<p>From my own experience, it’s the LAST school that really matters. If you intend to continue on to graduate school or professional school, then the prestige of the graduate school or professional school matters more than the prestige of the undergraduate school. </p>
<p>Expensive private school at full tuition for undergrad is not worth it if:
it derails your ability to afford graduate or professional school, or
it involves plunging yourself precariously into debt, i.e. picking a field of study where you will have great difficulty earning enough to pay off the debt.</p>
<p>Then after you use that piece of parchment with the calligraphy and shiny gold seal to bag the 1st job, no one really cares what school you went to.</p>
<p>“From my own experience, it’s the LAST school that really matters.”
-After talking to few proffessionals. my conclusion is that the LAST test score is what determines your future. As an example, Any Med. School graduate (from absolutely any Med. School in the USA, Harvard down to non-ranked) needs a certain Board score to be able to match to selective residency. Harvard graduate with lower score would be out, period. no chance, they will have to select a less competitive option for themselves. This is the first requirement, and there are others, like certain rotations, Medical Research and publications during Med. School. Nobody has mentioned the actual name of Med. School as a seleciton criteria, which could be considered, but seems NOT to be at the top of candidates’ selection criteria. I actually know few Medical School graduates who obtained very prestigious residencies after graduating from a very low ranked schools.</p>
May be true for medicine, but one can’t extend this statement to other professional fields like law or engineering. When applied to the entire graduate school population I am afraid that this unconvincing argument borders on being a sweeping over-generalization. </p>
<p>The median household income in the US is around $51,000. If your family’s income is under $60,000/year, your family will not be expected to contribute toward tuition at most top-20 colleges. This makes the elite colleges cheaper than any in-state options.</p>
<p>Not necessarily. If you have savings (as many near-retirees do), then you may not qualify for these special aid packages. We have a nest-egg, which we will actually need to avoid ending up on the street, thank you very much, and that is what hurt us with FAFSA. Ironically, once I retire and am no longer employed, our nest-egg will not be “counted,” so we could qualify for those aid funds. Go figure. What a wacky system.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is why our older son opted for a near-full-ride at a large state school. So far, no regrets at all. As so many folks have said, here and elsewhere, you can’t eat prestige.</p>
<p>Test scores aren’t that important for architecture school. Where you graduated from has a huge, huge, huge influence on where and what kind of first jobs you will get. No one cares where my degree(s) are from now.</p>
<p>“May be true for medicine, but one can’t extend this statement to other professional fields like law or engineering”
-Well, not familiar with Law, Engineering is definitely NOT worth to set a goal only on MIT and such. Very familiar with that, has been there myself, H. is still an engineer. Most enginnering firms hire locally anyway. They tend to be small and dealing with the whole globe, yes, they work for entire world and apparently local engineering department is just fine. I have never heard of NON-challengin Engineering program and vast majority DO NOT end up going to Grad. School at all. Why? If you want something more, just take PE exam and it is already pretty good to have on your card.</p>
<p>"huge influence on where and what kind of first jobs you will get. No one cares where my degree(s) are from now. "
Well, most people change jobs. I am on my 9th job. Who cares who I worked for at my first job? However, as funny as it could be, I was asked about my GPA at interview for my current position. I said that I do not remember, which was true, but I can guestimate, since I was Magna Cum Laude. they also valued MBA from no name school and some liked the idea that I obtained it while working full time and having family to take care of. Again, as most of my jobs prefer local people as they is not additional considerations for relocations, not a single cared about the name of the school and the first job was obtained after CC anyway, so here you go…I was so happy to get a job when unemployment in our area was close to 16%. And as correctly said above “No one cares where my degree(s) are from now”…I would say after first job, you have experience and references.</p>
<p>I thought this only applied to funds in non-qualified retirement accounts? So any retirement nest egg in IRAs, 401ks etc etc isn’t considered. PROFILE asks for the value of retirement accounts. Based on purely heresy on the CC FA forum, it seems that there are some schools that do bump up the family contribution if the retirement accounts are well-funded, but that many PROFILE schools (most?) seem to ignore it.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, you may be right; the FAFSA experience has faded from my mind, such as it is. We didn’t even bother doing FAFSA this year. All I remember is that they said DS qualified only for unsubsidized loans. It may have even been those parent loans, IIRC. </p>
<p>UNC-Chapel Hill did offer him a $1,000 National Merit scholarship, and several Catholic colleges made scholarship offers which were fairly generous but not sufficient to offset the steep and soaring costs of a private institution. It’s all water under the bridge now, though, and we’re all happy where we’ve ended up. Now on to son # 2…</p>
<p>Slithey Tove is absolutely correct! Qualified retirement accounts, such as 401ks, IRAs, etc. are not considered for FAFSA purposes. </p>
<p>From FAFSA: Investments do not include the home you (and if married, your spouse) live in; cash, savings and checking accounts; the value of life insurance and retirement plans (401[k] plans, pension funds, annuities, non-education IRAs, Keogh plans, etc.).</p>
<p>I think it’s important to get the right information out about this. There are many misleading statements, assumptions, etc. about financial aid out there that often characterize the financial aid system as unfair, crazy, etc., often on the basis of little or no information.</p>
<p>I (as would my parents) rather go to cheapest college that is Tier 1 rather than go to Top 20 full price.</p>
<p>Ive seen way to many 20-s year olds struggle becuause of debt. I dont want to be like one of my cousins who has to give a significant amount of his paycheck each week to pay for his education</p>
<p>“MiamiDAP, I have been in my profession (advertising copywriting) for more than 32 years, and no one has ever asked me for my GPA. LOL!”
-Yes, the question was after I had close to 30 years of experience (local too!) with so many people who knew me at most places that I interview, including the place that ask me a question. It depends on company policy.</p>
<p>kypdurron,
Parents here mostly are paying though, but where you go should not be determined by ranking, I agree, it is a personal choice that shoudl be a very good fit for specific student, not for others around him who are screaming their heads off pushing him into one school or another, and many times it includes closest friends.</p>
<p>It is still a financial burden for the family. But, I think that there is some truth to the above statement. DS3 is yet to decide where he would like to go. His intended major would be either Business or Econ, and there is no immediate plan for graduate school. I believe that he would probably push himself to a higher level in a more competitive environment. In such environment, he is likely to be inspired by classmates, friends, teachers, and the institution.</p>
<p>I don’t think people should go into large amounts of debt for school, or endanger their retirement. But…my graduating senior has told me that the he thinks the greatest benefit of his particular school was not outstanding teachers or classes. The most important thing was being surrounded by very smart, extremely motivated people. While you can try to control that by the people you hang out with, there are schools where you are surrounded by those sort of kids, as opposed to having to hunt them out.</p>
<p>That is not a commentary on public vs private, but a comment upon why I think it was worth it to pay for his particular school.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with my parents that seem to criticize anyone that they think do not know what they are doing when they are spending a lot of money at prestige colleges (or colleges because of higher selectivity / what people believe are better).</p>
<p>They’re getting more theory than actual practical job experience and they have plenty of stories of a CSU (rather than a Stanford/Ivy/UC) student being executives that hired the prestige school students and had to lay them off quickly. Or stories of students that graduate from the UC yet end up with the same job my mom has that doesn’t require a degree.</p>
<p>They’re the type that think you should stick to a budget, not overlook the “lesser prestige” universities, and to have a plan in what to major in (plenty of Harvard/Berkeley etc students I know that enter with no clue of this)–and preferably, this plan is a highly likely job, rather than an undemanded job, and a nice pay is good too. Well, there’s no point in attending a private if I have a guaranteed job with experience at the cheapest school out there.
(this is engineering)</p>
<p>For my D, her OOS private LAC was an easy decision at full pay. Can’t beat it for life experience over a state public - more of the same?? No thanks!</p>