<p>darkomi, are you saying that it is not ok to break the bank for a public university (you seem to lump them all together) but that it is ok to do so for a private university?</p>
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<p>Applicants, especially OOS applicants, shouldn’t regard Michigan as a safety. It’s too selective, and its selection criteria are too quirky and unpredictable for that. Every year in this forum as admissions decisions are coming in, there are posts by stunned high-stats OOS applicants who were rejected or waitlisted by Michigan, asking “How could this possibly happen?” They’re people who thought Michigan was a safety, and it wasn’t. The mistake was theirs, not Michigan’s. </p>
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<p>No, wrong. Clearly you didn’t bother to read my post; either that, or you’re an inattentive reader. At no point was Michigan a safety for my D2. It was a school she aspired to over her safeties, which were Minnesota and Wisconsin. And she didn’t “warm up to it,” she was absolutely thrilled to be accepted, and after she was accepted there but before she heard from her other schools, she became even more enthusiastic about it. But in the end she decided not to attend because she came to the conclusion that she really did want a smaller school after all, and because she got a better financial deal at a leading LAC, based on a large and unexpected merit scholarship. </p>
<p>Don’t try to rewrite my family’s personal history, please. It’s just too . . . personal, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.</p>
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<p>I can’t emphasize this point strongly enough: there are tons of families (like mine) that can’t “drop $45k or $55k or $60k without thinking about it,” but who can piece together those resources by saving for years in anticipation of college, digging deep into other savings and investments, postponing major expenditures like vacations and new cars and home improvements, borrowing moderately so as to spread the cost over a longer period, committing to live frugally for the duration of their kids’ college years, and placing reasonable earning expectations on their college-aged kids. And if you can do it, even with a struggle, then the colleges, even the colleges that meet full financial need, expect you to do it. The point is, just because you’re full-pay doesn’t make it pain-free, or a decision that one makes lightly, i.e., “without thinking about it.”</p>
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<p>It’s not your place to tell anyone what investments in their children’s education are or are not worthwhile. Clearly you don’t value a liberal arts education, and that’s your right–but the point you’re making seems not to be a point about Michigan, but rather a point about a liberal arts education generally. Others have other values and will decide for themselves what educational investments are worthwhile, given their own financial situation and their children’s educational aspirations and academic talents.</p>
<p>That said, I would never take out a second mortgage or do anything to jeopardize my family’s “financial freedom” in order to pay for my kids’ education. But I would no more do that for Ross or Michigan engineering than for LS&A or either of the very fine private LACs my daughters are attending. Those are my values. I don’t presume to say what others should do.</p>
<p>bcl, You highlighted that your D1 got into her first choice LAS and then glossed over D2’s first choice. Making it sound like her super safeties were Minn and Wis, safety was Michigan and target was some elite LAS. Your words, not mine.</p>
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<p>If money is tight, it’s rarely a good idea to break the bank on OOS tuition. Period. Has nothing to do with Michigan. There are way too many quality schools in America to go to the poor house for Michigan. Especially when you consider the OP is likely in California, Illinois, New York or New Jersey…states with incredible public and private schools that offer much better value than Michigan’s OOS cost. End of the day, spending $55k on OOS tuition is a luxury purchase only the wealthy (or students receiving sizable merit offers) should be making.</p>
<p>Private universities better value than Michigan? You are assuming that they provide a significant scholarship or a lot of financial aid right? And I am not sure I would describe any public university in NY or NJ as “incredible”. The SUNY and CUNY systems are solid, and Rutgers is good, but none of those schools are “incredible”. </p>
<p>I agree that it is never worth breaking the bank for any university, but you seem to be emphasizing that is only the case with public universities. So you condone breaking the bank for a private university then.</p>
<p>Since we don’t know where the OP is from or what his child will be concentrating on, all of this conversation is way too hypothetical. In general, I don’t think you can ever justify a family experiencing financial strain to send a child to a full priced OOS or private. In state, privates with merit, or a lower ranked and more economical OOS would absolutely be the way to go. I mean think about this thread: A parent, aged 45-55 yo signed up for a message board only to cry about how the price of an out of state school is unfair. It’s hilarious and really sad at the same time. My theory is that the parents have friends who are also sending their kids to Michigan and it was all exciting as everyone’s kids got accepted. Then it’s time to actually cut the check and all of a sudden junior has to look at those safeties…and this ladies and gentlemen is one way a wait list gets in, ha.</p>
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<p>Not “my words.” I never once said Michigan was my daughter’s safety. She never once talked about it that way, nor did I ever talk about it that way with her. Based on her stats and other credentials, viewed in light of Michigan’s increasingly selective admissions standards especially for OOS students, I regarded it as a “match” to “high match.” I was not surprised that she was admitted, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had been deferred in the EA round. She was thrilled to be admitted because she wasn’t too keen on her safeties (which weren’t “super-safeties,” by the way, just ordinary, garden-variety safeties), and with the Michigan admission, which came in early December, she was guaranteed of being able to attend a top-tier school.</p>
<p>D1’s and D2’s college searches were entirely different. D1 had a clear #1 choice, where she applied ED and was accepted; that was the only school she ever applied to. D2 didn’t have a clear first choice. She applied to many schools and in the end was accepted at all of them except two, where she was waitlisted. Technically she’s still on those waitlists. She had a hard time choosing among the schools where she was accepted (including Michigan) because there never had been a clear favorite.</p>
<p>Again, please stop trying to put words in my mouth, and please stop trying to rewrite my family’s personal history. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s offensive.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be offensive, “your words” made it easy to infer that she didn’t get accepted into at least one school, which you have now admitted. I think it’s safe to assume Michigan is less selective and exclusive than the other two LAS where she is wait listed, hence my I use of the term “safety” (only in comparison to the more exclusive LAS she applied to). It was not meant as an insult to UM, you or your daughter.</p>
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<p>I also think this comment is offensive. It’s not “hilarious.” I only have so much sympathy for the OP because it should have been clear that the cost of OOS tuition at Michigan was high and only likely to go higher. OP and OP’s family made a decision, and perhaps in retrospect it’s a decision that wasn’t well-considered. It sounds like they got in over their heads financially and are finding it hard to make ends meet. There’s nothing “hilarious” about that. It’s a painful and difficult situation that a lot of parents find themselves in as they sacrifice to try to make a better life for their children, and sometimes they miscalculate or are overly optimistic about what they can afford. Anyone with basic human decency and a normal amount of empathy is not going to find that “hilarious.”</p>
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<p>No one cares about your “theory.” Please stop speculating about other people’s lives. You have no idea how this came about.</p>
<p>I struggle to find any sympathy for someone who gave their child the green light on applying to their most expensive school option. Further, as a Michigan resident, I find the OP’s tone to be severely entitled, while failing to acknowledge a severe lack of preparation prior to the summer their child leaves for college. This is someone with limited means who clearly did ZERO research on the costs of their child’s education.</p>
<p>Do you think all the dollars that universities receive are used wisely? Maybe there is 5% that could be questioned? Think 10%? More?</p>
<p>I was using specific dollar amounts to illustrate the blank check that universities expect parents to pay. I apologize if it sounded like whining as that is the very thing that I did not intend to do.</p>
<p>I want to ask ‘why aren’t more parents speaking up about rising tuition, whether it is in-state, out-of-state, public, or private?’ </p>
<p>My son had a 34 on the ACT, 2200+ on SAT, 790 on Math Subject test, 10 AP classes, All-Academic State athlete in two sports (that means he participated in State Meets with a 3.5+ GPA), finished high school with a 4.2, and earned his Eagle Scout rank before age 16 (no over zealous Scoutmasters pushing him through at age 17 years and 11 1/2 months). Lots of schools wanted him. Michigan has one specific program that ties into an industry that pays well. We did the cost benefit analysis that if he went to XYZ college at a lower cost, that he would be competing for jobs with the students from Michigan. So in general we accepted the higher cost. </p>
<p>But, I still do not agree why parents who pay the bills are on the short end of the deal — we’ll tell you what the increase is over the summer, we’ll tack on fees here and there. Parents are the customer. And we bring an exceptional student to the party. One who will make UM proud in the future. Why are we chopped liver (with apologies to all the chopped liver fans)? </p>
<p>This has nothing to do with competing with the Jones or living over our means. We have lived in 2 states and paid state income and local property taxes for local schools. We didn’t mind. We had our kids later in life to save money because we started out with nothing. And I mean nothing. </p>
<p>Only 4% of people who have a complaint speak up. When people don’t speak up, bad practices continue and everyone pays more.</p>
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<p>darkomi, I see you have only a few posts here. Are you a HS student perhaps? Are you familiar with the term “safety” as it’s used in the college selection process? School A isn’t a “safety” relative to school B just because school B is more selective. School A isn’t a safety unless it’s a virtual certainty that the applicant will be admitted. Some use the term “safety” even more restrictively and insist that a school isn’t a “safety” unless admission is virtually certain AND it’s certain the school is one the applicant will be able to afford.</p>
<p>Michigan was never a safety for my daughter, and given its selectivity and its somewhat unpredictable pattern of OOS admissions, I think it’s probably a mistake for any OOS applicant ever to consider it a safety.</p>
<p>Not that it’s any of your business, but of the two LACs that waitlisted my daughter, one is only slightly more selective than Michigan, and the other is very similar to Michigan in selectivity. The schools that accepted her spanned a similar range in selectivity, similar to or slightly more selective than Michigan, except for her safeties, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are considerably less selective. It’s just a quirky and unpredictable process; you can’t just go by the numbers. Sometimes an applicant will be accepted at a more selective school and waitlisted at a less selective one. Again, however, your speculative assumptions are out of line, wrong, and unwelcome.</p>
<p>What Michigan program is your son interested in? Impressive stats. Did he consider playing a sport at an Ivy?</p>
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<p>OP, now I see where you’re coming from. We’ve faced a similar situation with our D1’s private LAC: once the decision to attend is made, you’re pretty much over a barrel, stuck with whatever tuition increases they throw at you after that point. The only alternative is to force your kid to transfer which can be hugely disruptive to their education, and will inevitably feel like trading down if your kid is already attending the college of his choice. It makes it hard to do a real cost-benefit analysis, because you don’t really know what the costs will be. We built in an expectation of an annual 5-6% across-the-board cost increase (tuition, room & board, everything else that goes into COA), and so far the school has done pretty much as we expected.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s accurate to say that parents don’t complain, however. They complain about tuition increases all the time. So do students at some schools; there have been demonstrations and sit-ins and such. Whether they complain or not, however, I think most parents (realistically) think the complaining isn’t likely to do much good, except possibly to make the school a little more cautious about future increases. </p>
<p>I have heard of a few schools that now offer a guaranteed 4-year price: whatever your tuition and fees are in your freshman year, they’re guaranteed to stay at that level for 4 years. I should think that predictability would be attractive to some people, but I can understand why colleges and universities would be reluctant to go that route. They’re accustomed to budgeting on one-year cycles, and some of their other revenue sources–legislative appropriations in the case of state universities, payout on endowment, annual giving, for example–are not that predictable, and generally they don’t have the operating reserves to run a deficit for very long at all. Plus there’s a lot of uncertainty in predicting inflation, interest rates, and economic growth (or retraction) that far out. Consequently, if they did go the 4-year-guaranteed-rate route, they’d be tempted to jack up the initial offered rate to account for future cost increases, with an added margin for uncertainty. I’m not sure parents would come out ahead in the long run.</p>
<p>Businesses have 1-year budgets, 5-year budgets, and 10-year budgets. Universities have access to leading Economists and Business Schools right on their campuses. Since they continue to play the game that they don’t know what their expenses will be until July ?!?!, I question if they are capable of educating their students in Economics and Business. </p>
<p>I just saw an article about $500 per square foot to remodel a UM dorm when new construction would be $100-200 per square foot. I will find it again and list the link. The counter argument was the dorms now need wi-fi, security and fire systems. $300 per square foot worth?</p>
<p>[University</a> of Michigan looks to out-of-state students to subsidize low in-state tuition increase](<a href=“http://www.annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-2013-14-tuition-rates-funding-model/]University”>University of Michigan looks to out-of-state students to subsidize low in-state tuition increase)</p>
<p>Comments below the article: </p>
<p>the U just rehabbed Alice Lloyd at a cost of about $100,000 per bed</p>
<p>Alice Lloyd should have been torn down and replaced with something that cost about $200-300/sq-ft. At $100K per bed, you equal what the private developers spent for Zargon West (200 beds, $20 Million) which is new construction.</p>
<p>[Dorm</a> renovation tab to reach $500M as University of Michigan plans $60M renovation of South Quad](<a href=“http://www.annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-plans-60m-renovation-of-south-quadrangle/]Dorm”>Dorm renovation tab to reach $500M as University of Michigan plans $60M renovation of South Quad)</p>
<p>U-M has spent $440 million to renovate eight dormitories and dining halls, including the current $116 million renovation of East Quadrangle, which is taking place this year. A refurbished Alice C. Lloyd Hall opened this year, after a $56 million investment, and has amenities and furnishings that rival the new luxury student high-rises popping up around Ann Arbor.</p>
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<p>I think their revenue sources are more variable than their expenses. If the legislature doesn’t pass a budget until June, then the university can’t realistically set its budget in May based on what it hopes to get from the legislature in June.</p>
<p>The cost of rehabbing dorms has nothing to do with the price of tuition and mandatory fees. Housing is on an entirely separate budget. It does affect the price the university charges for room and board, but at Michigan that primarily affects freshmen as most upperclass students elect to live off-campus.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, you’re tilting at windmills here.</p>
<p>OutofStateParent, Michigan funds most facilities renovations through alumni donations and its $8.5 billion endowment.</p>
<p>Look OP, universities are expensive to run. Reputable universities are not, however, for-profit institutions. If a university system, like the UC, has its budget slashed by the legislature, one of three things are possible:</p>
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<li>It keeps tuition the same, and makes cuts which affect its quality.</li>
<li>It raises tuition to compensate for the lost revenue from the state.</li>
<li>The legislature refunds the university, and, hopefully, tuition can go down if the university or the system is assured of reliable funds.</li>
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<p>Given the quality of the program your family chose Michigan for, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like option 1 OP, and I’ve also told you of option 3 which you haven’t commented on. That leaves only option 2, and you’re seeing the effects of that (not sure about Michigan’s politics, but pretty sure it was always underfunded by the state.)</p>
<p>Michigan isn’t a school like Chicago, building some overly-expensive, nonessential robotic library. It’s spending its money wisely, but to maintain academic quality, tuition must be raised, and likely increased. </p>
<p>I think you raise a good point that rising tuition is an issue which should be discussed. But I think you have the wrong perspective of it as an OOS applicant. OOS applicants probably pay more than both in-state and private options with generous merit aid. If they do pay less than anyone, I’d imagine it’d just be lower than families that apply ED.</p>
<p>High OOS tuition isn’t a huge problem because for most American families, it’s too expensive to even be considered an option. Your series of posts on this forum is analogous to you buying a Ferrari, and then complaining at how high gas has risen. If the latter was going to be a problem for you, the former shouldn’t have been purchased.</p>