I was hoping to get some guidance on a question which we may well face in a few years. How much differential would there have to be between two schools in terms of ranking tiers to justify walking away from the full tuition or full ride
I am talking of ranking tiers not actual ranks. So let’s just say ten schools in each tier. Can a large enough difference justify walking away from a full ride Or is leaving money on the table in favor of attending a much more expensive but higher tiered university( think full pay private) always a terrible decision.
So many things go into a decision like this that “in a few years” without any actual criteria makes this a moot point.
It depends on what you can afford, and the cost of your alternatives. In general, I advocate for the cheaper option, but if you’re intelligent enough to receive admission to top tier universities you should have no problem gaining significant (maybe not full ride, but certainly helpful) scholarships at good to great schools. It doesn’t have to only be full ride to Podunk U or full pay at Princeton.
Assuming a family isn’t made of money, I would say at least ten tiers (of 10), and even then it might not be worth turning down the free ride… especially if:
You plan to major in Engineering, where (it seems) ABET accreditation is the most important thing.
You plan on going to grad/business/law/med school. Saving up all that money for grad work is a smart move.
It depends on a lot of factors: the actual difference in the quality of education there (and not just external ranking or prestige), the cost differential, how wealthy your family is, your career plans to a certain extent, and how much the full tuition school is.
I mean, there’s something like Harvard vs. Clayton State University (a small regional college near my hometown), where Harvard would cost around $250,000 over four years and CSU would be free. But if my family can afford to pay for Harvard with no problem - or even a little belt-tightening - Harvard would surely open some doors CSU wouldn’t. I might make that choice…if I could afford to. Some families simply would not be able to afford full tuition at Harvard no matter how far down the ladder their other choice is.
But $250K at Harvard/Yale/Princeton vs. a full-ride to UNC or Minnesota or Wisconsin? Nah, I wouldn’t make that choice; I’d take the full ride any day.
Also, if I had a crystal ball and knew with 100% certainty my student would go to medical or dental school, then I’d choose the full ride even if it was at CSU or the like. But you can rarely know that, right?
Either way, novafan1225 is right. Any student who is accomplished enough to gain admission to a very expensive top-tier school like Harvard, Amherst, Pomona, Yale, et al. is likely to get some good merit aid at really good, high-quality, solid colleges.
Maybe my question was too generic. How about between an Ivy and let’s say schools between thirty and fifty in the ranking. Child may decide to pursue law or medicine for grad school.
Let’s assume child’s is capable of getting admitted to Ivy and is good enough to secure a full scholarship at the other school in the thirty to fifty ranking range. Let’s say we are full pay at Ivy and can pull it off, but then child would have to fund grad school on their own.
Child wants to learn with smart, intelligent and motivated students. Does not want to be the the smartest kid in class by a long shot, but wouldn’t mind being in let’s say the top fifteen percent of the class. Cares about learning deeply, but also wants a memorable college experience.
What would CC readers suggest? Is it worth blowing the education kitty on full pay undergrad for the privilege of having the Ivy name attached to child for ever?
A lot of families were faced with exactly that choice from our private prep school. Most every student who applied EA was admitted to Michigan in-state. That’s $100K out the door. The Wharton, Harvard and Stanford admittees all went. For others - including kids admitted to Columbia, Brown, WUSTL, Yale, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Rice, Cornell etc.- all costing about $280K- about 60% chose Michigan.
For the kids majoring in engineering, everyone went to Michigan. Every single one. The CC wisdom about ABET schools being all the same did not apply to this group.
For Music, Michigan, Vanderbilt, and some conservatories.
For Liberal arts, LAC’s, Ivy’s, Michigan, and other privates.
Most of the families were full pay, so I think it reflects the sticker pricing of different colleges.
It doesn’t make sense to go too crazy for undergrad if you have good, lower cost alternatives. Grad school is where the name matters.
I think it depends. Some people need the extra push that the most elite schools offer, because they are driven by competition. If they went to a less competitive place, they would slack off (not necessarily a bad trait). Others are more intrinsically motivated. For someone extrinsically motivated and with great stats, an Ivy or a top school like Stanford, Duke or MIT would be ideal.
For an intrinsically motivated person, a 30-50 school with high standards would be almost equivalent. The academics may be easier, but there are other opportunities such as research or independent studies. I think it would be reasonable to take a full ride at Georgia Tech or RPI over Stanford or a Full Ride at University of Pittsburgh or BU over an Ivy league school. Some schools are also renowned in certain areas. For example, USC engineering (though USC is itself a top school), Pittsburgh Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Computer Science, SUNY at Stony Brook or Rutgers Mathematics, Virginia Tech or Northeastern or University of Florida engineering. Full rides or even partial scholarships at these schools are viable.
If you want to be a high school teacher, a full ride and honors admission at a non-elite flagship state school like Alabama or U. Georgia or Iowa almost certainly makes sense over an Ivy; if affordability is at all an issue.
I don’t think all ABET engineering programs are equivalent. Cal State Fullerton or Western Washington U Engineering is not as rigorous as MIT engineering (not even close). In these cases, going to the cheaper school is almost inadvisable.
If you can’t afford a top school at all despite full need being met, then the scholarship also makes sense. In that case, it makes sense to even consider a respected tier-2 state school (like UT Dallas, NM Mines) over a top school.
Otherwise, the top school is a better option IMO. It’s not worth it to short change one’s education for money.
Not sure where this “CC wisdom” comes from. ABET accreditation sets a relatively high minimum standard for engineering degree programs (so that the “worst” one is still reasonably good), but does not mean that they are all the same. I.e. there can be good versus better ones, or some which offer more or fewer in-major electives in specific subareas of the major, or some where there are more or better opportunities for undergraduate research. There are also curricular differences like whether the engineering design part of the curriculum is back-loaded, or if there is some introduction to engineering design in the frosh/soph years.
@CollegeAngst - Between a 50 rank and HYPSM, Columbia, Penn and Brown I would encourage my child to attend the more selective school. The reason is that the worldwide perception of the school matters to my DH who has a career with an international bent and my daughter wants to study international relations so I can see it mattering in her career. I’ll bow to the wisdom of CC when it comes to engineering, but in both my career and my husbands the name of the school on the resume matters. Good luck!
In terms of ranks of 10, most other things being equal (and of course assuming the applicant likes both schools nearly equally), and a family for whom COA will require sacrifices such as taking a second job, giving up all vacations, dipping into retirement, I would absolutely encourage the full ride down a few ranks. In our quest for merit aid, my D had two or three schools that were ranked significantly lower than her capabilities (3 ranks of 10 or so) and two or three that were 1-2 ranks below. Example: we placed her in the 20-30 top LAC list for matches, 1-20 for reaches and 40-70 for safeties.
She was offered significant merit at most of the schools ranked 30 and below, and nearly full rides at three schools in the 35-50 range. Most of the schools in the 1-30 didn’t offer merit but met 100% need but that didn’t work out for us due to bio Dad’s income coupled with his lack of financial support. In the end, she took one of those nearly full tuition rides at a school ranked mid-30s and is very happy there. We didn’t feel the other two schools would challenge her enough or surround her with like-minded peers. Keep in mind though these are SLACs, instate flagship universities are very different in that they are generally much larger and have much more academic diversity and offerings than small schools. In the end, D will have much less debt and we as a family dodged significant financial stress trying to pay for her education.
Between a 50 rank (the university I serve has a ranking not far away from this rank and it is tuition free for my kids) and HYPSM and Wharton, I have been paying and will be continue to encourage my kids to attend the more selective school. At least for me, the choice is professional career-specific. My 2 kids want a business/finance career, and my prior working experience as a business/finance practitioner 20 years ago showed me that school tie is important for career development in this field. There is a rather recent research paper on this: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6261.2010.01574.x/full.
@prof2dad Yeah, when it comes to business/finance/consulting, I would generally agree with you. Here is a very recent paper that examines this issue. While you cannot measure everything based on “earnings potential”, it is a certainly practical to look at it.
Having said that, since this child is going to major in a science related field and probably pursue Medicine or maybe law, the decision gets complicated in my mind.
I know the financial arguments against taking the full pay private path for future doctors for example. Save up the money for grad school. Medical school is expensive. Medical schools don’t care about prestige as much as they care about GPA/MCAT. Costs should be primary motivation, because nobody cares where you went to medical school either if you want to be a clinician. You don’t want to take on much debt otherwise it will impact your life later, etc. etc. All strong arguments, which should make any parent/student pause and think deeply about their decision.
I am wondering if there are any counter points to those arguments, or is arguing against the above position, like arguing for a “flat earth”?
So, would specially love to hear from parents/students who went the full pay route for private undergrad and then applied/went to Medical or Law school. Would you do it again? What were the benefits/issues. Based on your experiences what would you advice?
@CollegeAngst: “Having said that, since this child is going to major in a science related field and probably pursue Medicine or maybe law, the decision gets complicated in my mind.”
I agree with you. This is the reason why I stated it was “career path-specific.”
you could go to 30-50 full-ride and shoot for grad school at an Ivy. that way you get the best of both worlds.
30-50 includes UNC, BC, NYU, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Penn State, Northeastern, Villanova. I would take full-ride there over full-pay anywhere.
Of course, paying $240K is impossible for us, so take my input with a big grain of salt. and if i say, “If I had money, I still would choose 30-50 full-ride,” you should dismiss my opinion because i have no understanding of how wealth would change my thinking or priorities.
for the same reason you can’t trust the rich person who says, “I would still choose the Ivy even if I wasn’t rich” – because they have no concept of struggling financially and how that would affect their thinking and priorities.
i would assume most people would answer this question based almost solely on their financial situation.
@collegeangst in my experience/opinion that decision is very specific to each student/family situation. No family/student should take on debt that is going to hamper them in their career pursuit. I have watched students having to forego good “career” decisions that paid less because they had to service debt.
For Medicine and Law, grad school is everything.
The student has to have enough money to go (and forgo earnings for another 4-8 years), and be prepared enough to get accepted to the Law or Medical school. There is some debate about how much undergrad helps for acceptance to med school. I saw a study on it a while ago that suggested certain “name” schools had much higher med school acceptance, but I don’t know how well done the study was. But adding Med or Law school can get really pricey - and catch some students by surprise.