<p>Please help list the reasons my husband and I should find money to pay for our son to attend U Chicago over paying in-state tuition at UVa (Echols) or W&M (Monroe, possibly 1693 Scholar). I know Chicago is a great and higher-ranked school with wonderful, intellectual students and excellent research opportunities, but is it worth an extra $30,000 (plus) a year? I should mention that our son is not set on a specific major yet (talks about Econ but I don't think he really knows), but is likely to continue into grad school and is a driven, intense student. I don't see him going into a high-paying career after college; he seems more service-oriented at this point, but who knows. Thanks!</p>
<p>Depends on him. If he wants to spend the money and later on earn it back as an investment, it’s a million dollar plan. U Va and W&M are equally recognized and prestigious too. </p>
<p>If it were my son, I’d tell him to go to UVa or W&M (both great schools!!) on the in-state tuition and save his money for grad school. </p>
<p>Getting accepted to UChicago is an achievement. Choosing not to go there could be regrettable later in life. To each, it’s own. </p>
<p>I think it would be the rare student with specific needs not met at the State University / College which could justify another $30 K / year to go to UChicago in lieu of UVA or W&M, especially with named scholarships. Plus you have the added difficulty of getting from your home in VA to Chicago. Unless you’re in the DC vicinity, that trip will not be trivial.</p>
<p>I will add that the statement above is how I would approach the problem. Your situation might be different. For example, cost might not be an issue for your family, in which case UChicago might be the choice for you and your son. FYI I am a parent of a UChicago first year from TN.</p>
<p>I have a D at UChi (happily) and have a different POV. UChi has a specific student body whereas I would expect a broader range at UVA and W&M. Your son will have a different experience there from the other two. If your son is that type of student, UChi is awesome. I’m not judging that one is better than another, just saying, that Uchi is right for a certain type of student, but it is definitely not for everyone. If your son wants a mainstream experience, then the other options are probably better. PM me if you want more details.</p>
<p>We faced a similar dilemma, and wound up deciding to pay for the University of Chicago. It was a pretty expensive decision – it accorded with our family’s values, and we could afford it (sort of), but I wouldn’t force it on anybody else. In our case, there was a strong issue of sibling equity. We were already paying for Child #1 to go to Chicago, and Child #2, who had worked harder and been a better student than #1, if anything loved it more than #1 did. He also knew perfectly well that the issue would never have been raised had he been accepted at either of the colleges where he qualified as a legacy, and which he saw as not clearly superior to Chicago. In the end, it was really difficult to tell him that his “reward” for doing everything right and getting a huge merit scholarship at a great university he didn’t love was not to be allowed to go to the same college as his sibling. He agonized about it, too – he knew life would be a whole lot easier if his college cost a whole lot less. </p>
<p>We don’t regret the decision – as I said, we were able to handle it, and we couldn’t be happier with our kids’ educational experience at Chicago. It was great having them at the same college and on the same schedule for a few years, too (but, honestly, not six-figures great).</p>
<p>What Chicago has going for it is an unmatched atmosphere of rigorous intellectual inquiry and rigorously civil debate. Demagogues and sloganeers are really not welcome. Evidence is required. People actually listen to one another and change their minds based on what others say. Pretty much everyone is deeply engaged in their studies, and interested in hearing what their friends are studying. When my older child did her first visit to friends at other schools, her main reaction was, “I can’t believe none of my friends and their new friends feels comfortable talking about their classes in public. Nobody does it, or they do it in secret, with just one person. I would go nuts if I had to live by those rules. I love TV, too, but it’s not the only thing worth talking about.” And her comment a couple of years after graduation was, “[My Chicago roommate] and I are still adjusting to how little actual intellectual curiosity there is in the real world. Apart from our Chicago friends, the only group that’s reliably interesting to talk to is the kids from Yale. Of course there are interesting people from other schools, but onesies and twosies.”</p>
<p>Alicejohnson:</p>
<p>Outside of JHS helpful post, here’s the 2014 payscale ranking:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-roi/full-list”>http://www.payscale.com/college-roi/full-list</a></p>
<p>Look! UChicago jumped up 89 spots in just one year! (from #243 in 2013 to #154 in 2014.) How do you explain that? Also, Duke, at #39 is behind Touro College and Lafayette College. How do you explain that? </p>
<p>So… keep going with your analysis alicejohnson. For the portion of students payscale tracks (the minority at both chicago and duke) why is uchicago ranked so low - 100 spots lower than cornell? Provide some accounting for that. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but Payscale’s methodology makes it next to useless. By excluding anyone with a graduate degree, it excludes about 90% of the graduates at Chicago and at many of the Ivies. In the end, it’s really only measuring people who get engineering jobs (0 at Chicago without graduate school), people with temporary jobs, and people working in finance, consulting, or marketing (also not so popular at Chicago). Maybe a few journalists, too. </p>
<p>In my college class, I hardly know anyone without some sort of graduate degree. Even the ones who joined the family business got additional degrees at some point. The only people I know who avoided it are a handful of journalists (three of them Pulitzer winners) and some authors. One person who worked in theater management and now runs a theater-oriented foundation. They are all pretty interesting people, but they are hardly representative of the careers my classmates have had.</p>
<p>My daughter has a great job at a white-shoe foundation in Manhattan, with excellent pay and benefits, but she’s out of the Payscale numbers because she got a MAT at Fordham while she was in Teach For America.</p>
<p>I fully believe that Duke graduates, with more engineers, and more finance bootlickers, make more money in the years immediately after college without getting additional degrees than Chicago graduates, on average. Anyone who really wants to make a decision on that basis should probably go to Duke. Please.</p>
<p>My D will be attending UChicago in the fall. She was also accepted to UCLA and Berkeley. The ONLY reason she is attending Chicago rather than staying in-state is that she has wealthy GP’s who are willing to pick up the difference. I’m an upper income professional, but with three other kids behind D and no FA in sight, I could not afford to send her to Chicago on my own. UVA and W&M are both awesome schools. If attending UChicago would create a financial hardship, I say go with UVA or W&M. (My D was also accepted to W&M and I would have been thrilled for her to attend if she hadn’t been accepted to UChicago, UCLA, or Cal.)</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for these replies - I’ll add them to the discussion we’re having as a family and we’ll keep you posted!</p>
<p>Please take this quote from a post by Unalove in 2008 to your family discussion:</p>
<p>“Chicago will teach you how to learn. It will also teach you how to think, how to read, how to write, and how to defend your ideas. It is these skills that are honed in any major here and are transferable to any career field.” </p>
<p>Employers understand perfectly well the value of this training. It’s worked very well for S1 in the 2 years since graduation while working in a field only marginally related to his majors.</p>
<p>^^^^ This. Chicago is a school for the student who loves to read, think, write, and speak. There is no hiding in the back of the class in this school. With 5 quarters under his belt, S has not bought a single textbook, including for his core science classes (he shared one online for math) nor has he taken a Scantron test. His syllabi for core classes and a range of humanities and social science classes have been heavy on philosophers and theorists. He has never had a class over 50 people and those that approached that number always broke into smaller once-a-week discussion groups. His least favorite professor thus far was a big-name guy in the History department; his most favorite and enthusiastic and available have been graduate students. I know there are ongoing reports about name recognition or the lack thereof (i.e. University of Illinois at Chicago?) but, not only has that not been our experience, we always get some version of “whoa wow” whether in word or gesture. (Caveat: we are in a fancy suburb outside NYC). I believe S’ success in getting two wonderful internships this summer in education policy are in part due to what is conveyed by the name of his school on his resume. Yes, we have drunk the Koolaid. If I have a complaint, it is that in S’ case, advising has been virtually non-existent and completely impersonal and unconcerned. I don’t think he’s missing anything there, but sometimes wonder what a good adviser could do for a student.</p>
<p>Edited to add: S came by his internships independently; I get the sense that the school’s career placement office is OK for the city of Chicago and less so anywhere else.</p>
<p>I am a UChicago student.
In my opinion: No, UChicago is *not<a href=“strong%20emphasis!”>/i</a> worth 30k a year more than UVa. There’s nothing in life that he won’t be able to accomplish for having gone to UVa over UChicago, and it’s not exactly like UVa is a bad place to be. </p>