Our household is 2 months away from making a substantial life decision for our oldest son, which school he’ll spend the next 4 years at.
We haven’t heard back from every school yet and we haven’t received all the financial aid info either.
He’s applied to in state publics, out of state publics and both in and out of state privates.
At this point the potential COA’s range from $30k - $60k without merit aid/scholarships.
When all is said and done I expect the adjusted COA’s to range from $30k - $40k.
He has no bad choices. Some are better than others in terms of major but all would suffice. Schools range from an in state, ocean front private to a public 700+ miles away in the mountains.
My question is…how much are you willing to pay for the “right fit?” Is it $0? $2K? $10k? $30k? Why, or why not?
A question that is only worth answering within your own family and your own financial/parent-child circumstances bc no other family’s response is going to matter.
I’ve got a year to make that decision (kid is a HS junior) and I just don’t know. I am very interested in seeing what other people say. I ran into some of the pitfalls of bad academic fit when I was in college. I very much want to help my son avoid the mistakes I made, I want to avoid the mistakes my parents made. But then, he and we will probably discover new and different mistakes. I guess that’s life.
I do know that we are willing to pay more for a better place but I can’t put a dollar amount on it until I have actual, concrete offers from colleges to put on the table and weigh.
There isn’t an OOS public in the country I’d pay full tuition for, personally. And I went to Michigan, so I’ve attended one of the best m. All large publics have large classes, lots of TAs teaching, sports, etc. if your son is fine with that (and he may be), pick your state flagship.
I understand this dilemma. We haven’t heard from everywhere either and I’m half hoping the notifications make the decision easier. We are looking at cost differences ranging from $15k to $70k. We can “do” the 70k (the one that seems like a perfect fit) but when the schools are fairly equal in terms of quality, major, etc, it will be hard to accept paying so much more for fit. As long as my kid likes the 15k that’s what I think we’re going to do. My kid will understand that 55k isn’t worth it. I hope after a few weeks the fit school is completely forgotten. Some schools have summer advising weekends and pre semester retreats etc so if the 15k school has that we will pay for that to build excitement.
I think this is not only family dependent, but also child dependent. Some kids (DS) are roll with it types of kids. They will find their fit within a college. We were fortunate that DS’s top choice came back within our set budget. He could go somewhere much less expensive, but the actual academics and opportunities for internship well outweigh the additional expense over any of his other choices IMHO. For DD fit will be the top requirement. She is less adaptable and more of an introvert. If we send her to the cheapest option and it is not a fit, I do not think she will be successful or finish at the college. This could mean more expenses in the long run as credits might not transfer, it’s harder to get merit aid as a transfer and it may prolong the number of years to graduate. So fit versus costs should be considered within the context of affordability for your family and the personality of your child.
The lowest net cost we would have to pay for a public instate school, including generous grandparent money is $12,000. The highest, for the sake of fit, would be about $25,000. That’s worst case scenerio because more scholarships are pending which will be taken into consideration in the final decision.
We are fortunate so have money set aside from grandparents; otherwise, anything but the $12,000 school would be impossible and fit wouldn’t be an issue. And as far as the grandparent money goes. It’s use it or lose it.
It is very clear that D’s real fit is at one of the more expensive schools, though not the most expensive. She will take loans if she wants it enough and a competitive scholarship doesn’t come through.
Hi Time2shine – all of the above answers seem right to me.
Once you select for the general range of affordability, then you weigh the type of learning against 1) your child’s personality and learning style and 2) their major.
If my child was go-with-the-flow, able to focus despite all surroundings then I'd know that I had more leeway.
If my child was attempting to go into a major with big weed-out issues (premed and engineering) then I'd try to choose a school with smaller classes that are not taught by TAs -- because is it worth saving $10K a year if your child has to drop out of a lucrative and rewarding major because he/she has a lousy TA for a core course???
Ditto for a school that has a culture of being overly competitive among the students. Would I choose a cheaper school where the kids cut the important review pages from the text books? Or would I choose a more expensive school where fellow students work together to teach each others?
Ditto for party-hardy schools. Is it worth sending my kid to a cheaper party school where they might get distracted by Greek life and substances? Or would I send them to a possibly more expensive school where the students have fun but are mainly there to study?
Finally there’re the other campus culture issues that may arise. I would personally never send my child to a cheap school that had a strong religious component. A Jesuit school like Santa Clara – that would work for us, but never one that uses religion as a filter for what’s okay to study. Similarly I would guide my child away from a school that was heavily into politics to the detriment of a studious environment, whether that’s Oberlin and Reed with the protests or the new conservative school at U of Arizona.
I had a budget that I could pay. If D was accepted to a school that was within that budget, she could choose to attend. If not, then it was off the table. It made this decision a whole lot easier.
We have a spreadsheet so far of cost/merit/4year cost for each school. It is sobering to look at. Our range so far per year is 27K to 45K (all merit we don’t qualify for FA). Most of the big merit is at safeties naturally but there are two schools that are difficult to get into. Once we have all the information then we will make decision. It is very helpful though to have it all in your face with the spreadsheet. We are in the odd situation where about half of Ds college funds come from a trust from her grandfather. if she decides on a safety or our state flagship (not a good fit) she will have money left over for grad school or a small down payment on a house. She is a pretty frugal responsible kiddo and because of the way the college funds look the decision will impact her finances long after college. Her dad is thinking of ways to incentivize her to chose the lower cost options. We talk about how long it took us to buy a home as adults and what $70,000 per year really means. At my first job out of college I made less than half of that. Time will tell and still quite a few schools left to hear from. First world problem and a good one to have. Time will tell I suppose,
I think one other thing to consider is if the admission is direct admit to major or if there is still an application process that the student will need to go through
Pre-med is pretty much always a competitive weed-out process. Engineering depends on the school. Some schools do use a weed-out process where enrolled students must compete to get into their engineering majors, while others offer direct frosh admission to engineering majors (no worries about getting into the major, but changing major may be difficult) or have sufficient capacity in all engineering majors to allow all engineering students to freely choose or change major.
It depends on what “fit” factors are relevant to the student and different at the various schools, and how much you can afford without compromising your retirement or younger kids’ college money.
I agree that child’s adaptability and personality might make a difference in how much one is willing to pay for fit.
That said, it’s tough to tell a kid no-go on, say, great fit at Cornell @ 70k/year (don’t qualify for need based aid) vs Georgetown or Emory @ 20k/year (with merit). This is not our particular scenario but I’m anticipating that we will find ourselves in a similar one. While we can afford the better fit, I personally don’t think it’s worth it, esp given how excellent all the schools are.
“how much are you willing to pay for the ‘right fit?’”
We wrestled with this also.
I think that Solomon would have had trouble dealing with this decision. The right decision is going to depend upon each family’s finances. However, even if you can afford to spend over $60k per year, it is not obvious that doing so is sending the right message to a young near-adult learning about the world and hopefully learning a bit about economic reality. If it is $65k for Stanford versus $15k for a local community college then I could see picking Stanford since there is a compelling academic reason to do so. On the other hand, when it is $15k for McGill versus $70k for BU, it is hard to justify spending that much for BU even if you have it.
One rule that I did make: If there is an academically reasonable choice without debt, then debt is not acceptable.
We have also noticed that kids will vary enormously with regard to the extent that they themselves will want to consider the price of anything, including university.
@DadTwoGirls I quite agree with your comment about teaching them economic realities. Good point.
Truthfully, my kid understands this stuff and would accept the outcome and get excited about it (allowing for a few days or weeks of disappointment). I think it’s easier when the “cheaper” school is on par with the “fit” school and we’re really ONLY talking about fit and not quality of education or other factors. Tougher when the cheaper school is not on par with the fit for whatever reasons.
We are going through this right now. State flagship, top ranked school on list, $0 cost of attendance. Safety school, not super well known but solid and great fit, $7K/year. Then OOS flagship, somewhere in the between the two - best fit - $14K/year.
My thinking: all are great choices and a bargain considering they are a fraction of cost of attendance. But for the best fit school, does it make sense to pay $56K over four years for fit when we can pay $0 for a more highly ranked school (that kid is ‘meh’ about)?