Private Universities and Colleges Not Worth It for Upper Income Families?

Parents Forum
61

My experience might have been dated (DS was in high school more than a decade ago.) But for a kid graduated from a relatively large, competitive public high school in a suburban area of a large city, it is rarely “enough” for a non-hooked kid aiming for a top 5 or even 10 US N&R colleges to have only 4-5 APs under his/her belt before the application. Our child was in some less-competitive, flyover part of the country, not in any more “insanely competitive” cities on either coast. There is some phenomenon of “racing to nowhere” going on here. I do not like it myself.

Another aspect in the “race”: let me cite something that Dorothy DeLay (a music teacher at Julia Conservatory once said in a PBS interview program: In order for a student to have an achievement (at the level of her students), both the child and their parents need to serve their respective roles in a team. Many parents of such child prodigies will likely be labeled as helicopter parents here. (Joshua Bell father, a psychologist/professor at IU(?), once said that because of Joshua, it is very “destructive” to their whole family – many family members suffer because, I think, he has drawn so much of his family’s resources to him, to the neglect of most others. His mother could be characterized as a helicopter parent here.

When my child was in a college application interview, an interviewer from a college kept asking about the parents, to the levels that our child felt very uncomfortable to answer (his parents do not have much “achievements” for him to talk about. LOL.) So, be careful about what you (parents) do in your daily life. What you do may have an effect on the chance of your child’s admission to college!

62

Op,
I haven’t read all the posts. For financial aid, if you look at princeton’s info, they are still sometimes awarding FA at incomes of more than $200k per yr. Maybe you can get more info about that?

63

I’m sorry- 14 AP’s and multiple SAT prep and all that jazz… I live in the northeast supposedly in the hub of college insanity and I can tell you that these are NOT the kids getting into the single digit admissions schools. Not by a long shot. There are most definitely kids I know who have done this… run themselves ragged during HS slogging hours in EC’s they don’t care about and staying up all night to cram for a calculus course they shouldn’t have been placed into, and taking tests 6 and 7 times to try and break 700 or 720 or whatever magical score their parents think will buy the golden ticket.

Nope. These kids end up at fine colleges, but HYP and MIT and Stanford DON’T need to admit the kids who are exhausted by senior year. The reality of thousands of applications is that they get to pick the kids the want- not the exhausted and insane competitors.

I know kids who you’d all consider absolute slackers who are at these colleges. They took AP’s in the classes they were interested in; they were the kind of students that teachers love to teach- curious and engaged and reading on the side NOT for extra credit, but because they figured “Hey, I read French- why not see what Rousseau had to say about free will instead of reading about it third hand in my history text book”.

Some of them had EC’s you’d laugh at. Passionate interests which they explored on their own, for which there are no team captains or award nights or regional honors. Many of them were self taught in the best possible way-spending their study hall taking an online class which their HS couldn’t offer- not for credit but just “because”.

And since some of them live in my neighborhood- these kids had normal summers with jobs like scooping ice cream or making change at the pizza store or getting dirty doing yard work or painting houses. Some were Eagle scouts and actually did old fashioned things like help an elderly neighbor clean out a garage.

The 14 AP kids? They end up at fine colleges. But admissions officers don’t need their high scores and their stats. They can admit the kids who have one or two passionate interests and have explored them authentically. The kid who is the amazing tennis whiz and 500 volunteer hours and NHS and struggles to keep up with all the AP’s and head of the year book committee and president of the student body…and still taking SAT’s by November of senior year desperate for a great “super score”- Princeton doesn’t need this kid.

I do feel sorry for the parents who have bought into the “more is better” ethos. But they complain that their kid gets no sleep and HS is such a slog and the kid is so burnt out from yet another summer building orphanages in Guatemala and y’know? then I stop feeling sorry for them. I feel sorry for the kids- but no 10th grader has ever said “Gee, instead of going to grandma’s 80th birthday I’d rather fit in an extra SAT study session with my tutor.” That insanity comes from the parents- and they need to own it.

There was a kid from my kids HS a few years ago who was just special on an epic scale. Kind, decent, sweet, fair- minded in addition to being brilliant and modest and exceptionally talented in his particular “thing”. He applied to one of the HYP schools early- and some of his classmates were railing that it was so unfair- this college never took more than 2 or 3 kids from the HS, and this particular year, there were several strong students, 3 of whom were legacies (and apparently, generous families), applying to this same college.

Everyone assumed he’d be shut out. Guess what- he got accepted, the legacies did not, the world kept turning on its axis. 3 kids ended up getting accepted- none of them the kids everyone thought was a lock- and at least among the seniors that year, there was joy in mudville. Exceptional is exceptional- and even a very strong legacy kid with great stats can recognize exceptional when he/she sees it.

So you’re tired of holistic admissions? Tell your kid to drop the three activities which are bringing him/her no joy and get to bed on time. Don’t want to “play the game”? Tell your kid to drop AP Chem (if your kid hates chem) and take Earth Science instead.

This endless cramming isn’t doing what you think it is. So just stop.

64

My kids just graduated from elite schools. Neither had anything remotely close to 14 APs. They each “un-AP’ed” in an area they didn’t care about. They had interesting ECs but they didn’t dominate their lives. We generally had dinner together as a family which was a very important priority. My D was an average player on her varsity team, had a part time job working at the mall (not curing cancer) and my S didn’t do any sport other than riding his bike and running around with the dog. They worked hard at their studies but they were not run ragged. Such a life’s not worth it.

65

As far as money, I can definitely relate. I’m considering applying to NYU in the fall. Tuition & board adds up to about $66k. I put our information in their net price calculator and it estimated that we would get $11k in aid. We’re an upper-middle class family, but there’s no way our family could afford that.

In my opinion, the name of your undergrad is really only important if you’re not planning on going to grad school. If you are planning on going to grad, best to do well at a state school and spend all your money (and energy) at the Ivy or wherever.

Whether or not you decide to go for Ivy-level schools, you still don’t want to stress your daughter out too much. Colleges like to see someone who has developed a passion in one specific area, rather than tried to do everything and anything. Plus, if your daughter is stressed, she will burn out and her grades will go down. And she’ll be miserable. High school shouldn’t be miserable.

It’s more important to take AP’s that she finds interesting along with extracurriculars she enjoys rather than to overload with AP’s so much so that she doesn’t have time for both extracurriculars and homework.

I think the worst thing you can do is to dedicate all four years of high school for one college (or set of colleges), particular one that has a tiny acceptance rates. She still might not get in. College admissions at Ivy’s is half luck anyway. 90% of people who apply are qualified to attend, so the admissions officers have to resort to pretty dumb reasons to reject people.

66

@cmsjmt, I don’t get why you think “our colleges” are “forcing” our kids to do whatever.

You know that they are free to do whatever and that they could get a perfectly good education at schools that mostly look at stats (both here and abroad; assuming that you are able to pay), right?

If you believe the second, why would you think the first?

67

OP,
I think it is definitely worth it if you decide you can afford it. If you feel you cannot afford it, then let your D know before application time.

68

My older daughter went to a high school in the states and the younger one didn’t. The older one only took APs in Junior and Senior years, and probably 2 APs each each, but she took AP exams where she didn’t take AP courses and still scored 5.

69

“My experience might have been dated (DS was in high school more than a decade ago.) But for a kid graduated from a relatively large, competitive public high school in a suburban area of a large city, it is rarely “enough” for a non-hooked kid aiming for a top 5 or even 10 US N&R colleges to have only 4-5 APs under his/her belt before the application. Our child was in some less-competitive, flyover part of the country, not in any more “insanely competitive” cities on either coast. There is some phenomenon of “racing to nowhere” going on here. I do not like it myself.”

Why would a kid be aiming for “too 5 or even top 10” in the first place? That is the race to nowhere.

70

This topic comes up over and over and over. And the responses are typically the same. If your kid (not you, your kid) really, really wants to apply to a prestige school whose decal you can proudly display in your car window, and it doesn’t hurt your budget one iota to cover the 4 years of room and board, then let her apply. But adcomms are pretty good at recognizing the crammed, padded applications with resumes that don’t scream “I did this because I love it” but rather “I did this because it looks good on my resume”. There was a video I am having trouble locating at the moment from a Stanford admissions counselor on how overused the word “passion” is and how hard it is fir many 17yar olds to truly have a “passion” as opposed to an inquisitive spirit. Its been posted here on CC but I cant currently find it.

71

Yes, but…

There seems to be an increasing trend for college graduates – including those with impressive accomplishments and high aspirations – to work for a few years to gain experience in their field before going on for a PhD or a professional degree. This is almost mandatory for people who want to get MBAs, but it seems to be becoming more common in other fields as well, and formal programs (such as the NIH’s post-baccalaureate research fellowships) now exist to accommodate this new trend.

This raises two questions:

  1. How much does the name of your undergrad school affect your ability to find a high-quality interim experience before you go on to graduate study?
  2. How much does the quality of your interim experience affect your attractiveness to top graduate or professional schools?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. What’s your perspective?

72

This has been my observation as well, for many years. I know one student currently at H who took exactly 3 APs. The kids who do things just to try to get into an elite seldom succeed. Those schools want lots of curious, creative, interesting students, not self-obsessed lemmings. Are the admits hardworking? Of course. but the work is accompanied by an unnamable grace, not a desperation to do anything to impress an ad com at the expense of some of life’s finest years. @blossom thank you for your thoughtful post.

73

What state is OP in? If it’s CA, his D will need about the same stats as the Ivys to get into Berkeley or UCLA, so there’s no point in trying to make a distinction when choosing high school classes. This may be true for some other states, as well.

74

Bay- while this is true in CA, it is NOT true in NJ (Rutgers is a fine U, but admits mostly by the numbers), CT, MA, NY, Maryland, etc. And many of the kids I know who end up at these colleges, show up exhausted and dispirited by the process of trying to “AP” and volunteer/build orphanages/get elected team captain their way into Penn and Columbia and Hopkins.

The line to “fight” your way into BC calculus in some schools is crazy. Kid gets placed in AB or college prep math senior year- parent goes nuclear. Is the kid interested in engineering? no. Does the kid like math? no. Has the kid shown a flair for anything quantitative during HS? no. Does the kids math tutor (hired by desperate parents during sophomore year) report that the kid is starting to exhibit any talent in math whatsoever? no.

So why exactly do you want your kid to spend senior year trying to keep up with the kids who live/breathe/exist for math? Do you want your kid who enjoys a twirl around the ice occasionally to train with a bunch of Olympic-bound figure skaters?

75

Plenty of colleges in CA besides the top UC’s as well.

76

Just another person piling on to the 14 APs and running ragged is not necessary bandwagon. Oldest took 7 (if you don’t count Calc BC and Physics C as 2 because you get two scores) plus a Linear Algebra course. No sports. Two school ECs - contest stuff with awards at the State level. The rest of the time he messed around with computers - volunteered some computer help for two med school professors, one program has been acknowledge regularly in papers, got an award for modding a game, volunteered in the computer lab one summer at the local senior center, then later had a paid job summer and part time during the school year for a company that does various web based stuff. All of the computer stuff he considered fun. He also had time to read more than 100 sci fi and fantasy novels a year average.

Younger son was in 2 ECs in school, also got state level awards. He was also in two school orchestras. Competent, but not great musician. No sports either. His hobby was playing with origami and eventually he got good enough that he sold earrings at a local gallery. Still does actually. Read almost as much as his brother. His only volunteer activity was helping organize papers for a local neighborhood association - which ended up in an interesting essay about learning history from primary sources.

Both kids spent way too much time playing games on the computer and got eight hours of sleep every night.

Both kids got into top 10 ranked schools, though younger son’s grades weren’t quite good enough for the single digit schools.

77

I don’t disagree with you, blossom. My point was that in CA, if he approaches high school with the decision that “we can’t afford the Ivies anyway, so don’t kill yourself trying to get into one, we can send you to the cheaper public,” his D still has the same issues of competition with those trying to get into the top CA publics (maybe even worse).

78

“we can’t afford the Ivies anyway, so don’t kill yourself trying to get into one, we can send you to the cheaper public”
-This is wrong approach, no matter what is the goal. Always striving to do your best and in addition, have a balances life will lead to achieving a personal goal, while having options to choose from. For many, having options is like having a control over your own future instead of letting others to control it. It is powerful and satisfying and provides background to a real confidence! Why not to always try your best?
Opinion that in-state public will be less challenging is also incorrect. How is it formed, I have no idea. There are plenty of valedictorians at in-state publics who graduated from both public and private HSs and the competition for all kind of Merit scholarships is severe at any place. The difference between getting few thousands in Merit of awards or having your whole tuition covered maybe resulted from some minute differences in the HS GPA’s and/or standardized scores and even EC’s while in HS. If a kid wants the best for her future, then the only way to achieve it is to work your hardest with the absolute best effort in EVERYTHING, academic and outside. There are other opportunities at colleges outside of financial. And these opportunities are also may be open only for the best of the best.

79

Hate to say it, but I agree with MiamiDAP wholeheartedly. The OP’s premise seems to be since he’s likely full pay for Ivy but isn’t comfortable with that kind of educational outlay ( totally fine, btw) should he encourage his child to relax. I think it’s our job as parents to see to some degree of balance and sanity and perspective in our children’s lives, but the Teddy Roosevelt maxim to do the best you can with what you’ve got where you are is as important in a flower shop as it is in a research lab or on Wall St. Most of the kids who’ve given their all to get into some very highly desired top 20 type school get denied, and I cringe when they or their parents lament on these forums about the waste of time and effort. On the contrary, I think these kids have done something worth celebrating just by giving their all and trying their best. It’s a great habit to develop and it will likely pay off in success at something more important than the USNWR ranking of your college. Encourage your daughter to do her best in school and her ECs, tell her why it’s important, but start having those talks now about how 60K/year isn’t going to work for your family and what that means for her college choices. She’ll understand and appreciate it and you’ll get to have many great talks with your kid.

80

What are some of the popular volunteer activities on college applications today?

  • Working at the humane society
  • Translating for immigrants at the hospital
  • Helping (illegal) immigrants fill out papers at the maternity ward so their babies can be citizens
  • Building mud huts for the poor in Guatemala
  • Working on eco projects in Costa Rica to save the environment
  • Working at an orphanage in Africa or some other 3rd world country
  • Assisting (often parents who are) doctors/dentists in Haiti
  • Replanting to support natural growth in wetlands
  • Playing classical music for senior citizen/immigrant centers
  • Working at the soup kitchen (esp. during the Holidays)
  • Teaching sports/being big brother/sister to Special Needs children
  • Tutoring “underprivileged” kids in English/math

Anyone who doesn’t think these are liberal causes is a liberal.

How many will volunteer in these activities if it weren’t for elite school admissions?
How many will continue doing these activities once they get into college (except for those who are thinking of med school)?