<p>Mom2, I think the disconnect may be in the language I used. My son wants to go to law school, and believes (correctly) that part of where he goes for his pre-professional education will be determined by where he goes to college. What we have told him is that while this is true, how he does in college will play a greater role than where he goes–in other words, getting a 4.0 from a decent school is better than getting a 3.0 from a great one excepting maybe a few select schools like HYPSM. He needs to do well, and if he doesn’t work hard, he’ll get swallowed at a school where everyone has ACT scores in his range, if not precisely at his level, and we’ll pay vastly more for that “privilege”. What we’ve thus told him (as we told our older daughter and hopefully our younger daughter when the time comes) is that we’ll evaluate everything when the time comes, and if we believe that paying more will yield more benefits, we’ll get it done. There’s no one measure of that, like senior year performance–like the admissions process, it’s a holistic decision.</p>
<p>In truth, I think he’ll work hard and do well in college wherever he goes–this year has been very impressive to me. In football parlance, he’s not across the goal line yet, but he’s consistently moving the chains.</p>