We do not quality for any financial aide, however paying full price will be difficult. Does anybody else have this same situation?
This is extremely common. My only input is that the money is worth more to some people than to others. There’s no way to measure if anything is “worth” that kind of money except to look at your own situation. It isn’t fun to graduate with significant amounts of debt. But Wash U might also be the best option when you weigh in other factors. It’s ultimately your decision.
Well, it’s nice to live in a $500,000 house. If you qualify for the mortgage, go for it, right? Of course, there’s that pesky $4,000 per month payment. Ugh.
Best to buy the house you can afford rather than the one you “qualify” for. Same goes for colleges.
Who knows? Education is not an investment that can be judged using purely direct economic metrics. To compound the difficulty, the demand for the top schools appears to be stronger than ever, allowing for huge pricing premiums that may not be easily correlated to value that you can put your finger on.
If it will be difficult to pay it is probably not worth it. You will have lots of opportunities if you work hard and do well wherever you go. It is really an individual choice. Having said that, almost anyone with the credentials to be accepted to Wash U, including my son who is a senior, likely had attractive scholarship offers at slightly less selective schools. If they chose Wash U without a scholarship, those students or their parents obviously thought full pay at Wash U was worth it to them. But it is a different story if, unlike my son, you will graduate with a lot of debt. It also depends on what your career objectives are. My son is fortunate to have been accepted at, and is now deciding between, a few top law schools. I mention that because I have been reading a lot about law school acceptances and the general view is that LSAT and GPA are by far the most important criteria, and the GPA analysis does not depend much upon the competitiveness of the undergrad school or the major. So assuming his GPA would have been the same at a school where he received a scholarship (which may even have been “easier”), he would have been admitted to the same law schools. We have been very happy with Wash U and have absolutely no regrets about paying for it, so I don’t mean to suggest we are sorry about not accepting a school with a scholarship. We would choose Wash U again. But if you do plan to go to graduate school you might want to consider looking into the criteria for acceptance.
@rednecktiger Like many people that respond to this question on whatever fora, you are confused about what is being asked. The issue is not affordability. The issue is value. Does Wash U meet the value threshold? If so, why? If not, why not?
Not looking for lessons in wise spending here. This would be a question more for alumni, hiring managers at law firms, med school students who took their undergrad at Wash U, etc. Do you think a Wash U education meets the value threshold for a full-pay attendee? Why or why not?
Thx,
JimKingwood
Ignoring affordability, I believe Wash U was worth the money. My son is a senior and was full pay other than $2,000 a year national merit scholarship. We have never regretted paying for it and believe he got a great education. He has been admitted to top law schools. It was “worth it” to us, but it was not difficult for us to pay and my son did not take any loans. It is hard to ignore affordability. If he had gone to one of the undergrad schools where he received a full scholarship, he would presumably received the same LSAT score, and if the school was “easier” presumably would have received at least as good grades. So he may have be accepted at the same law schools. So I still think whether it is worth it depends on all the facts and circumstances since most if not all students accepted at Wash U should have received scholarships elsewhere. Is buying a Ferrari rather than a Ford ever “worth it.” It was worth it to us in this instance.
I personally would say yes it is worth it if you can afford it. Private schools are a huge leg up over state schools. My H attended a state university that was over 50k in size and he said every course was a weed out class and he was a number. He was part of the rat race and they are constantly trying to push you out. They don’t want you there.
His education was basically self taught too because his teachers were TA’s and he had to go through two TA’s in order to see the professor. The TA’s read from the book! He stood in line for an hour for only 5 minutes of his professors time. His classes were 500 in size vs. an average of 20 at WashU. Also, he couldn’t graduate in 4 years due to the limited availabilty of the classes. So it can be costly to attend a state school for 5 years. Its like comparing apples to oranges.
My son came home for xmas after his first semester and he met with his 4 best friends from HS and 3 of them already dropped out of their state schools. The drop out rate for state schools is very high. I’ve heard it is over 50%!
I also recently learned another student that chose a state school wasn’t able to take a single class in his major until his Junior year so he lost out on internship. co-op opportunities, etc. My son was able to take 2 courses in his major the very first semester. He has been given tons of opportunties because of that -> co-op, internships, TA (grading papers & lab), research, etc. He’s even been able to pay his way for the last year and he is graduating on time.
The list is endless but smaller private schools aren’t for everyone either. Some kids want the big college experience. Just realize the hurdles you’ll have to get through at a large state school in order to graduate.
The other key ingredient is choosing the college that FITs your child. I was advised by a Physics professor to let my children choose the school that makes them the happiest. He said “happy students are successful students”. That is so true! I’m happy because my kids are SO happy and they are successful too. It’s a huge relief!
@OP, you indicated that paying full price will be “difficult”. If it’s cripplingly difficult, then u cannot afford Wash U any more than u can afford a Ferrari.
Keep in perspective that 99.9999% of americans have happy, successful lives w/o Wash U , just like 99.9999% of americans have happy, successful lives w/o a Ferrari.
This can be a very difficult decision, even though I do think WashU is a wonderful school. It may also depend on what factors would make it difficult for you to pay for WashU. If you have special circumstances (like taking care of a family member, multiple kids going off to college), it may be worth at least talking to Student Financial Services one more time. I also know for my family, we did not qualify for aid the first year, but did receive aid the year after that.
The discussion above about state schools might be discussing California schools. I have heard that it may be hard to graduate in 4 years and to get the classes you want. Not sure it is representative of state schools in general. My one son goes to Wash U and other other goes to Michigan. My Michigan student has some small classes and some large. But he has e-mailed professors and received a response in 5 minutes. His experience so far has been excellent. Science classes are large almost everywhere and can be 200 students at Wash U. My Wash U son has had very few 20 person classes but classes generally are a reasonable size. Note that class size discussions can be misleading. Let’s say a school says 5 out of 6 classes have only 20 students. If a science class has 100, then you need 5 more math classes, for example, to educate that same 100 students at 20 students each in one of the other 5 classes. If every student took science and math, 50% of their classes may have 100 students which is much more than 1/6 that the percentages suggest. Having said all that, I am a HUGE supporter of Wash U and think my son’s experience has been great. I could not recommend the school more highly. But if it is very difficult financially I believe there are other great options.
@newjersey17 Oh I know exactly the type of school your H went to, so did I. But you know what? My resume has always gone to the top of the hiring stack in my profession - computer programming - because hiring managers know I - and your H as well - can endure pressure and complete assigned work.