<p>taxguy: In a sense I agree with you. If you just make your decision based on $$, nothing is worth. Often the decision by parents to send their kid to expensive school is more than that. I for one do not for a second believe that the money I am spending is ever going to pay-off $$ wise. May be it will, but most likely it will not. But in my particular case, my parents borrowed money to send me to this country - for opportunity. I am just following the tradition - paying forward. I just had to work few extra year and drive a dented.
1992 car for few more years. Not a big deal.</p>
<p>And the math is working out in my case is not bad. I am paying only about 50% of the cost. About 35% son pays from scholarships, loans and internships. Wife pays another 15% by working few days a month (about 90 days in a school year).</p>
No, I didn't. Only if you do what you usually do--that is, skew the facts/opinions and pick and choose what you respond to. In fact, the statement of mine that you quoted didn't AT ALL make your case that having a dream school is oxymoronic. My post, taken in its entirety as it SHOULD have been considered, refuted your "case" (or "agenda") rather soundly, IMHO. There is nothing oxymoronic or detrimental about having a dream school, as long as the kid remains realistic and can deal with a dream that may not come true. Dream schools can be great motivators, and my son is a true testament to that! :)</p>
<p>But we all know that B's son had many marvelous offers and scholarships to great schools. We all know that he dreamed of Duke. And as the parent of 6 children, she made no bones about the affordability factor. After he got accepted into Duke, there was a time lag before they knew whether he could attend financially. as it turned out, he was fortunate to get the aid they needed to make the dream a reality.
Should a kid dream? Why not. Should they have a back-up plan? Definitely.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Stanford's Product Design Program dates from 1958 when it was started by Professor Robert McKim. It is a program offered jointly with the Art Department and has graduated over 250 graduate students and many more undergraduates. Product Design concerns itself with conceiving and designing products for the benefit of society. This process requires resolution of constraints arising from technical, aesthetic, human and business concerns. A product designer uses his or her creativity, imagination and technical knowledge to satisfy these requirements and create products to satisfy human needs.
[/quote]
I was thinking about Stanford. At Stanford Art Department involves in product design. My point is that should this be a suitable route for you, you may match your dream with some brighter financial reward possibility.</p>
<p>Every time I see my doctor, he moans about still paying off his student loans. And the guy's kids are now in high school and will soon be incurring loans of their own.</p>
<p>My wife and I took great pains to find the right "financial" mix for our son when he went to college. He was able to attend a private college, with a nice partial scholarship and graduate with very minimal loan debt. As a result, seven years after he left college, his student loans have been paid in full.
He's now married, happily employed and a homeowner.</p>
<p>We did have some anxious moments while he was in college, however. For a long time there, he dated a girl from a very modest background whose almost entire college experience was being funded by loans. My wife and I estimated at one point that the young lady would graduate with at least $150,000 in debt. And she was an art major! </p>
<p>It's going to sound terrible saying this, but we were privately relieved when my son announced one day that he and this girlfriend had broken up. (Forgive me for being so crass, but this is how today's college tuition madness forces families to think.)</p>
<p>mini: Your example brings up a couple of painful thoughts.</p>
<p>The first is kids "specializing" in sports that flatline when they turn 18 (or whatever). Female gymnasts in particular suffer from this. They spend their entire childhood in the gym and suddenly when they develop hips and breasts out they go. Balance should perhaps mean more than the balance beam.</p>
<p>The second (and main one) is, why do kids have the idea that they work hard in high school (and in life) just so they can go to a prestigious college??? Yikes. Talk about screwed up values, huh? :eek:</p>
<p>^ Nothing wrong in feeling that way. I ,myself, am telling our son exactly the same.</p>
<p>One of the major cause of divorce is money. When you have huge debt, you constantly are under money pressure. Not a stable situation. In addition, it tells you about the girl's personality as well - that she does not think of future and is careless with money.</p>
<p>This also brings up another issue. In general if your EFC is low, you may not have much in loans. I suspect that the kids who have astronomical loans are the ones whose parents have high income/assets but may have chosen not to fund their kids education.</p>
<p>Arkansasmom, I also believe that every CC parent and kid should read this thread. Maybe you can contact the moderators and make this a suggested featured forum for the CC site.</p>
<p>dt123, thanks for clarifying Inverse's question. I would not recommend a lot of debt regardless of whether the major was in engineering or art or industrial design. However, because engineers usually both start off and earn earn over a lifetime much more than most artists and designers, they probably can handle more debt. Someone mentioned that no student, regardless of undergraduate major, should incur more undergraduate debt in excess of their expected first year earnings. This might be a good yardstick.</p>
<p>I just shake my head at some of the financial aid threads where students are considering huge debt. As a nurse, I particularly cringe at nursing majors taking on 100K in debt. Think of the money that can be saved by doing a 2 year program at CC and letting your employer pay for your bachelor's degree. You come out the end with the same degree, without the 100K debt around your neck. They just don't seem to think through the real world effect of that sort of debt. I've worked with new mothers who return to work in tears because they can't afford to take more than 6 weeks off because of their student loans. It's hard to think ahead five or ten years when you're eighteen and forsee those sort of things, but life happens. And it's so much better to have money than debt.</p>
<p>The underlying message should be that before you start applying (11-12 grade summer), have a talk with your parents and establish paremeters and level of their support. Then DREAM. Funding Any private college on your own with high six figure loan is foolish. Specifically, kids whose parents have good income.</p>
<p>Simba notes,"taxguy: In a sense I agree with you"</p>
<p>Response: (Sigh), I didn't think that I made an opinioin with which someone can agree or disagree. I was simply pointing out the financial pros and cons of having to incur high loans in order to attend that "dream" or name-brand school. I just wanted both parents and kids to think about the future costs of this decision before they blithely shell out $30K a year or more in loans.</p>
<p>Sadly, at too many schools, including our high school, counselors don't generally discuss the financial pitfalls of incurring a lot of financial debt for education. In fact, they simply recommend applying to the best school that they think the kid has a chance to gain acceptance. Schools also downplay their tuition costs and aid. Many private schools (Carnegie Mellon is a big culprit here) don't readily show their tuition and expected costs. They hide it. Only if you do a search of their site can one find this information, which, in my opinion, is outrageous. No where on their site does it show what the expected true cost of the CMU education, taking into account books, medical insurance, transportation home, parking ( if no airplane is taken home), misc entertainment etc.</p>
<p>To me, affordability should be a BIG factor in making college decisions and NOT be relegated to being a sidenote.</p>
<p>I would have to disagree somewhat with this statement. Although intrinsic motivation is a generally wonderful thing--quite gratifying and "lofty," (for example, my son's independent study/research and interest in epidemiology and infectious disease from the time he was six or so), it is rather idealistic to think that such motivation will sustain ALL of the people ALL of the time.</p>
<p>Case in point: My son, who is a well-rounded academic student who scored well in both english/math, did not care for English lit in the least. Though he performed well, he would have been just as happy to NEVER take a literature course. <em>lol</em> He did not experience the intrinsic gratification in that subject that he did in the science areas. Nevertheless, he tried his best and learned the subject matter in English, not because he was intrinsically motivated to learn it, but rather because he had set a college goal for himself and performing well in English helped him to meet that goal.</p>
<p>I don't consider it "screwed up values" to seek extrinsic motivation for something. How many people would cart themselves to work each day if the dangling paycheck didn't serve as a motivator? Few are fortunate enough to work a job for which money is completely unimportant, either in terms of the high level of intrinsic motivation or the sheer NEED of it to pay bills. </p>
<p>There are many things that none of us would do absent a little extrinsic motivaton. That doesn't make our values screwed up. </p>
<p>Now, can all of this be taken to an extreme? Sure. Like anything else. But in general, I do not see extrinsic motivation as a negative in the least. In fact, it can be quite effective.</p>
<p>"Sadly, at too many schools, including our high school, counselors don't generally discuss the financial pitfalls of incurring a lot of financial debt for education."</p>
<p>I am sorry to say, but people should not expect the high school counselors to act as a financial planning advisors. </p>
<p>It is the kids and their parents who have to decide - if they don't know they can ASK. It is the wishful thinking on kids and parents part that someone will sprinkle some pixie dust and magically the college money will appear.</p>
<p>I have seen this not only from parents who are un-educated, but also from parents that are highly educated. Somehow the 'talk' about the finances is done only in April when emotions run high.</p>
<p>I actually forgot to add some information to my original post. </p>
<p>If you take the same $100,000 of debt ( thus, you would take the highest scholarship offered and go to the school with the lowest net cost) and instead put that money in an average performing investment for your kids or for you yielding 8% compounded annually for forty years,which isn't that aggressive, you or your kids would have an extra $2,172,452 at retirement. </p>
<p>This is really the marginal cost of attending an expensive school instead of taking the same money and investing it. Notice, I am not talking about the debt. I am simply comparing the benefit of taking the same $100,000+ of excess tuition that you would pay over that of a state school and investing this excess cost.</p>
<p>Would an extra $2,172,000 substantially improve your kids' lives or improve your life?</p>
<p>Bottom line: Before you blithely send your kids to that expensive school rather than taking the one with the best scholarship or lowest cost, consider how much this is really costing your family. Yes, it is nice to achieve dreams. However, as my dad always told me, "be careful of what you wish for. You may get it!"</p>