<p>I know a family that lives near South Bend. I believe the D graduated as the ND valedictorian. Younger S chose a generous scholarship package at Texas A&M. Both are fine people that are ecstatic with their choices, and felt that they made no compromise.</p>
<p>Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>Hi,
A year ago, I was in your shoes struggling with the concept of spending $90K more for our daughter’s undergraduate degree to go to her dream school Notre Dame. She also considered many private schools that gave her full rides. She was a NMF. Marquette, Madison, U of I, and many other schools were cheaper options. There was no way it seemed “smart” to sent her to Notre Dame and make the huge financial sacrifices to get her there. She received several small private scholarships she applied for, and interviewed and received a $5K a year Notre Dame club scholarship. Then came the aid letter. It was still quite a stretch. Notre Dame was more generous than Northwestern, but it was a huge jump from her other options.
After much prayer and soul searching, we decided to make some major financial sacrifices and send her to Notre Dame. In our minds this has been the best decision we could make. She has loved every minute of Notre Dame, academically and socially. We hope a degree from Notre Dame will pay off later when searching for a job. Visiting her on campus, being a part of the Notre Dame family, it is a very special place and a very special community.
What will I say 3 years from now? Was it worth the sacrifice? Only time will tell. But as she finishes her freshman year, we all know the decision we made for our daughter was best for her.</p>
<p>This was a tough decision for many hear as well as for us. I have to say that in our case we did not get anything from ND even after appealing. Because of that although it has been very hard my D chose a school that gave her a substantial academic scholarship. She had several school give her a full ride and she chose one that gave her a bit less than a full but still a substantial amount. We have also prayed very much during this process and hope we made the right decision. In today’s very uncertain economic times, paying100% for ND was too great a risk. My D will always be Irish at heart and congratulations to all of you that were able to make tbe finances work.</p>
<p>That seems like a sound decision, even though I’m sure it was a very hard one. Good luck to your daughter.</p>
<p>Thank you. That makes me feel a little better. It has been very hard. I pray for the best.</p>
<p>In my mind, it’s unfair that a Catholic school should charge this much money (if any money at all) and force people into these tough situations. I almost feel as if it’s exploiting its desirability to grab more money from starry-eyed high-schoolers…</p>
<p>While I agree that the cost of an ND (or any similar school’s) education puts a lot of families in a tough spot, Notre Dame isn’t aiming to make money from its undergraduates. In fact the tuition is significantly lower than what the education costs the university.</p>
<p>Well, it would be very nice if all students could attend Notre Dame at no cost to themselves, it being a Catholic school and all, but one of life’s tedious realities is that education costs money. As irishevan99 correctly points out, no student is actually paying the full cost of his or her education – even so-called “full pay” students are benefitting from the generosity of donors who make up the difference between tuition revenues and actual costs. Surely you don’t suggest that students and their families should get a free ride, while Someone Else pays the bills? </p>
<p>No family is “forced into these tough situations.” Students and their families freely choose to apply to Notre Dame, with full knowledge both of the costs and of their own resources. They have had 18 years to prepare for the costs of college. It’s totally up to them to decide the level of financial sacrifice they are prepared to make for a Notre Dame education. From my perspective, far too many parents encourage their children to go ahead and apply to expensive schools – “we’ll see how much financial aid we can get” – without any understanding of how the university will calculate their EFC and how much aid can reasonably be expected. The kids get their hearts set on Notre Dame, or another expensive private school, only to have their hopes dashed when the parents finally are forced to admit that they have no realistic hope of paying the bills at the dream school. Then everyone blames the financial aid office for being stingy, when the real problem is that the parents were clueless. For some reason, they really thought that Someone Else was going to pick up much of the tuition tab.</p>
<p>nafmom it sounds like you have done your best and your DD should be proud of all the scholarships she earned. These choices are full of emotion but it is wise to put financial reality and responsibility first. Your daughter will no doubt do wonderful wherever she goes. If ND continues to call to her she can consider transferring there after a couple of years or going to grad school there. It is far more likely she will come to love and thrive where she is planted and someday look back and realize that such debt was not justified, too bad ND couldn’t have seen what the other schools saw in your DD to warrant some scholarship assist. Private college will once again become something only the very wealthy can afford while the the rest sink into life long debt trying to obtain the “specialness” of this or that experience at top priced schools.</p>
<p>About a year ago I tried to figure out how much more my kid cost me at ND vs. being at home. After private school tuition, food at school and home(had expensive taste), tolls, mileage on car, sports fees and pulling out the checkbook for some reason every time we stepped on campus it really wasn’t that bad.</p>
<p>Coskat- thanks for the very nice supporting comments. Your thoughts are just like ours and yes my daughter fell in love with ND and so did I when we visited. However she wants to study medicine and we felt that we could use the college savings for graduate school and she could use the scholarship money now. It made more financial sense. By the way she did get scholarships at pricey private schools (Both Catholic and non-catholic). My daughter is a very special girl who is very responsible and conscientious. We were not expecting to go for free at ND but the full tuition, room and board , travel from where we live which is very far , etc made it a big financial sacrifice when she had other options. I guess we were naive and ignorant to hope that we would get something since she got so much at other places. I saw this as a sign that maybe she was not meant to be there. Nevertheless, I have told her that if she made a mistake as to her decision and is not happy where she is at, then we will help her transfer to ND. Hopefully, that will not happen.</p>
<p>Thanks again for being sympathetic. This has been very hard for me. I think more for me than my daughter.</p>
<p>Best of luck to all of you.</p>
<p>My daughter studies in Shanghai China and have gotten admittances from U of Southern California, UW Madison, UIUC, ND, Boston College and Boston U. </p>
<p>I prefer her to study USC as the weather in California is bette and it is in Los Angeles. USC offered her grant 3K per year as start. Hong Kong Technolgies and Science University offers her full year tuition. </p>
<p>ND offers her ZERO grant. I will support her 1st choice - Notre Dame when she decide to study US. Simply my daughter is beloved and I do not want her to be regret for the rest of her life.
$200K is not a small amount of money. But if it would not make me rich or poor. There is no need to be bothered.</p>
<p>Juldad and Nafmom:</p>
<p>What did you decide and how did it turn out? Have a very similar decision here. Son is deciding between Madison and ND, and wants engineering, math, and an MBA some day. Madison is ranked higher in engineering and math, but loves ND for a variety of reasons. We have two more daughters (15 and 6) that we’ll need to provide for, and ND’s aid is not alot so looking at $100K difference.</p>
<p>We are wondering how your decision and satisfaction with it turned out? Lots of student debt? How much satisfaction with the amount of debt?</p>
<p>TCParent869 - Parent here who has faced similar decisions. It would be hard to turn down UW - Madison. UW is one of the top 25 publics and it has a lot of things similar to ND, i.e. great school spirit, excellent academic departments, really cold weather :). </p>
<p>It’s very hard to turn down a top public (e.g. Texas, Michigan, UCLA, NC) if there’s a substantial cost differential. </p>
<p>Having said that, I will repeat what I’ve written many times: this is my view, and there is nothing wrong at all with picking ND if that’s what your family is comfortable with. If you do take the ND option, go with it and never look back.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>TCParent869 - Three years after having chosen ND, our daughter is a very happy junior and we are very satisfied parents. She has been around great people who who have helped her grow and mature immensely both as a person and as a student. She’s majoring in the accounting at Mendoza business school, minoring in European studies and already dreading the day she will graduate because she loves the school so much. She spent a semester abroad this past fall and also had a great experience. She has an internship lined up for this summer in Chicago with a big four accounting firm. Given the cost of her studies, we were relieved and apreciative of the number of employers coming to campus seeking students for both internships and full time employment. Socially, she has made friends for life. She has grown spiritually. She loves the school spirit and has a genuine sense of belonging at ND. It really is a second home for her. No regrets! </p>
<p>That being said, everyone’s financial situation is different. We are probably paying double out-of-pocket in comparison to Madison, which is probably also a great, but quite different experience. We had about a semester’s worth of money put away for our daughter, have asked her to work summers and on campus to contribute to her tuition and earn her own spending money, and we have taken advantage of a total of $12K-$15K in Perkins Loans offered through the financial aid package. We haven’t really had to adjust our life styles too much over the past couple of years, but have definitely seen our bank accounts get somewhat depleted. However, hearing our daughter continually thank us for her opportunity to study at ND makes us realize that it was the right decision for her. We have a second daughter who is starting at Marquette this fall and she will be just fine too. There really are a lot of great options for students these days. Your son has to choose between two great schools and won’t go wrong with either. Good luck to you in your decision.</p>
<p>kaukauna, so what did your family decide and how did it turn out?</p>
<p>Son chose to go to a top private after the financial aid was revised upward sufficient enough to tip the decision. Our major State university, while good, is not quite at the level of UW Madison. It would have been harder to make the decision to go to the private, located just north of ND, if our home State had been Wisconsin. So far it is working out well, and I think it will get better and better as son gets acclimated to the school. Definitely a good place for him: challenging and intellectual. Hope things are working out for you. </p>