<p>I know someone whose daughter will be a sophomore at Cornell in the fall. She applied to many good schools (honors colleges of flagship state univs, other well respected private colleges, other Ivies). She got accepted to all the state schools, most of the private schools, and one of the Ivy League schools--Cornell. So she went to Cornell.
The family was so excited to have an Ivy League child. Cornell was the 'only' choice once the letter of acceptance arrived.
Now fast forward one year. The family is having Ivy League regret. They live in south FL, the kid is in NY. Can't visit very often due to high airfare costs.
Also, they said that Cornell turned out to be much more expensive than they thought it would be. Hidden costs and the like. But they are plodding on, because it's Cornell.
Questions: Has anybody known someone who left an Ivy League school; where'd they go after that and why'd they leave?
And this is just a general question because my oldest is still in HS. Parents, would you say that the amount you had to pay out of pocket for your child's education was close to what you were estimating, a lot more than what you'd estimated, a lot less? I would hate the idea of even thinking that we'd made a terrible school choice from a financial perspective, and then going deeper and deeper into debt for 4 years.
Anyway, just thought I'd ask since there is so much interest on this board in attending Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Sounds like helicopter parents. They need to give the child some space to grow and expand. Part of the reason o go to an Ivy is so that the child can be around better peers than a state school will provide. There are educational experiences in living away from your family and being forced to assimilate into the college experience.</p>
<p>To answer your question, I think a lot of parents experience regret when their child goes away to college; this is not unique to the Ivy league so I wouldnât call it Ivy Regret. Of course, those parents never regret leaving their child in the school after all is said and done; they would likely regret pulling the student out after a year or two.</p>
<p>Now, regret for taking on student loans to pay for undergrad is definitely a typical regret, but hopefully the parents and student were smart enough not to over extend themselves.</p>
<p>No, it has nothing to do with being helicopter parents. The parents are finding that the âincidentalsââie air travel back and forth, not getting to see the kid much, kid not being able to come home much, and the actual costs of having a kid who goes to college half a country away (and an expensive school at that) are more than what they planned for, and they now regret it from a financial standpoint. Since an Ivy tends to be the dream school for so many, I found it interesting that there is some regret on their partâŠnot due to their being helicopter parents but due to the fact that the kidâs (and their) Ivy League dream is costing quite a bit more than they thought it would.</p>
<p>None of that has anything to do with an Ivy. There are hidden costs at every school save for perhaps the service academies. If youâre from California and your kid goes to school in the East Coast, be it Harvard or SUNY Brockport, youâre going to incur travel costs. Oh and by the way, for many students the Ivies are cheaper than many other academically excellent schools their kid got into.</p>
<p>Sure, Iâve known people whoâve left Ivies. My own roommate transferred from Penn to Reed. She was originally from Oregon; got into Penn (I donât think she applied to Reed out of high school because she wanted to leave the state). She was homesick; just found the east coast weird; couldnât go home often and maybe she didnât realize how urban the school was. </p>
<p>A high school friend also left Penn and transferred to Grinnell his sophomore year. He didnât like the size of the classes and did much better at a LAC.</p>
<p>If a college isnât a good fit, for whatever reason, itâs just not a good fit. Better to leave than be miserable.</p>
<p>I canât see travel costs being called a hidden cost, either. My daughter went from CA to Providence and wasnât home as much as Iâd have liked but it suited her just fine. This sounds like it is all about the parents. What an attitude-- plodding on! Iâm sure they will adjust after this first year of change and figure out that the childâs focus needs to be on college life and community and not trying to get home all the time. Time to pick up some hobbies. I remember a wonderful Winter session my daughter stayed in for one season and met her boyfriend in the international students dorm.</p>
<p>We were on serious financial aid so her costs were determined by COA she and didnât find any hidden expenses over that. She was able to find ways to save money to use for her other expenses (going off campus Jr year, off meal plan, buying a refurbished computer, mostly). At her school in particular it is very easy to pick up an on campus job where you can get paid doing research and only work 10-15 hours.</p>
<p>If you have the type of student who will be fine going âawayâ for college, Iâd encourage it. It is a highly protected way to experience a new part of the country and expand your horizons. Itâs great to be able to attend the best school you can get into. But there isnât much reason to pick a school just because it is in the Ivy League, there are so many equivalent schools where they can do just as well. Try to look deeper into school qualities; access to professors, research, class sizeâŠ</p>
<p>because theyâre paying private school tuition for the half-Ivy, half-state-school that is Cornell</p>
<p>Wow. Iâm amazed at how much criticism this thread is eliciting. Comments like âhelicopter parentsâ and calling Cornell a âhalf-ivy, half state-schoolâ are pretty striking.</p>
<p>I think that there ARE a lot of hidden costs involved for first-time parents when kids go off to school, and air-fare increases the cost a great deal. Itâs not just the flight, but shipping charges, buying more items on campus rather than just throwing them in the car, and enormous flight and hotel costs if parents decide to visit. This, of course, occurs with any school, not just ivy league schools.</p>
<p>For parents to be concerned about this does not make them helicopter parents. That term is thrown around too quickly without truly knowing the circumstances.</p>
<p>I do think itâs possible that both parents and students might be more likely to overlook problems with fit and cost when the college is an Ivy. They assume itâs the very best because itâs Ivy, and everyone is impressed, and they feel like it would obviously be a mistake to turn down. Ivies ARE excellent schools, all of them. But they are not a fit for every bright student. It is just harder to admit that itâs not a fit and make a different choice.</p>
<p>I knew a kid who transferred from Harvard to Wesleyan his junior year. In his case, he had gotten to know a Wesleyan alum on Harvardâs faculty who was able to hook him up with colleagues doing similar work at his alma mater and the kidâs interest took off from there. In other words, it wasnât so much that they disliked Harvard as the fact that they liked what was going on at Wesleyan. I suspect that this happens a lot as young people advance from the dewey-eyed stage of winning the Ivy lottery on the road to more serious interests.</p>
<p>I knew a girl who transferred from Princeton to William & Mary. NJ winters were too cold and school vibe was âstuffy and too much attitudeâ. W&M had much milder winters and down to earth students.</p>
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<p>Thatâs not Ivy League regret. Thatâs Expensive School That Is Far Away regret. Would the situation be any different if the kid were attending such non-Ivy schools as say USC, Smith, Bowdoin, Pomona, or Reed?</p>
<p>But I do know of a girl who had what I guess you could call Ivy League Regret regret. That is she started her freshman year at Dartmouth. A couple of weeks in she told her parents she wasnât happy, didnât fit in, and wanted to go home to Oregon. She turned in her paperwork to transfer to the Univ. of Oregon and got accepted. Told Dartmouth she was withdrawing at the end of her first term and made plans to move back home.</p>
<p>Fast forward to the end of her first quarter and itâs time to leave. She should be thrilled to get out there, right? Wrong. In the ensuing weeks she found âher peopleâ at Dartmouth. Now had made a a lot of friends. Turns out she fit in on her Ivy League campus just fine. She really didnât want to go through with her transfer to Oregon. But it was sort of too late. Her parents insisted she stick with her decision this time and not keep changing her mind.</p>
<p>She tearfully left her new friends and went away seriously regretting her earlier case of Ivy League Regret.</p>
<p>Harvard to University of Maryland because the student really didnât like Harvard (bad fit).</p>
<p>So yup it does happen.</p>
<p>I spent seven long years (and longer winters) in Ithaca, NY first in grad school, then waiting for Happydad to finish grad school. It is not for everyone. I can easily imagine a student from FL being miserable there.</p>
<p>Cornell meets financial need. If this family has learned that they cannot afford what Cornell expects them to pay, and if the student has other affordable options, there is no shame in transferring to an affordable institution. However, if it is airfare and incidentals that have broken the budget, having a heart-to-heart about those line items might be what is called for. Perhaps the student does not need to travel home multiple times each year.</p>
<p>Cornell is about average in net cost after gift aid (grants) among elite schools. And, it should not come as a surprise that there will be incidental costs. Sounds like the family mentioned by the OP did not do their homework. I am not sure about this particular family but some families are perfectly willing to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to buy (overbuy) a nice home and to take out loans for cars and boats but unwilling to take out loans (or save money) to pay for their childâs education. Itâs a question of values.</p>
<p>By the way, Cornell is an awesome school with a campus that is beautiful all year around (including after a snowfall). The students in the state-supported units are almost identical to the students in the endowed colleges in SAT CR and are about 50 points lower in Math SAT primarily because of the College of Engineering where the Math SATs 25th-75th percentiles are 730-800. The state-supported colleges at Cornell are the best buy in the world for NYS residents and their students do not diminish the quality of the student body.</p>
<p>average net cost (tuition, fees, room and board) after gift aid 2010-11 and 2009-2010 from IPEDS for families with income $75K to $110K.</p>
<p>3826 Amherst College
10694 Harvard University
11050 Yale University
13427 Vanderbilt University
13445 Stanford University
13916 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
16334 Princeton University
16906 Pomona College
17035 Williams College
17335 Claremont McKenna College
17390 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
17800 Dartmouth College
17956 Bowdoin College
17996 Columbia University in the City of New York
18241 Colby College
18894 Davidson College
19583 California Institute of Technology
19962 Colgate University
20185 Haverford College
20230 Brown University
20348 Macalester College
20370 University of Notre Dame
20868 University of Pennsylvania
21327 Vassar College
21439 Middlebury College
21487 Grinnell College
21827 Wesleyan University
21923 Cornell University
22360 Rice University
22373 Duke University
22385 Hamilton College
22467 Polytechnic Institute of New York University
23019 Lehigh University
23113 Carleton College
23292 Washington and Lee University
23497 Wellesley College
23709 Swarthmore College
24929 Harvey Mudd College
25139 University of Rochester
26032 Georgetown University
26903 University of Chicago
27558 Northwestern University
27769 Boston College
27770 Emory University
27806 Tufts University
28054 Stevens Institute of Technology
28072 Reed College
28101 Johns Hopkins University
28256 Case Western Reserve University
28322 Washington University in St Louis
29539 University of Miami
30029 Carnegie Mellon University
30414 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
31909 Northeastern University
32050 University of Southern California
39121 New York University</p>
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<p>This is nothing to do with the âIvyâ, but rather the issues involved attending an OOS private college, that is only accessible by air. The vast majority of kids attend a college within a dayâs drive of home (6 hours?). Homesickness works for both child and parent.</p>
<p>That being said, Ithaca is a special place and not every kid will thrive there â some may just do better in an urban area.</p>
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<p>The problem started in considering those eight schools, bound together by an athletic conference, as somehow in another universe from 100+ other excellent schools that might have been an equal or better fit for the student.</p>