<p>My parents have several very successful friends who went to colleges that almost anyone could go to. Compared to 20 years ago, does the prestige of the college today matter more than it used to? It seems to me like it does.</p>
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That’s opinion, not fact. Do you have evidence suggesting that your parents will break even on the investment in a more expensive school.
I would like to see a citation for these claims.
You think the school is “amazing” enough to be worth the additional money. Your parents obviously don’t. Why are you right?</p>
<p>Coe,
Ummm, you are assuming that the options we parents face are a beach house/Mercedes/early retirement or college tuition. It’s not that black-and-white. </p>
<p>We don’t have a beach house or expensive cars, and my DH has no thoughts of retirement. We have lived frugally our entire adult lives to give our kids a choice, and our kids seem to have avoided that entitlement mentality. The financial burden for college is STILL huge.</p>
<p>You may find that it is in your best interests that your parents save for retirement. That way they won’t be a burden to you when your children demand the big bucks for MIT, et al in 25 years or so.</p>
<p>I think all parents that are middle class and above should have at least 20k a year saved to pay for their child’s education. That is definently enough to suceed and get a solid job. But past that amount, I agree with everybody else that it is the parents choice. You are still the same person no matter what college you go to and will still have the same potential. I have realized that my parents probably want a nicer house after living here since I was born. But if my parents had to pay 200k for 3 kids, it would be really hard to afford a million dollar house, which I know they want. Also, what if I decide to go to graduate school? That’s even more money. Since I do not see double the value in a really expensive school compared to a regular one, I am really becoming convinced that this is probably not a good option for me. But I still plan to apply to a lot of schools.</p>
<p>Twins,
remember that when you have children (not a criticism). Many parents make the mistake of not saving at all for their kid’s college education. You’re already learning some things about paying for college. The ideal situation is to start when they’re born and save consistently. Along the way, you may have to make decisions- should I upgrade to a bigger house or “better” neighborhood? Should I send my kid to an expensive summer camp or put that money in the college fund? What type of vacation can I afford? What type of car can I afford?</p>
<p>For our family, we’d much rather fund our kids college education than have a million dollar house…but we don’t live somewhere where million dollar homes are the norm, such as certain parts of California. We’d much rather fund our kids education than have a second home (assuming we could only do one). For me, if someone has a kid who got into Princeton but told him he had to start at a community college and then transfer to a fourth tier school so the parent could buy a beach house and a boat, I would consider that misplaced priorities, but that’s me. As far as retirement goes Coe, it depends on what age the parent is retiring. If it means retiring at 50 vs 57, then I would work those extra years, assuming I’m able. Now if it’s 70 vs 77, that could be a different story.</p>
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I work for a major consulting firm and hired a graduate of Colorado State over a Dartmouth grad. It’s about the person.</p>
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<p>We’re parent of going to be Sophomore DD who is doing engineering at $52K/year fully paid by us. We are in a very high cost area and in the same range as your parent so didn’t qualify for any FA even though the college has a very generous FA policies. </p>
<p>We are paying the expenses from our current income, which uptill now have worked fine.</p>
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<p>Oh My Goodness. Please print out this thread and look at again when you are over 35. I have no polite words for this attitude.</p>
<p>I meant 20k a year for 4 years of college, so 80k overall. So over 18 years, that would be only like 5 k of savings per year.</p>
<p>It sounds easier than it is, Twins.</p>
<p>Twins, how did you get this 80K figure? It that per kid? What about families with 2 or 3 kids? Do you really think that most parents can save 80K, 160K or 240K just for higher education, not considering housing, transport, taxes, food, medical care, retirement (so they’re not moving in with you later), etc.?</p>
<p>Not to mention that 80K won’t even cover 4 years (room, board, tuition) at our in-state flagship, Rutgers.</p>
<p>Actually you sound very thoughtful and mature, and I appreciate the struggle you are going through. But MD Mom (above) is correct.</p>
<p>Twins, wanna know where my kids’ college funds were going when they were small? I was paying $15k+/yr. for day care for two kids fifteen years ago. (That was after being home for a couple of years with babies.) I didn’t clear much after taxes and day care, but it did keep me economically viable so now I can help pay for college.</p>
<p>$5k/yr of savings in after-tax funds = about $7,500 in pre-tax salary. I’m not saying that saving $5k/yr for college isn’t an admirable goal, but when you are trying to save for a house, pay for day care/forgo a salary so one of you can be home with the kids, put something away for retirement and pay off student loans, it’s hard to find that kind of money left in the budget. Life happens. Cars break down. People lose jobs. Someone gets injured or seriously ill.</p>
<p>^^^:But I thnk Twins127 is not wrong here, a small planning go a long way as far as education is concerned. We’ve paid upto $35K for DD k - 12th grade schooling and still manage to save for DD college and it was just because of litlle planning 15 years back.</p>
<p>I maintain that it is not how much you make but how you spend is the key to financial success.</p>
<p>POIH, I do agree with you, and Twins is right that saving from the get-go is a good strategy. </p>
<p>My point was that there a lot of demands on income when one is raising kids, no matter how assiduously one saves. We are wickedly good at saving – but not all of our savings gets earmarked for college. There will be no inheritances from our parents, so whatever we have is from our own efforts. I was out on medical leave (with no disability income) for five years and have ongoing significant medical bills. I went back to work PT when S1 left for college so we could borrow less. So, while we don’t have the college kitty we’d hoped to have, our frugal lifestyle insulated us from the financial morass that serious illness can bring to a family. </p>
<p>We took the position that we would make the money work wherever our kids wanted to attend. We had the flagship covered for both, with the assumption they’d have on-campus jobs and take some Staffords to have skin in the game. Had they both chosen the flagship, we’d be in terrific shape. 
They lived up to their end of the deal, so we are living up to ours. We will get some FA for the time both are enrolled in school. </p>
<p>It’s still bleepin’ expensive, even if we are thankful we can do it!</p>
<p>I guess I did not take into account private k-12 schooling. My public school is very good, but if you lived in a bad area, private schools would cost a lot. For example, one of my neighbors spent 10k per year in high school for their two really smart kids (probably close to 100 thousand total). But both of the kids now go to a community college. This really does not make sense to me because of our great local public schools.</p>
<p>But I still think any smart/responsible parents with one/two solid jobs, should be able to save that much even if it is hard. It is just so unfair to your child if you don’t. Although I guess if your child does not try in school, it is up to you whether to pay for college. With problems such as really high medical expenses, I could still see how even smart and responsible parents could not be able to affor this much. Someone at my school had to get some operation that was around a half of a million dollars. If the parents’ income is just to low to save that much, the child should be able to get financial aid if they try hard.</p>
<p>“It is just so unfair to your child if you don’t.” I don’t buy this and this is why. There are hundreds of great schools in this country. Some young people who are brand-obsessed, seem to think that going to Big-Name, Big-Money College is going to give them huge advantages in life. Hard working kids who go to their flagships do well. My guess would be that a degree from the state flagship would be better than the big name schools once you get off the coasts a bit.</p>
<p>One of the bigger problems today is that what many parents used to do is say that they would pay what the state school costs are. If a child wants something else, it’s on them. Today, a state school costs about $20k, but a private school is $50K+. It is tough to make up that $30k difference because the tippy top schools don’t give merit aid and the upper middle class family will not qualify for need based. It’s a dilemma.</p>
<p>I remember my dad, with his 8th-grade education, making fun of the college boys who worked at his company during the summers. A Big-Name college education is almost a novelty in many areas of the country. “Oh, so you graduated from Big-Name, big deal, what can you do?”</p>
<p>My feeling is that parents should do whatever they can to help their children get a degree from an accredited college or university provided that said children hold up their end of the bargain. That may mean that the kids start at a community college to save money, live at home, work, try to get merit scholarships, or take out small loans.</p>
<p>Anything beyond that level IMO qualifies as a gift because the differences in quality are primarily subjective. That isn’t to say that all schools are the same, but the parents deserve the right to decide for themselves whether an “upgrade” in school quality is worth additional money.</p>
<p>I’ll admit to not having read the entire thread so forgive me if this point has already been made. To the OP, as I see it you’re trying to make a decision with incomplete information. First of all you’re assuming that you will be accepted at Northwestern (or whatever other expensive schools you have on your list), that is not a small assumption. Second, you are assuming that you will not receive any financial aid; while your parents income level seems to make it unlikely, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that you might get some money, thereby altering the gap between your schools.</p>
<p>Your list of schools needs to include the standard safety-match-reach from an academic and financial perspective. Maybe you’ll get accepted to NU with money, making your goal achievable or maybe it will be with lots of loans that you will have to bear, making it uncomfortable. Maybe you’ll get accepted with no fin-aid making it painful and likely impossible, but then that’s why they’re called dream schools. Until you know where you’ve been accepted and what your aid packages are or aren’t, this discussion is somewhat premature.</p>
<p>Finally, if you haven’t figured it out yet, telling parents what they “should” do for their kids is a lot like tap dancing in a minefield, entertaining to watch but likely to end poorly.</p>
<p>““It is just so unfair to your child if you don’t.” I don’t buy this and this is why. There are hundreds of great schools in this country. Some young people who are brand-obsessed, seem to think that going to Big-Name, Big-Money College is going to give them huge advantages in life. Hard working kids who go to their flagships do well. My guess would be that a degree from the state flagship would be better than the big name schools once you get off the coasts a bit.”</p>
<p>I meant it is unfair if you can’t pay the 20k for the state school.</p>
<p>I actually only think my chance of getting into Northwestern is like 50 percent, so this is a little premature. But, if I don’t make it in, my choice becomes a lot easier. Because my stats are nothing that special, I still do not see myself receiving aid.</p>
<p>Twins, a little bit of a fact check for you here – not to deflate you, but to point out that some research on the schools to which you want would apply may help you in creating a list that gets you where you want to be, academically, financially and personally.</p>
<p>You need to see which schools offer merit $$ and which ones are need-based only. My recollection is that Northwestern does not offer merit aid. Your stats will have nothing to do with getting FA at a school that offers need-based money only.</p>
<p>Also note that Northwestern’s acceptance rate is <em>considerably</em> lower than 50% – for someone to have a 50/50 shot of acceptance, one would have to have a pretty great application package. Admission to some schools within a university may vary (Cornell, CMU and UMD are three that I’m familiar with), depending on the program.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/northwestern-s-class-of-2014-s-acceptance-rate-drops-4-percent-to-record-low-1.2213641#2[/url]”>http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/northwestern-s-class-of-2014-s-acceptance-rate-drops-4-percent-to-record-low-1.2213641#2</a></p>