<p>Clg 210–beautifully said.</p>
<p>Honestly, I would be sorely, sorely tempted. My weakness. I know it hurt me, not him, when son just discarded his high cost acceptances that had no merit offers with them. Had he wanted to go to one of them, I would have so wanted to let him do so, to the detriment of our family as a whole. I am lucky that he has more common sense than I do.</p>
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<p>Sounds to me likes it’s the mom who’s concerned about the prestige even though her own experiences prove that “assorted public colleges and universities” can provide a path to success. Is this the mom’s issue or the kid’s? </p>
<p>Why is this decision being presented as binary - Cornell or nothing? A student bright enough to get accepted to Cornell doubtlessly has other options between that and waiting tables while attending community college at night. It’s affects the decision if the choice is Cornell for $250K out-of-pocket vs Michigan @ $200K OOP vs. Boston College @ $150K due to scholarship offers vs. working the drive-through at Wendy’s, (I randomly chose the other schools for example purposes only). There is an implied assumption that the OP’s other options couldn’t possibly provide the educational and social advantages that Cornell can; I have a very hard (impossible) time accepting that idea.</p>
<p>As far as the prestige argument goes, people always overlook the fact that most if not all of a college’s academic prestige flows from their graduate schools. So, while graduating from Harvard is impressive and will help you get that first job, graduating from Harvard Law or Harvard Medical School is much more impressive and will get you an even better paying job.</p>
<p>In the end it’s the parents’ money, they should spend it however they see fit. If they want to contort themselves into a financial pretzel and pay for the education great. If they also want to say “Look I made it from nothing, so can you”, I’m fine with that too.</p>
<p>The funny thing about college choice, is that it is kind of like when you buy a new car and then all of a sudden you see lots and lots of those cars. Once a student chooses a college/university, you see bumper stickers and everyone you talk to knows someone who attended there.</p>
<p>No. While I think a college education for one’s children is worth stretching for, I don’t think a “prestige” college education is. If I could easily afford it and that’s where my child wanted to go, so be it. If it was a financial hardship, even though do-able, I’d look for another alternative. There are so many good alternatives to an expensive prestigious private school that IMO there’s no need to make the stretch. My view is influenced by the fact that both DH and I went to run of the mill undergraduate schools, yet were still accepted to top tier graduate schools, received excellent educations and got the jobs we wanted.</p>
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<p>There are a lot of parents and students who regret trying to finance a private university education. Research has shown that students who are accepted to HYP and the like do just as well at other colleges. It’s difficult to imagine regretting not going into debt when your child is doing well. </p>
<p>dg210, It’s very easy to solve the so-called problem you’re speaking of. Give up the jobs and investments that enable a family to be in the top 5% of American families in financial terms and make your children eligible for financial aid. Just go ahead and join the ranks of the poor and lower middle class.</p>
<p>You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Our families income is a third of the families we are supposed to not bite the hands of yet we are middle class and had an EFC close to full freight at most universities. Instead of whining about that, I instead chose to be very grateful that we own a home, have health insurance, can take any vacation at all.</p>
<p>Lastly, the idea that it’s actually a problem that a family might have to accept merit aid at a less perfect fit school than pay full fare at a private is absurd. That is very much an enviable situation. That you fail to see that does not make it any less so.</p>
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Not sure where you are getting that idea, but it certainly isn’t “cornell or nothing”. K will go somewhere - in-state public, or private with merit aid are the other alternatives.</p>
<p>The decision is dependent on many factors, including the potential talents and interests of the young man or woman. We chose to pay full freight at MIT for our daughter, and have no regrets at all. She has been able to find paid research positions from her first year there onward, and now as a rising senior, she has a paid research position in Germany this summer and a solid offer for the summer after graduation. She has so many skills under her belt, that I believe she will easily be able to support herself with work she enjoys. Not easy in this economy. Moreover, by the time she graduates, we estimate she will have contributed around $35,000 toward her own education, so in the end the bill hasn’t been quite as painful as we anticipated. </p>
<p>On the other hand, for the past several years, our son has expressed an interest in high-school teaching and wanted to attend a liberal arts college. Although we were willing to pay for him to attend the college of his choice, we were very pleasantly surprised (and grateful, in fact) when he chose to attend the university that offered him a very large merit package. We think he’ll be very happy there, it won’t break the bank, and he will be well prepared to obtain a teaching credential, if that’s what he wants to do after he graduates. In terms of the current job market, we are far more worried about his possibilities, than about those of our daughter.</p>
<p>CalAlum, If he’s willing to move, there are a lot of states where teachers are still needed. Here in south Texas, the need is especially acute for science, math and special education teachers, at all levels. Plus the cost of living in not that high. San Antonio and Houston are growing and that shows no sign of stopping. Just something to keep in mind for when he graduates.</p>
<p>sylvan8798, It seems almost all state schools, and many private, have honors colleges. If our son had gone to UT, he was excited about attending the honors college and living in their housing. He’s attending a private college and is in their honors program which also has designated housing. </p>
<p>My only caution is to research what the schools mean when they say “honors college.” For some schools, it really doesn’t mean much. You want to be sure that the honors college will make a meaningful difference to your student.</p>
<p>“Research has shown that students who are accepted to HYP and the like do just as well at other colleges”</p>
<p>There is exactly one study that shows that students who were accepted to different universities (not just HYP) do as well in terms of income when going to “lesser” universities, using average SAT score as the proxy for “goodness” of university. The paper is NOT available free online, so I do not know how they adjusted for A. Differing majors among students who picked one or the other B. Differing employers (for ex NGOs vs private employers) C. Differing personalities etc, etc. There are other methodological issues I could think of as well, for example the assumption that “goodness” of job is perfectly measured by salary (jobs vary by fringe benefits, working conditions, etc) Also, of course, it assumes that the school with higher SAT is automatically the “better” school, which is rather different from the complex considerations of “fit” we see here. </p>
<p>I mean its a worthy data point, and one to consider, but its not the slam dunk some folks at CC seem to think it is.</p>
<p>sylvan, </p>
<p>you dont have to name the instate LAC, but could you say roughly where it ranks on the USNWR list of national LAC’s?</p>
<p>The comparison schools and financial packages are important factors to me.</p>
<p>In PA, our true state schools do not have the breadth and depth of majors as compared other schools. Our “flagship” schools are only partially state funded (Penn State, Pitt) and double the price of state schools. </p>
<p>For my family, a private with merit or a private who is generous with aid could easily be equivalent to Penn State or Pitt after all FA packages are reviewed. </p>
<p>How high is the Parent’s expected contribution? </p>
<p>Taking into account Cornell’s recent promises to match other Ivy and Stanford aid, will these parents now be eligible for any grants from Cornell?</p>
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<p>250K is <em>not</em> upper middle class. </p>
<p>2006 CBO data: <a href=“http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/income_ranges.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/income_ranges.pdf</a></p>
<p>top 10%: 98,100<br>
top 5%: 134,400
top 1%: 332,300</p>
<p>Even if you add on 10% to 2006 numbers to adjust to 2010, 250K is still top 2% in income in this country. And yes, most of those will be in larger cities with higher COL as there are not too many jobs that pay that in Wyoming. I think its hard to apply term “middle class” even with ‘upper’ added, to a subset that comprises what is the tippy top in income in the country. It would be equivalent to saying Columbia (just using as an example) is a “high average” school because it’s in the top 2% of colleges in this country.</p>
<p>We faced this exact scenario, for real.</p>
<p>S was accepted to a top-15 school. Zero financial aid was offered other than unsubsidized loans. Total cost over 4 years was estimated at around $230,000.</p>
<p>For him to attend this school school would have required:</p>
<ul>
<li>either he or we taking on in excess of $120,000 in loans + deferred interest</li>
<li>stopping saving for retirement for 4 years and taking probably $60,000 in loans</li>
<li>drastically down-grading our lifestyle - selling the house and move to something smaller in a town with lower taxes and a much inferior school system to we live now; my D at the time was a rising sophomore in HS. </li>
<li>taking money out of our retirement savings</li>
<li>selling assets which are intended to provide a good portion of our retirement income, and probably taking loans</li>
</ul>
<p>We both work full-time, working more is not a practical solution.</p>
<p>We don’t exactly live high on the hog - no expensive vacations, our house is not huge, until recently I was driving a 13 year old car, W’s minivan has 150,000+ miles on it, etc.</p>
<p>We ultimately decided we could not forgo retirement savings, didn’t want to take on huge loans for ourselves, and moving to a cheaper town with a lousy school system was unfair to our D.</p>
<p>So we let S make the choice - he could borrow the $120K, or go to cheaper school. And we <em>STRONGLY</em> recommended he pick something cheaper.</p>
<p>Which he did. And he loves it there, so he has no regrets.</p>
<p>I do, though - I still feel guilty that I couldn’t provide the top-15 education to him. But financially, it was the right decision.</p>
<p>There are two different statements “We cannot afford it” and “We could afford it, but we do not think it is the best use of resources”. The hypothetical mom does not see a difference between the two statements, in her mind both are the same and final. In my mind, they are different as one says “this is not a choice”, while the second says “this is not the best choice”. Life is full of choices.</p>
<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>
<p>The OP, IIUC said its either Cornell or a LAC offering merit money. Why do people go on and on about State schools when that is not part of the hypothetical choice? Are we so sensitized to the state vs private debate that we dont read what is posted?</p>
<p>^^^The OP said </p>
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<p>I guess maybe some of us can read.</p>
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<p>Actually they are rated under the Master’s Universities-North (top 20) but they consider themselves a liberal arts college. The other choices all still have religious affiliations except one. Hypothetical list stands at 7, including the Ivy covered thing.</p>
<p>Sylvan, my son turned down in state Cornell for a LAC with some merit money that brought it to about the same cost. He did not even consider any of the high priced schools that did not offer any scholarships. He only looked at those that were close or under our target amount that we established in terms of cost.</p>