<p>200k+ (more like 240K by 2016) is not exactly a drop in the bucket for us, but we are full pay and we’ve gone over and over the “worth it?” question. We finally decided to pay it if D really wants to go to a particular school. We accept that we will never know if it is “worth it” in a straight-up ROI economic sense, and furthermore, it can’t matter to us or we shouldn’t pay for it. </p>
<p>If we required our D to go to a cheaper school, we would have more money for home maintenance, nicer cars, vacations etc. I don’t think the cost difference would radically change our lives, however. We are youngish (late 40s) and have a lot in retirement accounts. We have only one kid. We have no debt except for a fairly cheap mortgage. We have savings. Were our circumstances different (i.e. if we had more than one kid, or we were older), we’d be making a different decision. I know and acknowledge that from a purely financial standpoint, we are fools. A full-price LAC is a luxury good. It’s one we happen to be willing to pay for. </p>
<p>An earlier poster (eastcoastcrazy?) said something to the effect that if you are really worried about the value question, you should go with your gut and accept the less expensive option. That is excellent advice.</p>
<p>Kweabie…guess the grass is indeed greener, as they say. Many Students from our neighboring state are trilled to be attending some of your SUNY schools.</p>
<p>thumper, I didn’t mean to say they aren’t great schools, we just don’t really have that one flagship. sorry if I’m wrong about the statement about intellectual curiosity at top 20 schools, absolutely didn’t mean to offend anyone. I just know many many students at these schools (including 3 of my siblings- two at different ivy’s, the other one at a top 10 school) who concur with me that their daily conversations with peers tend to be much more intellectually stimulating than students at not great schools. I could be completely wrong though</p>
<p>Keabie, how would they KNOW what their daily conversations be like like at colleges other than the one they attend?</p>
<p>It is like the tour guide we had at Claremont Mckenna. She was a freshman who kept saying “you won’t find THIS at any other college”. My daughter finally looked at me and said “how would she know? Has she BEEN to every other college?”</p>
<p>Or…you could take the ‘saved’ 150K difference, invest in income producing property for D. Then after graduation D would have a source of passive income to support any next effort. Just a thought</p>
<p>My school in the 80s, tiny hippy honors college, was dirt cheap and probably as intellectually stimulating as any top school. We were constantly discussing philosophy, art, and literature on our own free time, sober or not. (I was obviously a Humanities student). All we lacked was prestige, and a career counselor. Maybe you would count us as one of those not so great schools, because it lacks name recognition, so it can be easily dismissed. I might have posted this already, I don’t remember, but I know my friend at Bowdoin was NOT surrounded by the same kind of discussions.</p>
<p>I think you can think of Binghamton as the flagship SUNY, even though technically it’s not, and it does carry some amount of prestige. I plan on visiting it when the time comes.</p>
<p>Careful. The kids who didn’t graduate within 4-years aren’t necessarily all at the bottom of their graduating class as implied here. Many took time off for medical reasons, sudden career opportunities…especially those in arts/music(Common at my LAC), needed to take some time off to work to defray undergrad expenses, or other reasons not indicative of their academic performance/capabilities. </p>
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<p>Possibly, but this is also highly dependent on the LAC’s departmental strengths and its course offerings in certain fields. Moreover, this is a problem which also affects universities as indicated by dozens of classmates who transferred in from universities like Georgetown, John Hopkins, and Brandeis because they found the course offerings in the fields of Political Science, East Asian Studies, and/or History were woefully inadequate and/or they had serious issues with the department’s academic, philosophical, or methodological emphasis as they existed at the time (i.e. Not enough emphasis on comparative politics in the poli-sci area,).</p>
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<p>This is something which I and most high school classmates were looking for when we were looking at colleges. For those who desire or even need those factors…it can be critical judging by the dozens of high school classmates…including former C/D average students who found their local state flagships/local colleges wasn’t giving them the adequate intellectual stimulation/critical mass of peers at/above their academic achievement capabilities and getting fed up with dealing with a school bureaucracy which catered mostly to the average/mediocre students. </p>
<p>That prompted them to vote with their feet by transferring up to elite LACs/universities like Reed, CMU, Columbia…and found those schools suited them much more. In addition…there was also the bonus that in many cases…they actually got more FA coverage which made attending them cheaper than their former state/local colleges…even as transfer students. </p>
<p>However, not every prospective college applicant…even some tippytop ones need or more importantly…desire intellectual stimulation or being around a critical mass of students at or above their academic-achievement level. A reason why one older classmate with top Ivy-stats got into a bit of a tussle with his GC when he listed a much lower-tiered private university as his first choice mainly because he was a big fan of their sports teams. He ended up losing that tussle and ended up going to one of the Ivies…though I wouldn’t be surprised if he later decided to transfer to that private/go there for grad school.</p>
<p>I don’t know about now…but that wasn’t the experience of some older California cousins who attended Berkeley and UCLA in the '80s. Despite not having to take remedial coursework and taking far more than regular courseloads as STEM majors…they ended up graduating a semester to a semester and half late because a few critical core courses in their major/distribution requirements were only offered once every year or every two years and they were shut out because all sections were oversubscribed. Though tuition was cheap…it really ****ed them off as they were more than ready to move on from the undergrad phase of life by the beginning of their 4th year.</p>
<p>(in reaction to the bit about smart friends not being stimulated enough at Suny, etc)
We have heard this before. Cobrat, what I haven’t heard from you is an acknowledgement that for some parents $200,000+ can be too much. It’s great to go to the fancy schools on someone else’s dime.</p>
<p>And imagine you had three kids, and would be full pay. Wouldn’t you think twice about what is good enough? Or not?</p>
<p>cobrat - You’d think it would be worse now. They do post 70% 4 year grad rate. That is not bad for a big university with a diverse student body.</p>
<p>UCs are trying to get more OOS students at 55k+ per clip. To me 70% graduation rate is not acceptable to me. It means I would need to spend more money for kid to get a degree.</p>
<p>But OTOH, if your S or D might want to do a double major with each major requiring a seperate prerequisite chain, or take the opportunity to learn a new language in addition to completing their major, or begin a new major after intial plans do not pan out and not have to settle for a humanities or social science major that can be completed with 27 credits or so, a cheaper school that allows for a fifth year might be an excellent deal.</p>
<p>That is a good point, frazzled. And for schools that are affordable or families with lots of $$ resources, some students may choose the 3+2 plan to have the opportunity to attend a LAC and get an engineering degree too.</p>
<p>In this economy if I had to choose between spending less but having my child at a school that may have less successful job placement stats vs spending a little more (within reason) to send them to a school that might be better situated to help them secure that first job, I would probably choose the latter, even of it means my s would have less In his pocket to start out his life after college.</p>
<p>Right. And if I had done that in my area when my daughter started college in 2006 with the traditional leverage that real estate investors use, the properties would now be worth far less than their mortgages. In hindsight, the elite college was a far better investment.</p>