Yeah, it could get tricky. I’d have to do Math to figure out who needs LORs, who needs transcripts, who needs school reports, and whether we bump up against the 20 limit, and if so, where. Ugh. I hate Math.
I see this a lot. Maybe I’m naive but I’d imagine there is some link to prestige and the quality of education a student earns by graduating from some of the more highly ranked schools.
I am 100 percent on board with the concept of going to a school is what you make of it and there are thousands of great schools out there that provide outstanding opportunities.
But still there is no way every school is equal in quality.
So when future employers hear you graduated from an Ivy League school they have reasonable assurance you are well educated just based on the name.
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It depends on the student. If they cant take the rigor or advantage of the elite institute, they fall behind.
I read stories about people from Ivy colleges not getting a good/dream job.
Or not sufficiently aggressive portfolio for the first 12 years.
Due to favorable market conditions we were eventually barred from contributing more - and after full pay at an Ivy League, we now still have 2 years of grad school covered.
And no — not rich, but not qualifying for FinAid…
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It works both ways—some employers are impressed by high-prestigiosity degrees, others are whatever the conceptual opposite of impressed is, and most are just looking for an applicable degree no matter the source. Basically, it’s a wash.
And that makes sense, given the research that’s been done on career outcomes—once inputs (e.g., HS stats, familial cultural capital, and the like) are accounted for the actual college attended has no meaningful impact.
This is amazing!
UGH… You can ask the individual teacher for a separate reference. Usually, teachers just write 1 generic letter. An outside application will email the teacher specifically. Honestly, I would apply through individual school applications where Naviance (or other programs) is not used. Personally, you should not need to apply to more than 20 schools, but for those students trying to get into a college with a separate audition application process, limiting the schools thay can apply to could be detrimental.
There was a study out, I think in 2013, that showed employers prefer to hire graduates out of top state schools over Ivy graduates. We have friend associated with a University based hospital and Medical program, they would rather admit Honor students from the local state school, over any Ivy-educated student. There is a perception of a type of student/person that graduates from Ivy versus the type that graduate from a state school. On the flip side, Ivy schools have incredible networking and tend to hire those graduating from Ivys
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My point was: even if you live in a nice suburb of a major metropolitan area, pay a mortage, and make just enough to not qualify for financial aid, you can still set enough aside each month from birth to pay for any college of a single child.
But it requires more than just “saving”, it does require “investing”:
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Obviously you absolutely have to use a tax-deferred plan (so that all earnings continue to grow exponentially each year) - or start an “education” IRA, if you’re not already contributing the max to IRAs each year.
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The second concept to warm up to (of course, investing is always a personal choice – and I am JUST an amateur, so NOT qualified to give anyone advice): Going back in history - within 2 or 3 years, major stock market dips usually made up their losses.
So until age 15 or 16, it will likely maximize your returns if you stay invested in whatever broad index fund that your plan offers - instead of letting the money wither in some “age/year target blended portfolio”. If comfortable, you might even have some significant percentage in an aggressive growth fund, especially in the first decade. -
Then, as college age nears (e.g., at about 15 or 16), take a 1 1/2 years worth of tuition, room, board during a bull market and “lock it in” into a money market fund. This way, if the market drops just when you need the withdrawal, you have the option to time your withdrawals within the 12 month period and if necessary dip into the money market portion while you wait for the market to recover. But if the market is favorable, draw down the index fund(s) until about college sophomore year - by which point you might want to start drawing from the money market proportionally, to let the still-remaining index fund portion continue to appreciate.
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“Blended” funds that try to imply “safety” by having whatever tens of percentages invested in bonds don’t really deliver what you will need in bad times. Because they won’t earn enough on the stock side of it, to ever make up for the low-returning bonds, and when the brown mass hits the fan, those funds might still dip by 20% (and even outright bond funds will drop 15% - that’s why you stick to minimal-return money market funds to “lock in” your emergency cash, to counterbalance your otherwise “growth” portfolio.)
Otherwise, with blend-funds, you had never earned enough in the first place (when compared to equity index funds), and to add insult the injury, you’ll still find yourself having to “sell” while the market is down - because you can’t pick & choose which side of the blend you want to liquidate!
Creating my own “opposite-ends blend” of growth, and ultra-conservative for annual expenses, has worked for my tax-deferred retirement, health and college savings - but obviously, individual results will differ. I’m only posting this, to make people realize that a college fund might require more thought than just a monthly ACH payment and forgetting about it until 18.
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This is good advice. I regret that I was in the middle of a pandemic when my D23 was 16 and wasn’t paying attention to return rates of index funds and such. Now off to investigate our options…
I’d make sure you and your child understand this before eliminating schools. Both of my kids applied, accepted and went to numerous schools. All reported grades via the Common app - and only sent official final transcripts to the schools they ended up attending. CRWU was one of the schools included above.
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There are some schools on his list that require official transcripts before a decision is made - not final, but official through junior year.
I dunno, I feel like we have to stay on the counselor’s good side, at least now. We’ll see where we’re at in winter; might be all over by then 
Anyway, that’s good to know about CWRU.
He’s gotten laser-focused on that school this week. He’s attending a virtual session of some kind tomorrow, he’s reached out to the admission counselor (and was in such a hurry that he sent an email with typos, ugh, couldn’t wait until I was available to give it a once-over), he’s clicking on all the emails he’s ignored up until now.
I think this is going nowhere, because we cannot afford it. But, sigh, he knows the budget and he knows we’re not budging and he wants to give it a try anyway. I’m OK with that, as long as he’s realistic, and he is.
@AmyIzzy didn’t you visit CWRU? Is your kid still applying? What did you think of it?
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Yes we did an open house at Case Western in mid April. It was very informative and comprehensive (academic session, financial aid, research session, & tour, etc.) My son loved the rigor (many students spoke of double or triple majors!) and loved that he could double major in Cognitive Science & Psychology and still get in a Spanish minor. Definitely the vibe he’s looking for. We are in the same boat with having a strict budget and I don’t anticipate they can come down to SUNY prices (we will get some financial aid but not much.) However, they do have some competitive scholarships so we won’t rule it out as long as our son understands our bottom line, which he does (he’s very practical knowing his end goal is a PhD.) They did seem focused on increasing diversity so we are hoping my son’s National Hispanic Merit Scholar recognition/minority status might be helpful.
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thanks! good to know; good luck to your son!
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Pitt and PSU are both very strong national universities that will cost in state folks like yourself the 35K you talk about. That said I understand the frustration that many schools like Vanderbilt, Northwestern etc are unattainable without merit for those in that income level. And merit is hard to come by as all students getting accepted into those schools are high stat kids.
My two PA kids got great merit money have thrived at OOS public universities. My oldest who went to Clemson did well and got a full ride to university of Florida law school which is a top 25 law school and just accepted an offer with a large national firm for a summer job next year which will most likely lead to a job after graduation.
I guess my advice is don’t lament that which is unattainable. There are lots of good schools that will be attainable and give your child a great college experience and education.
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Thanks, I appreciate the wisdom. They’ll be fine, I know! I hate not being able to give them everything they deserve after a lot of hard work, but it’s truly not the end of the world, not even a little bit.
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I agree to some extent, but I’m going to push back gently. College costs have, for the past several decades, risen at much faster than the rate of inflation, and the S&P 500 has beaten it but not by all that much.
Also, whether you can afford to set aside money from the birth of a child depends on one’s financial status at the birth of the child, you know? When our first child was born we had a negative net worth (student loans, mainly, magnified by still being in the phase of opportunity cost recovery from deferring income due to grad school attendance); some families feel that even more so.
And of course, there’s plenty of families who start out not just having delayed income but actually being properly low income until later in life, so they appear solidly upper middle class when their kids are in their later teens, but they didn’t have the means to save money earlier.
So yeah, it’s possible for lots of people, but for many, many families it’s not going to be doable.
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We make way more now than we did 5 or 10 years ago. We were repaying our own students loans and both going to grad school until we were nearly 40. With four children to fund, we just didn’t have enough set aside. I think each kid had 20-25k in a college account, but each of their educations has been well over 100k. On paper we would look affluent enough to pay full boat, but that doesn’t give a full picture. We’re living frugally and making it work, but 80k a year for a single kid would be very tough.
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We enjoyed a recent trip to Miami so my son decided to check out a few schools. I posted on another section of CC but thought I’d share here too:
Florida Atlantic (FAU)-Boca Raton
Had a jock, “rah rah” vibe (not what my son is looking for.) Beautiful campus but too big (30K students!) for my son. The main part of campus reminded me of a strip mall set-up where academic buildings branch off the center area. The gym was immense and full of very athletic students. Almost every machine was occupied. He considered their honors college (Wilkes Honors College) and did a quick visit but that seemed too small (500 students) and isolated, totally separate campus in Jupiter, Florida.
Florida International (FIU)
Also a beautiful campus, had the diversity my son is looking for and less of a “rah rah” feel (positive in his mind) but WAY too big (55K students!) even with the honors program perks of keeping some classes small-so took it off the list. He said the university was like it’s own city.
Nova Southeastern (Fort Lauderdale)
Gorgeous campus and seemed to be just the right size for my son (6300 undergrads) Very research-based and has the academic rigor he’s looking for. They have good merit for my son’s stats (4.0 unweighted GPA, 1450 SAT, National Hispanic Merit Scholar as per PSAT) and a “Sharks Weekend” where students compete for bigger scholarships. They even have a BS/PhD program (non-binding) for clinical psychology-exactly the path my son wants-that is competitive to apply to, and other direct entry programs. Definitely a good school for science-related or medical majors. Highly recommend for Marine Biology majors. Maybe not a good school for undecided students. Very diverse (Hispanic Serving Institution so over 25% Hispanic) including 6% international students (our tour guide was from Brazil.) This one is added to his list!
Barry University (Miami Shores)
He really loved our tour and the vibe of the school. Smaller school (under 4000) but he could definitely see himself happy there. School spirit was apparent but not over the top. Didn’t seem like a party school (my son prefers a non-party atmosphere) but they had many social activities and lots of opportunities for involvement & research. Offers good merit for my son’s stats, especially if he gets into the honors program. Great diversity (30% Hispanic, 29% African American, 23% white, about 6% international.) He’s definitely applying.
The main selling point was Miami itself. My son loves the diversity and that everywhere we went people were speaking Spanish. I don’t speak much Spanish so he had to translate for me often like he does when we visit family in Mexico. He wants to minor or double major in Spanish so he considers this a big bonus which would allow him to practice and improve his Spanish skills in everyday conversation and outings. It was very hot when we toured but he thinks the warmer weather is a perk for the winter months at least (we are from Buffalo.) Both NSU and Barry are within 15 minutes of a beach so that’s a nice perk.
I know that Nova Southeastern & Barry are lesser known schools, but they seem like hidden gems if your kids are looking for small to medium sized colleges and want a social campus but aren’t into sports or parties as much.
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I understand the frustration. Besides starting a business or something like that both my kids did everything they could. 4.UW 8-10 AP’s 35ACT varsity sports and other EC and had no chance to even get into a top 20 school let alone for us to be able to afford them.
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