Education is super important to get a solid understanding of how to write, think and logic conclusions and work together.
An elite education pays dividends for decades/a lifetime. Better than any other investment. Not going to lie my elite education meant that I have earned more money, had more time for my kids ( by making more), and raised me from a life of poverty into the top % group. I want my kids to have an easy lif and a job they love. I want them to have enough $ that they can buy a house, start a biz, travel, and live safely.
Hence I want them to have an excellent education, the best that they can obtain. I don’t care at all about impressing other people ( personally). I never even joined the alumni clubs etc that go with my education. I do care that my kids education impresses others so they can get a great job. Very different. Impressing other people is a dead end. Being about to live the life you want is the goal. We are able to do that and we want the same for our kids.
The reason I came here or found this group was after my son got deferred from his choices of schools, then rejected from some, accepted from some and then waitlisted to his dream school. I found out that I was not the only parent who is obsessed or want best for their child and this group had/have all answers to my questions. I always thought we parents were doing right stuff and our S is also doing his share of work.
I also didn’t know we could have hired private counselor as I never thought that his school counselor wasn’t enough (one of my friends did , didn’t tell us then, and telling and bragging us now that her child is going to this elite school because he did summer program with them last summer while my son was interning and also have lower stats than my child, same major but zero internship experiences, less EC). At this point we are happy that some of his friends are also going to his school and they all plan to transfer (finger crossed).
I have a D who is a sophomore now and I will not make same mistakes again. I will research this CC thoroughly , find her match , reach/ high reach college unlike my son which we thought everything was match or reach and make sure she gets into a good college and be happy.
We have only one reason. Apply to the best school and see where the chips fall and try to pay the least $$$$$$ possible. Between two prep school tuitions and two College fees, we saved nearly $900 K. Our total cost for eight years net was 30K. But we did spend lot of money in summer programs. Hoping for same results with our young daughter. Our kids earned their first scholarship starting junior high school, they worked during summer on internships that paid them while in high school. Name of the school carried lot of weight but they have worked very hard.
“that’s not true at all for me and I don’t think it’s true for a lot of parents.”
I think that was what user4321 meant with this:
“It’s just human nature playing out among a certain class of people”
By any definition of the word most, most parents do not obsess over college admission, the OP I think wanted to discuss c/c parents, where most probably do :-).
@NearlyDone2024 My son was admitted to some great state schools and some expensive private schools. He chose an expensive private school. He nearly chose Rutgers, which would have been much cheaper. Fast forward a few months, Rutgers will be all online this fall, kids have not heard from advisors or picked classes and need to decide whether to defer without even knowing what classes they would take. The expensive school (Northeastern) will be on campus (with some remote classes to reduce density), my son has talked to an advisor, picked classes, been meeting virtually with his orientation group, etc. We are paying more than we would have for Rutgers, but he is also getting more educational opportunities, personal attention and communication.
I believe most parents want more, or at least the same, for their kids than they had themselves. Most of my great-grandparents were immigrants. 3/4 of my grandparents didn’t complete HS. My parents went to college, but commuted from home. My Mom only went because my Dad told her to and signed her up for the SAT. (She scored >1400 without evening knowing anything about it.) I and my siblings went away to college. It was an in-state public college, and we all applied to the same one school. My siblings’ kids are following a similar route to their parents. Mine are the first to ever go school shopping.
My parents did a LOT right raising me. However, I do feel like my profession (engineering) was chosen for me. I was raised that was the best job anyone could have. 25-30 years later, I think I would have been better suited for something else, so I wanted my kids to explore more. I spent a considerable amount of time throughout their childhood introducing them to all kinds of activities (educational, sports, pure fun, etc) to see what they liked. Who were they? What were they good at? I paid a lot of attention to them when they talked. Anything they appeared to like or be interested in, we pursued to see if it stuck. I’ve done many things with them that I didn’t even know existed. It’s been a fun journey.
When it came to picking a general career , older S was easy - math and money. But I know little about those fields, and there are few opportunities to explore jobs in my area. I wanted him to go to a school that could help him figure it out. He wound up at an LAC. Younger S was tougher. He is a generic smart kid who has a wide variety of interests. Large, in-state public made sense for him. That’s his kind of place. Oh yeah - and $$$ was definitely an issue. We needed all options to be affordable (i.e. in-state public costs or less)
I also LOVE college visits. It’s the only part of the process that I enjoyed. I would travel and go to them all if I could. So much excitement and energy. But while I spent a lot of time helping the kids pick a school, once they are/were there, they are/were on their own. I can try to help, if asked, but most of the time my answer is “Talk to your advisor. Unless you are becoming an engineer or teacher, we aren’t going to be much help for you anymore.”
I loved the college visits too @ClassicMom98! We scheduled our vacations around college visits when D was looking. Both H and I were ready to go back ourselves at a number of places ; )
I love to research and be in the “know” about things that are outside of my circle which is why I joined CC.
I grew up in a place where people went to college, but it was so simplistic. You took the SAT once (no such thing as prep classes or studying for it), applied to colleges, and as long as your grades were good it was easy to get in. College costs back then were super affordable so even my friends from modest-income families attended as well. Some colleges gave automatic full rides to any valedictorian! I had good grades and decent SAT’s and got into such places as UCLA. Today? No way would I make it in nor be able to afford these elite colleges.
Today so much has changed and I don’t think parents realize just how much until their own child enters the college arena. First, the competition to get into many schools has ramped up exponentially. It’s no longer straight A’s but perfect SAT’s, unbelievable awards and EC’s that are required to get into a top 20. Then the cost has also skyrocketed exponentially. Our state flagship is $30k WITH in-state tuition, room & board. Scholarships are much more limited and are reserved for super-top students, recruited athletes, or URM. This has shocked families who thought their “excellent average” student could get a full ride.
In my era you could switch your major and not suffer intense financial consequences. Today, many degrees have long lists of pre-reqs so if you do switch, you could be looking at an 5th year of school (that doesn’t have an academic scholarship) and have much more debt. Today $50k of debt isn’t unheard of if you consider that’s only $12.5k a year. But even that is hard to have when you are starting out.
With the stakes being so high researching and planning a student’s journey into the college process is actually wise and not always something that is “obsessive” if it can help your student get into a right-fit school and graduate with minimal debt.
I loved the college visits too. The one on one time, hours in the car, evenings at the hotel hearing their recaps/thoughts. So many fun moments that we still talk about years later
Everyone’s journey is different. I was a first generation college student with no assistance who went to CC first. When I first began looking at colleges for my son, I had no help or experience with the process. It never occurred to me to seek out prestige. I looked on college board for schools where there were students like him, schools that had his major. I plugged in our requirements in the search engine and was presented with a list of schools. We visited and narrowed it down. He went to school and sought out teachers for recommendations. One teacher inquired as to why he did not have an Ivy on his list and informed him that she was not going to give him the recommendation if he did not apply to any Ivy (I’m sure she was joking). When he came home with this response I was initially put off because I didn’t think that we could afford it and also because it was added cost but decided to follow through with the recommendation as this was the only input that we had ever really received. I honestly did not feel that Princeton & Harvard were obtainable and was a little upset at my son’s impending rejection. To my surprise he was accepted at Princeton, waitlisted at Harvard and accepted to the other few schools that he applied to, one of which was Johns Hopkins. He graduated from Princeton. Here we are 11 years later with another daughter who graduated from high school in 2020. The journey was very different. I knew a little more but had a lot more help. She had an amazing college counselor at her school who would talk to us for as long as it took to get a picture of what the best fit would be for her. In addition she was part of a community organization that supplied college counseling services. Both counselors collaborated and came up with individual lists which actually were very similar. Included as reach schools were a few of the top schools. The only thing I obsessed about was the affordability and that loans were not an option. As a family it was agreed upon that if we can not afford to pay (regardless of the level), then the school was not an option. Through this process, I discovered that there are many schools that are not on the list of the Elite but are amazing schools and she had many options to choose from that were not 'Elite" schools. What did we choose? Yes, we chose an Ivy, not because it was an Ivy, but because of many reasons which included the out of pocket cost, was in state, was able to deduct the cost of medical insurance, little travel expenses (1hr from home), her major, we are able to visit and she is able to come home with minimal cost. Most importantly, no loan required. So all in all my daughter’s dream school was not obtainable according to the budget that we set but most of us have more than one dream and all dreams do not come true. She has worked through it and is happy to attend the school that she is going to.
I obsessed because our budget was small and DD’19’s list of wants very specific. Nothing to do with prestige, we mostly looked at directional publics because they were the ones with her somewhat rare major. I looked and looked at automatic merit and majors and course requirements. A somewhat local school fit the bill, but at first she refused to go there because other kids from school go there. A lot of research and stressful discussions later and no better options, she went there and loves it.
I came here in case I could find the magical answer to affording school, I stayed because I like reading these forums
I came on here to learn what had changed in 25 years. I am a research ‘nut’ like many others. I had a high stat kid. Even with the good deal kid got it still was going to be the second largest purchase of my life behind my house.
I get bit obsessed with getting a good deal. Not cheapest, but overall best value.
I’m on CC because I like to do research and explore all my options. Neither one of my kids was interested in an Ivy League school and while they are both smart, they didn’t quite have the grades. That’s ok, neither did H and I. We had them apply to schools that were affordable and a good fit for them. If we were looking at Ivy League schools, I’d probably still be on CC. Interestingly, one of D’s friends who was applying to Ivy League schools, her mom hadn’t even heard of CC when we were talking about it at high school graduation.
One thing I also like about CC is that you get a lot of ideas and opinions and hear about schools that you maybe wouldn’t otherwise. The college counselors at our kid’s school were incredibly knowledgeable, but even though it’s a small school, I don’t want to monopolize their time. There were at least a few schools that I suggested to my kids that I heard about here…
This is me. It doesn’t matter if I’m hatching chickens or helping DS find a school. I like to research the heck out of things. The fact that it represented 18 years of savings for me and that we were going to have to choose schools wisely to be affordable had a lot to do with it as well.
Also, count me in as one that really just enjoyed the whole process. This past year (recent months excluded) were just so much fun. The acceptances, the college visits, the scholarship letters coming in the mail… Exciting times!
I think a lot of families did this. When the kids were born they opened up a 529 college savings plan. Very popular way to save for college without any tax consequences.
Yeah. I didn’t say it was a lot of savings! I knew my only hope was to start young and stay the course. It was just $100/month…all I could afford, but that’s almost 40K now.
and make sure she gets into a good college and be happy.
