@cshell2 I think what hit me was the timeline. I know about 529’s we’ve even had a few here and there. But we didn’t use them as our main savings tool. I guess that many people do use them from an early age.
Yup, it is 18 years worth of savings for us as well. We started saving as soon as the test said we were pregnant. I am a researcher as well. We sold a house in 2006 at the top of the market and decided to rent “temporarily”. I literally spent five years researching the housing market before we purchased another house of our own again. I guess when DD actually does go off to college I will begin researching retirement!
We were way more concerned about our son’s high school education than college options as we felt, and still do, that exposing him to the best high school education he could consume would prepare him to hit the ground running and excel at whichever college he chose, the college itself irrelevant.
I joined CC one month after our son was accepted to a boarding school thousands of miles from home looking for a community of parents who understood this choice. Along the way, I learned that I could take my hand off the college wheel completely as his high school had that process down and did not require (or want) any help from me. Ironically, our son did not take much advantage of his high school’s deep experience with the college match process and, instead, forged his own path to a service academy with the help of the military equivalent of CC. We were just spectators in his application process, not overly invested in which civilian college he attended, but we were not at all happy with service academies in the mix. In our opinion, he had better academic college options, but he followed his heart to a prestige-for-“free” academy caring neither for cache nor cost.
We started saving for college before our only child was born and ended up with a 529 that would have covered full freight anywhere. Our goal always was to enable him to attend the school of his choice with no debt. Obviously, he didn’t need the funds for a service academy, so the Military Family Tax Relief Act allowed us to roll those funds over to our retirement portfolio with no penalty, just taxes on the gains. As good as that sounds, we paid college rates for high school, so it was sort of a wash. In any case, because we had that fund, the cost of college when the time came did not figure into our concerns or his.
As for dating, that did enter my mind but only in the sense that I met DH in undergrad (he lived on my hall freshman year), and I see those as prime, carefree years among a large, available, ready-made dating pool. But, even there, our son went his own way and ended up among a very small female population where the potential downsides of “cadating” outweighed the benefits in his mind, so he did not engage. I do think he missed out in that regard.
So, no fixations, obsessions, rank-checking, or decals during our son’s college journey. We would have been thrilled if he had chosen our alma mater (Go Blue!) but were fully confident that he’d get a stellar education wherever he landed, and he did, even if it didn’t initially look like anything we had imagined. He’s healthy, he’s happy, he’s educated, he’s launched. Nothing else matters.
It is sometimes easy to forget that even high-performing students in high school are still just 17 or 18 years old. Certainly an over-bearing parent or mentor can be a hindrance in many ways, but a well-informed adult can be an excellent guide to many bright and ambitious students. Despite their intelligence and curiosity many of these top students have very little life experience. Simply put…most kids “don’t know what they don’t know”. There is a great big world out there for students who are interested in expanding their horizons, but most need an adult to guide them and to introduce them to these opportunities…not to mention financial realities!
Most kids just end up choosing a college by default because they (and their parents) did not put forth any effort to research schools and opportunities outside of their little regional bubble. Statistics show only 20% of students travel more than 500 miles from home to go to college, and over 50% of all students attend a college within 100 miles from home. Did a good number of those 50% attending a college close to home actively research and consider colleges in different parts of the country (or world) or did most just default to a school without any effort or research because their parents, siblings, friends, etc. went there? I do not have the data to answer this question specifically, but I tend to believe it is the latter.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to “in-State U” or to the local commuter school; for many students that is the best option and the best fit for them. However, many adults I have spoken with over the years have expressed a tinge of regret that they did not have more encouragement and guidance from a parent or counselor to expand their search when looking at colleges.
It’s funny. I’ve been on this site for about a year and I felt my “obsessiveness” increase, plateau and now, decrease, in that time (1st of three kids is a class of 2021 and will be applying this year). I think it’s in my nature to research the unknown and once I feel informed, the obsessiveness stops. The current status of college and the application process was the object of my obsession because “I didn’t know what I didn’t know”. Now I feel very informed about the process and my child has made her list of schools that should work for her to apply to - and, as a result, my level of obsessiveness has decreased considerably.
I’m sure I’ll continue to be engaged as results come in, and then with the actual school she ends up choosing and, finally, I may become obsessed with being prepared for freshman year, but I’ve solidly come to the conclusion that I just feel better about things when I am well informed.
And, as per usual, I’ll be much more relaxed as my other two kids go through the process because I’m not starting at square one (unless one of them takes a different path with a very different process - recruited athlete, etc).
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I have gone through the college selection process. My child has not. I want to help them make a good choice for them and best value for me.
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Parents know their children will soon be leaving the home…they want to have a modicum of control in where they go.
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Prestige…Parents often want to have their children go to a prestigous college and that reflects well on them.
@bopper Disagree
- when kids leave and they begin to exercise their freedom, they start making their own decision. So if a kid goes to boarding school does it say age 13 to 14 years old. 2. Parents can say anything but in the end students are the one who has to study and do extra curricular activities and live their life. 3. Sometime money is not an issue but students do not get in or second way student get in but can not afford - so prestige is irrelevant. By playing to the student strength -choose a college. Our first kid got into Harvard, parents wanted him to go there but he chose Stanford and we have to pay 7k more. Second kid got into both and parents thought he will be better in Stanford, but he chose Harvard. Go figure. You can not really tell kids what to do!
@RealityCheck I agree with your assessment of kids choosing schools closer to home with one other point to offer. Some kids just don’t want to be that far away. D20 originally said no more than 4 hours from home because she recognizes the financial implications of needing plane tickets or overnight stays just to transport her. We visited schools as far as 5 hours away and she still ended up just under 3. She was an ED applicant and was set on where she was going before all the Covid stuff started but now she is even happier because she won’t have to deal with a quarantine situation and if she has to be out in a hurry.
I agree with that. I tend to research and gain some knowledge so I can spot any huge red flags or potential pitfalls when helping to guide my kids. After I give the kids that information, I let them make their decisions and am more hands off.
@helpingmom40…I agree with you that many students really factor in the logistics when it comes down to making a final decision about where to go. I think a lot of students like the idea of going far away to college, but many students do not like the reality of going far away. As parents I guess the best we can do is to expose them to different options and to let them make the final decision. Hopefully, they will come to realize that they were shown different options and will be satisfied that they chose the best school for themselves.
…and if they are lucky they will reflect back years later and not have too many “what ifs?”!!!
Of my parents and all my aunts and uncles, only one uncle went to a four year college. He was mildly obsessed with his 3 kids going to college. It turns out that none went to a four year college but all went to a two year technical college of some kind. They all have done well in life and he was proud of them.
My dad barely made it out of high school but he was a hard worker and “instilled” in me the concept of hard work. He didn’t obsess over college, only that I would sometimes sleep past 7am and therefore would have “slept half the day away”. My mom was a nurse so she was a nursing school graduate.
The one who really obsessed over college was me!!! We lived in the Boston suburbs and MIT was in the newspaper all the time and they did engineering. I wanted to work in the space program and therefore needed to go to engineering school which to me meant MIT. I didn’t really know much about it at the time I made that decision, which was somewhere around 4th grade. But I was obsessed. That obsession drove me all the way thru high school as I eventually figured out what going to MIT involved.
I did indeed go to MIT and then worked in the space program.
So, I was conflicted when it came to my two kids, a boy and a girl. How hard do I push them? Or push them at all? I decided to let them push themselves to a point. I would express my pleasure or displeasure at how well they did in school but not in any big way. If they didn’t care, neither would I. Funny how they didn’t want to disappoint me and would generally push themselves quite hard, my daughter especially.
I also had them help me with projects around the house. They both learned to use various hand tools and power tools. They both seemed to be science and math types as it excited me and my enthusiasm rubbed off on them.
The only obsessive thing I did with them was with early elementary math. I really don’t like the memorization methods and the “drill and kill” mentality that was being used in their school. I had my visualization methods combined with games that I would use. For instance, I taught them the game of poker along with betting on the hands (and the language that went with it). They learned to figure odds, what the values of the chips were and how to combine them into whatever level bet they wanted to make. Of course, at the end of the game we’d just collect all the cards and chips and put them back in the box.
I did these things with my kids because they were fun but also because I did these types of thing with my dad. Even though my dad’s formal understanding of math wasn’t very great, doing these things with my dad is what I attribute my math skills to have developed from. Math is actually a visual skill and my dad helped me visualize it.
In the end they both became mechanical engineers. One went to CalPoly SLO and the other to WPI. We were in-state but full pay at CalPoly and WPI gave my daughter enough merit money to make it slightly cheaper than CalPoly would have been for her. I actually DISCOURAGED my daughter from applying to MIT. She would have been in the ball park for there but she was so obsessed about being at the top of her class that she would have had, IMHO, real problems with her mental health at MIT.
Encouraging, motivating, making learning fun and not obsessing is what it should be about. In the end I am proud, “obsessively proud” (?), of my kids and what they have been able to accomplish so far in their careers. And isn’t what one does in one’s career much more important than the name at the top of a piece of paper that rarely gets seen.
I have no choice but to be extremely involved, as I am my kids’ guidance counselor (homeschooling parent). The research is part of the job. I do a lot of reading here and on other sites, some geared to homeschoolers and others geared to everyone. Plus I listen to a ton of podcasts and have spoken with/listened to admission officers at a variety of colleges over the years.
As for prestigious schools - though D21 has a few on her list, the emphasis on my end is more about fit. D21 could have a great fit at a number of different schools, so it is also my job to dispel the notion that there is such a thing as one “dream school.” D21 has quite a range on her list now, and she would be happy at any one of those institutions (though she definitely has a few favorites).
I can say that, “Yes, I can recognize myself in some of your descriptors OP” However, with the recent trouble in US cities, how many of us are contemplating whether we should be sending our child somewhere so volatile? DS 1 is a rising junior and wants to play collegiate ball at an elite school as he can get into. We realize that we would have a better chance at scholarships at need-blind schools, otherwise college would be just a dream; we would drown financially. We have two more sons that need to be educated in the coming years. Being Native Americans with not a whole lot of money, we have to carefully search for the best options for our children. All this has been new territory and with college consultants being a far cry from reality for us, we have to be “obsessed” or, as I like to describe our efforts, “driven” to bring all the best options for our sons. I think it is the least we can do for them with limited resources and it would be remiss of us to do less. We have to help position our children for the best possible outcomes with limited resources we have. I pray it all works out!
I see a few different “flavors” of obsessed parents. You have the group that is very hands on, developing lists of schools that a student is allowed to apply to. I am a self-identified “helicopter” parent. I hover to protect. Too much? My students would say for the most part yes.
I was shocked by the admission process. We are expecting 17 year-old students to make huge financial decisions. As a payor, I feel I get some input into that decision. As many have stated, I research options for my kids.
I was really shocked by the hyper-competitive nature of admissions to elites. My twins are high achieving (NMF, etc) students that received rejections from a number of top, but not elite schools. They were much stronger candidates then I was waaaay back when, and I got into West Point. I naively expected them to have a broad range of choices to pick from. Not so much.
We are a donut hole family. We have enough income to pay some, but not enough to be full pay anywhere except a CC. Even in-state UC or CSU was going to be really tough.
As with any family dynamic, everyone will have a different blend of influence over their kids decisions. I appreciate the community at CC for providing insights into the process.
Many of these replies really resonate with me: “we have gone through it” , “we are paying for it” , “we know better”, “the process has changed since we went through it” , “we obsess until we acquire info/knowledge and then obsess less” and “they are too young to know what are the consequences of their choices or what they want to do or what even are the options out there”; to paraphrase a few.
The challenge I am facing is whether and how to get my D, a junior in HS, more obsessed herself. She is doing fantastic on grades at an elite prep school, studying for the ACT, doing social service online during the summer and digging into summer reading for her AP classes; she’s got good community service (including leadership), academic honor societies and drama/thespians ECs lined up for the new year starting. Can’t really get her motivated about college list because a) no tours/travel in the next few months in light of covid and b) does not have any SAT/ACT scores yet. Hard to talk re whether she need additional ECs for real shot at elite colleges, at which she would have URM hook and also legacy at some. Not sure what she wants to study although attracted to public service and medicine (seems put off by the very long 10+ years schooling in the latter).
Some friends have 4-year college advisors telling the kids what to do every week of the summer and throughout the year…
How much is too much? When does it become counterproductive? How much do we do for them and how much better to let them do? There is a lot of wisdom here and would love to hear from the forum re what has worked best in your respective views.
We have 5 kids (2 in college) and the college choice is driven by cost and quality = value. My wife and I both have graduate degrees and think the best method is to get paid to go to our in-state college honors program and use our college savings for graduate school or to help them get on their way.
Yet - in the middle of this, our 2nd child got into a top 20 school (Cal) vs. the honors program at a top 120 school (ASU) and we have chosen to support him on what seems like a poor financial decision. A dollar can only be spent once so - it may be a decision our 2nd will regret but we think supporting him on this decision is still a good process as he does own it.
@gablesdad I can relate! D20 generally gets overwhelmed by too many choices and options. We started by bringing her to casual walk around visits at a variety of local schools and it became obvious what kind of environment she found more appealing. She knew she wanted a trip shorter than we spend in the car to go for our beach vacation so we had a place to start from. She had no idea where schools were or how we would get there so I started a list of options that fit her basic criteria. Soon, she was excited but it took a bit to tease out what she was looking for.
My youngest cane out of a special ed background. While she no longer needed any accommodations after elementary school and took honors and AP classes in high school, nevertheless she still had pretty significant deficiencies entering college. I obsessed over finding a well-regarded school and major program in which I thought she could succeed. For example, if there was a difficult quant requirement, we eliminated the school.
I think obsess which is one thing and concerned is totally another. Most of the parents here seem concerned, imo, then obsessed.
Often parents get heavily involved in the college application process simply because they want a better experience for their student than they experienced.