<p>As an out of state accepted applicant offered a measly $6K in aid from W&M, is it really worth the $156K difference to go here?</p>
<p>Is anyone else planning to go into debt for over $100K to attend this school, and what do you intend to do for a career to pay it back?</p>
<p>signed ~concerned parent</p>
<p>Do you mind if i ask when you recieved Financial Aid info? My child is OOS also and I thought that was the reason he has yet to recieve it. Now you’ve got me worried because it is certainly a hefty price to pay.</p>
<p>We have paid the full sticker price for two OOS kids to attend this school. We are not wealthy, but do not qualify for financial aid. We found a way to do this without borrowing (through savings, costcutting at home, and current income). For us, it has unquestionably been worth it. We think our kids have received an exceptional education, in the classroom and out of it.</p>
<p>BUT - if you don’t have the savings and/or available current income, if you have several more children to educate, if it would mean going into debt to the serious detriment of your retirement, without enough time to make up the loss - then I don’t think that W & M - or ANY college - is “worth it.”</p>
<p>W & M is open about being unable to meet the full financial need of all admitted OOS students. From the website: “The College’s undergraduate aid policy is centered on meeting as much as possible of a student’s demonstrated financial need. For Virginia residents, we generally meet students’ full need, but have gaps in offers for some nonresident students. Like many institutions, we meet lower amounts of need in self-help and focus our grant money on higher need levels.”</p>
<p>To my knowledge, the only public schools that meet the full need of all students, OOS and instate, are UVA and UNC-CH. No student should “go into debt for over $100K to attend this school” or any other. Parents may well decide it’s worth it, depending upon their individual situations.</p>
<p>I have two nieces, lovely girls, who both graduated from W&M. Neither of them has ever had a professional job. One is 28 and the other 35. The younger one finally went back to a professional school. $100k in debt is not worth it.</p>
<p>That amount of debt is way too high for any school. </p>
<p>OOS students, imho, are used by schools to boost their tuition receipts. Frankly, many are flat out on the record as stating this. So, as such, nobody should expect any kind of substantial aid from a state university if they are out of state. Actually, in many states, at this point, most people shouldn’t expect much aid if they are instate.</p>
<p>I hope you have affordable options.</p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>@Maofthree, financial aid awards are not held for out-of-staters. The Financial Aid Office began emailing notifications about awards to applicants’ email accounts last week. You’re welcome to contact Financial Aid to see if your student’s package is ready.</p>
<p>@Poetgrl, OOS students add a lot of perspective, diversity, vibrancy to a college campus. We would never deny that out-of-state tuition contributes to the financial well-being of W&M but they lend a lot more to our campus than tuition dollars.</p>
<p>in my opinion, no undergraduate school is worth $100K in debt…</p>
<p>wm may be too expensive for OOS. Look at some private schools. They may be at better value.</p>
<p>as a former out-of-state student who graduated (yikes) more than ten years ago, i’ve been very disappointed by the steady increases in out-of-state tuition. total cost of attendance has nearly doubled since my freshman year, and while i know there are plenty of reasons (and people to blame) for this, the inability of financial aid to keep pace with tuition would seem to undermine the college’s reputation, aspirations, and standing among its perceived peers (especially when many of them do meet 100 percent of need). the excuse that w&m is a state-funded university rings more and more hollow as said state funding continues to dwindle (currently less than 15 percent). assuming that non-resident students supplied one-third of the $117.3 million that w&m received in tuition last year, out-of-staters paid just as much of the college’s operating expenses as the state of virginia. </p>
<p>no, sadbytheprocess, w&m is not worth $156k. especially if your alternative–which i assume, based on your phrasing–is free. still, if you are determined to attend w&m and money is your only obstacle, it’s worth calling up financial aid to see if they can’t come up with some more help.</p>
<p>IMO all the top schools in VA should get together and raise their instate tuition to put pressure on the legislature.</p>
<p>Do not go deeply into debt to attend W&M or any other school. Other, cheaper alternative must be out there. By the way, ignore the person who says their nieces went to W&M and never held a professional job. That’s true of every school. Says more about the nieces, I suspect.</p>
<p>^^^ That seems a little harsh. The poster is a long-time CC member with many helpful posts to her name. I’m sure what she said about the nieces is true - and, though I’m a pretty rabid W&M fan, I took no offense. I know people who went into far more debt at Ivy League schools who haven’t found themselves yet, either - it’s certainly no reflection on their schools.</p>
<p>I wonder what the OP’s response to the advice posted here is.</p>
<p>Thanks, Frazzled. I was really trying to make the point that it was not worth that kind of debt. My dear SIL worked for W&M for decades and BIL worked in the Wburg school district also for decades. They are both also W&M grads. </p>
<p>The nieces graduated with no debt, so they don’t have the worries of the OP. One was valedictorian of her class.</p>
<p>There are losers that go to every school and waste an education. Of course don’t spend a dime for those ( and trust me we all know who they are* ) </p>
<p>W&M is cheaper than most private colleges ( if you will not get aid) S was accepted to NYU, CMU, Columbia and BC each is about 56K all in for each of those schools, W&M is 43K all in. I am happy he chose to go there finanicially and he is happy as a clam it was his first choice and I did nto make him go to our Highly ranked state school in order to save 15G a year. But for me the difference was 60K not 160…</p>
<p>As a parent, you’d have to be living under a rock to not know, from the day your kid was born, about the cost to attend college. It hasn’t changed dramatically in the last four years since your kid was in high school. W&M is a bargain for in-state, and to our family has been worth it as OOS, comparable to non-state private schools for this calibre of student. </p>
<p>I had no intention of going into massive debt to pay for my kids’ college (two in college right now), and as a result, we saved like squirrels from the time the kids were very young, and managed to save a full year’s worth for each kid, my kids saved whatever they could too. It seems a reasonable approach for parents to pay for a year, kids to pay for a year’s worth spread over the course of the 4 years), and for kids and parents to figure out how to earn & borrow the rest during and after college. As an OOS, this worked for us. As a family we have lived very frugally for the college years, foregoing vacations, all luxury items, no iphones, no data pkg phones, no cars for the kids, no nail appointments, no expensive clothing/accesories, you get the picture. My kids both worked two jobs in summertime, and had small on-campus or off-campus jobs. I know the lifestyle doesn’t have to go on this way forever, so we make the short-term sacrifice for the long-term benefit of a good education. It is so worth it. W&M has been a great experience for our student.</p>
<p>I am an out-of state student who chose W&M over Carnegie Mellon and Boston College (which I essentially grew up at and have wanted to go there since I was a toddler) in large part due to financial aid. If there’s one school I would have gone into debt for, it would have been BC, but they gave me exactly zero in grant money and I am so glad I’m not going to have debt. (W&M gave me more than enough to enable my parents to cover the entire cost, whereas I would have had to contribute about half of BC’s $57K price tag).</p>
<p>No school is worth that much money; they simply can’t have that much of an advantage over the next best option to make the extra hassle worth it. Smaller differences I think are understandable to take on, but $100K in debt IMO is just silly. I am loving it here, my 4th or 5th choice when I applied to schools.</p>
<p>It does make me sad, though, that W&M is raising out-of-state tuition so steadily. One of the reasons I came here was the large OOS population, and I have greatly enjoyed being part of the OOS contingent here. I think there should be even more OOS students, but I fear the rampant increases will drive down the ratio. It also makes me wonder how I got so much in aid – thank you very much to whoever decided that!</p>
<p>@Marthaijki - I agree that upon having children, college costs are an immediate concern. I will say however that when serving my country for over 11 years I lived as miserly as you and was only able to save enough for 1 year at W&M at out of state prices. If the stock market or real estate markets had done better in the last 10 years, maybe I would have more to contribute, but I also just put my son’s older brother through an in-state school and have a younger sister who will be ready for college in 3 years. So while I have saved over $100K for my kids its not nearly enough.</p>
<p>Thanks for everyone’s input and to let you know we declined the acceptance and are trying to get into an in-state school closer to home as plan B. My son is very driven and obviously academically qualified or he wouldn’t have gotten accepted to W&M. He has aspirations for medical school and adding that debt to what it would have cost for W&M is just overwhelming in this parent’s opinion. My wife and I finally boiled it down to this, will our son have more regret not going to W&M or more regret that it cost him over $150K and he paid 161% of the actual cost of educating him so an in-state person can go for half the price.
[Virginia</a> Business - News: Finding a way to fund higher education](<a href=“http://www.virginiabusiness.com/index.php/news/article/finding-a-way-to-fund-higher-education/]Virginia”>http://www.virginiabusiness.com/index.php/news/article/finding-a-way-to-fund-higher-education/)
We took the final advice from the well respected plastic surgeon my wife works for that said “Go to a cheaper undergraduate program and perform so you can get into a reputable medical school.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, nobody on here told me what they or their kids are doing professionally after attending W&M. Are they making $80K or $180K… after all, if it comes down to a financial decision there better be a payback.</p>
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<p>without reading back through the thread, it seems like the vast majority of people that responded, including people with ties to W&M, told you that it would be a bad idea to take on that much debt for undergrad.</p>
<p>After W&M, people do whatever they want. Just like other kids from similar schools. They live in a wide variety of places, doing a wide variety of jobs, making a wide variety of money. Not everyone chases the most lucrative career.</p>
<p>How much will you pay for a house? 200k? 300k? Which is more valuable; a house or an education? “Is it worth it?” varies by the person and how far they run with an amazing opportunity. You cant answer this question with a calculator or a break-even analysis. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
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<p>I’d agree with that - while your undergrad selection does impact your med school admissions, it’s not the end-all -if you graduate from W&M or Princeton or Harvard with a 2.5 GPA and score a 25 MCAT, you’re going to have problems - yet go to StateU and score a 40 MCAT, and no one will care where you went.</p>
<p>(note that the “name” of the undergraduate school you attend isn’t usually a big deal - but the education you receive there is - AAMC likes their applicants to have a liberal arts education as well as research experience. W&M does both of those well. So, keep that in mind as your son selects his undergraduate school.)</p>
<p>Anyway, bringing up medical school only reinforces my first notion that $150k in debt would be too much - if your son goes on to medical school, he can look forward to <em>another</em> $150-300k or more in debt - in my opinion, graduating from undergrad debt-free is almost imperative if med school is in the future.</p>