There must have been a misunderstanding about this. Ivy League colleges do not offer any athletic or merit scholarships, only need based financial aid.
@sherpa - he was recruited for wrestling, but his mom mentioned a full-scholarship at Cornell. With his family’s income, it makes sense the aid was need-based.
Yes, the decision to go to Kansas State over Cornell may have come down to cost and distance.
I think it was probably distance over cost, in addition to the desire to play D1 football.
My two kids went 2000+ miles away for college, and everyone thought that was crazy. Couldn’t understand why they didn’t stay in-state. It was much less expensive for my kids to attend pricey LACs due to the need-based aid they received…
I think the decision can often involve a specific activity - athletics, music, art - and the opportunity to be a starter, be in the top music group, work with a top professor. I know many athletes who pick a school that offers a better playing opportunity, a better conference, nicer facilities. I don’t think many people are surprised when someone picks Stanford over Harvard for football or swimming, but I think there are a good many who would pick Cal or Alabama or FSU too. Of course, if the athlete is just a step down in sports but academically qualified for any school might pick Harvard to be the athletic standout on a much smaller stage. The hockey player is going to pick Harvard, unless he needs the money.
Money can be a decider.
People often assume that Ivy League athletes are on athletic scholarships and that Ivy League students in general are on merit scholarships. Also, it’s not uncommon for parents to prefer people believe their child’s aid is merit as opposed to need based.
There was a thread a few years ago posted by a father whose daughter got into Yale, Amherst and several other super selective schools – and turned them all down for a full ride at a small southern LAC. She figured she could excel anywhere, and the money her parents saved for her undergrad would go towards paying med school. Her father had very mixed feelings about it – turning down YALE, yikes – but four years later happily posted that his daughter had been admitted to med school… and in fact, it was Yale Med school.
@sherpa - I agree. When asked how we could afford the expensive LACs our children attended, I usually answered that the schools had very generous financial aid. In casual conversations I didn’t specify that it was solely need based.
There are a lot of parents of athletes that do the same - purposefully or not - when discussing student athletes people assume they have a full ride athletic scholarship when it is a partial that may come with need aid or even merit aid (or neither of those). “My kid got a scholarship to play abc sport at xyz school.” People without athletes often assume that athletic scholarship is a full ride when in fact that can mean a lot of things. People with athletes know how much that can vary.
Athletes often choose a national championship contender over another more prestigious school.
I have known kids that have turned down MIT and Harvard for UTD and Texas A&M. The reasons were money, distance and plans for graduate school. They are all doing great.
My high-stats S is a junior so I can’t say for sure, but so far he’s not too interested in applying to elite schools. Even UT Austin, which is very well regarded for his intended CS major, is not high on his list although he should easily be auto admit there and he will most likely apply. At the moment his top choice is UT Dallas. He feels more at home on the UTD campus and he likes the merit scholarships. From his school, many students are accepted to elite schools but end up at Texas public universities. Money and distance from home are factors, and many expect to go to grad school so they want to minimize undergrad cost.
These days MONEY has to be the #1 reason why a kid would choose a college ranked much lower (like +40 or more lower). You have to think that if they applied to the top school and the lower school they at least believed they would like either school- so in most cases (these days) it comes down to cost.
Guessing that the real question is USCarolina vs. Stanford based on other posts. I don’t think strangers on CC are good data points. Every situation is hypothetical to everyone else bc no one else lives your family’s life. (It’s easy for me to say my kids don’t choose the elite over the high merit bc the decision is singular…they don’t have the higher cost schools as real options.)
If cost is a real concern, you and your wife and your son need to sit down and look at a spreadsheet of data points for the different schools ($$ for COA, broad career goal salary range, list of recruiting on campus opportunities, possible income differentials, difference in allowed credit and increased/decreased flexibility of hrs to graduate, etc) and for the impact on your retirement age, long-term financial security, etc.
For some people it is a clear cut decision, cannot realistically afford/can afford. For others it is murky and hard decisions need to faced. But other families’ decisions do not make personal ones easier.
@suzy100 money was not the deciding factor for my daughter. She was recruited by a lot of high ranked LACs and had no interest in them. They were too small, too liberal, too ‘mean’ for her, and she didn’t think she’d fit in with the students she met. Her school is more than 100 ranking points lower than some of those schools. She doesn’t care.
Jenna Bush picked Texas over Yale (and I assume any other school she wanted since her father was about to be president). I don’t think the Bushes cared all that much about instate tuition. The val at my kids’ high school picked Santa Clara over Stanford and Harvard and I know money was not an issue. Why? It was catholic, he could play soccer, he liked it better.
It is not always money.
For the 4 that I know: one was purely for distance, one was for money, one was for sports, Div 1 vs 3, and the fourth was for opportunity - McDermott scholar and thinking of med school. All sorts of different reasons, not just money.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Your point is well taken. Bluntly put, even though we could afford the costs of attending Stanford (mainly because we managed to save for a private college), more I thought about it, the more I am thinking “Why the heck should my kid pay a lot more money than other Stanford kids, especially when he can go to a nice college for almost free?” especially when you can pay for other items such as one’s graduate school with that money or buy a small apartment. I myself am convinced that HYPSM is not worth $250+ but am having a hard time convincing my wife and my kid. My kid is our only child, so his mom (my wife) wants to give him the best opportunity possible but she still thinks Honors College at University of South Carolina is a great opportunity. In all likelihood, we will go with whatever my kid decides. I just wish Univ of South Carolina’s IR/East Asian Studies programs were stronger compared to Stanford’s though. I guess you can’t have everything. Lol Also, my kid has an option of attending UCLA/UC Berkeley (assuming he gets in) at a lower price ($35K per year) because we are CA residents. To be honest, I did tell my kid “If you get into Stanford, you can go there instead of UCLA/UC Berkeley”, so it’s not as if my kid disobeyed me by applying to Stanford. I just didn’t think he would get in. Lol I under-appreciated my kid’s ability to market himself when he’s motivated, I guess. Also,. because I attended college for free, I just don’t like to pay that much for college education mostly because I believe if you are motivated, you can learn pretty much anything on your own with today’s technology. In short, I think private colleges are rip-offs unless you get a lot of financial aid, so I just don’t like the feeling of getting ripped off knowingly.
My kid didn’t like small well-known liberal schools either. He in fact didn’t even apply to other HYPSM because Stanford was the only school among HYPSM he was interested in. I myself would have recommended that he apply to Stanford and Yale.
D is an athlete who was strongly recruited by two schools a good bit higher ranked than where she ended up applying ED. While I can’t say for certain she would have gotten in to them, their coaches assured us she had a great chance. It came down mostly to money but also several aspects of fit, including housing options, campus vibe, graduation requirements (thesis mandatory), coaching style and strength of team, and gender balance (one school she opted not to pursue was all female, and the other was around 65/35 female/male).
Adding to my above post, I wish I had known earlier in time about University of South Carolina Honors College or University of Kentucky’s Croft School of Diplomacy and guided my kid’s expectations of which colleges he should apply, but it’s not really my or my kid’s fault because I didn’t even know he would become NM Semi-finalist. It’s only when he unexpectedly became a NM Semifinalist (and a likely NM Finalist) that I began to research many schools which would offer nearly free education based on his NM Finalist status. For us, without the offer of nearly “free” college education, we would not be considering any Honors Colleges simply because we could send our kid to either UCLA or UC Berkeley or UCSD in the worst scenario to the tune of $35K per year which is way more affordable than $70K per year. I am the kind of person I could care less what school my kid goes to, as long as he goes to a school which he thinks he will enjoy. And I am a big believer in my kid doing what he enjoys rather than going into an area where he can make more money. I keep telling my kid “Don’t go into an area just to make more money; do something that you can be proud of while helping others and will enjoy.”
One more thing. If University of Southern CA would have offered 100% tuition for being a NM Finalist, my kid would have gone there but they offer just 50% off their expensive tuition, so that their cost is pretty much same as costs for UCLA/UCB.
My father withdrew from an Ivy to attend an OOS flagship because he wanted to get out of New England.
If I were a rich kid, I would almost pay money not to go to college but . . . lol I couldn’t wait to get out of college. Some people like it; some people don’t. Looking back, I mostly enjoyed establishing my company and taking risks based on my educated guess; but mostly, I hated studying. I have no idea why my kid wants to go pay $70K to do what I hated doing. Lol
I think a college is a place where you go thinking you can change the world but learn that you can only change yourself.