. Didn’t push for the full ride school vs a school where kid was going to have to scrap and scrape to afford it, though we laid out the advantages and disadvantages. We weren’t hands off, in that we did tell them what we knew, our opinions, but left the choice up to them and fully supported it once made. It’s a big advantage to have the kid be driving the choice as things often do go wrong at college, and a kid that feels railroaded is often not going to have the incentive to make it work as much as the kid who made the choice himself. All of my kids were well informed of the disadvantages and drawbacks of their choices and our opinions of them, but we proudly wore the shirts and sweats and whatever once it was a go. And paid what we said we would without a murmur. 100% support once the decision was made.</p>
<p>The main factors our daughter considered were fit and pressure to perform. She continues to struggle with anxiety and depression, and she felt that attending either of the scholarship schools would have increased the pressure she felt to perform. Ironically, the school she chose is known for its academic pressure and grade “deflation,” but because they offer no merit money, she feels better about taking academic risks.</p>
<p>Perhaps a slightly different question might be: “If you could afford the expensive reach school with no debt and little or no financial sacrifice, how much would cost enter into your decision about colleges?” We were fortunate enough to be in this situation, and we didn’t really consider cost–even though free or nearly free options would have been available. (I do admit to feeling a pang when my son didn’t get into a free graduate program that he might possibly have attended over the full-cost one he is attending.)</p>
<p>I can share our experience from the opposite decision, except the schools were not actually reaches academically, but very good fits. Our ds is a strong student who is advanced in both math and science. He has a 4.0 GPA in university classes through 300 level in math and physics; he has been dual enrolling at local universities since he was 16.</p>
<p>Financially, however, we are not in a position to provide our ds with a lot of $$ support. He is one child out of a large family. We have a disabled adult child who at this point is completely dependent. Our youngest is only 4 and we will be close to retirement age before she even graduates from high school and we need to provide for all our other kids while simultaneously considering our retirement reality. We have great income, but we live off of it. We cannot cut out expenses since they are essentials (food, electricity, water, housing, etc…it costs a lot of $$ just to feed our family.) Our EFC, however, is significant and would have to be covered via parental loans. We still have a houseful of younger kids, too, who will one day be going to college.</p>
<p>So, what decision did we face? He was accepted into top schools, some with scholarship $$, some with school aid, some full pay. The costs for out of pocket expenses varied from approx $98,000 (which was still less than 1/2 COA) - $160,000 for 4 yrs.</p>
<p>Alternatively, he had 3 lower ranked school options. The local university offered him full-ride. The profs recruited him heavily. An in-state flagship gave full-tuition and room/board would have been the only costs. Another university awarded him 4 stackable scholarships which are the equivalent of full ride. He was accepted into their research honors program. While he was tempted by the local university due to the extensive research opportunities he was guaranteed, (he will be participating in one this summer even though he will not be attending there in the fall), he also wanted to go further from home and have a college experience. So he accepted the other university’s full-ride equivalent offer.</p>
<p>He is a very serious student. He loves academic challenge. But he is also a very friendly and social kid who knows how to seek out opportunities that fit his needs that don’t simply show up in the classroom. He will make the most of any location’s opportunities and create opportunities when needed. He will be one to succeed b/c he puts in enormous effort to succeed and learn everything he wants to know–whether taught in the classroom or not. So, ultimately, while he decided on a no-cost option, do I think we sold him short? No. I think we weighed reality just like we do for every financial purchase we make and that he will do great. (Just like his older brother who is a chemE with a great job and was a graduate of a small, no-name state university.)</p>
<p>In our case not much scholarship was offered from anywhere except from no-name state university. DD is a bright student and got into good schools (MIT, Princeton and other top schools). The difference between state university and where she wanted to go (MIT) is around 140k. We are middle class and it’ll be tough for next four years, but DD will have better growth opportunities in diverse student body and will have good professional prospects after she graduates. </p>
<p>I agree, this does not guaranttee success but odds are higher and education is one of the precious lifetime gifts one can give to ones child, even if it needs some sacrifice from parents. Again, this is just personal perspective.</p>
<p>“Perhaps a slightly different question might be: “If you could afford the expensive reach school with no debt and little or no financial sacrifice, how much would cost enter into your decision about colleges?” We were fortunate enough to be in this situation, and we didn’t really consider cost”</p>
<p>That’s more or less where my parents were. They feel that there’s nothing else in life as valuable as education for their children. They could be living in greater luxury now if they’d made their 4 kids go to less expensive schools, but they come from a tradition where the central purpose of life is to educate your children the very best way you can. As my mother puts it, too, there’s no other way of spending this money that would have brought her greater pleasure. They feel they are still getting returns from this spending as they see us progress in our careers, build networks, etc.</p>
<p>Where you have to borrow, that’s a WHOLE different ball of wax. Also, my parents’ 4 kids all got into excellent schools that were ideal for each kid, where there wasn’t any question of whether an in-state option would be equally good. If my kid were begging to go to an expensive school that I thought wasn’t any better than a much cheaper option, that might change the analysis.</p>
<p>We were lucky - the reach school was financially safe. She did end up having to take a small amount in loans. The scary part now is that she has this fuzzy major and has decided not to go to graduate school - she’s getting married instead. I guess I could say it was a success because she met her future husband through her school, but how old fashioned can you get? I think if her reach wasn’t financially “safe” I would have chosen the financial safety. </p>
<p>We made choices both ways – for reach/prestige and for the financial safety. Financially, we are fortunate enough that we wouldn’t be getting financial aid under any circumstances and have saved substantially so cost was not a constraint – though I hate to spend money unless it is going to generate positive return. I went to three of HYPMS and felt that I had been advantaged thereafter – I was able to make academic and career shifts that might not have been possible had I not attended top-ranked schools (and done well there). So, I believe that going to top schools (15 or 20 plus some special schools for specialized fields) can provide lifelong advantage (if one takes advantage of the advantages that one has available).</p>
<p>ShawSon son is gifted, severely dyslexic and seriously ambitious. He was partially homeschooled in HS to learn how to write (schools mostly teach writing by osmosis) and because high school honors math was so easy for him that with 3 hours a week of tutoring, he did sophomore honors math in a semester and junior honors math in a semester. We had no idea where he would or wouldn’t get in as he wasn’t a conventional candidate. I suggested he apply to the top-ranked LACs as well as Ivies and safeties because I thought that in an elite small school, professors would quickly get to know him and how bright he was. I had no qualms justifying the expense. And it worked beautifully for him. Graduated summa, 3.96 GPA, started a company with some other kids that is doing well, and is going to get an MBA/MS in Data Science at what I’d say is the best school in the country for that kind of program.</p>
<p>ShawD is bright but not intellectual. I was happy when she decided to go to school in Canada as the net cost was a lot lower (tuition/room/board was $15K a year at one of Canada’s best schools as she is a dual citizen). She wasn’t going to be an academic and although I didn’t have any idea what she would do post-college, she wasn’t going to get into one of the top 15 or 20 schools in the US, which are the schools that, to me, largely justify the differential.</p>
<p>Long story short, she loved the Canadian school but decided that she wanted to study nursing rather than biology. Her Canadian school would not let her transfer from the Faculty of Science to the Faculty of Nursing – she would have to reapply as a first-year student – so she decided to apply to transfer to other Canadian schools as well to that school (again, I felt good as it is not clear that where you get your nursing degree has major impact, although there is some impact on which hospitals will hire you that is school-dependent). A nurse acquaintance arranged for ShawD to shadow a nurse at her hospital near us and then told ShawD that there were three schools from which her hospital hired nurses. ShawD wrote one of the three, who responded very favorably given her good performance at a competitive private HS and ACT scores. It is a small school and she was probably at the 95+ percentile for that school academically. She was admitted to that school’s nursing program and to their nurse practitioner masters (in a five year accelerated program) as long as she maintained a B+ average in her nursing/science courses. She did get some merit aid, but the net cost was a lot higher than staying in Canada and prestige in nursing programs probably has a lot less impact than when applying for PhD or MBA programs. So, the difference is probably $35K a year. I justified it because I could see that she would likely do well (better than in the big classes at the Canadian school) and the NP degree seemed to me to make a lot of sense for her (and doesn’t exist in Canada). Nonetheless, I think it is worth it as she is having a great time, doing very well, training at fabulous hospitals (that she wouldn’t have been able to train at if she had stayed where she was), and loving her program. Plus, it turns out that admission is very competitive to NP programs and her guaranteed admission (her GPA is way above B+ at the new school) will take away a lot of stress. It would have made a lot less sense if she were going to get only a BSN (it is not clear that the job opportunities are that much different), but given the NP program (plus the small size) made it worth the investment on my part.</p>
I think that the student’s interests and career goals also play into this. I would definitely agree that someone who aspires to become a research scientist might very well have better opportunities as well as a better education at MIT or Princeton… but what of the future journalist or teacher? Of course many kids aren’t at all sure what they want to do at the end of high school… but we might at least have a inking. It certainly was clear to me, for example, that my math-averse daughter would not be studying physics in college. (Although she did end up taking astronomy to fill her lab science distribution requirement). </p>
<p>I’d also note that the big name colleges aren’t where opportunity is always found. For example, my son ended up finishing college at a CSU that turned out (in hindsight) to offer him life changing opportunities. There would have been no way to anticipate such opportunities in advance-- but when I looked at his experience and also consider some of the opportunities my friends’ kids have had at lesser-known, less selective universities – I am reminded that there is often plenty to keep an undergrad busy and engaged at a no-name U. </p>
<p>So I wouldn’t even go with “odds are higher” – I’d say that “it depends” . With the perceived increased odds of success also comes increased competition. Sometimes the best way to increase odds of success is for the student to be a big fish in a small pond. </p>
<p>So again, it comes down to individual circumstances.</p>
<p>I do feel that parents sometimes face tremendous pressure to go with the more prestigious option, and that arguments from others along the lines of parents providing the best for their children or a a precious gift of education can put parents in emotional bind. No parent should be in the position of spending money beyond the family’s means or of brushing away serious doubts because of a sense of guilt or obligation. I think it’s wonderful when a parent like Hunt can make a choice without needing to worry about where the money is coming from – but I think it is more common that the choice may involve significant financial sacrifice. </p>
<p>From other CC posts, it appears that the OP is a student interested in studying journalism. So the real question might be more along the lines of, “how will I ever convince my parents to pay big dollars for me to get an education to prepare me for a career where it will be quite difficult to find lucrative work?” I’d rather help that student to discover some of the wonderful opportunities that might await him/her at some less well-known (and more affordable) colleges. </p>
<p>Hello, I’m a junior from Canada and I’ve spent the last few months researching and mulling over this exact question. I had originally wanted to apply to some top 20 schools in the US, took the sat in Jan with roughly a 2000 and was going to retake in fall aiming for 2150+ along with Subject tests.</p>
<p>However, after consultation with my parents the decision was that although I might get admitted, they didn’t want me to “struggle” amongst people “smarter” than me, had a harsh viewpoint on American culture (apparently more cutthroat), and weren’t comfortable paying 20-25K a year opposed to 5K at local university or roughly 10-13K at one of the better schools in Canada. They also didn’t want me to go to the US for Under Grad only to return back to Canada for med school even though I haven’t quite decided what I want to do after HS (might do engineering or business instead). </p>
<p>Although I would have loved to get the full college experience at an academically challenging US college and later end up working/living in the US, it doesn’t look like this is feasible for my situation. Would going to a “worse”, comparative to US top 20s, and much larger school in Canada with less attention given to students hinder my opportunities? And should I still try to go to a prestigious Canadian school over my local University? Also, would my future job/life prospects be limited to Canada if I graduate from Canada for engineering or business, and if I graduate from a Canadian med school, would I still possibly be able to do my residency and later work in the US?</p>
<p>There are Canadian and other non-US bachelor’s degree holders working in the US.</p>
<p>There are Canadian and other non-US bachelor’s degree holders in US PhD programs.</p>
<p>There are Canadian and other non-US MD degree holders working as physicians in the US.</p>
<p>The AAMC represents the 141 US medical schools and 17 Canadian medical schools. Presumably, all of these medical schools know how to evaluate Canadian undergraduate courses and grades as well as US undergraduate courses and grades.</p>
<p>How do people justify buying a Mercedes instead of a Toyota? Granite countertops instead of laminate? Why do people stay at a Hilton instead of a Best Western? Designer clothes instead of department store? Is the OP question meant to be philosophical? Don’t we make these decisions every single day? Peter Pan instead of store brand? Why do we spend money on ANYTHING that is more expensive if there is a less expensive alternative? The same rationales apply to college decisions, no? </p>
<p>But a “financial safety” can also offer an education that will benefit a kid for the rest of his/her life. Just because it was a “reach” to get into doesn’t mean it was necessarily a better school. All sorts of factors make colleges “reaches”–including how much they spend on marketing to become more selective. It is a false dichotomy that more competitive and more expensive > easier to get into and more affordable in every situation.</p>
Schools like UChicago and NYU have moved up in ranking some what because of marketing, but even without marketing, they would still be considered as very selective schools. A school is highly selective if a lot of students want to apply there. A lot of students want to apply to a school because the school provides better academic environment, more resource, location, great track record for graduate school or job placement…I don’t believe USNews ranking made any school a better school, the ranking only re-affirmed what most people knew already. I didn’t need the ranking to tell me HYPSM are the best schools in the US, but without the USNews ranking I probably wouldn’t know Duke was ranked higher than Cornell, or Columbia was ranked higher than UPenn. When you are comparing top 10 or 10-20, or 20-40, you are really splitting hair anyway, but not if you are comparing a school that’s ranked top 10 vs 40-50.</p>
<p>As many people here know I am into expensive bags. There isn’t enough marketing in the world to make me believe Tory Burch or Michael Kors bag is in the same league as Gucci or Prada. Likewise, the workmanship of a Prada bag is not the same as a Birkin bag. If you don’t want to spend the money, fine, but don’t try to convince people that they are all the same.</p>