When I went to college it was on a wing and a prayer that I would get scholarships and financial aid: Else, it just wasn’t going to happen. Roll forward many decades and my kids have very different options.
We will be full pay. I don’t let my kids buy houses with our money and I wouldn’t give them $250 K+ each without weighing lots of variables. We give the kids lots of voice ( sometimes too much). So they will articulate what they want and need and that will be the biggest factor in the decision. However, there isn’t support for letting them decide everything and just paying the bill when it arrives. That creates a sense of entitlement we do not support. We have seen too many parents do this and kids are 25 and still not on their own. It’s not for us.
We will likely do what a colleague of my spouse did. He told his kids when they were young, if you graduate in 4 years you owe us nothing. If you take five years, you owe the last year. He had them sign the loans and paid them upon graduation. Flipping from one thing to another is a waste of cash. I cannot fathom paying for five years because kiddo is finding themselves. If they need time, fine, take time off from school.
And to those who think it’s easy to transfer, I know from experience it is not. You waste a lot of credits and time doing that. Most of this could be spent getting a Masters if you had gotten it right the first time. And many transfers drop off because they are not socially connected. Not to mention, you will rarely get into an Ivy as a transfer ( if that’s your goal).
I wouldn’t care about best school rankings or best acceptance etc. As long as the school falls on the continum of having good educational value in that field and relatively good ranking, the decision is theirs. But if it’s between a low ranked school and a highly ranked school kiddo will hear a lot from us as parents. Fit is important. But fit to us, is not having more vegetarian options or a fancy gym. It’s based on academic standing and the ability to get a job. Safety would also be a factor.
“They had options of picking schools within each category, but if it was a reach school vs a match school they were going to a reach school. We were full pay, so I wanted to make sure we got the most ROI. I know we often debate about rankings (how useful), but I knew careers they wanted to pursue where they went to schools mattered.
To be very frank, why would I leave it completely to my kids when the cost of attending was 250k+.”
“I wouldn’t care about best school rankings or best acceptance etc. As long as the school falls on the continuum of having good educational value in that field and relatively good ranking, the decision is theirs. But if it’s between a low ranked school and a highly ranked school kiddo will hear a lot from us as parents. Fit is important. But fit to us, is not having more vegetarian options or a fancy gym. It’s based on academic standing and the ability to get a job. Safety would also be a factor.”
Don’t these comments assume that all schools cost the same? Does a parent really say we don’t care what it costs, just go to the “best” school you get into? Who weighs up the ROI of a scholarship that means lower ranked college X is much cheaper than higher ranked college Y, or that in-state tuition means public college A is much cheaper than private college B?
I’m interested in whether/how any parents let their kids consider cost as well. It doesn’t seem very common - most parents simply seem to say you can’t spend more than $X per year (and then keep most if not all of any difference for siblings’ education or other expenditure). We were prepared to let our kids take into account budget as well: we said here is the amount of money in your 529, you decide how you spend it (undergrad, postgrad, buying a house later on). And they picked their cheapest offers, though we agreed with them that those were also the best options and would likely give the best ROI.
@eb1256. “I’m flabbergasted (well, maybe not given this is CC) that many kids aren’t being allowed to make their own decision. What’s the worst that can happen? If they choose poorly they can transfer. Great life lesson which is part of what college is supposed to be about.”
Our kids will have limited budgets and need merit aid that would likely be lost if they transferred. Three kids means we need to stay within a certain price range if our son wanted to go away to school. We helped do the research and found a list that fit the budget for him to choose from.
Letting him do the search on his own without the financial guard rails seems like a heartbreak waiting to happen.
In many real world cases, parental finances tightly limit the kid’s college choices.
Here on the forums, parents with money mean that the kids may have the luxury of choosing more widely, but parents also have the luxury of forcing their kids to attend a school that the parents prefer (due to ranking or whatever).
In other words, few kids are free to choose a college without outside (typically parental) limitations.
@momofsenior1 Because it’s the best school on her list, by a long, long, long shot. Similar logic to that used by my Dad in the story about my applications and admittances. And, she’s only applying there because SHE would love to go there. I don’t want her to apply because I think as soon as you send an application in, you have some tiny hope that you might get in, even if there’s not even a sliver of a shot. I would have saved her the rejection letter/email.
For us it was the best school my kids could get into, and most schools at that level all cost about the same. D1 did get a full scholarship at a lower ranking school on her list. She asked me if she could turn it down. I paused for about 5 seconds (I could have gotten a new car every year with that money), and told her yes.
Neither of my older kids is a top student-- both had high school averages that hovered on either side of 80. So they weren’t choosing schools based on anyone’s rankings. And, as teachers, we didn’t have the type of bank account that would ever let either of them utter “finances aren’t a concern.” They both ended up with a freshman year at a school that most people in their schools had never heard of.
And yet, as far as I can tell on September 2, both made the right choice.
I helped them come up with a list of schools to consider, just as I would help them buy a car-- something that I’ve had more experience with than they have, something that would matter, and something that was going to represent a very significant cost. That’s the stage where I really had my say-- there was no point in considering a school we would never be able to afford.
Once we started visiting those schools, I did give input, but didn’t give edicts. With my son, I learned that I would ask 2 questions when we got into the car: “What did you NOT like?” and “Can you see yourself going here?” We both knew the right school when we saw it.
With my daughter, there was a lot more conversation. I started with “What did you think?” And there was a lot more give and take… “Yeah, wasn’t that cool?” kind of stuff.
@Twoin18 “I’m interested in whether/how any parents let their kids consider cost as well. It doesn’t seem very common - most parents simply seem to say you can’t spend more than $X per year”
Yes, most parents have their students consider costs! It’s just here on CC, which has a huge % of very wealthy families that it doesn’t appear to be as much of a factor.
I don’t get the second part of your statement. If a parent says you can’t spend more than X per year, then they are considering cost.
PS - I know more and more wealthy people that don’t think it’s worth 250K+ to send their kids to a non HYPSM type of school. Those parents are happily paying for state flagship or lower ranked schools with merit instead of 250K for BU, Lehigh, Trinity, Villanova type schools.
Maybe I am missing the point here but I think it’s irresponsible as a parent not to discuss the finances of colleges with your kids. It teaches them life lessons also. I mean… I really want a Ferrari. My whole life… I love Ferrari 's. My kids know if I could have one car… It would be Ferrari. There’s just one problem… I can’t afford a Ferrari! :((
@suzyQ7, I think that what @twoin18 is saying is that not all parents who give caps can afford the luxury of letting their kid pick any school whose cost is equal to or less than that amount. Most people have to carefully consider the cost differences under their cap.
I think the primary reason people don’t just turn the decision over to their kids is cost. Residential college itself is a luxury. The ability to give kids a budget of $20k-60k/year or more and the discretion to spend it however they want is one that’s not available to the majority of parents.
@austinmshauri – Yes, we made it clear with our D that we had to balance cost vs. fit vs. value and compare offers under our max budget. The choices ended up including our in state flagship which is fabulous and the cheapest – but we sadly eliminated b/c of fit. She wanted smaller which she didn’t figure out until accepted students’ day.
After that, the costs ranged between $37k and $58k/year, mostly due to merit $$. We eliminated the $58k option b/c it was most expensive and very similar (ranking, offerings, etc.) to other options she had so it just didn’t make sense to choose it over others (cost and value).
After that, the choices on the table were $37, $44 and $50k per year and we let her choose based on fit. Esp. since the two cheaper ones in reality were prolly each about $3k more when taking into account our travel back and forth for drop off and visits whereas we could drive the the most expensive option… And we felt like the $50k option was slightly higher ‘value’ based on reputation.
We were upfront all the way through with this thought process and our D understood that even under a price cap there were price sensitivities to consider. So balancing cost vs. value vs. fit was a good framework for us.
What I’m getting at is this sort of rationale that I don’t understand:
“D1 did get a full scholarship at a lower ranking school on her list. She asked me if she could turn it down. I paused for about 5 seconds (I could have gotten a new car every year with that money), and told her yes.”
If you give your kid the choice of them going to a “better” college or you having a new car (or at least the kid not seeing any difference in their finances) it is hardly surprising what they’d pick.
If @oldfort had offered her D1 the choice of go to the higher ranked school or take the scholarship and keep the money that the higher ranked school would have cost, wouldn’t that have allowed her D1 to consider whether she really would get an ROI from the additional spending?
No, D1 offered to pay me additional money so she could go to a higher ranking school. At the end, I wouldn’t have let her take the scholarship because there was a reason why she was getting a scholarship.
I think that’s an excellent point, @AlmostThere2018. As long as parents are upfront with their kids and realistic about chances of admission and sources of funding, then the way that works for each family is the right one for them. But honesty throughout the process is important no matter what.
Our family had financial restraints. Our youngest had 3 full tuition offers and one full ride offer on the table. We told her she had to take the full ride. She wasn’t happy. We were relieved to feel the noose loosen on our budget. She’s happy now, but it took some time.
Come to think about it, not only that I give as much freedom as possible to my daughter, I am the one who defends her less ambitious educational choices from her mom and “wise” relatives.
As long as our kid applied to UCLA and Berkeley and another UC and one Honors College, he was free to apply to other few schools. He then asked me if he applied to a high ranked private school and somehow got in, whether we could afford it. I said no problem because not only it was true but I honestly didn’t think he would get in. But he got in. Only school I told him I liked less after the visit was Berkeley, but left the decision up to him, although I told him if I were him I would choose the Honors College with merits over UCLA or Berkeley, but since he’s not me (and we have different personalities) he can do what he thinks is the best for him. I was more insistent that college should be 4 years of relaxing, learning experience without thinking about making money.