I don’t view colleges the same way I view movie times or even cars. When we set the budget a few years ago (I ran the NPC’s sophomore year and felt it was too late), I didn’t say to D , “our top number is $X but you need to pick the lowest cost school” and decide she must attend the school that cost Y-$10,000 instead on $Y school when both met our budget. That would have been cruel.
It was a family process. Having a budget and allowing the child choose colleges within a budget doesn’t preclude any family discussion. D wanted and expected discussions when she was deciding on her top three finalists and then, after visiting them, deciding on the one to attend. At this point, we didn’t want D to have to discard any school because it was too expensive (except the one she already knew would be) so we set a budget at the beginning of the process. Distance, food quality, academics, learning style, personality of the student body were factors we wanted D to consider making her final decision, not cost.
Since her favorite colleges are within the budget you gave her and they’re a better fit than the less expensive school, she may be really unhappy if you make her take the least expensive one. Even if it seems to be her favorite now, it may not be once it becomes her only option. If you’re having second thoughts about the budget you set, you should tell her now so she has time to apply to some more affordable schools. It will be easier to adjust to the new budget if she has at least a couple schools to choose between in the spring.
We dealt with the “within budget but high vs low” issue in a different way. For every dollar he comes in under budget, he gets half. That makes it a team effort with a potential cash benefit for everyone.
My daughter applied only to state flagships; none were reaches and she was accepted to all, some with merit money. Like your daughter, she said she’d be happy to go to any of them. At no point in the process did she have a favorite, but she did narrow it down to two schools (which happened to be the most and least expensive of those she applied to). Over the course of 4 years there was a cost difference of more than $100,000 between those two schools. We told her it was her choice and that we would pay for whichever school she chose. However, I told her that as part of her decision-making process she should at least ask herself whether attending the more expensive school was worth over $100,000 to her. She chose the least expensive school and has never looked back (she’s graduating next spring, having had an excellent experience at her chosen school). I have no idea how much, if at all, the cost factor weighed in her decision. I felt strongly that she needed to consider it, even though we were willing and able to pay for whichever school she chose. We consider cost in just about every other purchase we make, and I didn’t see where this one was different. I also felt strongly that the decision should be hers, since all of the schools were affordable for us. I would have been very uncomfortable dictating where she had to go based on cost.
Interesting article @sax, the key point being, “Nationwide, the well-off are more likely to enjoy the amenities and expectations that encourage academic achievement.” If this is what you meant by the (indirect) advantage of wealth, then I can agree with that.
I thought (perhaps wrongly) that you and @JayDee12 were implying that Ivy kids gained admission/success due to wealthy parents writing a check or calling a connection. This is what I was disagreeing with. Article does not address that, and if anything it points out that low-income families actually get a leg-up in admissions decisions.
IMO a lot of parents my age, and OUR parents, remember a completely different era of college attendance. My tuition was $700/semester, I paid for it and my dorm through scholarships, loans (about $5K total), working during school, and working summers. That was the 1980’s.
Fast forward 30 years. I was shocked to read in a post above that a parent would wait for their child’s senior year to run NPC’s. Whaa? Those NPC’s were a big driver in how D’s list came together and evolved. I must have run 60 of them. OK maybe that’s compulsive, and may underestimate the merit aid, but why not have the data on at least the leading contenders? Worst-case. And see the patterns on the others.
Of the 9 applications that have been submitted, we have 3 that we know will be $20K or less, based on her stats and other information (one is in-state). 3 that we know will be $25-30K (possibly less), and 3 where we are watching to see the merit aid picture. I expect the sands to shift many times between now and Feb/Mar.
I didn’t run any NPCs until the fall of their senior year. One pretty much knew where she was going in the spring of junior year. She’d visited, she didn’t like it, I said pick a different school, she decided she didn’t hate it and applied. We did visit again in Sept of senior year and she loved it. Sent in an application. I don’t think I ran the NPC until after that.
The second daughter, same year, had no idea where she’d go way into the summer. She’d been thinking about a military academy, but hadn’t done a lot about it (except visit). I saw an item about a school in July, she contacted the new coach in July, visited in September, and signed her National letter of Intent 2 years ago today. I think I ran the NPC in October for the first time.
If I had another child would I do it differently? Yes, much earlier. However, I think there are many more students who don’t think about college at all until their senior year than there are who know exactly where they’re going or the type of school and certainly many don’t know the cost. None of my kids’ friends knew where they were going until the spring of senior year (except one who knew she was going to FSU since birth). None of them were as into the search as CCers are, and I think most of them would have been just as happy at one school as another. Many picked schools because their siblings attend(ed), that offered a slightly bigger scholarship, were near the beach, were near grandparents, etc.
I agree that is very typical @twoinanddone. I ran a couple NPCs at need only schools, Harvard and MIT specifically, and found we would be nearly, if not, full pay at those two so actually didn’t bother run too many more. No point. But we started the hunt for merit, an approach we figured out we would need to pursue on our own, before we discovered this website, if we were going to find affordable options. We may have missed some big award possibilities because we didn’t find CC until after my daughter had her list and applications in. We might have done a few things differently before senior year, but in the end it worked out.
I went with the best financial choice and will have enough money left over for grad school. If the $40,000 difference is available for grad school I personally would rock the state university and use the $40,000 towards the best grad school you can get into. Or use some of the surplus to study abroad.