<p>Article: [As</a> Colleges Retool Aid, Can Entry Stay Need-Blind? : NPR](<a href=“As Colleges Retool Aid, Can Entry Stay Need-Blind? : NPR”>As Colleges Retool Aid, Can Entry Stay Need-Blind? : NPR)</p>
<p>They only mentioned Cornell, MIT and Grinnell. Cornell always had a rep for a bad FA policy at my old school, Grinnell is probably a niche school and MIT…well, we’ll see. I do remember reading threads of CCers complaining about MIT’s FA package.</p>
<p>I am happy to say that two generations of my family have been the beneficiaries of affordable public education to date, resulting in no debt, well paying secure professions, positive undergrad experiences and great friendships. No regrets. If one can afford what they want without mortgaging their (or their parents) future so be it but it isn’t necessary to bury yourself in debt to get a quality education and succeed in life.</p>
<p>Ucba #195: Re: UoChicago: My friend’s parents refused to do FAFSA forms and could easily afford COA (1970s). Cost was not the issue. I think her parents were small-minded and mean-spirited.</p>
<p>^ Was she adopted?</p>
<p>Re: #223</p>
<p>Mean spirited to her, but not her sister?</p>
<p>Perhaps clients of taxguy’s at the time, but switched accountants by the time the sister was ready?</p>
<p>These two articles explain the proposed FA policy changes at MIT, Cornell & Grinnell.</p>
<p>[Cornell</a>, MIT Scale Back Aid Even as Endowments Rise - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>[Grinnell</a>, one of the country’s wealthiest colleges, questions sustainability of financial aid | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/01/grinnell-one-countrys-wealthiest-colleges-questions-sustainability-financial-aid]Grinnell”>Grinnell, one of the country's wealthiest colleges, questions sustainability of financial aid)</p>
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<p>So true!!! If you can afford it, go for it otherwise there is no sense in going into debt and being stuck with loans for a long time. I believe our children would like to see us retire one day :)</p>
<p>Blossom notes," You are living in a dream world if you think the people whose kids choose a less expensive option then take the money they would have sent to Princeton and sock it away in a nice large cap stock fund at Vanguard."</p>
<p>Response: LOL, yes, I know it isn’t always done or even done as regularly as I would like. However, for what it is worth, I have recommended this technique to friends and also suggested it in my latest financial book. Will most people do it? NO! However, there is a story about why I mention this. </p>
<p>There was a guy who was written up pushing whales ( with a tractor) who had beached themselves back to the sea. There were far too many whales for him to save. A reporter came up to him and asked." Don’t you see all of the beached whales. You can’t make that much of a difference before they all died." His answer was, " I made a difference to the one I got back into the sea."</p>
<p>So my answer is although most people might not put the tuition saving in a mutual fund as I would suggest, I might make a difference to a few people!</p>
<p>Darn those beached humans. They need all the advice they wont take.</p>
<p>The problem is that everyone’s anecdotes are cases of top high school students who choose to attend colleges where they are still top students. So yes, the top students with full scholarships to Alabama/(other state U) are successful. But how about mediocre students? The kids who are at the average for Alabama? </p>
<p>Going to a gigantic school that is known mostly for its football team than anything else isn’t a smart thing for everyone. There is a huge population of high school kids whose education would be negatively affected by going to a large public school. As I said before, it isn’t a problem for the top students. They are given preferential treatment. They are academic “superstars”. </p>
<p>Anecdotes don’t prove anything.</p>
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<p>I think we have a philosophical difference here. Life has always been hard. It was hard in the “Ozzie and Harriet” days too. People lost jobs and had no safety net. Current times are bad, sure, but they are like the 1970s, not like the Great Depression.</p>
<p>If my adult child is homeless or ill, she can live with me. I cannot, however, foresee a situation where I’m going to be giving her 60K a year of income support because she gets a divorce at 30. And I have no desire for her to be like the Lena Dunham character in “Girls,” cashing checks from her parents so she can live in Brooklyn instead of, say, Keyport, NJ. She’s going to get herself the life she wants, or not. Her problem.</p>
<p>If our financial situation remains unchanged, we can help her with a move, a deposit on an apartment, interview clothes, transport subsidy, etc. All of these will cost much less than her annual college bills. We will help her get started in adult life. After a point, though, she must build her own safety net. We did. My parents did. My grandparents did (in much worse circumstances than now).</p>
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<p>I’m quoting Coskat’s post in its entirety because I agree completely as well. No college is worth damaging the family’s financial stability or placing a huge debt burden on the student. In my family we have gone to privates and state schools. They were all great for the individual student concerned.</p>
<p>I see no problem with going to the best school you can reasonably afford. And obviously that’s different for everyone, so there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.</p>
<p>I agree with taxguy. Your child’s success will often depend on their own personal motivation, interviewing skills, ability to network, desire for success and more. These gifts are not handed to you in college. They are innate and can’t be purchased with a private school education. My husband went to to CUNY as an undergrad and is financially in the top spectrum of his profession. I went to an average college and have a wonderful small business for the past 20 years. Again, not an elite institution, but I had the desire to excel.
So maybe elite, private schools are a bit overrated by parents in the hopes that their child will succeed?</p>
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<p>However, most students at 4-year schools do attend large public schools. Most of them are not the superstar students who have more choices (in terms of where they can get admitted to, or afford with large merit scholarships).</p>
<p>That’s exactly my point. Using the top students to characterize the experience of an entire (huge) student body makes no sense. Many on the side of “State U” cite experiences from the honors colleges, but the reality is that these students make up an extremely small part of the college overall.</p>
<p>If the kid can get accepted and the parents can afford to pay, why not? It’s a personal decision for each family.</p>
<p>Re: #237</p>
<p>On the other hand, most 4-year college students do attend large public schools. While you claim that their education may be negatively affected by attending such schools, the students themselves obviously think that it is worth attending such schools, even when there are not too many other realistic choices of 4-year schools (due to either cost or not being admitted to other 4-year schools). Many people just cannot afford the small private college that seems to be predominantly favored on these forums, so whether such a school is better or worse for them does not matter.</p>
<p>LadyDianeski, my child actually chose to attend our state flagship elite honors program by his own volition. He passed on several elite top 10 private schools, as well as a merit-based half-scholarship and national merit scholarship to a top 20 school. I sent him for overnight visits and recruiting events at all of the elite private schools offering admission, even a second overnight trip to one of them. Almost gave me a heart attack at the time he made his decision, until I realized it was his heart that mattered, not mine. It was strictly a matter of best-fit for him. He does not qualify for any need-based financial aid, and we too saved our time and skipped the FAFSA. I can assure anybody who wonders that the money he will have saved over an expensive private school will continue to grow in his 529 account, good for graduate school or his own children someday, not frittered away. We too know plenty of Ivy League graduates of modest means, my own parents for starters! Then there are all the teachers at the private high school my son attended–Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia all well represented, many with advanced degrees. I remember meeting several Stanford grads without a job when we visited, and after all the money I spent on our trip west, my son chose not to apply as he simply did not care for the school; fancy that! At the end of the day, I believe that one of the reasons he was probably admitted to many of the schools was his capacity for independent thought.</p>