The parents in the article have an older son in another OOS college, but he has scholarships. The mom seems pretty competitive and entitled (she made a big deal out of the younger kid gleefully putting the WI sticker above his brother’s college sticker on the family car and said that going OOS was the expectation in their upper middle income NJ community). I think the parents mistakenly interpreted reports that colleges are trying to attract OOS students to mean that they’re going to give them money to get them to enroll when the reality is that colleges want them for their OOS tuition dollars. I understand her son was disappointed and she wants to blame someone, and the colleges and cost of attendance are easy targets, but I think that kiddo’s problem was entirely the parents’ doing.
They could have encouraged him to take a gap year and apply to a new college list so he wouldn’t have to feel like he was settling, or at least have the courtesy to remove the WI sticker and talk up Rutgers. But bursting into tears over the outfits of local college girls? Really? This is not all about you. I wish that boy luck because I have a suspicion that he’s going to need it.
Our GC office is of very little help. I get it, they are swamped and just trying to get kids IN school and graduating. But it is not helpful to suggest to these kids to “apply to all the Ivy” schools. For real we had a kid who was admitted to all that he applied to and he said in the article that our GC told him “you have what it takes and you should apply to all Ivy schools.” Oh myword. What a strategy. And then when they did tons of news articles on this kid all it did was promote that “you too can do this.” Not a SINGLE mention of how this is being paid for.
Athletic recruits: I used to think all the kids from the local HS who were featured on “signing day” were getting BIG $$ scholarships. Over the years, the real truth has come out. Some are getting less than half tuition. One that “signed” with UT is PAYING full price to go there and signed as a walk-on. The kid loves it and wouldn’t change a thing and is fantastic in every way, but I gotta say as a parent I would be bitter if my kid was putting in hours daily of work and was not even getting books paid for. It would be very hard to watch.
Thankfully, we had a GC for all three of my kids (grouped by last name) who always talked about the money.
My kids were all strong tennis players in California, but the middle one was actively recruited.
We checked it for all of two minutes. The problem was that the schools were nowhere where DD2 wanted to attend. Plus, if she were injured, she’d be on reserve without funds. She stayed instate and we paid full fees at her UC.
DD1 initially had a merit scholarship but a hefty GPA requirement at 3.5 in a STEM major. She also was a strong athlete, but the scholarship for the athletics was minimal. Needless to say, by her junior year in engineering, she lost the merit scholarship.
Not enough information is given by GC’s about the current costs of education, not only at privates but at public institutions. Do the GC’s even know?
I’m jealous of you all that have access to Naviance and guidance counselors that you can talk to. We have no tool even close to Naviance and the GC don’t spend ANY time on college search and selection with the kids. They don’t even know half the kids names.
@Rollout … Well honestly all I care about is how well they teach my kid and for the most part they have done an amazing job. Teachers here do a fantastic job with tech stuff and I’m impressed.
@artloversplus You may be surprised but there are a lot of low-income people in NYC, first gen immigrants too. Ironically some of the most aggressively sought after high schools–and world famous for having produced Nobel prize winners, artists and designers, politicians, scientists, authors–are predominantly filled with low-income, first-gen immigrants, like Stuyvesant, Bronx Sci, Brooklyn Tech etc. Stuy is probably the most famous. It is 78% minority and 47% low income. Brooklyn Tech is 80% minority and 64% low income. Like, that’s low-income nationally and they live in NYC just to make it more challenging.
The wealthy have the option of these amazing public high schools plus the super expensive private schools.
Personally I think the GCs feel that the students will use SUNY and CUNY schools for undergrad.
I have a good friends whose kid is being recruited for and acro and tumbling. She has her heart set on a particular school and has the talent and academic ability to attend, but even with scholarship money the likelihood of being able to afford it is low. When the mom and I sat down to look at the other possible schools they are not really academic matches. Full ride athletic scholarships are few IMO. Maybe kids are able to combine a partial athletic scholarships with a partial academic and overcoat of their costs.
I agree there is an obsession with lists. Trying to make the subjective objective by applying a formula to it and sorting the results. Though at least some type of ranking is needed to calculate value, isn’t it? And there I am talking about broad rankings (such as top 50 or 100 or ranked in top 25-75, etc).
@saillakeerie Its not clear to me rankings mean anything. Most measures are self fulfilling…they are good because good kids go there, and good kids go there because they are good, and good kids are probably good anywhere they go.
They measure aggregates, which is ultimately meaningless to an individual. If I told you most people were happy buying a prius would you still buy it even if you didnt like it ? I dont think so. Yet students are willing to go through testing hell just to get into a school someone told them is tough to get into.
I think a lot of kids are used to their parents paying for their needs and never even think to ask about college budget until it gets really complicated late in the game. Our counselors are quite good but they have a huge packet for seniors to fill out which has 1 financial question and not a helpful one at that. I’ve noticed among friends with older kids people don’t talk about the financial part of college very much which I think promotes the whole magical thinking concept. I know all these people with kids in college who I assume have similar incomes and things seem fine so I’m sure they will be fine for us too type thinking not realizing that a lot of families are signing an outrageous amount of loans for their kids. We do have a number of athletic “scholarships” that at best are OOS schools at in state tuition cost but most are minimal especially compared to the costs of getting to the level to be considered for these scholarships.