“Pitt is a Top 60ish overall university with strength in the sciences. It isn’t a typical free school ranked in the 150s”
Actually Forbes ranks them #144 and they have a 60% acceptance rate.
Not saying you are wrong - but it’s not $60K.
It’s $60K + points, + interest, + the stress of having to make an extra payment every month for many many years. It’s stress for the child, it’s stress for the parents.
Doesn’t mean it’s wrong - but it’s not just $60K in actual dollars and in emotional cost as well.
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Are you offering to pay the difference then? Or anyone telling the OP they should go into debt for it?
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We keep going around in circles.
The question isn’t a full ride to Pitt versus an affordable cost for Yale.
The question is a full ride to Pitt …versus Yale…at
- $500+ per month in loans
- responsibility for this payment falls directly on the 22 year old
- biology major with an interest in research (low paying)
- parents will likely not be able to help knock down the monthly payments
Everybody has a different comfort level. I would not be able to do this without feeling very guilty about my child paying these loans back on what might be a $40,000 a year salary.
I wish them the best as they try to make the right decision.
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It’s 58 in US News - and it does have strength in the sciences.
Rankings are - and there are many - not an opinion but let’s face it - they are not fact. They are what one guide or publication says. Truth is, for each student there are different best schools.
Part of the reason there are so many transfers or unhappy kids is because they are choosing schools - not for fit - but because US News says they should consider that school - and that’s silly. But it’s reality.
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I understand but there’s a real life example an Ivy school matching a state college offer (full ride/stipend) for a GRADUATE course. So I was wondering if that’s only for a graduate program.
If the kid is worried about $60k debt he would have plenty of opportunities at Yale to find lucrative summer internships that pay $10k/mon. And he would probably make more than $60k at the end of four years.
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Graduate school offers are whole different situations, and most if not all of the real PhD programs are fully funded anyway.
Are you infantilizing the OP by saying they can’t understand the terms of commonly offered financial instruments? Is there some reason you don’t think OP’s child belongs at Yale?
Wheee, asking bad questions in bad faith is fun!
You can cherry pick rankings but at the end of the day Yale is a top 5 U.S. college
and top 10 in global rankings.
I don’t give too much credence to ranking but if you are going to bring them up, let’s use rankings for all colleges not just large universities. For example, US news does not even consider colleges like Williams and Amherst on your list but we know these are fabulous colleges.
At the end of the day, Pitt is a 100+ ranked university and Yale is top 5.
Two totally different college experiences. Pitt might be the right choice here but let’s not pretend that it’s on the same playing field as a degree from Yale.
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It was between Emory and U Florida for us, $310k vs. $0. The intimacy with professors at Emory is what we are mostly interested in. We visited last week and loved the campus. UF is a very decent school too. We went there in March and my son liked it.
Probably, we won’t take either of them, as a compromise, we now put more weight on USC with half tuition which has a different environment from Emory. USC offers more majors which is an advantage in case my son decides not to pursue biology study. Actually, very few 17-years old know exactly what they want to do in their whole lives. USC may also offer more intern opportunities given the location. Although it’s half tuition, the total cost for 4 years will go well over $200k. The difference in quality of education between USC and UF is not where close to that between Yale and Pitt, but it’s a big gap in cost.
We gave our inputs to help my son to make a decision, but don’t want to overly stress him on the cost. We’d like to leave the final decision to him. Probably, I will quit beers for the rest of my life to save for him at USC 
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May I ask what schools you are applying to? Every single school we applied to was priced at $70,000 or more, except our State University at $33,000. What I wasn’t prepared for was my high stat son getting into top schools (non-Ivies) and being offered nothing or a few hundred $. Not to mention the back door international freshmen experiences for full-price. I’m not sure where else he should have applied. We would have been paying the same high rate at OOS Universities. I feel for all parents regardless of financial ability going through this process.
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$60k is a bit less car and less house. And parents budgeted $60k so maybe they’ll be able to help with down payments.
I’d have chosen the Ivy for $15k per In today’s dollars but I went for free to a regional university highly ranked in my major (chem E). I switched majors and graduated in a recession. Got a low paying first job. Maybe the same would’ve been true at an Ivy. Maybe I’d have flunked out. Maybe I would have flourished in a more supportive environment. I went to an Ivy grad school and saw that job opportunities were far superior to what they were at other state schools I considered. However, it wasn’t in stem research.
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They’ll match need-based financial aid for undergrads offered by other Ivy schools. Cornell also will match MIT, Duke, Stanford offers. Grad program funding is a different story altogether, and for the most part isn’t need-based.
Totally agreed. Education is crazily expensive these days. Everything is close to $70k a year if you don’t have good in-state choices, not even to mention the 3-5% annual raise in tuitions. Even our in-state, Rutgers, costs over $36k a year with zero $ of financial aid. We knew we were to pay full tuition for all those top schools and out-of-state schools, although we were not financially prepared. The good schools are for either those rich people or low incomes. The middle class are those who are really struggling.
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Such internships are not typical at all. And how would the biology major get a unicorn computer science or finance internship that had that income possibility. Y’all have no idea what opportunities are actually available at these schools yet are convincing families to go into significant debt with unrealistic expectations.
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My daughter was a biology major and had summer research positions. The students came from a variety of schools, including Ivy League. The best position she had (best is defined by me as great experience + good pay) was one that provided free room and board in a gorgeous fully furnished apartment, reimbursement for travel, and $4500 for an 11 week position.
I have never heard of anybody getting paid $10,000 for a summer research position (and her friend was a bio major at Yale).
I didn’t mean to respond to you. I meant this as a general response.
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I know several dozen kids at these schools who are paid $10k/mon because my kid was one them.
Of course, majority of the kids at these schools have other priorities, such as research, travel etc, because a lot of them care more about experience than worry about debt. But if making some money is a top priority, which seems to be the case here, then the opportunity the schools brings will make a difference. As the recent Pitt grad upstream pointed out such opportunities are much more abundant at Yale, and yes, we are talking about debt eliminating opportunities.
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There are companies that pay $20,000 for summer interns. I have seen those.
I have never seen this kind of money for a summer biology research position.
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I’ve seen those $20-30K summer internships, and I even agree with jzducol that there are several dozen positions to be filled by even just one top rated school.
However, the student population of those schools is well over ‘several dozen’ so depending financially on the possibility of getting a highly competitive summer research position is a high-risk one. The likelihood is getting a summer position that pays somewhere around $4-8k for the summer, not including any costs associated with the job or COL.
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