<p>OK... so we are an upper middle class family professional parents with income of about 175K. Only one child in college, no mortgage, and no outstanding debt. So chances for need-based aid are basically ZERO.
Our daughter is an excellent student, NMSF, 4.1 GPA, AP scholar with honor, decent ECs, good assays, and letters. She wants to become a physician.
She has been offered several free rides by very good schools but not her dream universities (Duke, WashU, Vandy, Emory and alike).</p>
<p>My husband thinks she should take a free ride and then we will help her pay for med school, so she will have little debt at the end of the road.
I say, she goes to her dream university (if accepted), we pick up the tab, and then she gets loans for med school (like everyone else does). I also think that by going to a better/more prestigious/better fit university she will increase her chances for acceptance into a better medical school.
So CC community are you with me or with my Dear hubby?</p>
<p>You are kidding, right? :eek: If she has been offered free-rides by Duke, WashU, Vandy, and/or Emory she should definitely take one of them. Usually when someone posts something like this, they are trolling.....</p>
<p>I read the post to mean that she was offered free rides by school OTHER THAN her dream schools, which were Duke, Vandy, etc. maybe I read it wrong -- I was thinking of free rides from random schools like Univ of Oklahoma and University of Arizona. </p>
<p>If she has the opportunity to attend Duke, WashU, Vandy, etc. for free -- then I would say jump on the chance!</p>
<p>Otherwise -- to me, a good fit is better than taking a free ride if the parents have the means and willingness to pay.</p>
<p>"She has been offered several free rides by very good schools but not her dream universities (Duke, WashU, Vandy, Emory and alike)."</p>
<p>Not that hard to comprehend. Offered free rides at good schools "but NOT" her dream schools.</p>
<p>Neways..most people say that if your ultimate goal is to go to grad school then go to the school that is more reasonable and then apply to a good grad school. Apparently in the medical field where you went to grad school is more important.</p>
<p>To give you advice, exactly what "very good schools but not her dream universities" are you referring to?</p>
<p>My 2 cents....You worked hard and can feel good about the parenting you have done as your child exemplifies(sp?) so well....if your child attends a school that gives her a full ride but does not challenge her, provide her opportunities to interface with other students that raise the bar in learning, then what good is the free ride? I believe college is not just the degree at the end of the four years, but also the learning that goes on in both the classroom and in the dorms....What if at the end of the fours years she has attended her dream school-earns a very different major-and she walks into a business interview with the resume listing the dream school-will she carry herself in a manner different than say the school that offered her a free ride???...What if at the end of four years in which you have paid for the dream school, and you find you have the financial where-with-all to cover the graduate years as well, will you have any misgivings about the money already spent?? I do not have the answers, but maybe these questions will open the dialogue with you and Your H, and your D....g'Luck!</p>
<p>We are in a similar situation, and we chose to save for med school. My daughter was accepted at Princeton and CalTech, but chose to attend Case Western with a nearly full-tuition scholarship. She had also been offered full tuition scholarships to Tulane, Richmond, Pittsburgh, and Furman. My daughter is not sure if she will attend grad school in her field (biomedical engineering) or med school, but she does not want to graduate with debt. We are also old-fashioned enough that my daughter does not want to be financially compelled to work full-time while her children are young, and she knows that $200K in loans almost certainly eliminates the possibility of being a stay-at-home mom. I agree with your husband.</p>
<p>Med school is SO expensive, taking the full-ride and saving the money for later sounds very very smart to me. I doubt if the better undergrad school will make that much difference in which med school she can get into, as long as she does very well wherever she goes.</p>
<p>However, if she changes her mind about med school, she may regret the decision. I think it depends on how sure she is about med school.</p>
<p>I think the key is to let her weigh all the options and let her decide for herself, if you're comfortable doing that.</p>
<p>Another thought: Admission to decent med schools requires a top GPA and outstanding recommendations. How likely would your daughter get those at her dream colleges where she might only be an average student?</p>
<p>I would personally go for the free ride IF I was likely to find challenging classes and academic peers there. Big public flagship university - yes, small lower-tier private college - no.</p>
<p>I think we need some idea of the free ride schools. If they are state flagships with honors programs, vs smaller LAC's on the fourth tier.....</p>
<p>I would rethink paying $45,000/year for 4 years for undergrad (with other expenses, its more like $200,000 for the four years.) You never know where she will get accepted to med school, and if its not a state U with reasonable tuition, you are looking at another $250,000 and no chance for a part-time or summer job to "help." And based on the proposed 10% cut in Medicare payments this year (they have delayed it for a bit, temporarily) and the fact that all major insurance companies base their payments on Medicare (ie contracts for 90% or 110% of Medicare), physician incomes are dropping all over. Physicians are working harder than ever, trying to see more patients just to maintain status quo. And starting off a career with big debt is a problem. It can limit where you decide to go for residency, where and with whom you start your practice, etc. Suddenly, even with an MD you are counting every penny for more years than you think if you start out with a large student loan debt.</p>
<p>Give us a little idea of where the full rides are. We can better make recommendations.</p>
<p>Troll or not (and I happen to believe NOT), the question is a valid one.</p>
<p>So OP, if you KNEW your D was going to become a well-respected Cardiovascular Surgeon, then the answer is easy --- pay for dream school now, take out loans later. BUT if you KNEW your D was going into Family Practice, then Med School loans would bind her options for decades --- not a pretty prospect. "Mom I CAN'T start a family. I have all these loans to repay."</p>
<p>So there's no pat answer to your question. Our family philosophy is to keep our children's options open, which would mean free-ride now and save money for wherever they head later. I'm sure many families operate under quite different philosophies, and that's fine also. Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>I left this decision up to my children. I know, some would say they're not mature enough to make such a decision, but I thought it was theirs to make.</p>
<p>Each matriculated at a school that is fundamentally changing who they are in wonderful ways. I don't think the results would be as dramatic at lesser schools. Each is meeting kids as smart and sophisticated as they are, and each is benefitting tremendously from an environment that each hand picked. My D attends school in NYC and S is at a rural LAC that is giving him social opportunities and EC opportunities I know he wouldn't have anywhere else (he's shy). NYC speaks for itself.</p>
<p>They will have to borrow for med school and law school, although I will try to help as much as I can.</p>
<p>For them, college was more than a means to a degree. It's up to each family (consulting with the students if this is amenable to parents) to decide how much the experience is worth.</p>
<p>They may regret their choice when there is debt, but each is becoming her person h/she wants to be.</p>
<p>I think you need to consider a couple things.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Will she fit academically at the free ride schools? Will she be challenged academically? Will she find peers like her?</p></li>
<li><p>Some schools publish their med-school acceptance rates (I remember Davidson's being pretty high, for example.) If your free ride schools are up there with the best of them, that would be an encouraging sign.</p></li>
<li><p>Financially, how will it affect your D? Will you pay for med school if she takes the cheap school, or will she be on her own anyway? It sounds like you can afford the undergrad. Although I wouldn't discount the cost of a first-choice school entirely, I would make sure the value-added was good.</p></li>
<li><p>How much better does she like the expensive schools? We have 3 kids, and have been through this. First kid went to expensive school because the fit was absolutely the best. We're still paying; no regrets. (A few moments of second guessing, but would probably do it the same way again.) The second went expensive because it was the very best school for his field. No regrets. The third went to her 3rd choice school due to the cost vs. value ratio. We made a spread sheet comparing the things we liked and disliked about each of the schools, and realized the differences were too slight for the money. Again, right decision for her, even though it was a different decision from the first two.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>We are in a similar situation. My S can go to a lot of schools using tuition exchange - basically, we pay for room and board. We, however, saved $ and have the income to send him most anywhere, though a $45k school would deplete our savings and crimp our lifestyle - also, perhaps put us back a year as to when we retire.
It makes no sense to deplete what could be funds to attend any kind of graduate/professional program that he wants because he wants to go to 'status U'. I went to Duke. Nice gardens, etc., but there are a lot of small LACs out there where the education might be better and grad school placement just as good.
Imagine what kind of stress med school graduates face when they have accumulated massive debt from both med and undergrad school.</p>
<p>The idea that S/D may be out of peer group if goes to school ranked 50 instead of ten is nonsensical. Sorry, but it is. The purpose of the 25th HS reunion is to confirm that HS stats predict little.</p>
<p>WOW thank you for all the responses and wonderful advice. And ..No, I am not trolling I am a bona fide anxious mother (she is our oldest!).</p>
<p>The free rides or very-generous scholarships are from Texas A&M, Tulane, University of Alabama, U. Texas-Austin , University of Richmond, and a great chance from Boston University. Of these, she likes Tulane and Richmond....because she prefers smaller schools. Her dream schools are WashU and Duke.</p>
<p>My employer also participates in the Tuition Exchange program, and she is (we are) URM, so some of those schools have added money to the basic tuition waiver.</p>