<p>Say you were accepted to one of your super/extreme safeties and you were offered a full ride - tuition, room and board, book stipend, everything. You were also accepted to a significantly more elite/rigorous school, say in the top 30 - but it'd cost you 15k a year. Which one do you choose?</p>
<p>Major?
Grad school or no grad school?
Location?</p>
<p>All this matters</p>
<p>$15k for a top 30 school? I’d be all over that.</p>
<p>Edit: I don’t plan to go to grad school without funding, though.</p>
<p>Major: Political Science
Grad School: Yes, Law School
Location: Higher up school is in Northeast/New England, safety is in Ohio.</p>
<p>@halcyonheather - Really? I’m not going to attend any school that has a price tag of more than 10k. Some of the smaller, more elite LAC like Wellesley are telling me that my NP is like 5,000.</p>
<p>What if instead of 15k, it was 40k?</p>
<p>Depends on how much of a safety it is.</p>
<p>Also, you obviously have no idea how much the COA for most colleges is.</p>
<p>I did the stupid Net Price Calculator for all of the schools I’m applying to and they’re all either sub 10k or more than 40k. For the schools with acceptance rates between 60-85%, I qualify for large merit scholarships along with need based aid, so the estimated price is usually 0. For the big schools in Boston like BU and NEU, its usually 40k+ for the net price, since their financial aid is notoriously garbage. The smaller schools like Wellesley and Brandeis are like, 6-10k a year with everything factored in.</p>
<p>By extreme safety… I mean EXTREME safety. Schools where large portions of their students (30+%) were taken from the bottom 50% of their graduating class.</p>
<p>Depends. How tight is money for you?</p>
<p>My parents make, combined, 100k a year. We’re a family of 4. We own our house - so while I wouldn’t say we’re low income by any means or even struggling – (we actually live quite comfortably) any expense more than 10k a year would mean making some serious changes in our lifestyle. Anything more than 20k wouldn’t be feasible. </p>
<p>I don’t want to take out huge loans because I’m trying to go to law school which is another three years of tuition that I need to keep in mind. I don’t want to be 300,000 in debt by the time I’m 25.</p>
<p>Our family is facing the same decision. My HS senior son can go to the local state university for four years on a total free ride (tuition, room, board, books) based on his being a National Merit Commended Scholar. It’s a very reputable school and has a medical school, too. My son wants to be a physician.</p>
<p>He has just been accepted into Vanderbilt University (his dream school), and our estimated annual contribution looks to be just over $12K. </p>
<p>I am a single working mom with another son a sophomore in high school, so I am torn. I make about $50K/year. We already live very frugally (no cable TV, no smart phones, etc), so cutting another $12K from the family budget is going to be tough. </p>
<p>Son #1 does have a 529 account that will cover about half every year. So do I spend almost $50K on a super bright, super motivated, pre-med kid who could otherwise go free to a very decent local university? Or do I force him to give up his dream school so that his younger brother, who is less likely to score a free ride anywhere, has some money in the bank to pay for his tuition bills in three more years? #1 son would never speak to me again, seriously.</p>
<p>One minute, I am so proud and excited for #1 son that I don’t hesitate to spend the money, the next minute I’m mad because I think he is being selfish for leaving a perfectly good free ride on the table. I’m a terrible mother because I was almost hoping he wouldn’t get in to VU so he would be more inclined to take the free ride. But he wants to go to school far away, and I have always encouraged him to get out of our rust-belt, no-jobs town. I am so conflicted!</p>
<p>What if something happens to me or my job in the next four years, will he have to leave Vanderbilt, and the local free ride offer will no longer be available? Single parents loose a lot of sleep worrying about the what-ifs.</p>
<p>Help.</p>
<p>If you have the stats for Wellesley or any of the LACs you’re talking about, 5k a year is a huge bargain for a family with a six figure income.</p>
<p>If something happens to your job over the next four years it’s been my experience that the financial aid officers at a school like Vanderbilt will work with him and probably increase his financial aid package. Why do you have to contribute all of the $12k? He can contribute as well. You also assume he’ll want to be a doctor in four years. IMO a huge percent of freshmen come in as pre-med but leave as something else. Not necessarily because they were weeded out, but because they decided they didn’t like medicine, found something else they’re interested in.</p>