<p>I have brought up this point a number of times regarding expensive, private schools: often it is the less than super academic student that is best served by them. Studies have shown that kids with like stats going to, really, any school, do just as well. I believe this is true. When you have a kid who is an excellent student, doing well in rigorous courses, balancing a tough academic schedule with some great ECs, and getting high scores on the standardized tests, s/he is very likely to do very well where ever s/he goes to college. </p>
<p>I’ve referred to a family we know whose college plan was for their kids to go to Flagship U, a large, but very fine state university, reasonably priced and affordable to them. But when it came to the third kid, he was not likely to gain admittance to that school, and even if he could, he was truly not big state school material. Even his Dad who was super gung ho about State U’s came to that conclusion. After looking at some of the less selective state schools and contemplating his going to a local college and commuting, they looked at some LACs, for the first time in their lives, and felt that was where their son belonged. Pricey, yes. Very expensive, in fact, as they got no financial aid, nor did the young man get merit money. But he did thrive there and the parents felt it was every bit worth the expense. </p>
<p>Their older kids were certainly candidates for the most selective schools in the country in terms of academic stats, but that never even came up in their college plans. They applied to State U early, and that was it. They saw no reason to torture themselves on whether they could pay the then $40K+ for private schools when $12K could do the whole thing at a perfectly fine university. They were right. 10 years later, both kids have done very well as state school grads. As they would have done, I’m sure where ever they went.</p>