I wouldn’t assume that he needs grad school. An MBA after an undergraduate business degree likely isn’t worth it.
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Contact his Gc immediately : is there a problem with A-G requirements, something else? Have them go over th UC app with a finetooth comb.
Where else has he applied?
Did he apply to Penn’s M&T or MET at UCB?
It’s not just a matter of going “because I feel like it”. There really is a big difference.
In fact, for business more than for Engineering, the quality of the school matters a lot (as it does for Humanities: when classes require discussions and team work, you want strong peers. It doesn’t mean brand name, it means checking stats and looking for especially strong departments in what you’re interested in.)
He’ll then need to work for 3-5 years before going back for his MBA (if he does - some MBAs aren’t necessary if the BBA is strong and/or may be paid for by the employer. The MBA matters especially for networking and turbocharging or changing an already promising career.)
We can disagree. It depends on many factors - what type of organization he’s at, what level he wants to get to.
Many companies/leaders find them unnecessary. For others it’s a cost of entry, etc…
Nonetheless, one has to get out, get a job, and can worry about that later.
Gc? Sorry I’m not very familiar with the systems here
If he had an issue with A-G requirements he wouldn’t have gotten into UCM and waitlisted at UCSC, correct?
If there was an issue with the a-g course requirements, then he would have not gotten into any UC plus the application would have flagged any issues before submitting. Not sure what a GC can do at this point.
Yes , that’s what I was thinking too. Thank you.
His GPA goes up if we take into consideration of grades received in senior year. Does it make any sense to appeal to UCI & UCSB?
You can appeal, but in general the UC’s do not consider Senior grades and they expect all students to maintain good grades since all acceptances are provisional. For an appeal of your admission decision to have merit, it must bring to light new information that was not present in your application—information that clearly shows your application to be stronger overall than had been earlier evidenced.
This year, UC acceptances seem to be more competitive than before. Probably the non consideration of test scores means that there are more competitive applicants as there may be more candidates with good GPA than candidates with good GPA & good test scores.
Was there an understanding between you and him beforehand about how college choice was to be made between admissions of different costs?
This is the ultimate fair question. My daughter applied to 21 - we are chasing merit.
She has a top choice but she knows the # we need to hit. She knows that for her stretch schools - if she gets in, where it needs to be.
Because she can go, OOS, to Florida State, a very good school for example, for $22K or so. So I’m not going to spend $75K - and she knows if she gets $25K merit to a $75K school, that’s still $50K - and while she will decide where she goes, dad has right of first refusal on anything!!
Sounds like you needed to be more clear with your son up front…or if you were, then you have to act within your comfort zone.
You keep saying you can afford Purdue - but clearly you don’t want to. That’s fine - tell him so and hold firm.
You’ve already gotten great answers - all three schools will provide him a great education. All 3 are quite different. Purdue is the most “traditional” and “well known” school but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a great experience elsewhere.
So you gotta make your call.
Thanks. I was thinking that perhaps due to the difference in selectivity, UCM may accept “A-G requirements finished at end of senior year” whereas UCSC may go “waitlisted till we get senior results”.
In any case, if a student is waitlisted at his safety, it may mean there’s a problem in the application - always worth checking with the GC (guidance counselor) that an element hasn’t been forgotten, or incorrectly entered, and of course that the essays aren’t complete catastrophes. Since UCs don’t take recommentations, it could only be courses/grades, UC GPA, or essays. Easy to check.
@califlow: Did you give him a budget? If Purdue is within budget, is there a reason why it’s no longer on the table (ie., change in financial circumstances) that you’ve communicated to him?
If you would like him to contribute anything, can you make any decision conditional on the fact he’d take on an on-campus job or a job nearby for 6-8 hours a week (more than that is risky for a freshman, it can typically increase to 8-10 for sophomores and 10-12 for upperclass students without risk; 12 is the upper limit, and 15 is known to impact grades significantly). You can also say he has to maintain a 3.0 every semester or he has to go home/CC. Both would be strong incentives and ways for him to contribute. Finally, you can lift the “job” requirement if he attends a CA public university, whichever one he gets into.
More likely, the presumed “safety” was not really a safety (as proven by non-admission).
A cautionary tale from a few years ago, when the parent and student do not come to a firm understanding about financial implications before the application list was made:
Summer between 11th and 12th grade, parent writes that “money is not a factor in the [college] decision”: Best schools for Math/Comp Sci with undergrad research
After student gets admission offers, parent does not want to pay for the more expensive college that is the student’s first choice: Need advice on college choice, $$, etc.
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Thank you so much for that link. That was an eye opener.
Fortunately I’m not in that position. I will be able to send him to wherever he wants to go without much of a dent on my long term plans. And that indeed was my original thought process.
However, once I started frequenting this forum I see how kids are prioritizing financial wellbeing and how they do the right financial decisions based on an eye on the future. And I started contrasting with my kid’s situation.
My struggle is by doing this(a.k.a supporting him with a more expensive college when he already has a lesser expensive choice ) am I setting him up for failure later in his life.
The crutch of his parents will go away in about 4 years(This I was very clear right from the start. i.e. we will only support undergraduate level college and anything on top of it has to be self funded) and is he going to struggle once that happens.
So this was more along that lines of “am I doing the right thing for life lessons” than “am I doing the right thing financially”
hope that makes sense
First of all I do not think this applies to this particular thread - the OP has clearly mentioned:
Money is strictly not an issue and I can pay for Purdue. But is it worth $50K more than merced or $75K more than CPP?
The OP is doing more due diligence before actually committing to one of the options for his/her kid - nothing wrong with that.
Secondly let us not be quick to judge. The scenario in the two threads you posted probably happens all the time as many families are not expert with respect to college admissions and at the start of the process get carried away with what is prestige. Also at the start of the process have the idea that it is all or nothing - where they think the kid becomes super successful only if the kid goes to an ivy league school. Slowly some realize that the ivy league does not guarantee success in life and a state school does not doom their kid to a failure. And also the financial implications come more into focus. I would actually credit the families and the parents for realizing this before deciding on which college to actually enroll than those who burden themselves or the kid with a lot of debt. Applying to a top college cost only $80 per college - and it was OK to keep the options open at the beginning of the process and applying.
The second thread people talk about the kid losing trust in their parents because the parents thought initially they could afford it and found later they could not. One person even says:
I have seen this same scenario a couple of times, and the results are not pretty. Relationships are damaged. Trust is a delicate thing. It takes little effort to destroy it.
If the relationship between the parent and the child are this fragile, then there are deeper problems. Most kids with well adjusted parent-child relationships can handle having to go to a good in-state school (say UCLA or UCSD) over a top 10 school due to financial reasons. If the kid is really this fragile to lose trust in the parent, it is actually a good learning experience for the kid as in future he/she will be employed by companies who may lay him/her off due to financial situation just 2-3 quarters after giving a bonus for company doing well financially. Life happens.
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Unfortunately, nobody will be able to give you a definite answer. Since it doesn’t sound like you are taking on debt or severely changing your lifestyle, very few will criticize any choice. In our example last year, my DS had choices everywhere from near free (Alabama), $15k (Ohio State), $30k (UChicago) and $75k (Georgetown). He ultimately didn’t go with the cheapest, but except for knocking out Georgetown, it wasn’t an easy decision. The good news is that after he starts, conformation bias will set in a you will be convinced that you made the right decision.
Also, since the UCs and Cal States tend to be impacted, he may or may not be able to graduate in 4years – not through any fault of his own, but because he can’t get the classes he needs when he needs them. I know this was an issue in previous years – it might be worth looking into now.
Thus…if he needs more than 8 semesters to graduate at a lower-priced school, how does that compare to eight semesters at a higher-priced one?
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I’m not clear on how supporting him choosing a more expensive college is setting him up for failure?
While you can get very good educations at a slew of colleges, very few of them are equivalent on any level, let alone most of them. An experience and education at CPP will be vastly different than one at Purdue, or Merced. Choosing one purely based on cost, when cost is not material to you, doesn’t seem like teaching a good lesson, because most things should be evaluated on more than price.
Does he like the idea of a very large school? Does he want a football school? Change of seasons? To experience a different part of the country? He prefers the nationally ranked option? What does he like most about Purdue? Where does he want to live after graduating?
We told one of ours that we would hear arguments for any school he got into, ‘give us the presentation.’ Unfortunately for him, when he had to list the reasons why for his ‘top choice’ he realized it really wasn’t the right choice for him (that is my edited recollection, we might have just said no way). I think you should have him explain why he likes Purdue better and why you should make the additional investment. I can think of many reasons he could give that would convince me to pay the additional for Purdue, the question will be if he can convince you.
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The parent did say at the beginning that “money is not a factor in the decision”, and apparently encouraged the student to make a college application list that was mostly colleges that they later decided were too expensive. If the student had previously assumed that the parent’s word was good, what happens now that the parent breaks their word? This is independent of the actual quality of the colleges in question.
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None of the college choices in question is “setting him up for failure later in life”.
Although if you are concerned about lessons with respect to spending habits, it is likely that he has been learning them over the past 17-18 years.
But here are some important questions:
- What did you and he understand would be the college selection criteria after getting admission offers and net prices?
- Since then, were there any significant changes in financial or other situation that make it reasonable to change the previous understanding?
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