Is it wrong of me not to want to go to college for free?

College Search & Selection
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<p>As a National Merit Semifinalist, there are more than a few four-year colleges that would be free (often including room and board) for me to attend. I'm not really interested in any of them, though, or even the idea of taking one of them up on it. It's not that I want my parents to have to spend money on me (believe me, I will be working during college); it's just that I don't see myself seeing any value in a school that was free. I won't have worked for it, and I won't be doing anything (other than passing classes) to maintain being there. This is to say nothing of the fact that it'd likely not be a very good or selective school.</p>

<p>My friends think I'm crazy, though. What do you think?</p>

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<p>I think if you are coming up with a list of reasons to choose or reject a school, being free DOES seem a little crazy on the “reason to reject” list. I know there are people that do not see value in things that are free, but it’s not REALLY free. The cost is your SAT score, and presumably your GPA. I’m not sure if you are saying you didn’t have to work for it, and therefore it has no value, but I think the school values the numbers, and see it as valid "barter’.</p>

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<p>Yes, you are being crazy.</p>

<p>You did work for the scholarship by doing well on the PSAT and then completing the application.</p>

<p>You may be pleasantly surprised by some of these schools if you dig deeper into the Honors Programs, research opportunities, etc. There are more opportunities and work required than you may thing, even if the college is not ranked in the top 20.</p>

<p>I was able to convince my son to look at the depth at some of the schools; others the name and rep alone turned him off. For example, Liberty was thrown out immediately because of the conservative school. But he had reasons for fit of personality and not just that it provides generous merit. Will he take a generous NMF merit? I won’t know until spring, but I do know that we as parents have financial constraints and other kids. I won’t take a large loan or co-sign unless he can convince me it is worth the dollar difference.</p>

<p>The VALUE of the free school is that it provides financial freedom down the road. You can spend the savings on grad school or staring a small business. </p>

<p>Do you feel the same way about a school like USC that offers half tuition merit?</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t call it elitist to dismiss a full ride, but I wouldn’t squander NM money either.</p>

<p>For example, I will not apply to the big NM recruiter schools, but I will apply to Northeastern and Fordham for their full-tuition scholarships. </p>

<p>Longhaul’s suggestion seems to be the best compromise between top education and NM aid. I vaguely recall that you dislike the Midwest, so it isn’t your fault that many of the full rides are from that region. </p>

<p>Perhaps, use your semifinalist status as a safety, but don’t feel obligated to aim low.</p>

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<p>I think your logic is flawed… that said, I can see how you might not end up at a college with a full NMF scholarship. My D2 is NMSF this year as well, and probably won’t go to a school with a significant guaranteed NMF scholarship. HOWEVER, I can afford to send her to a full price school with no loans even if she does not get any merit aid.</p>

<p>If your parents are not in the same position, you may want to consider some things:

  • Depending on your major and plans post-graduation, you could end up debt free if you go to a “free school”. If you have plans for post-graduate education in an area that costs (eg, humanities, med school, law school, etc.), that is a very valuable asset. You will have “earned” it through strong test scores and hard work in high school, IMHO.
  • Some schools offer partial NMF scholarships (eg, USC is 50% tuition, as mentioned above). You may be a very good candidate for signficant (although not guaranteed) merit aid at other schools as well if you have NMF type statistics and a good GPA. Some of them may be more to your liking than the “free” schools (that is certainly the case for my D2). That is a middle ground between the free schools and full pay.
  • If you don’t get any scholarship money, you are going to be asking your parents to spend (or borrow) a ton of money for you even if you are working. A student can typically earn a max of $5,000-$6,000 with VERY diligent work hours, an excellent summer job, etc. That barely makes a dent in a $55,000 a year school.</p>

<p>Ignore your friends, this is a decision for you and your parents to make. Your friends are not spending the money or going to college for you. Tune them out.</p>

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<p>^ Read this…</p>

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<p>If you want the experience of working, you can go ahead and work during college. Just contribute your earnings to your own Roth IRA instead of to your university’s general fund.</p>

<p>The amount you / your parents spend for your education does not impact the ability of that education to help you reach your goals. If you don’t have a reason to attend college already, you probably shouldn’t bother.</p>

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<p>it’s just that I don’t see myself seeing any value in a school that was free. I won’t have worked for it, and I won’t be doing anything (other than passing classes) to maintain being there. This is to say nothing of the fact that it’d likely not be a very good or selective school.</p>

<p>???</p>

<p>I don’t know which schools you’re talking about, but if your major is a challenging one, you won’t be skating by in classes.</p>

<p>I have two sons…one took a large NMF scholarship (nearly a free ride) and the other was given 3 scholarships that combined to be nearly a free ride. One was a math major (now in a PhD program) and the other Chemical Engineering (now applying to med schools). I can guarantee you that their undergrad challenged them and demanded a lot of hard work from them. </p>

<p>I’m not saying that you must/should take the free ride or other big NMF scholarships, but you’re very wrong if you think you won’t be challenged at those schools.</p>

<p>What schools are you talking about and what would your major be?</p>

<p>It’s not that I want my parents to have to spend money on me (believe me, I will be working during college</p>

<p>this is fine, but be realistic. The money you’ll be earning will likely go for “day to day pocket money” and maybe books. Your earnings won’t likely be making a dent in some school’s $60k COA.</p>

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<p>To be clear, I would be getting significant financial aid from any other school I would be going to because of our income bracket and probably picking up some scholarship money as well, or else I wouldn’t go - it just wouldn’t add up to full-ride-level money. My parents and I have already agreed that neither of us should have to take out egregious loans. So this isn’t really an issue of $60,000 vs. $0.</p>

<p>Another thing is that I just don’t want to go to a college that I don’t really want to for no other reason than saving a bit of money - especially if this would necessitate naming it as my first choice on my NMSF account. That would just be lying.</p>

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<p>There are many schools that offer scholarships to high stats students and many more that offer considerable need-based aid for them (if they get accepted).</p>

<p>My suggestion is to find a free school you like the best and use them as a safety. Then apply where you like and see what happens. Don’t fall in love with any school (since finances are an issue), but rather, openly consider all offers once you have them in. Visit the schools you like that end up affordable. THEN make your decision - not now. You may, or may not, find a school you like better than your safety that is reasonably affordable. You DO NOT want excessive loans for yourself or your folks. IMO, no undergrad school is worth that (excessive meaning total debt of upper 5 digits or higher).</p>

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<p>Do you have any idea what you want to major in? And do you plan to pursue post graduate studies? </p>

<p>As others have said, you don’t have to make this decision now. I think you have until spring to name your #1 school for NMF, so that can wait. But I do think it is important that you look at each school that offers significant NMF aid and really see what they can offer YOU. You may be surprised that you find a school that is a better fit than what you currently think is your ideal school. </p>

<p>If you know (for absolute sure) that you will already qualify for significant financial aid, and scholarships, then by all means, apply to your dream school. Apply to a couple of them. But remember that admission to any elite school is not a sure bet for anyone. As another poster said, try not to fall in love with any school.</p>

<p>Look at your college education just like you were looking at any other major purchase. Shop, compare, contact students at the school, even “test drive” by attending a few classes. Don’t pay for a Mercedes because you like the hood ornament better and it comes in a color you like if someone is willing to give you a top of the line Audi for free. It does not make sense. </p>

<p>It will make even less sense for you to pay anything significant for undergrad if you plan to go to med school, or you plan post graduate studies. Some schools offer a 4+1 or accelerated Masters degree that you may be ableto earn under the NMF scholarship. Look for those schools as well. It is another way to save big money in college.</p>

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<p>Don’t reject them outright just because they offer aid. Instead, look at what they offer, and consider whether you would have applied there if they didn’t offer merit aid. My D will be applying to a variety of schools, some with good merit aid, some with none. Together we have rejected almost all that offer significant National Merit scholarships, not because of the money or because the perception of not being a top school, but because they won’t be a good fit for her. </p>

<p>Ignore the money for the moment. Would these schools have even been on your radar if they didn’t offer aid? If the answer is yes, then give them a good look before you move on. But don’t accept their offer just because it’s there. Take the best fit among what you can afford.</p>

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<p>Ignore the money for the moment. Would these schools have even been on your radar if they didn’t offer aid? If the answer is yes, then give them a good look before you move on.</p>

<p>I don’t necessarily agree with that. There are a number of schools that would not likely ever be on most students’ radar if they didn’t offer substantial merit. However, the merit offers got the students’ attention, they investigated, and the students found a very good choice.</p>

<p>I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “I never would have considered X school if it weren’t for the scholarships offers, but after visiting, it’s now one of my top choices.”</p>

<p>I think this student just has a wrong premise. He thinks that a school that offers a large scholarship will be easy. Well, maybe that’s true if the school is very lowly ranked and offers few big scholarships, so only a few kids on the campus would have his stats.</p>

<p>However, if a school offers lots of merit scholarshps for high stats, then the school will have a large number of high stats kids on campus. It’s no secret that high stats kids tend to be concentrated largely in about 10-15 majors, so if the OP chooses a challenging major, then his classmates will have stats similar to his. High stats students typically are not spread out evenly amongst a school’s 100+ majors. </p>

<p>For instance my kids’ undergrad enrolled about 600 frosh this fall with full tuition scholarships. The school also enrolled over 200 NMFs this fall. It also enrolled a few hundred students with 2/3 tuition scholarships. Those ~1000 frosh are largely enrolled in about 10-15 majors…Engineering, Math, Bio, Chem, Physics, Business, Econ, the Classics, Nursing, etc. There’s no “dumbing down” going on in their classes.</p>

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<p>I don’t think that there are enough National Merit Semifinalists, or that enough of them will have you guys’ mentality, that the schools will be crawling with SFs.</p>

<p>It’s also not just that I’m not convinced it’ll be challenging enough; another thing is that I don’t want to feel like I’ve worked my butt off in AP and honors classes to just go to a nonselective school anyway (that I’d still have gotten into if I’d just taken BS classes and gotten bad grades but been an NMSF). It kind of invalidates the idea that hard work pays off. I realize that a feeling of accomplishment at a selective college may not be worth the thousands of extra dollars, but I might just end up transferring if I went to one of these schools for free, and I sure as hell wouldn’t get much money then.</p>

<p>Oh, and a lot of these schools are sports schools, which I generally don’t like, so…</p>

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<p>If you had bad grades, you possibly would not be NMF (only NMSF) and this not eligible for some of these scholarships. Nor would you be as well prepared to excel in college (which is as much the point of the hard work as anything else, I assume). Also, your NMSF status may very well be a result of a lot of that rigorous classwork.</p>

<p>I think you are kind of spoiled… if a free college education isn’t payoff for hard work in today’s world, then you have a pretty warped perspective. As I said above, I can see some reasons why you would possibly choose other schools, but it does not sound like your family has a lot of financial resources. A lot of kids don’t have the options you have and don’t have any money.</p>

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<p>Happykid landed a scholarship that made two years of community college almost free. When she got the letter, she danced around the living room singing “I’m going to college for FREE!!”. Could we have paid for it, of course! However, two years free means she will finish at her 4-year school with significantly less debt, she could be very picky about the kinds if paying jobs she took, she could concentrate on her classes and career-related opportunities, and she could blow a year’s worth of earnings on a trip to Europe with her pals. All I had to chip in for that trip was the gas to get her to the airport and back.</p>

<p>Going to college for free or at least for cheap gives you a lot more options. Don’t discount those options just yet.</p>

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<p>I don’t think that there are enough National Merit Semifinalists, or that enough of them will have you guys’ mentality, that the schools will be crawling with SFs. <<<<</p>

<p>I didn’t say that these schools would be crawling with NMFs. I said that schools that give lots of merit scholarships will have lots of kids with high stats. At my kids’ undergrad, there are over 600 NMFs on campus, plus many, many more with full tuition scholarships. </p>

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<p>Based on WHAT evidence?? I think you’re just wishing this were true to justify your thinking. </p>

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<p>I think you’re confusing the issue. If you had been lazy thru high school, then you wouldn’t be able to do well in a challenging major at one of these schools. For instance, if you were an engineering major, do you think you could do well in Cal I, Cal II, Cal II, Dif Eq I, Dif Eq II, Physics I, Physics II, Gen Chem if you had been flakey in high school??? Seriously??? If you think you could, then you really have no clue about what these schools offer/require of their STEM students. </p>

<p>What is your major?</p>

<p>What are your test scores and GPA?</p>

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<p>

  1. Your hard work is paying off with a merit scholarship!</p>

<ol>
<li><p>This is a good example of a sunk cost. The costs you incurred in high school are sunk and unchangeable. They are irrelevant to the decision at hand.</p></li>
<li><p>Again: you should have a reason to go to college. Try to find an affordable school that will help you achieve that goal. I hope you are not just expecting “a feeling of accomplishment” from your education.

What is a sports school???</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>^^thank you for taking the words out of my mouth, intparent.</p>

<p>My D is now seriously considering two schools would never been on her radar if it were not for their merit scholarship program, Bama and UAH (thanks mom2collegekids!!). She’s an outstanding, hard-working student & recently was designated a national Hispanic scholar. Thanks to the scholarship, her safety is no longer our local university (a good school but not “away”). We’ve discussed college for a few years now and I told her the same thing my dad told me about high school and college: S
A school is what you make it. Aim for the stars but know that opportunity is around you wherever you go.</p>

<p>I’d reiterate the advice given above:

  • graduating debt free affords you the opportunity to go to grad school with less financial pressure (or work somewhere because you want to, not because you have to pay off student debt)
  • If you want to work, then work! Sock all your money in a Roth IRA, help your parents, save for grad school, support a charity, start a company, whatever.
  • you should be grateful there are opportunities afforded to you regardless of whether you had family who could afford to pay your way or your academic dedication and hard work have helped you to score well on tests and maintain a high GPA. You do sound needlessly elitist and it makes it seem like you are saying “you get what you pay for” somehow cheapening the level of education provided.</p>
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<p>So if Harvard gave you a full ride you’d say thanks but no thanks? You’d say, I don’t see value in your free education?</p>