Not wrong to want to avoid overpaying. But overpaying is in the eye of the beholder.
This is completely anecdotal, but interesting nonetheless:
Three of my Dâs peers entered college wanting to go to med school. They attended three different undergrads, and they are all rising seniors now.
- One went to Hamilton. She got certified to be an EMT right after HS, and has also gotten a lab position and good grades. She already got admitted early to a med school with no need to take the MCATs. She is thrilled.
- Another went to a SUNY, mostly on merit scholarship. She got admitted early to Upstate Medical (relatively low cost for a med school) contingent on a decent score on the MCAT (which she just took- fingers crossed on the score).
- A third went to Williams. She has had a good experience, but isnât in a position to apply to med school yet due to GPA. She plans on taking some post-bac classes and doing something else for a year or two before applying to med school.
So, is it really where you go or what you do when you are there? Williams certainly has all the bells and whistles, so maybe this student did not take full advantage and/or struggled academically. But the SUNY student certainly took full advantage of everything available to her. The Hamilton student had it all in front of her and also made the most of it. Again, anecdotal, but just shows the variety of outcomes regardless of the undergrad school.
And yet, both my kids are in privates (T20 LACS). They are exposed to classmates from across the country and world, have really well-funded opportunities, have amazing campuses, and have thankfully taken full advantage of the offerings at their schools. While they would not have had these same advantages at a SUNY (e.g. most of the student body at a SUNY is from NY), they probably would have come out just fine at a SUNY. But is it worth it to me to pay more for the privates given who my kids are and what they are studying? Absolutely. Thankfully they both got some merit, and neither wants to be a doctor, so I didnât have to consider any post-grad costs like that into the equation.
Yep, at some point, the extra you pay for for undergrad is really a luxury good.
IMO, there are some degrees where the prestige of the school really makes a difference (MBA and JD), but to a large extent, assuming that youâre smart (top 2 percentile) and driven (and if you are unhooked and can get in to an elite college, you pretty much have to be these days) and have good people (and strategic thinking) skills, if you want to make money, you will make money.
I agree overpaying is in the eye of the beholder. Also if you can afford 40k per year thatâs what you should be paying. We all need to leave the free college for those who cant afford it . If we dont we are taking advantage of the truly needy students
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My perspective on the cheaper college versus elite college is different from most of the posters. Having grown up poor, in a family that talked about going to college, but provided the inverse of financial support (my siblings and I worked in h.s. to help feed our family), I went to the nearest, cheapest state college. I worked while in college. I can remember two professors who inspired me. The college didnât even have my preferred major, but I graduated with the closest major to it. My estimate is that the lack of a suitable college education cost me six years in my chosen career. By that, I mean that it took me 6 additional years to reach a desirable level in my career, compared with peers who had good educations and had the right major.
So colleges are not all equal. My husband and I recognise this, and weâre going to send our kids to the best colleges we can possibly afford. If we were more affluent, weâd send them anywhere they wanted to go. For us, college is, perhaps, the biggest lifetime decision they can make. It likely will set the stage for their future friends, mentors, spouses, professional connections, and graduate education. Yes, colleges are too expensive. Itâs a shame, but its importance is no less.
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What is overpaying? If you have an opportunity to go to Harvard, want to go to Harvard, can afford to go to Harvard, does the fact that you have to fully pay when there are many students on financial aid, even full ride, turn your decision?
I know folks in my area who just could not bear to pay for OOS public schools because they are paying so much more than most of their peers.
But if you define âoverpayingâ as paying more than you can safely afford. Thatâs not a good idea most of the time.
@collegedad13:
âWe all need to leave the free college for those who cant afford it . If we dont we are taking advantage of the truly needy students.â
I have about as much trouble understand this viewpoint as I do if someone said that upper-middle-class families should spend a lot of money on a big house because if they decided to save money by getting a smaller older house that costs a fraction the amount, they are taking advantage of the poor.
What does your daughter want? If the apple falls close to the tree, sheâll likely be on the same page as you, which would be great. At the same time, if your daughter really wants to go to, say, Duke or Vanderbilt and you can comfortably afford to pay for it, I donât think that youâre spoiling her or wasting your money by sending her there. Especially on CC, thereâs often a lot of pressure/judgement about choosing the cheapest school, chasing merit, etcâŠbut still, thereâs a difference between paying 40K for college, which many people would consider a worthwhile investment, and paying 4K for a prom dress or a trip to Europe, which are usually considered luxuries.
To me, it depends on how the moneyâs distributed â choosing a cheaper college is worth it if it means being debt-free or saving for Mom and Dadâs retirement, but if it were a case of wealthy/upper-middle-class parents who could totally pay for their kidâs college but just didnât want to, that might be a little âunfair.â (I mean, if Bill Gates refused to pay for his childrenâs tuition, thatâs unreasonable, IMO.) Thereâs another thread where a studentâs EFC is 40K and her parents will only contribute 15K, so she canât even afford her state schools. Her parents have rental properties they wonât sell because they want the money to travel and live the high life in retirement. Is it their right to make that choice? Sure, but it doesnât seem âfairâ to me; thatâs like eating steak for dinner and feeding your kids chicken nuggets.
It doesnât sound like OP is in that situation, though. Youâve raised your daughter frugally, which is great, so itâs not like youâre springing it on her out of the blue. My parents are the exact same way (except the 40K EFC, haha), and even if I sometimes hate it, Iâm glad they raised me to value other things besides money. If Iâd been dying to attend an expensive college, they would have found the money somewhere, but I wouldnât have wanted to choose a school that put them in that position.
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This is a tough choice and there is no âone size fits allâ advice for it. Something to consider on the other side of things is that your daughter will most likely NOT be admitted to ANY allopathic med school (MD program - typically much easier to get the needed residencies/fellowships with a MD). That is just statistics and the truth. In the case she is not admitted to med school, or may want to do another program before med school (MPH, MS Phys, etc.), the name of the undergraduate institution may matter.
^ Though I would think that having the money to pay for those programs may matter as much or more.
We lived in a town with very good public schools. I opted for private schools for my kids because the quality of education was so much better. The schoolâs tuition was on par with most of private college tuitions. If I didnât pay for 2 kids from K-12 I would have a lot more money in the bank now. I felt the same about paying for my kidsâ college. I could have opted for cheaper options or have them chase merit, but I preferred to spend money on their education. It wasnât a real hardship, but it wasnât chump change to me either. It was a conscious decision on where I wanted to spend my money. Not all colleges offer the same level of education, and by paying more doesnât mean it is better. Unlike some parents on CC, I would not pay the same for lower tier schools (I do think college ranking does give one good guideline on how good a schools is), even if I could afford it. One school that comes to mind is High Point University. My kids wouldnât be able to convince me it is best fit college, because of ice cream truck, good climate, steak restaurant, and expect me to pay for it (it would be in state Rutgers for them) . To me, it would be overpaying for a Honda with BMWâs price.
@PurpleTitan my viewpoint is almost identical to all the programs that just give need based aid. Some examples of this are Stanford Harvard and Yale. Life long friends are made in college. And if one only thinks about the dollar when going to college they will most likely lose out on some golden opportunities and relationships
Also the true cost of one year of college is about 200k at a lot of schools when all costs are added in. So the concept of overpaying is not really applicable
@collegedad13, lifelong friends can and are made in many spheres.
As for the âtrue costâ, outside of the purely undergraduate LACs that conduct almost no research, cross-subsidies are everywhere at a university. STEM PhDs who donât pay anything and in fact are being paid would be subsidized more. Full-payers (especially outside of STEM who arenât taking advantage of those costly laboratories and equipment) not so much.
But if you want to believe that a school is spending $200K on your kid, sure, go right ahead.
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Bowdoin spends $92k per student per year for our $73k per year. This made us feel a little better when paying full price.
https://bowdoinorient.com/2019/04/12/how-does-bowdoin-spend-its-money/
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My daughter will be applying ED to Bowdoin this fall, so this is great information. Thanks for sharing!
@PurpleTitan Stanfordâs budget is 6.5 billion per year. If you divide that by the number of students you come up with a number in the 300k range. Stanford says 15 percent of the income comes from students. About 30 per cent of berkeleys operating expenses comes from students. None of this considers the capital costs of the building or the land. On a 40 year amortization at a low interest rate that would be at least 100k per student per year in addition to the operating costs. So college no matter where you go is pretty much a real bargain
"Well⊠The âbestâ school is the one you can succeed in, is affordable and has a good âfit and feelâ makes you happy. "
But apart from affordability, how would you about any of the other factors before you attended?
âSo college no matter where you go is pretty much a real bargainâ
Ok, 70K is not a bargain, it may be a good value, but itâs not a bargain, especially compared to less expensive colleges in the US and other colleges outside the US. I was talking to a couple of friends who went to the top schools in India (IITs), for like $1-2000 (US) per year, that sounds like a bargain!
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@collegedad13, again, there are cross-subsidies everywhere. Itâs a great thing for society that Stanford and other top unis devote a ton of money to their medical school and high-level basic science research (beyond what they get in grants), but how much do undergrads benefit from that (especially outside of STEM)? And would the undergrads that do benefit not be able to get the same benefit from a major comprehensive uni that is cheaper and has an honors college whoâs undergrads can get involved in research to the degree that an undergrad can at Stanford? Berkeley doesnât have a med school. Iâm curious what the numbers are for a school like UMich.
At a LAC, even though they donât get to benefit from economies of scale or sheer spending power, at least pretty much all the spending would be solely for the benefit of the undergrads, who would be the sole raison dâetre for their existence.
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^ BTW, UCLA has a 7.5B budget, so spending $167K per student by your formula. If youâre getting such tremendous value in a bunch of places, why maximize the amount of money that is coming out of your own pocket?
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@theloniusmonk
. Of course this is very subjective but we have had a little practice in it also. In Chicago we do whatâs called applying to selective enrollment high schools. We litterely go through a college application process including visiting different high school campuses much like college. Itâs not the same but close enough.
When visiting the schools and talking to the teachers you just get a âsenseâ of which school is a better âfitâ for your child and they do also. Hard to explain but the feeling that you belong and itâs just the right place for you. For my son it was the top state school and they way they taught math was very different then how the top 2 school did. Also it had the top students after taking tests to get in which is were he wanted to be. His âmajorâ decision was giving up playing football since the top school didnât have a team and the other school did that he would most likely start. He went for academics, in his mind. Both stellar schools. Also the more sports school just felt sterile to us. Donât know how to explain that. When talking to the school he ended up with the teachers just seemed to be more engaged and interesting.
Off to college exploration and more of the same. This didnât seem foreign to us. But to us there is just a large difference of fit and feel between his two last picks (after eliminating his acceptances of safeties or getting eliminated by some schools of interest ?)
UIUC and University of Michigan. This was almost the exact parellell to his high school choices. Both stellar schools but to my son Michigan was just the better âfit and feelâ. He again wanted to go to the school that he perceived would challenge him more. He wanted to be with higher stats kids across the university landscape not just in engineering. He is also into sports and wanted school spirit. After actually making a pro con list he choose Michigan which we are paying more for. For us, it was his best choice. He is being challenged (be careful what you wish for?) but excelling in things we couldnât even imagine. My wife went there and walking around in Michigan gear during him making his decisions didnât hurt either. I really think he felt guilty that we would be paying more for OOS but we told him we saw the worth in it.
@oldfort. We had the same experience with our kids from elementary to 12 (different school for high school) for one kid and to 8th grade for kid 2. I am not proud to spend $25,000/each/year but it was our best choice at the time. We were a few years to early having our kids. Today⊠I would to public in a heartbeat. The local schools have really changed for the better and like âeveryoneâ (not really true), goes to the local publics.
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