For me it comes down to fit and goals for the kid. Have a friend with two kids. FL resident. First kid went to FSU, got a business degree (I think accounting) is doing just fine living on his own in his home town / city (Tampa). Money in the bank, owns a home, will likely be a FL lifer. Second kid went to Lehigh, also accounting. Is working in the valuation practice of KPMG on Wall Street and will pursue the path of “high finance” in M& A work. Has different aspirations than his brother.
I speak to his father frequently (he’s a partner in a regional CPA firm) and he has an interesting perspective:
Both are great and you can do fine at either.
Experience at Lehigh was incredible in all areas including: academic, social, network, alumni, career immersion ( he describes a different attitude - very focused on getting meaningful internships at leading companies and a network to help accomplish that).
I view them both as a launching pad. Where are you trying to go, what trajectory, etc. Some on CC may not want to hear it, but these two different experiences set his kids on a different path. Both of them well suited for the individuals involved. Also know that you could accomplish either from either. It’s just more natural to do it from the corresponding silo. Something about being installed into an environment that speaks to one’s desires outcome.
No, not an OOS Flagship scenario but very similar as the cost of the OOS flagship is similar to private. Although I do agree that the environment at a fine small or midsize private will be vastly different then a state school even if we’re talking UVA, UNC, UMich, UC. More similar (quite similar actually) to William & Mary.
Is it worth it? My buddy thought so. That’s up to the individual.
@momof2g1b Why would a student, wanting to branch out, choose to room with a HS friend if they are wanting to separate from HS acquaintances? Are they really friendly with ALL 100 HS classmates that attend that university? All of them are in the same major? They are all taking the same section of English 101, the same semester? Why would a student have an issue with running into a former classmate every now and again or taking a lecture/class with a few of them? They can choose to sit on the opposite side of the lecture hall and if they happen to be assigned to the same small discussion group, ask to change groups. No one is forcing people to hangout with former HS classmates. If there is contact with them on social media, the student is choosing to follow them on snapchat, insta or twitter. As for joining the frats and sororities, there are multiple to choose from, you don’t join the tri-Delts if that is where your HS classmate gravitate, be a Pi Phi instead. Honestly, I don’t think there are huge cliques of Anytown HS students waiting to embrace or ostracize former HS classmates. If a given student chooses to separate or branch out no one is going to care. It is a different story if you hated/had issue John Doe and Peter Smith in HS and they are going to State U and you are all majoring in mechanical engineering and planning to pledge Figi. Then yes, you might consider selecting another school. But in general, by college, most people are capable of forming their own friend groups without resorting to the familiar and comfortable; particularly the kid who is eager to make new friends and was willing to move 5 states away to avoid HS classmates to do it!
I attended a medium - large sized state University that many of my HS classmate attended also, although I probably only knew 10-20 of them well enough to strike up a conversation. Not once, in 4 years, did I have a class or socialize with anyone I knew or recognized from HS. I did know a guy from my church youth group and we carpooled home every now and then, but we were not hanging out together regularly.
My eldest daughter made this argument, not wanting to go to college with people she went to HS with; DD went all the way from Texas to obscure (for Texans) Marquette U in Wisconsin, a school that 0 kids from her HS had ever enrolled. Funny thing…at her new student event she ran into a girl she had known in elementary school and DD actually found a bit of relief knowing that there would be at least one other kid on campus who knows what it is like to be craving some tex-mex Torchy’s Tacos. They, unexpectedly ended up living across the hall from each other last year when the girl ended up moving out of her freshman room due to some roommate issues. She and DD socialize occasionally, by choice.
We have a slight variation on this problem - is it worth a premium to pay for one OOS flagship over other OOS flagships that have a lower COA, and are comparably rated?
D didn’t get into our highly competitive in-state flagship (UNC-Chapel Hill), but was accepted with $10k in merit to Tennessee and South Carolina. (total COA roughly $35k). Got into honors at UTK. She wants to go to neither of them because they are “too familiar” as we have relatives in both cities and visit Columbia and Knoxville regularly.
Got into SMU, but no scholarship money, and don’t expect any FA with our EFC being more than the COA there. Still, our income is not such that paying double ($70k) makes SMU a viable option. Still waiting on TCU and hoping for some scholarship money, because that seems like the best compromise of all the options.
Enter Colorado-Boulder. Accepted with a modest scholarship of $6250 and honors program. Barring additional scholarships (there was a separate application for these) total COA is going to be about $46k, so $11k more a year than UTK or USC. Is Boulder worth the premium over two comparably-regarded OOS flagships? She’s never even been there, but from all reports it is heaven on earth so a campus visit isn’t likely to sour her on it. She really doesn’t have a planned career or major in mind, so we consider the three schools to be even in that regard as well.
If CU-B is where she is dead set on going, we plan on having her take out the $5500 PLUS loan to give her some skin in the game and see how much she really cares about it. We basically have the total four year COA for USC and UTK already saved in her 529 plan (or will by the end of the year). The added cost of CU-B won’t break us financially, it’s more a matter of whether it is worth that premium so that she can go to a location that she thinks she will enjoy more for her college experience for four years. I can certainly see a value to that, as well as to living in a new part of the country she’s never experienced before, but is it worth $44k over four years? We are doing all right, but $44k is still real money where we come from. That’s what we’re struggling with right now.
@UTSquared: “Is Boulder worth the premium over two comparably-regarded OOS flagships?”
Worth it in what sense?
While understand how HS kids may want to get away from some place they’ve lived their whole life, I almost think that for some of them, it may make more sense to take a gap year living in different parts of the country, maybe close to a college, working a minimum wage job to support themselves so that they can get that out of their system and then regard college options with a more critical eye.
“I myself have made some financial sacrifices to send my DD to UChicago, but OOS public, not even on the table. JMHO.”
That wouldn’t depend on major? For computer science it would make for sense to send a kid to Berkeley or Michigan than Chicago or for that matter most ivies (outside of Harvard). Chicago is good in CS, but it’s not Berkeley.
@PurpleTitan the public schools you mention are elite at the GRADUATE level where there funding and finances are much more in line with elite private universities. The problem is that the undergraduate experience is heading downhill as they try and shore up a lack of state funding with larger classes, smaller budgets etc. So no I would not ever pay OOS rates for a public university at the undergraduate level. Every state has a university with something to offer (maybe not the name recognition your looking for) that will cost far less. The public undergraduate university experience is generally fend for yourself and you can do that (and excel) in your home state at half the cost or less. My kids choices were elite private (if you get get in) or in state (or any college that would match in state cost). This is advice that most parents who are financially constrained should follow.
@Alexandre attended both UMich and Cornell and he’s said that he did not see a discern difference in resources.
Many of the publics are STEM powerhouses. A visiting professor from Oxford, for instance, was amazed that the equipment that a fellow professor at UT-Austin had access to (that he didn’t have). And for the very top students, the line between grad and undergrad is a false one as many can and will take grad-level classes (I took a grad-level philosophy seminar at the Ivy-equivalent I went to, for instance; got an A there).
CU Boulder (in-state) alum here, married to a CU Boulder (oos) alum who also returned to CU for grad school. You and your kid should visit before deciding. Rank doesn’t matter as much as fit.
Also, I have been hearing this frequently from students who want to transfer: they are not offered the same aid package when they apply to transfer in after a miserable freshman year elsewhere. So if she goes to SC for one year and hates it and decides to transfer, you might be paying even more for CU.
We live in Washington state, where our flagship too urban and too large for either of my kids’ tastes. Oldest is at a LAC out of state, youngest still in high school but will be likely attending an OOS public university. CU is on his list and I’d be happy with that.
@theloniusmonk Agree with @CU123 re Cal. Ah the beauty of the college process is there are so many choices. We wouldn’t send our kids to UCB ever, even for CS, at in state rate. And had that choice. Reputation and reality can be two very different things to different people.
We’re paying about 10 percent more for the OOS flagship than our in state flagship, because kid got max merit scholarship. In state flagship is better overall, but for her major, and because of the honors campus, and because of location, OOS flagship was clearly a better choice. Worth it at 10 percent more. But I don’t think it would have been worth it to us without the merit scholarship. Without that, it would have been about 40 percent more, at least an extra 80K total, maybe a bit more, over the 4 years. So glad we didn’t have to make that decision.
@PurpleTitan very smart/successful people go to public universities all the time. I would argue that those people would have been just as successful attending in state univerisities, as the experience does not differ that much from state to state (especially for self motivated people who will succeed virtually anywhere and in any endeavor) The issue is that your spending at least twice as much paying OOS for a marginal difference in experiences and depending on your circumstances that can be debilitating.
And this is with the bottom quartile at the publics generally being weaker than the bottom quartile at the privates.
Obviously, publics that are strong in STEM like Cal, UMich, UIUC, UW-Madison, and even PSU dominate in terms of the sheer number of undergrads they send to S&E PhD programs (with only Cornell in their league).
So if some privates don’t do as well as the top publics even with more money and a generally stronger entering class, doesn’t that tell you something?
BTW, schools like UMich and UVa wouldn’t be much affected by cuts in public funding because they get so little from their state already anyway. At one point in time, at both those schools, state funding accounted for only 2% of their total budget.
@CU123: "The issue is that your spending at least twice as much paying OOS for a marginal difference in experiences "
Again, that depends on the school/program. I think you generalize too much.
Ross, for instance, has the most career counselors per student of any public b-school (and probably is on par with many privates). It also is an IB target while many publics are not.
In CS, I noted that, judging by the difficulty of the OS finals I looked at, the rigor of publics that are highly-ranked in CS is roughly equivalent to that at Ivies/equivalents, but both are a definitely level more difficult than an average flagship (and light-years more difficult than a typical directional public).
Granted, for something like elementary school education, there may not be much difference.