<p>Last night my DH expressed his concern with what we are going to do if D gets into her dream school – Harvey Mudd or any private school in general. We will not get any need based help. He thinks that her prospective major- engineering should not cost more then let’s say 30K. But 60K per year is too much for engineering degree. He thinks if you are buying medical degree with this amount you will see a better returns, but with engineering degree, you just overpaying. What do you think? </p>
<p>Is it correct to assume that you are not eligible for financial aid?</p>
<p>Would paying that much endanger your household finances or cause college funding problems for any younger siblings?</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Yes. It is correct. We are not eligible for financial aid. D is our youngest child so paying that much if we continue working at our current jobs will not be impossible, but might eat up all our savings. </p>
<p>This is a question I wrestled with myself. It is applicable to any undergraduate degree. What I decided is that every degree has a range of true investment value. You simply figure out taking the money on loan and do a ROI calculation based on salary range and Voila! you have a real value. I wouldn’t recommend anyone who is doing it totally on borrowed money to spend more. </p>
<p>Then there’s the differential. I view this as a gift of the experience. If you can afford it, you have to decide how much more you are willing to pay, simply because you can.</p>
<p>In the end, we eliminated all $60k schools UNLESS SIGNIFICANT MERIT WAS POSSIBLE. We drew the line at $200k maximum expense after aid. It was easy for us though because our son understands value possibly even better than we do. He ended up at a school that is a great fit, an OOS public that’s $35k per year.</p>
<p>As a pure investment, experience gift aside, no undergraduate degree is worth a quarter of a million dollars, not even engineering from MIT. </p>
<p>No it is not worth it. Fortunately for the field of engineering, if the school you attend is ABET then you are well on your way to getting a solid education. </p>
<pre><code> Is this discusion about money only just happening at this point? After all the legwork etc?
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<p>@Alfonsia D is a HS junior. Yes, this discussion about money is happening now, since she is going out of her way to maintain the perfect GPA and trying to get a matching test score to go with it. So if she settles for a lower tier schools because we do not feel that engineering degree for 60K per year is a good investment it seems that her rigor and EC are overkill for nothing.</p>
<p>If it endangers your financial situation by eating up your savings it is too much. What if you or your husband becomes unemployed or your business takes a big hit or another major expense comes up. Are you fully funded on your retirement?</p>
<p>It’s not worth it. FYI:</p>
<p><a href=“Recruiters Favor State Colleges & Universities for Job Hiring - WSJ”>Recruiters Favor State Colleges & Universities for Job Hiring - WSJ;
<p>I dunno if it is for nought, engineering is a tough degree so my take is all the APs and IB are for actual educational purposes. Lucky the kid who just gets to decide it really isn’t worth the effort if MIT isn’t on the table. Have we all made mistakes in selling our kids on the academic dream LOL? Sure we have. Just give her your budget and tell her to work from there. This will result in self selection. If you have fanned her expectations too high, then as she is just a junior there is plenty of time to temper that. Start with the budget restrictions for sure. </p>
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<p>It won’t be for nothing. The better she does in high school, the better chance she will get merit scholarships at some of the otherwise-too-expensive colleges, and the better she will be prepared for college-level work at any college.</p>
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Could you elaborate on this? I am just curious what you consider a lower tier school for engineering. </p>
<p>@DecideSomeHow Do not have a full answer on this question yet. But the first tier in my mind will be MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd with Berkeley, UCLA, USC and UCSD to follow.I might be wrong since we are just in the beginning of this process. And also we are not completely set up on EE and CS or just CS.</p>
<p>I agree with your husband. 30K seems a reasonable return on investment especially if she ever takes a career break for family. You know, kids are so concerned about rank these days. Our neighbor’s daughter is at MIT and is completely miserable. Go to youtube and view “A day in the life of an MIT student.” It’s good that your daughter is so driven now because college will be rigorous even at the “lower tier” schools. Engineering is a practical field. You don’t need a prestige sheepskin to do well.</p>
<p>A lot of state schools are EXCELLENT in engineering. UT-Austin is ranked highly in a lot of departments, for example. I would never have paid to go out-of-state when UT was in my backyard. And back in the early 80s, I could have gone anywhere since I had good stats and was female. </p>
<p>I’ve only worked with one engineer who went to MIT, and I remember people talking about him behind his back, because he was hard to work with. Very good at identifying the problem, but not so good at coming up with a solution. He was eventually let go!</p>
<p>Look for a school that has Co-op. That would help to lower the total cost and get work experience for a jump start in career.</p>
<p>To echo what @ucbalumnus said, it certainly is not a waste. The same stats that would net an admit and no money to Cornell or Mudd will most likely be rewarded with $100k or so in Merit from schools like Case Western and RPI. It did for our son.</p>
<p>The rigor and performance should also payoff in collegiate performance.</p>
<p>If you are California residents, then $30,000 per year will pay for those UCs that you consider “first tier”, as well as many other schools after merit scholarships.</p>
<p>For my family, paying for the degree was worth it (it wasn’t 60k then, thank goodness). My son helped by earning a merit scholarship for the first two years, then we got some need-based aid when my next child started college. We saved $ for education (529 plans), got a PLUS loan, and didn’t try to find a larger house. We wanted a school like Harvey Mudd. YMMV.</p>
<p>There are “education for education’s sake” people who will pay to study philosophy with no identified job path, and on the other extreme people who consider engineering a workhorse trade, who want dollar value. Different sorts of people. I think that you will find the creativity and envelope-pushing is what defines the “top tier” and you will find that inspiration is cultural to the school.</p>
<p>Best value is a personal metric. But, you may find, if you can afford it, that the best quality of life is molded in some of the more elite institutions.</p>
<p>If going to school is more about learning a trade, then an ABET certification at the lowest cost may do the trick.</p>