<p>There are no guarantees in life. It’s really up to the individual to persevere. As far as med school admission - I have seen it both ways - elite school med admissions after elite undergrad program where the student was at the top of their class as well as those from good ole state u being admitted. There are tangibles as well as intangibles being measured in the admissions process - like what an individual brings to the interview. Choose the college that provides the best overall academic fit for YOU, whether it is at an Ivy or a state u.</p>
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<p>Took the words out of my mouth. Taxguy, there are something like 3,000+ colleges in the US, a country of 330million people, and 8 small Ivies. As an accountant and a lawyer, please apply some of your numerical and analytical reasoning to your arguments.</p>
<p>cormom15, your post #121 is straight to the point!
Agree 200% (sorry for my math, but I never went to Ivy, it explains it!! LOL)</p>
<p>OK,Bay, atlhough the number of successful people from IVYs might slightly exceed their representation in the population, I have not seen a huge correlation between the undergrad school’s cache and financial success. Is that better?</p>
<p>I am very new to CC, and realizing that I should have done more of this kind of reading earlier. My son is an even greater procrastinator, and is only just getting serious about applications, spending literally the last few days to beat the Nov 30 deadlines. </p>
<p>What I am puzzled about is that I can’t find the kind of choice laid out in the original post - free state college vs expensive private. For somebody in my circumstances (single earner family of 4, middle class by CA standards), the EFC estimates in the college websites seems to do nothing but equalize the cost of almost all colleges - whether it is the UC’s here, or private colleges elsewhere, even including colleges like MIT or Stanford - showing an estimate of 35k-45k per year, with little variation.</p>
<p>I don’t have the history that many other posters have - I went to college in a different country, and only came here 15 years ago - so I don’t have that background to help us make choices. Son has made up his mind to do Engineering, and has done well in high school - he has a 4.0 GPA, high SAT (2380), and is a National Merit Semifinalist - but none of that seems to matter in the Estimated Family Contribution’s of the kind of colleges in his list. I can see from the mail we get that there may be other universities in other states that will offer generous merit-aid - but I can’t find a way to help him choose among those – they aren’t necessarily in any top-50 list of engineering schools or names that we recognize.</p>
<p>I am happy and grateful for any advice from all of the experienced parents and posters here – among the most pressing questions I have : How reliable are the EFC estimates provided by the colleges - and can we rely on them while making the choice?</p>
<p>…all wrong direction, waste of time, just do what you want, choose school where you will be happy and succeed, it it you, who will make a diff. in life and nothing is cut in stone, you can always change, transfer, move, change your profession, and again, huge money might not be your priority. Some people just love to be on a couch and watch that “Two and a half man” and there is nothing wrong with that, it is made for somebody, yes, some very successful people put lots of money in and getting lots of money out of producing this and many other shows so that some others enjoy their couch a bit more. Some are very satisfied living in some very primitive conditions, so? Well, they are not successful in our eyes, do they care?</p>
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<p>Not really. What do you mean by “successful” people? Are you referring to the studies of average mid-career salaries, like Payscale, or success based upon some other measure like career advancement regardless of pay or just contentedness? Are you including things like being elected President or appointed to SCOTUS as a measure of success, or only money? When you say “you have not seen,” do you mean you have made that determination based upon peoples’ observed lifestyles, or are you referring to tax returns you have examined? Some specificity would bolster your argument, otherwise it sounds like a superficial opinion based on nothing much.</p>
<p>“I just think, based on my life experience, that most accredited schools will give the same success rate and education as those of the expensive , competitive schools.”</p>
<p>Do you really think that most of the 2500-3000 accredited universities in the US will give you the same education?</p>
<p>There is not a simple answer to the original question there are way to many variables.
Focus on the quality of the education for a specific major at each school. Choose the highest quality that you can afford. In many cases the most expensive/competitive school is not the highest quality for a specific field of study.</p>
<p>Based on my life experience if your child is a computer science geek and gets accepted to MIT, Carnegie Mellon, or Stanford the education is well worth the money (if you can reasonably afford it!).</p>
<p>@spancha, you should probably start a new thread in the Financial Aid & Scholarships Forum. There will be people who will help, particularly with your son’s interest in Engineering. There is also a thread that lists automatic scholarships for students with high stats - it looks like your son would qualify for many of those.</p>
<p>Spancha - EFC is just a number and different colleges come up with what you have to pay out of pocket based on their own sets of rules. So you may see an efc of 40k and the school will come up with 55k in some cases.</p>
<p>You really have to plan on what you want to pay for college and then go after colleges which offer merit money based on your son’s scores and national merit status. Lot of people apply to University of Alabama engineering as the best financial safety out there for a national merit scholar. You can always go to berkeley but I am not sure how much money they offer.</p>
<p>My daughter has been bombarded with scholarship offers (automatic in some schools for kids who are NMSF and who, presumably, will go on to become finalists) from state schools and even a few larger private universities, but she is not interested in applying to any of them because of their size. She is applying to only one private U, a fairly small one; the rest are LACs. We have accepted that we are just going to have to pay for private school.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I might not have thought this way, but our experiences with a top-rated public high school that was a miserable fit for both our kids has taught me the value of a good fit. This is important in high school, but it’s vital in college, where kids are actually living there.</p>
<p>If I were looking at this purely from an accountant’s perspective, it would be totally obvious that I should send my daughter to UMass, where she could get a good education for free, but from a parent’s perspective, I just can’t see her there.</p>
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<p>If parents give a 23-year-old recent graduate 200k, what happens if he decides not to invest it? There is a very high probability that it will be spent on the high life until it runs out. Furthermore, wouldn’t that be a huge taxable event? Why not keep the money and invest it in your own retirement funds, so you won’t need to come knocking on your kids’ door later in life? Or set up a trust fund your grown child could not access until he is 40 and has already demonstrated the ability to support himself and meet his own financial goals? It’s been my observation that adult children who know that they can tap the Bank of Mommy and Daddy end up doing so on a regular basis. As young adults, they never learn to live within their means, with negative consequences for their long-term financial stability.</p>
<p>As a personal anecdote, my cousin chose an in-state SUNY because she did not want to burden her family with having to pay a huge sum. They were willing to pay full freight to any school she was accepted to. She, I believe a very selfless 17 year old at the time, didn’t want to spend a ton of her parents money and to keep expenses down. I laughed at her at the time, saying “You could go anywhere!” but at 17 she, I believe, was mature and self giving beyond her years. She later went from the SUNY system to an Ivy league law school, mostly with grants.</p>
<p>Fast forward a few years and her parents had a major financial crisis. She said “I would have felt horrible if I had spent that money. They really need it now.”</p>
<p>I don’t care how people spend their money, and I don’t think it’s anyones business how I spend mine. Just something to think about. And the worst,
from a financial point of view, is the parents that shell out 2 or 3 years of private tuition only to have the kid drop out and not finish at all or at the state university that was so much cheaper in the first place! You can’t predict that but it happens and I have a friend who, now older and wiser, says she has the $200,000 local state commuter school degree, because that’s where she eventually graduated from.</p>
<p>And I have to admit it makes me laugh a little when a friend that is a well payed medical specialist proudly displays his UPenn degree and some of his patients think it’s great he went to Penn State! He doesn’t really care as they all pay the same! And he started off at a community college, then state school (not even flagship) and then Penn. He’s always believed that
Penn was impressed with his MCAT scores coming from a small state school.</p>
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<p>Some parents around here say “if you go under-budget on undergraduate, you can use the extra on graduate or professional school”. What do you think about that?</p>
<p>spancha -</p>
<p>Most of your questions are answered in threads in the Financial Aid Forum. Go there and start reading through them. Better yet, have your kid do that so that he starts to understand what he’s facing. [Financial</a> Aid & Scholarships - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/]Financial”>Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>His grades and test scores may not qualify him for much money in your own state, but they will get him a true full ride at some of the places listed here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html</a> Some have early cut-offs, so he needs to do the applications TODAY.</p>
<p>Top 50 for engineering doesn’t matter. Just ABET accreditation. <a href=“http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx[/url]”>http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx</a> </p>
<p>As for the Net Price Calculators: some are good, some are bad. If you ask in the Financial Aid Forum for data about specific NPCs, someone may be able to advise you.</p>
<p>If money is an issue for your family, make sure that there is at least one dead-on financial safety on his list. He may not like the name of the institution, or the rumors he’s heard about it at his high school, but if he wants a place to go to next fall, he needs a rock-solid safety.</p>
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<p>If you mean the net price calculators, it probably depends on your situation. They are probably better for estimating “ordinary” situations like having a relatively predictable wage/salary income and typical amounts of savings and investments, versus more unusual situations like self employment, wildly varying income, etc…</p>
<p>There are some schools where the list price is lower than $35k, such as Minnesota (in-state or out-of-state), South Dakota Mines (in-state or out-of-state), New Mexico Mines (in-state or out-of-state), Cal Poly and other CSUs (in-state), etc…</p>
<p>With your son’s grades and test scores, he may want to try for the following large merit scholarships:</p>
<p>Drake at Berkeley (if mechanical engineering)
Park at NCSU
President’s at Georgia Tech</p>
<p>If he makes National Merit Finalist, there is a decent size scholarship at Texas A&M that comes with an out-of-state tuition waiver.</p>
<p>Plus, there are some automatic large merit scholarships just for stats, like the full tuition at Alabama - Tuscaloosa, full rides at Alabama - Huntsville, Louisiana Tech, Prairie View A&M, and Howard.</p>
<p>It’s all personal choice. However, SAME qualifications. One went to Yale, the other to a good state school. I am inclined to believe the employer would hire the Yale student over the other.</p>
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<p>We pay educational expenses largely out of current income and savings. What if the student does not know if she wants to go to graduate school? I wouldn’t want my D’s choice of undergrad to be a hedge against a possibility that might not come to pass. I also can’t guarantee that I will be able to help my child pay for graduate school. If there is a parental job loss or disability, then we can’t help anyway. I can’t guarantee that I’ll have 250K available for medical school in 6 years’ time. I might need it for other life emergencies. The safest thing for my D to assume is that she’ll be responsible for graduate school. If she wants a PhD, she can get a funded slot in a graduate program. If she wants to go to professional school, she will presumably get a job that pays enough for her to pay off her loans.If the job prospects are dire for that profession, then she should do something else.</p>
<p>As she won’t have any undergraduate loans to pay off, she will have some flexibility in deciding how or if to get graduate training.</p>
<p>I still haven’t figured out if my kid “really” believes Stanford, Cornell or Princeton are better than our two highly-ranked state schools, but we’ll see when any acceptances are sent in the coming months and he tries to decide where to invest in his education. He’s been offered full-ride opportunities at good schools (in the south), but for some reason thinks they must not be good if they’re offering him a full ride. What’s up with that? I can’t tell if it’s a confidence thing or if he’s just listening to his peers talk about their goals at the Ivy’s. I have tried to keep my opinions about college choice out of his thinking. I’ve simply explained that we’ve saved a certain amount of money for his college; the rest is up to him (he won’t qualify for any assistance unless it’s merit based and we know the Ivy’s don’t offer any). At times I wonder if it’s wrong of me to hope that his top three choices reject him. Sad, but believe me, I’ve wondered. The kid loved Stanford and so did I, but at $50 per year it’s nuts - no matter how many contacts you make for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the chatter about this issue. I was raised in a different generation where each dollar meant something and you spent them wisely. I can only hope my kid will come to understand that money doesn’t grow on trees and leaving college with over $100,000 in debt is nuts when you could have a great education for FREE.</p>
<p>momsrockVA - I can tell you for a fact that if you are in Virginia and fullpay at Stanford, you will need to allocate about 62-65k per year.</p>