<p>Everybody should read Taomom's "To the Senior's of 2008" Just posted in the Parent's Forum. It is marvelous.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Much better than paying for rehab, or bailing a kid out of jail.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>A much better use of our money, I agree!! Thanks for the laugh.</p>
<p>My husband and I told D1 that we had X dollars available every year and she could choose her school accordingly, but we did expect that she would make a monetary contribution to her tuition. It worked out perfectly that between scholarships and her contribution it equalled exactly the cost of attendance. She's done exactly what my husband and I have asked every step of the way, has worked hard in school and at her job and is a genuinely nice person whose company I enjoy. Paying for her school is a blessing.</p>
<p>we are now in the position of thinking about how we will approach D2.</p>
<p>Everyone's decision on how to handle this issue is valid for his or her family.</p>
<p>I would like to take exception to an opinion voiced earlier on this thread
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U-Mich and UT Austin are just as good as Duke, JHU, and Rice
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<p>by saying "not necessarily." Does not mean that is true for all, or that every family should pay the upcharge. </p>
<p>I attended UMich, my family attended Umich, many of the brightest kids from son's HS attend UMich. I loved/love UMich. Son attends Duke. They are very different experiences, and I write with some confidence that the level of performance expected at Duke in son's area of study is more rigorous than the corresponding area at Umich (and UMich excels in this area).</p>
<p>^^^^
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. My neighbor went to Duke and used to teach at UMich. Now at Penn. Says she was actually surprised but there's not much difference in quality or rigor among the three...at least in her field.
We also have a Cornell engineering grad among our friends. He always says he thinks a quality state U would be just as good. Hmmm....I'm sure you can name some folks who would think just the opposite.
Lots of different opinions out there... but come on...it's not like we're comparing Harvard and Podunk U.</p>
<p>We expected to be able to pay instate and told our daughter if she went elsewhere she would need scholarships to pay the difference. We are older parents and thought we would be sitting comfortably at this stage but Because of a number of circumstances - a lay off by a company that is in a small town far from other towns and by a company that was the main employer in town making our house unsaleable - that meant living off retirement income years before we expected to - that followed by major medical problems and the not wonderful performance of stocks - well we are not in nearly as comfortable a financial situation as we expected to be at this point. Even full freight at the State U she is attending would have been a struggle. Thank goodness for financial aid (which we never even applied for for our son a few years back). Between financial aid and excellent scholarships she will come out of undergrad almost debt free. And if she goes no further we will pay off her debt with what is sitting in her 529 account untouched thanks to scholarships - or it will go toward Grad or medical school.</p>
<p>We each do what we can. And you never quite know where you will be finance wise. We don't live high - my car has almost 170k miles, my husbands truck in the mid 200k and my daughters cost all of $100 to buy. Now admittedly we have had new cars in the past - nothing fancy and nothing recent - but sometimes life happens and you find things don't turn out quite how you planned! Even if things had turned out as we expected we were never at an income level that would have enable us to pay $200k for college.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>my daughters cost all of $100 to buy. <<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Can I put in an order somewhere to buy bright daughters?</p>
<p>:D (I don't know how to do a sticking out my tongue thing or i would)</p>
<p>edit: :p :p :p</p>
<p>My daughter's car cost $100. Over the years think she has cost a lot more!</p>
<p>toneranger: I think the feelings about state u's might have to do with the state.</p>
<p>From LI all the state schools except SB are in a drearier part of the state except SB which is almost literally in our back yard. If we had a UMich, a UF, a UW, a UCLA, a UVA we would feel differently.</p>
<p>I think that because there are so many privates in the NE and the NYS schools are a bit dreary (I went and H did too) many students here think of the privates. And then, the friends our kids have made in our upscale suburban neighborhood were all looking at privates. Most of them have more money than we (doctors vs college professor), but our kids were geared toward the same experience.</p>
<p>Best friends went to: Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Wesleyan, Williams, Tufts, Colgate, NYU, UPenn, on and on.</p>
<p>We believe our first responsibility is that our children can succeed in college. Our oldest is a Junior and planning to major in music. Since he will be getting a masters and quite possibly a Phd, one of his options is to live at home and commute for his undergrad years if he doesn't get a full ride (or near full ride) to preserve the most of the money we have set aside for his education. He has come to the understanding that spending it all for undergrad will cost more in the long run.</p>