<p>tptshorty</p>
<p>I like your ‘great-by-any-normal-standard-but-not-tip-top student’ : )</p>
<p>I have one at UCLA and another one hoping for UCLA or UCSD in a couple of years</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agree with this. I went to a UC. My son is at a UC. If a student wants to graduate in 4 years, there is usually a way. Students might need to focus, not change major, sometimes take a heavier load, take classes with less ideal time/professor/GE subjects, etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is so true for most families with
- great but not elite students
- good income but too much for aid and too little to pay for private</p>
<p>My son is a 2nd year engineering major at Cal Poly. No issues with getting his classes, even outside of the normally-scheduled quarter (per his major’s flowchart). He changed majors last year. He’s well on track to graduate in 4 years. </p>
<p>I think for engineering students, it’s important to have taken Physics AP and AP Calc BC in high school in order to have some breathing room in college. For those who have to start in the first math & physics courses it can be a struggle to finish in 4 years. Likewise for CS and CPE majors - having done some programming in high school makes a difference, as so many students with no programming experience have to repeat the first couple of programming courses in college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That definitely would have been true for my daughter – who was offered modest merit aid from at least on UC as well as need based aid, but opted to attend a private college. But the out of pocket cost for my d. to attend UC Santa Cruz – with aid factored in – would have been around $7500. We were looking at double that for her first year at Barnard – and the financial aid package from U. of Chicago would have been another $10K on top of that. So that’s an example of a student strong enough to get accepted at some very prestigious schools, but not at the handful of elite Ivy caliber schools with their unusually generous financial aid practices. </p>
<p>My daughter chose the private school because there is also a value judgment at play. $15K for a year at Barnard seemed like a pretty good deal at the time - and as a UC graduate, I am quite confident that my d’s education and the benefits available to her from attending an elite, private Ivy-affiliated LAC were qualitatively better than the education I had. It was easily worth more… but NOT (in my mind) the cost differential reflected in the full cost of attendance. So it wouldn’t have been worth going broke over, but it certainly was worth a little bit of a stretch.</p>
<p>But to go back to tptshorty’s point… the money isn’t exactly overflowing for the majority of student applicants. I think a more common dilemma faced by parents (and students) is whether it is worthwhile to go to a less-prestigious, but possibly more personalized, private college which is offering aid that equalizes the cost. That is, these students aren’t choosing between Berkeley and Harvard, but they are looking at attractive aid packages from less well known LAC’s that are pretty good - and trying to figure the right balance between fit, prestige, & cost.</p>
<p>Also, along with being willing to take courses at inconvenient hours, a student cannot drop classes and expect to graduate on time. If a student starts with 17 credits for the semester, but drops down to 14 credits, and doesn’t make it up in the summer or at another time, he’s not likely going to graduate on time…especially if he does this more than one time.</p>
<p>Responding to bluebayou’s comment in #36:</p>
<p>I did tell my son that I was only going to pay for 4 years. However, as I have stated in some of my previous posts, the ME department head stated in his welcoming remarks that the 4 year grad rate was 15%; 85% after 4 years and 2 quarters. </p>
<p>My son had problems getting into some of the classes he needed. They were, of course, the prerequists for other classes he needed to take. I was sitting with him at his PC during his signup slot one time and saw first hand the problem. He tried, one quarter, to attempt to make up some time and set himself up with a very hard schedule with about 19 units. He was trying meet the 4 year schedule but he just crashed and burned. </p>
<p>I backed off the 4 year requirement figuring that taking 5 years to get a degree is better than leaving after 4 with no degree. After all, there was no way he could afford to stay at Cal Poly without my help.</p>
<p>We were surprised that the Regents scholarship at Berkeley was just $1,000, and Regents scholars did not get the perk of early registration there. When we had heard about students getting full tuition scholarships because they were Regents scholars, we didn’t realize that was because they qualified for need-based aid. Students who don’t qualify for need-based aid get an honorarium of $1,000 at Berkeley, $2,000 at UCLA and UCSD.</p>
<p>Those students, who are in the top 1.5% of the applicant pool at UCLA and Berkeley, probably have lots of other great options at private schools, either for lots of merit aid or if their EFC is under 50,000 they can get financial aid without loans at the HYPS type schools.</p>
<p>*, the ME department head stated in his welcoming remarks that the 4 year grad rate was 15%; 85% after 4 years and 2 quarters. *</p>
<p>Yikes…I think I would have looked elsewhere.</p>
<p>And, I think the Dean of the COE should have his head examined for letting this go on like that.</p>
<p>“Those students, who are in the top 1.5% of the applicant pool at UCLA and Berkeley, probably have lots of other great options at private schools, either for lots of merit aid or if their EFC is under 50,000 they can get financial aid without loans at the HYPS type schools.”</p>
<p>Maybe so, and at Cal and UCLA there are 50,000 other applicants who would gladly take their places. </p>
<p>But if there EFC is $70,000, as my D’s was (financially we are doing OK, but there is no way I could pay that a year), they are s* out of luck as far as any scholarship based on need. As I said before, I don’t know anyone (non-athlete) who got a free ride anywhere, and our high school is rated #2 in the state based on API scores. So who’s getting all these free rides?</p>
<p>It should not be surprising that a private school can be less expensive than a public school, due to discounts of need and merit financial aid. However, the comparison varies considerably by individual student, so blanket statements are often inapplicable to many students.</p>
<p>Regarding not finishing in 4 years (or 8 semesters or 12 quarters of actual school, not counting co-op internships and the like), some students for whatever reason do not pay enough attention to prerequisite chains (which are more of an issue in engineering and science than in humanities and social studies), or take an average of fewer than 15 credit units per semester or quarter.</p>
<p>Regarding AP credit, some AP credit can be very useful (English and Calculus most commonly), but there has been a proliferation of AP tests of dubious value like Statistics, Physics B, and Environmental Science, which may end up being just “generic credit units”. That may be useful in getting higher standing at schools where higher standing gets higher course registration priority, or meeting the 120 semester credit unit or 180 quarter credit units for graduation if a student were averaging fewer than 15 credit units per term, but otherwise does not help with fulfilling requirements or getting into more advanced courses.</p>