True story about a local family: about 10 years ago two siblings each received an inheritance in the high five figures from a grandparent.
Son invested it and went to State, I believe with a tuition scholarship. Daughter went off to private out of state, burned through the money in 2 years, and either couldn’t afford to keep attending or wanted to be closer to home. So she transferred to State and, as a transfer student, didn’t have access to the same scholarships.
They both have their degrees from the same school now! Except he owns a home he bought at graduation and has cash in the bank. She took a year longer to finish and has debt from loans.
Mom says “I tried to advise her, but she said it was her money and her life”. Not untrue, but some life choices made by 18-year-olds work out better than others. And as a parent, I think it would be even sadder if that had been her parents’ hard-earned money and not a windfall from a relative.
Well, I think my college education has more than paid for itself in personal satisfaction, if not necessarily in cash. A lot of this is about what you value, and not everybody values the same thing in education, as with everything else in life. As others have noted, this thread is about making sure that your kids understand what YOU value, and what you can and will pay for. Don’t assume that they are on the same page as you–indeed, there may be other people, such as teachers, relatives, and maybe even your own spouse–who are telling them something that conflicts with your attitude.
One other suggestion: don’t just tell. Also listen.
Here is a true story…
SIL graduated from Columbia then went on to U of Chicago for art history. She never worked outside of home for 15 years while living abroad with my brother. When they moved back, she wanted to work, but had no job experience. She applied for a job at a top tier college (not as a professor) with hundreds of other applicants. She was one of handful of applicants who got an interview. She was hired and is doing well at her job. Her job is not very difficult, just needs to be organized and well spoken. Many of those applicants could do the job, but I believe the reason she even got an interview was due to where she went to school.
I think all of us could all give an anecdotal story about how successful or failure after went to certain kind of school. At the end of day, it is about what you can afford and willing to pay. I was a scholarship student with not the best CR SAT score because I was a new immigrant. I picked the one my family could afford and one I could get into. I didn’t use my alumni network too much, but I did receive a top notch education and it has paid for itself over and over again. I was going to go to our state school because COA would have been lower. My father talked me out of it and I am really grateful that he did.
“There are also lots of threads on here about parents who spent many years forgoing trips or new cars or a bigger house so they could put money in the college fund. I sincerely admire their perseverance! But I think that’s a personal choice, too. Some parents may think it’s better to be able to take their kids to Europe a couple times during their childhood or buy them a car at graduation - and then send them to UW or Washington State or Western Washington. I have my own opinions about what I’d rather do, but I don’t think one is objectively better or worse than the other.”
That’s nicely put. i have a strong preference for me and mine, but I’m not everybody.
Heartily agree, @Hunt and @Pizzagirl . Here’s something I posted on another thread, that’s since been closed.
The real Coke-vs-Pepsi division is between those who think no UG degree is worth $250-300K under any circumstances, whether the assets are available or not, and those who find that outlay acceptable for the “right” school, whether the assets are available or they have to borrow.
I know which camp I’m in, but I’m careful not to judge those who are in the other.
Getting this thread back on track a bit, we are talking about being honest with our kids about financing of their college education, not judging whether and how some may value UG degrees, name vs elite vs local schools or the wisdom of paying a ton of family wealth into an UG education if the family can and is willing to afford it. If a parent has the resources available and wishes to pay for whatever school little Jane or Johnny chooses and can get accepted into, then they are being equally as honest with their seniors as those of us who take a more frugal, pragmatic view of the process by nature and/or circumstance.
I just don’t want to turn people off from reading this incredibly useful thread because it devolves into one of a million discussions on CC about whether elite and brand name schools are worth the price tag. As noted in one of my previous posts, it annoys the crap out of me that some family members show disdain that my DD is pursuing, and being offered, significant merit at places like Pitt, Case, Tulane and the NMF schools of her choice, so I imagine that if we delve too far into the ‘it isn’t worth it’ to pay near full or full price for an Ivy-ish school that we will annoy and discourage others who see things differently. A lot of people probably think I am crazy for diving so deeply into learning about the college admissions and financing process as I have, but as with people’s view of spending money on college vs a family vacation, to each his own.
You can be honest and say I won’t pay a dime or I will pay everything, as long as those are true, but since most of us fall in-between those two extremes, let’s remember that the focus of this thread is to advise and help people to become educated about the true costs of an UG education, what it really takes to pay for that, and how they need to get together as a family unit and all get on the same page about what is possible and achievable and expected as their kids look at and apply to schools.
And yep, my DD still has a Cornell application downloaded just in case I do win the lottery this week (-:
And truly, most college experiences or “fits” will be neither 100% perfect nor 100% nightmare.
It’s like marriages or jobs. I don’t believe that each person has one soul mate in the world, whom you either find and settle down with or spend the rest of your life unfulfilled. I’ve also had jobs that morphed to where they barely resembled the opportunity or environment of the first day, but there were kernels of the experience that are still valuable today. One door closes, another opens.
The young woman I described in post #100 may have some great friends or experiences from her two years out of state that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. Or perhaps that orbit kept her from meeting and getting involved with the wrong guy too young. Or made her appreciate her home state more. That’s all valid and some good things are just intangible. Maybe they balanced out the dollar cost, maybe not.
ETA: Just making the point in that post that starting out at one school is no guarantee that the student will complete their degree there. I suspect a fair number of students, parents, and other stakeholders at this juncture in the decision process think it “can’t happen to them,” or haven’t even considered that scenario.
We live in a house that costs less than half of what we could allegedly afford on our income. We buy low-end cars and keep them for 10 years. Our family vacations were so small-scale that our kids had never been on an airplane until their senior year of college, when one flew to job interviews and the other to visit graduate schools.
Both of our kids had the good fortune to be accepted to their first-choice colleges, and both were able to attend those colleges even though they were not eligible for need-based aid. They have no undergraduate debt, and we don’t have any debt connected with their undergraduate education, either. One of them attended our flagship state university by choice (we got a bargain there), but the other went to an Ivy League school (which was a tad expensive). We had no trouble paying.
I’m proud that we were able to do this for our children, just as my parents were proud to be able to do it for my sister and me a generation earlier.
Would we do the same thing again? Hell, yes, and with no regrets.
“As noted in one of my previous posts, it annoys the crap out of me that some family members show disdain that my DD is pursuing, and being offered, significant merit at places like Pitt, Case, Tulane and the NMF schools of her choice”
Unless they are offering to pay the difference, it’s not their business. It takes two people to have a conversation. Refuse to have the conversation with them. Tell them the subject is closed. If you and your D are happy with the path, that’s all that matters.
Btw, this is also good modeling for your D that you will stand up for her. The opinions of Aunt Betty and Uncle Harold just don’t mean a thing. A single thing.
One of Marian’s kids was NMF. So, many years earlier, was Marian. Neither got a dime of scholarship money because neither chose a college that has special scholarship programs to attract NMFs.
Marian got her photo in the local newspaper, though, along with the one other NMF from her high school. That part was cool. Marian’s kid got no recognition because she went to a magnet program and that year, about 35 of the kids in the magnet were NMFs. So it was a big yawn.
When I was setting off for college, my father told me "We can’t promise you an inheritance, but we can make sure you have an excellent college education. My four siblings and I all attended excellent colleges (three were UC’s, two were private). None of us had scholarship money. We did work during the summers and used some of those funds to spend on incidentals at college. My parents took on no debt. My father was an engineer. Tuition at the private colleges was on the order of $2,000 per year the first year. These days, the tuition is probably 25 times that amount.
When our two kids were approaching college applications, we paid the promise forward. They could attend the college of their choice (of course we advised and helped in the selection process), and we expected them to work during summers to pay some of the incidental costs. They both attended private institutions. One had a modest NMS award (REALLY modest: $1,000); the other had no institutional award. We ended up without debt, however, because we had saved (in an era prior to 529’s and the like, and because the grandparents (my parents) also gifted them with some money earmarked for college.
Ours was an intergenerational transfer of opportunity. The kids satisfied this priority: you can major in anything, but you must graduate in 4 years.
@GMTplus7 interesting! Actually, being on CC for only 6 months I’ve wondered what it means when an avatar appears behind bars. Does that mean the member has been banned or disciplined?
My previous cherry tomatoes avatar is out of season now … I’ll try a new one after the holidays.
Our family did it slightly better: Before college, our kid had been on an airplane for vacations twice – both times due to family obligations: The visitors (MIL and BIL’s family) specifically requested to have a destination union/vacation in another state. (For some reasons, they seem to have more vacation money than we do – it is likely because they live in a country where the college tuitions, health care and taxes are not as high as mine, and they have never had to pay any mortgage for their whole life.) Our kid only remembered the second time though because he was too young to remember anything for our first OOS vacation trip.
We do not talk to our kid about financing his education. We just do not think it is his concern; the responsibility is ours.
Wait…I take this back. For his post-college education, my wife did talk to him about it. It happened when she “promised” to him that his student loan indebtedness would not exceed a certain amount at graduation if he chose the supposedly more expensive school. (By and large, we have kept this promise, but we have achieved this with some luck, i.e., I continued to keep a job in most years while he was in school.)
Good for you. I wish my kids had had this experience – especially since my daughter had a connecting flight canceled on her very first trip – and it was the last flight of the day. She had to negotiate getting herself on a flight for the next day, retrieving her luggage, and getting a room in an airport motel for the night, all on her very first trip by air. Fortunately, though, it happened on the way back to campus from a job interview, not on the way to the interview.
^^ How did she do @Marian? It sounds like she managed it successfully even without the previous flying experience. Actually I’m not sure previous flying experience would necessarily have helped.
Maybe the key is to teach kids how to keep calm and think (and ask for help) when things go awry.
^^That was one of the things I stressed with my kids when they started flying alone. ASK! If you don’t understand something, ASK! If the gate looks strange, like a plane is not boarding when you think it should, ASK! Don’t just sit there.
My kids started flying by themselves when they were freshmen in high school. At first, I only let them fly non stop and I walked them to the gate. I did make them lead the way, figuring out the gate, the TSA, the check in. After 2-3 flights, they were dropped at the curb and were on their own. They then started changing planes, but I tried to have them switch in cities where I knew someone who could rescue them if something went wrong.
I did get a call/text once when my daughter was in route saying the connecting flight was delayed for 3 hours and she was trying to get to a graduation. I got on the phone with SW, they weren’t able to actually book a different flight for her, but the woman put a hold on a seat for me. When my daughter landed, I was able to tell her exactly which gate to go to, and they got her (but not her luggage) moving again to Santa Ana, not LAX; Santa Ana was a lot closer to where she wanted to be anyway and her boyfriend’s father wouldn’t have to pick her up at LAX at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon! They even moved her luggage to SNA later in the day. That is one thing I learned from my father - keep moving in the direction you are headed. Traveling from Chicago to LA? Take the flight to Denver if that’s all that’s offered. Or Seattle, or Phoenix. Think about other airports in the area, other options. Abandon your luggage! Keep moving. Ask for free food, free lodging, Look pitiful.