<h1>60: Large intro-level courses, heavy use of adjuncts and teaching assistants to deliver service courses, little personal attention or devoted academic advising. Bureaucratic inertia and indifference to individual circumstances. Sink or swim attitude. Professors who are more interested in research than undergraduate teaching and reflect it in their interactions with students.</h1>
<p>I understand that not every public nationwide is like this, but there are plenty of privates that are, especially largish expensive privates in the Northeast. There are many private universities which, in my opinion, are a mediocre value for a full-pay student.</p>
<p>If you’re looking at a specific private, how can you tell whether it’s a public-like institution? I know you can look at things like faculty composition and class sizes - but how do you assess things like “little personal attention or devoted academic advising. Bureaucratic inertia and indifference to individual circumstances. Sink or swim attitude. Professors who are more interested in research than undergraduate teaching and reflect it in their interactions with students?”</p>
<p>Our daughter had full-pay offers at several large, lower-tier universities, and she was also admitted to several ivy-league schools, including MIT. She chose MIT, for which we paid full tuition. Several weeks after graduation, she was employed and fully independent, and she’s now doing research as a grad student at Harvard (with everything funded: tuition, health benefits, and generous living stipend.) She’s doing what she loves and making her way in the world doing it, which is what every parent wants for his or her child. Could she have gotten to the same place attending a less-costly school? Honestly, I have no idea. No regrets, though. She had fantastic opportunities at MIT.</p>
<p>We told our son he could go anywhere he was accepted, and he got into schools like Emory University and UC San Diego and Trinity College, CT, all without any financial assistance. He ended up falling in love with Willamette University in Oregon, and that school offered him a very generous merit package, which made attending actually LESS expensive that going to a University of California campus. We visited the campus TWICE to check it out, and we all decided that we loved it too. He’s really happy there, and so are we. </p>
<p>Just talk openly with your child about financial concerns and then see what the choices are. Because parents pay the bill, it has to be a family decision in the long run, but it also has to be a good fit for the son or daughter. By and large, it’s the first major decision your child will make in life, and it ranks right up there for the parents, too.</p>
<p>We had three kids attend excellent well known schools. It was worth every penny of it, and I would do it all over again. They have each had loans, and they all received some financial aid albeit less as the years went by. The education and the opportunities could never have been available at our state school. There is absolutely no comparing the experience, and post graduation for my three sons has been nothing short of terrific. I don’t believe that would have been the case had they attended the State U. The professors, students, education and opportunities all contributed to helping them post graduation and it also set them apart from others applying for the same jobs. In this economy with jobs so difficult to find the school and experiences make the difference. I don’t know if this was the case back when our economy was better but it does now. Of course cream will rise to the top so I am not saying that a kid coming out from a state school will not go on to do very well…that would be ridiculous. There are tons of very smart kids attending state schools but one of the differences is that there are tons of less than stellar students attending the state schools. This is what makes the difference in how classes are taught and the depth of information within a specific class. I have seen this first hand and there is NO COMPARISON. You can flame me for this but it is what it is.</p>
<p>The Dean of my son’s state flagship honors college likes to tell this story:</p>
<p>About 6 years ago one of the students accepted a full scholarship at the honors college over going to Harvard, Stanford and several other big name schools. Of course, everyone thought he was crazy - I, mean, who turns down Harvard to go to a state school?</p>
<p>Fast forward 4 years later and this very same kid is now at Harvard Medical School on full merit, having turned down full rides at Stanford and a host of other top name medical schools.</p>
<p>Another true story. I hear this first hand from the student at my brother’s graduation from UNC-Charlotte (which is basically a lower tier extension campus of UNC) 6 years ago. This young man was given the opportunity to speak at commencement: </p>
<p>His dream was to work on Wall Street. Of course, we all know that Wall Street only hires from the top schools, right? Well, one determined young man and 25+ interviews later, he announced that the week following graduation he would be starting at…Goldman Sachs.</p>
<p>On my son’s honor college page right now is a podcast from a young lady who just started at Harvard Medical a few months back.</p>
<p>The perception that a student at a top name school is afforded a lot of opportunities is no doubt correct. The perception that those from state schools or lesser known schools forgo those opportunities is absolutely false.</p>
<p>Kids who are smart and motivated will rise to the top no matter what school they attend.</p>
<p>^Yes, the cream always rises to the top—exactly what I said in post #64. However there is alot less cream at the state U’s than at the top colleges. In the current economy the kids at the Ivy’s and other top schools fair better upon graduation. I have seen this in my town with so many of the kids that my sons knew growing up. Most of the kids who went to Rutgers or TCNJ are unemployed vs the kids who attended top schools had more opportunities for internships during college and summers off. There are always going to be great students who do well anywhere but when the econmy is in the crapper the kids who have the Ivy or top school degree will fair better.</p>
Word of mouth. People I know who adjunct in these places. Experience of friends’ children.</p>
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<p>The choice is most often not between the “top” schools (USNWR top 10 in LAC or national uni category) and Rutgers. The choice often is between Rutgers and Syracuse or BU. And I have observed that students going to Rutgers do not have worse opportunities than students at those other schools. </p>
<p>Only about 100,000 students nationwide attend truly elite colleges. Most people will never be in that category. For them, the question is: what is the best value for the money?</p>
<p>Like Sewhappy, our student earned a Presidential Scholarship at her private college (approx. $15,500/ year). She must keep a high gpa to maintain scholarship. We also saved in the Maryland 529 plan (starting when she was 11) and that amount covers about half of the semester bill. We are able to pay the rest of the bill because we save a specific amount weekly in an account - it’s automatically transfered so we don’t have to think about it. </p>
<p>It looks like she will be graduating with no college loans, Lord willing. She is a junior this year. So far, so good.</p>
<p>Not only same potential but same desires. I work with lots of really smart kids at our state flagship…most with ACTs at 27 or above. Many just seem to be ‘lost’, not seeking internships or leadership experience at all. Those that do seek those things out get great jobs at graduation. The internships are there just as they are at a private school, but lots of our kids just seem to say…I don’t really care. </p>
<p>Private school grads are not getting jobs just because they went to a private/elite school. They get jobs because they are smart and seek out internships. Northwestern’s 2010 class placement survey showed 25% of Northwestern grads reported not having a job or working part-time.</p>
<ul>
<li>Saved 1/3 of the cost (started when they were wee)</li>
<li>Oldest kid went to a college where she got about 1/3 merit aid plus a few small outside scholarships</li>
<li>Paid remaining 1/3 out of pocket</li>
</ul>
<p>Kids are responsible for books & spending money, and any summer programs where they need to cover expenses (eg, unpaid internships where they live can’t live at home, they have to pay for their own expenses for the summer).</p>
<p>It worked for us for D1 (college senior at a private college), D2 is current college searching.</p>
<p>How could an employer see a student’s potential other than his/her GPA and courses he/she has taken in school. Assuming there is no grade inflation, then grade distribution should be very similar between Rutgers and Princeton, therefore employment rate should be pretty similar between Princeton and Rutgers. This wouldn’t be the case if employers think a student with 3.5 from Princeton has better potential than a student with similar GPA from Rutgers. And why would an employer think that?</p>
<p>The problem with comparing the employment opportunities of students from Princeton with students from Rutgers who rank about the same in class is that the if the Princeton student attended Rutgers he would probably NOT have the same approximate class rank; the Princeton student would almost certainly rank much higher at Rutgers. It is the reverse of garbage in, garbage out. That explains a great deal of the difference in employment opportunities.</p>
<p>I can attest to the fact that a student who does very well at a flagship state university in an appropriate major (as our hypothetical Princeton student probably would) has terrific employment opportunities.</p>
<p>Another set of parents whose first kid is going to the state flagship full-pay (mostly). Got accepted to a few privates that were comparable or maybe slightly higher in reputation, but with no aid offered and no real drive from the kid to go to either of them the state school was the better value.</p>
<p>I thought that we were saving a decent amount for the kids’ college education but if we had to pay full-ride we’d be tapping the savings and shelling out the equivalent of a large mortgage payment a month. Doable? For us, fortunately yes, mainly because we are both engineers working full-time. We’d only do that, however, if the kid really needed the experience from a specific private school and he/she really wanted to go there.</p>
<p>In all honesty I don’t know how people with middle-class incomes can afford it…but then again I don’t know how those same people can afford to buy a $500K house either.</p>
<p>My daughter graduated from Cornell in May. She and six of her friends chose to go into the workforce right after graduation (the others went to grad school or to short-term opportunities like one-year internships). All seven of the job-seekers were employed by the end of the summer. Six of the seven had their jobs lined up before they graduated, and most of them found those jobs through the university’s on-campus recruiting system. All seven kids are working in fields related to their majors and/or their long-term career plans, including the two with liberal arts majors.</p>
<p>Was their success due to their own efforts or to their enrollment at a nationally recognized university? In my opinion, it was a little of both. Most of these kids had high GPAs. (The two liberal arts majors were both Phi Beta Kappa.) Most had internships or other work experience related to their majors, and some of those internships were very prestigious. Several had completed honors theses and/or had meaningful extracurricular or leadership experiences. These are kids with ambitions, and it shows.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the school they attended was also a factor in their success. Several of them obtained jobs with companies that do not recruit at your average flagship state university (although they may recruit at the top publics, such as UCLA or UVA). And some of the internships and other opportunities that helped them look good to their first employers would not have been available to state school kids, either.</p>
<p>So both factors – the kid and the school – seem to play roles.</p>
<p>There is a disturbing amount of elitism in this discussion, especially the contention that state schools are full of less-than-stellar students who will pull down the top ones with their lower stats and slacker attitudes. My daughter is a proud student at the most economically public university in the country (ethnically diverse as well). She is surrounded by high-achieving peers who go on to do all kinds of interesting careers. She meets students of all ages from all social classes and all corners of the world, including former foster kids, veterans, and international students. In short, they are not all like her, a privileged white girl from the suburbs who had all the advantages in college admissions. I just have to say there is more to a college education than getting your kid to be one of the 1%. And what are we talking about, really? How many kids are truly choosing between Princeton and Rutgers? It’s more about choosing between USC and UCLA with no merit aid from either. They are so similar, the campuses even look alike, but one is in Beverly Hills and the other is in South-Central LA and costs twice as much.</p>
<p>I work part-time. My H works full time. We live off of his salary and devote 100% of my income to D1’s college expenses. She understood how much we could afford when she applied to colleges. So, with merit aid, we were able to swing private tuition. We didn’t qualify for FA, btw. Now S2 is HS jr looking at colleges. Since we will only have one year of tuition overlap - we will probably take out loan for S2’s first year. He knows how much merit aid he has to receive in order to go to a private. Without merit aid, we could not swing private school tuition.</p>