Parent Dilemma

<p>I always got great answers from this forum so I am posting here </p>

<p>I have a very interesting situation where I am not able to take decision and I need help
I am current GA resident who has an option of moving to NJ. I have two kids rising high school. As a college student which state will be better to live in.
GA has few good collages and no idea abt NJ but all around in there are lot of colleges.
what should be my criteria do decide which state will be good to live for highschooler and college going kids.</p>

<p>Where you will live in NJ will better answer that question assuming your kids will be in public school</p>

<p>New Brunswick 50 miles radius</p>

<p>As a resident of the Garden State, I would offer these thoughts:</p>

<ul>
<li>The NJ college applicant pool is very very competitive. I would think that coming from GA would offer more appeal to colleges looking to add geographic diversity.</li>
<li>By and large, I would say that NJ has very strong high school options…public, private, and parochial.</li>
</ul>

<p>In terms of NJ colleges: Princeton (of course); Rutgers; TCNJ (formerly known as Trenton State), Stevens, Rider, Drew, and Ramapo are all schools I’ve heard good things about or know graduates of.</p>

<p>I recommend you repost this question to the main Parents forum on CC. I’m sure GA and NJ differ in many ways, including financial aid for in-state students. Georgia has the Hope Scholarships, and (I believe) merit aid for instate students. I don’t know enough to compare the trade-offs in such a decision, but I’m sure someone on the Parents Forum does. </p>

<p>I suspect staying in Georgia would be a good choice, IF you have good local schools.</p>

<p>If you are a generous taxpayer, new jersey is open for business! I kid you not! NJ public schools are overrated, most of the competitive kids from NJ tend to be driven by Asian immigrant parents. Most of the rest play football and baseball. </p>

<p>If your children are into Engineering, very few schools match Georgia Tech.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the replies. It is very tough decision. GA has gerorgia tech and emory but Nj and surrounding area has more colleges.
What will be better to apply to these college as GA resident or NJ?</p>

<p>GA Tech is a public school, so tuition is less for in-state. Emory is private, so no difference in tuition. There are public colleges in NJ too, which would have different tuition rates for in-state students. There are also many private colleges in NJ and NY. And unless there is some reason you want to have your kids close, kids frequently attend college in different states. There are many kids from the Northeast at Emory, and some at GA Tech. </p>

<p>You probably want to post these questions on the college board, not the prep school board.</p>

<p>We were transferred from Atlanta to NJ when our kids were entering 7th and 8th grades. I know how hard a decision this is. There is a lot to consider, not the least of which is cost of living. Housing, property taxes and private school tuition are much, much higher here than in Georgia. We used private schools in Atlanta and opted for a private school in NJ as well because we thought it would be an easier transition for our kids. Academically, we found that even though there were differences in the curriculum, it was a pretty smooth transition into the new school. The culture shock was the bigger issue for us. I have to say that the kids adapted much faster than I did and it turned out to be a good high school experience for them. I will mention that the driving age here is 17 so our kids weren’t very happy when they turned 16 and all their Georgia friends had licenses!</p>

<p>When it came down to college selection, both kids were only interested in Southern schools although there are many, many great choices within a few hours of NJ. If going to an in-state school is your preference, you are better off in Georgia particularly if your kids qualify for the Hope. In our high school, none of the kids wanted to go to Rutgers so almost all are paying out of state tuition or going to a private school. Georgia has great options in Ga Tech and UGA. Rutgers is a fine school, but for some reason the kids we know aren’t interested in it at all. </p>

<p>To answer your other question, I think it could be better to apply to certain schools from GA rather than NJ. Jersey kids apply in great numbers to top out of state schools and they do tend to be very competitive. There are schools though where the advantage could lie with NJ – more info would help as to what schools you are thinking of. </p>

<p>Having been through this myself, I am happy to help you if you have more questions.</p>

<p>There are a lot of good schools in the south: Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, Tulane, UNC-CH, UVA, UT-Austin. NJ has only Princeton and it’s a long shot for all applicants. Your chances of getting into Princeton are better from GA than from NJ. You’ll be able to afford Princeton with all the tax savings and the lower cost of living in GA. However, if you are plush with cash, it doesn’t hurt to come to NJ.</p>

<p>In NJ: Average house cost: $800K, Average house property tax: 12K/yr, Good driver auto insurance: $1200/yr, Private school tuition: $30K/yr/kid, Highway tolls, Bad weather, bad restaurants, rude people, but to their credit, they are better than New Yorkers. Garden state without gardens. All labor unions, teachers unions are headquartered in NJ.</p>

<p>Anyone who thinks the Garden State is all refineries and Sopranos needs to visit Hunterdon County. Or any number of counties in the state.</p>

<p>As for taxes/cost of living (which I hear about from out of staters all the time), have you tried to live in NYC?</p>

<p>There is one more factor to it is one of my children is going to prep school in NJ starting this year.</p>

<p>Is there a career factor in this decision or is it primarily based on where your children will be attending HS and college? It’s hard to predict where they will choose. After going through HS in NJ, both our kids were very anxious to get back to the South for college and would not consider any Northeastern schools. We thought we’d never see them live up here again and then DD accepted a job in Manhattan. Go figure.</p>

<p>There must be 2 New Jerseys - the one I live in and the one pwalsh is talking about.</p>

<p>^^ Your NJ, if it exists, can’t be better than what I described. This is called pwalsh’s law of reality. But I support all the people that love to stay in NJ and continue to feed the unions.</p>

<p>Sevendad, You don’t call NYC a garden city just because there is central park.</p>

<p>OP, are you thinking about turning your soon-to-be-boarding-student to a day student? Which is understandable as some say the “results” of day students are better, but I’ve seen many boarders doing great and more than a few day students doing so-so, so it really depends. Considering you have another child and you need to find a proper school for him/her as well, I suggest you hold off moving to NJ IF the main motivation for the move is to accompany the child in prep school at NJ. </p>

<p>We shouldn’t comment on the financial aspect of the move because you didn’t ask for it. For high school and college choices, the Northeast, NJ included in general is an area where people are “crazier” about education than most parts of the south. It does mean there’re more resources, more information and more peer motivation in the area for families of the same type. If you are eyeing the Ivy League colleges and those great LACs (known as “little Ivies”), you might find more schools with good track record in matriculating their students into those colleges, more “peers” with same interests and more services helping you to achieve that goal. On ther other hand, however, it also means there are more in-state, in-area competitions for those few tipsy-top colleges. You’d lose a possible “gegraphic diversity hook” (depending on whether your area or your kid’s school is truely under-represented in the elite colleges in the east) if you give up GA residency.</p>

<p>Those are some of things you might want to consider. At the end of the day, kids can succeed anywhere and I understand you are just trying to find a “better” option since those options happen to be available to you at this point. The starting point to make that decision, I think, is a good analysis of your goals regarding your children’s education, your children’s preferrence of types of schooling, and the school choices you have in your area currently, etc. Good luck!</p>

<p>Can’t help but chime in here… NJ is a fine state for living and education. No, I’m not a resident but I commute through aforementioned Hunterdon County. It’s such a beautiful countryside and completely different from the scenery of smokestacks that you can see along NJ turnpike on your way to NYC. Middle and South Jerseys are as rural as they can be. It’s just probably more expensive to live than GA…steep property taxes, to support fine public education, and high state and local income taxes.</p>

<p>In terms of college admission, I would argue against 7D’s view. In my observation, good public high schools near Ivy colleges tend to produce a disproportionate number of admissions to local Ivy. For example, Lexington High to Harvard, Lower Merion to Penn… and I’d bet the same for Princeton, Yale and others.</p>

<p>@SharingGift: My point about the competitiveness of the pool was not so much about in-state schools (like Princeton) but schools at large. NJ parents can be sort of intense about college prep/college matric…I’ve heard the same is true of parents in the Cambridge, MA area.</p>

<p>Thank you Benley for breaking it down and making few things clear for me. Thanks for great analysis. My concern to move was should we make her day student or boarding is ok too. I think we can try out this year. Thanks 7Dad and sharingGift for Nj info.</p>