We actually found an OOS college with an excellent Engineering School that was the same price as UCD - 36 k and so much easier to get into . We are from CA . That school is Iowa State University. Beautiful campus, super friendly people and a delicious food !
Our son chose my OOS alma mater over our in state flagship. The cost differential is roughly $9k per year. I think he made the choice that is best for him, as a student and a person, even though it’s not the best financial decision.
Do note that TCNJ now has “Campus Town”…it gives you a mini-college town right next to campus and features apartments, barnes and Nobles, many fast casual restaurants, Panera, urgent care, bank, gym, etc.
https://www.campustownretail.com/featured-shops
There is also a loop bus that can take you to the Hamilton Train Station, AMC in Hamilton, Quaker Bridge Mall, Nassau Park Pavilion, Market Fair, and Princeton
From the perspective of the strength of CS program, UDel is a national research university and TCNJ is a regional liberal arts college . The scale of research done by professors and the range of undergrad courses and subfields will be greater at UDel. Also, the campus seems quite friendly. Changing majors is difficult at TCNJ. It may be easier at UDel, but you have to check. (My background : I am a university math prof in NJ and my kid is majoring in CS at NJIT .)
I think another issue is that this discussion should be split between STEM (esp engineering) and non-STEM kids. It is an axiom that prestige of school matters less in STEM and that good grades at a solid, cheaper state school can get you the same places as an expensive private/OOS. I don’t know that this holds true anywhere close to the same degree for social sciences and humanities majors, however, or for those who want to attend a prestigious professional graduate school. Where you go to school likely matters more for a finance major or a Classics major or an Economics major. I am NOT saying it is determinative, just that I think it matters more than it does to an engineer or computer science major.
Well…ended up choosing an OOS, albeit one that offered merit that brought the COA down to something agreeable. University of Delaware here we come.
Paying full OOS → never worth it unless you’re very well off. Paying OOS with merit that brings it down to in state → worth it, but that isn’t really paying OOS, is it.
Paying full price for a private school might not be “worth it” either.
There are too many variables and there is no cookbook approach. Every student is different and every family does what is best for them.
Congrats to the OP!
@CU123 Thank you for the feedback. Agreed on your point about merit money and its impact on OOS choice. When I posted the question initially, it was more from the angle of trying to justify paying near full price for an OOS School.
What if full OOS price is relatively inexpensive, such as at Truman State, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, or University of Minnesota Morris?
Again, if it’s the same as in-state, cost wise their really is no difference, is there? My point is paying FULL OOS (50k+)tuition for a university is never worth it, especially for STEM where their is relatively little differentiation between major universities. Paying for a private university is worth it if it’s a very good one. Anything that mitigates the cost will effect the decision for either.
Paying full OOS tuition might be cheaper than paying instate. My daughter’s OOS tuition at Wyoming is the same price as my nephew’s instate at CU, but where I really come out ahead is in the r&b and incidentals. Daughter’s football tickets are included in her student fees while nephew pays $$$ for his. COL in Laramie is cheaper.
I think Pennsylvania residents can find cheaper OOS options. Some states charge a lot to their residents.
My biggest frustration with our particular search was an inability to objectively measure worth of any particular CS Program. Maybe that is a universal struggle? Felt there was no empirical way to measure the worth of any program. In our case, after narrowing to our choice schools, the spread between most cost effective and most costly was nearly threefold.
Would that mean that the most costly choice would deliver 3x what the most cost effective choice would educationally? After much deliberation, there was no way to reconcile that disparity in cost. Everything in this world has a price. In our case, paying a premium for something we couldn’t assign a solid value to, was not worth it.
I’m not aware of any public university that charges $50K+ for OOS tuition. Or did you mean $50K+ full COA?
Beyond that, I don’t understand the logic. If as you say STEM programs at “major universities” are all the same, why would it make any more sense to pay full tuition at an expensive private school—even a “very good one”? The sensible thing then would be simply to find the cheapest “major university”, public or private.
But I don’t think anyone actually believes the programs are all the same. Yes, the underlying science and math are the same everywhere, but the quality of the faculty, the quality of one’s fellow students, the facilities, the research opportunities, the support services, career services—these all differ from one school to the next, among public universities as well as privates. Sometimes an OOS public is just qualitatively better than the in-state alternative. And some of the best publics are just pretty darned good schools in their own right.
My own daughter applied to and was accepted at Michigan as an OOS full-pay, with my blessing because I know from first-hand experience with both schools that Michigan stands head and shoulders above our in-state flagship along a number of important dimensions. She ended up choosing a small LAC which in some ways was a better fit for her, but I know she would have thrived and gotten an outstanding education at Michigan for slightly less than we ended up paying for her full-pay private LAC.
Simplistic generalizations like “it’s never worth it” just aren’t very helpful.
“Paying for a private university is worth it if it’s a very good one.”
What’s the definition of “very good”? HYPSM? Where do you draw the line? If it’s only privates that are better than Berkeley/UCLA/UVA/UMich (i.e. top ~20) then that’s a pretty short list. But if you are willing to go below that then why wouldn’t you consider paying OOS for one of those 4?
“Very good” …“worth it” …“never worth it” etc … are subjective. We need to be careful.
My friend’s daughter transferred out of Emory and into an OOS public. Emory is an outstanding school- why did she transfer? She felt that Emory had “too many” wealthy kids from NY/NJ and she wanted to escape that- she went to HS with those kids and was not interested in another 4 years. What does “too many” mean? I don’t know…
Emory was not “worth it” to her… despite being an excellent school.
@bclintonk I assume that the poster meant $50+K COA. One that comes to mind is Penn State - which is somewhere around $52K for an OOS student.
Beauty is in the eyes of a beholder. What may seem to you ridiculous is a matter of fact to a family earning one million dollars per year. I had a client earning $15 million usd per year, and he certainly would have paid several million usd for a spot at Harvard or Stanford for his kid. I wish there was a way to sell my kid’s spot to that guy so my kid could deposit several millions usd into his acct and go to an Honors College or UCLA instead. Where is capitalism when you need one?
It really depends. For example, say you are a CA resident, a business major, and were rejected from the state’s 2 flagships (UCLA/UCB) but accepted to UC Davis which only has a Managerial Econ major not Business. However you were accepted OOS to University of Washington directly into the Foster school of business and received the maximum Purple & Gold scholarships. COA at UCD is approx 135k and UW 165K (w/ P&G scholly). The parents have already saved enough to cover both colleges costs and will not have to take out loans.
I could see a family choosing the OOS route in this scenario.
We made the decision to go out of state and live in NJ (logo may have given that away). We are paying more for sure but FIT was a non-starter and we there were few NJ schools that my D liked that had her major. Plus, she was tired of the NJ scene and personalities and wanted to explore other areas. Even U Del gave her a nice merit scholarship, but many of her HS classmates were going there too. So no to them too. She Ended up choosing the University of Florida.