My daughter was accepted to University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign as a Spanish major. We just found out yesterday that she got ZERO financial aid and barely qualifies for any subsidized loans. Cost per year will be over $30K.
She was also accepted to Northern Illinois University, a tier 2 state school about 50 miles from our home, and received $7K in merit aid per year (renewable with a 3.2 GPA). Not sure of cost per year yet due to not having received the financial aid document yet, but I estimate it will be around $18K with the merit aid applied.
If she was a STEM major, without question we would make sure she attended UIUC. But she’s a Spanish major and wants to be a Spanish teacher. My husband and I are willing to pay half of her tuition/room and board, but she’ll have to take loans for the rest. That’s potentially a big load of debt for a teacher just starting out!
She’s now leaning towards NIU since they offered up that merit aid, but we are attending Admitted Students Day at UIUC next week and checking out the campus over the weekend.
Yes, we did that already. Our daughter really loved the campus and felt “at home” there. She doesn’t feel like she’d be “settling” by going to NIU, but my husband and I can’t help but feel that she may regret her decision later, which is why we are checking out the UIUC campus this weekend. We went to UIUC in October for our son’s hockey game, but she got a negative impression of the campus because it was a football game day and the campus was packed, people were tailgating everywhere and there were kegs and beer pong games going on on the front lawn of every fraternity.
Teaching degree. Absolutely the cheaper college. Many of our local schools like to hire out of the local state college teaching program. Do you have a college that your local schools like to hire from?
^UIUC is kind of isolated the party atmosphere might be pretty big there on any given weekend.
Anyway, the school is not affordable, she likes NIU and if you can pay $10k there and she takes out the $5500 student loan and works in the summer and earns about $3k it should be affordable for her.
I would focus on student satisfaction, Spanish and education department if you visit NIU again. She might also want to find out what activities the school offers for non partiers or is she planning to come home on weekends?
I would send her to the school she prefers anyway and that (luckily) is also her cheaper option. Starting out a career in education with huge student loans isn’t a good idea when there is an alternative. Especially since it can take awhile in some places to get a teaching position. Sometimes grads I know start out as subs or working part time.
OP, taking out huge loans for a career in education is probably not a good idea. Not that this would necessarily happen in your case, but something like 40 percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years or so of teaching. Again not that this would happen… but at the same time it is a career with good benefits and high satsfaction but not a career with so high a starting salary that would be easy to pay off loans quickly. There are loan reduction programs for teaching in underserved areas but she would have to be prepared for those challenges,
Looking at it from another angle, If your family saves $ on tuition you can more easily afford to send her to Spain or another Spanish speaking country for an experience abroad.
Since she is getting merit at NIU it makes sense to have her go there, especially since she likes it.
If you can afford $15k she might not have to take out loans which for a teacher would be very helpful for her future.
It seems you are the ones that feel that not going to UIUC is “settling”.
But if it fits her goals and she feels at home there and they have a good teaching program, then what is the problem?
If for some reason she regrets going there later, she could always go to the more expensive UIUC. The price without any merit or aid probably won’t change that much.
NIU seems like the obvious choice to me, and you are blessed that she likes it!
It’s hard to not get hung up on the label. We are going through the same thing here with a particular Florida school, though our son will be a STEM major so it does make a difference.
A young teacher does not want loans. And what if she wants to go for a master’s or PhD so that she can advance into administration?
If your daughter prefers NIU, received merit award (that always feels good to the student), and is able to study and reach her goal by going there, I’m not seeing much of a problem here. Your biggest complaint about NIU is that it is a tier 2 school. Is that it? If so, I would say, check your own ego (?), “concerns” or whatever is bothering you and be thankful your child isn’t into names and labels.
My husband and I both have our grad degrees from UIUC; one of our best friends teaches at NIU. Regarding the particular program your daughter is interested in, here are maybe a couple of other qualities to look at-
1-when we were at UIUC, undergraduate education was by & large provided by grad students (hey–it provided us assistantships, so it wasn’t all bad). As an undergrad, you could make it to the second semester of your junior year without having had a PhD for a class. As a smaller school with fewer grad students, NIU may not live off of its grad students to the same extent. Is this distinction important to you? Who teaches first year students? What access to full professors do undergrads have at all?
2–With a foreign language teaching major, how much access would she have to native Spanish language speakers as professors/teaching assistants? It’s a huge difference when advancing in a foreign language to learn from one who thinks in that language first.
She also could have attended the local community college for free because she is in the top 10% of her class, but she doesn’t want to do that. Why not, I’m not sure-- I did that!
I don’t have an issue with NIU being a Tier 2 school–I was just stating that for people on this forum who might not be familiar with it.
I know that if we had to pay the full amount for both schools, we would send her to UIUC. The merit aid at NIU definitely sweetens the deal and makes the decision a lot more difficult.
Many friends, relatives and co-workers have a favorable impression of “Big 10” UIUC, so when we’ve mentioned that she got accepted to both schools, we’ve gotten comments like “Oh, NO CONTEST!” Well, it IS a contest when the less well known school shows you the money and the “Big 10” school doesn’t give you a penny!
We’ve told her that the decision is hers to make and she needs to go where she feels most comfortable/at home. We’re just trying to be there for her and help her sort out the information. We could come home on Monday evening after Admitted Students Day with her having a very negative impression of UIUC due to the sheer size, etc. We shall see!
I would figure out how much in loans she will have at the end. Then I would figure out her starting salary as a teacher ( with all the dues and taxes taken out.
Then I would help her with a monthly budget as an independent adult and show her how much money those loans will actually mean. It is a good exercise to help her understand what those loans will mean for her future.
Are most teachers in your state expected to get their masters degrees in a certain amount of time after they start work?
How does that figure into finances?
I think if you end up swaying her in the direction of going to UIUC then it’s only fair that you pay the difference. After all, she seems fine with NIU.
After all, she seems fine with NIU.