<p>I am really at a loss.
I am in love with Reed College,
but Macalester College has offered me $19000 per year
while Reed is giving me....nothing...
Could I really be happy at Macalester, knowing that I am crazing the interlectual
atomsphere that Reed offers?</p>
<p>I wouldn't take on $75K+ of debt for Reed, but if you or your family have the money, then it's just a question of where you want to spend it. Reed is a grad school prep college; would you still have money for grad school?</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that students who do well at Reed (or Macalaster, I imagine for that matter) are attractive to grad schools which may offer substantial financial assistance. Im a Reed grad from many years ago and was lucky enough to have had competing generous offers from top graduate programmes. </p>
<p>Considering that you havent even started your undergrad career yet it, and the field you are interested in pursuing at the grad level may change, I think it is bit early to plan too much based on the funds you may need for grad school (or law school or med school or whatever). I think the question is, if you think Reed is the best fit, can you and your family make the financing work.</p>
<p>While I guess its possible 80K is a substainial amount of money whatever way you look at it. Do you think a student who did well at Macalester could still have good chances for a top grad school compared to attending Reed?</p>
<p>Also from my impressions it would seem that Reed has much more rigourous academics that Macalester, but I may be wrong. If anyone has any insights it would be appreciated... Thank you</p>
<p>Macalester has a very good academic reputation. I don't think it is as intense as Reed, and no senior thesis as far as I know.
But 80K is a lot of money.</p>
<p>If I were you I'd go to Macalester because of the money, but if you want to go to grad school eventually/get a phd, Reed is the place to prepare yourself</p>
<p>@Vossron: You refer to Reed as a grad school prep school and suggest that people need to consider the cost of grad school, too, when they consider how to pay for Reed (or some other college).</p>
<p>Just keep in mind that if the grad school is a PhD program then anybody worth his or her salt will get fellowships and assistantships to pay for doctoral studies. If they can’t get full support for doctoral studies, then they should consider whether they’re really cut out for a PhD.</p>
<p>The story is different for professional schools (law, medicine, business, etc.). But for doctoral programs, it is rare for students to go into real debt to complete their degrees.</p>
<p>“Just keep in mind that if the grad school is a PhD program then anybody worth his or her salt will get fellowships and assistantships to pay for doctoral studies.”</p>
<p>I’ve heard that for hard sciences and technology, but rare for humanities.</p>
<p>It’s true for hard science, technology, and social sciences. For the humanities, you have to give thought to where all those TA’s in English 1A, History 101, etc., are coming from: they’re doctoral students. Language sections are also often taught by TA’s – doctoral students. Art may be a special situation, because while there are definitely TA’s, there are also “cheap” adjunct faculty to bring in to handle studios.</p>
<p>I advise you not to take on 80k of debt for Reed, unless you really feel that you’d be miserable elsewhere. Law and Medical school will cost a lot of money.</p>
<p>If you’re getting a PhD in the sciences, your stipend will cover living expenses - it will not allow you to begin paying back your debt, really. You’ll get loan deferment because you’re still in school, of course, but then what? You’ll be doing a post-doc, again, for not very much money, and THEN you’ll have to face down all of this debt.</p>
<p>If you plan on a humanities PhD, you’re in worse shape. Those things take eight years, and they pay the students a prohibitively low amount of money. Really, it’s often times not enough to even live on. For this reason, graduate student unions have gone on strike (see Yale, University of Michigan), because they felt like they were being used as temp workers (for TAships) and getting paid less than minimum wage under some guise that it was important for their ‘education.’</p>
<p>Then you’ll be eight years out of college, no more loan forgiveness, and trying to pay off 80k on an adjunct salary, if you’re lucky.</p>
<p>Bottom line: the academic pipeline is long, disheartening, and low paying. If you plan to enter with 80k on your back, the chances that you’ll Make It seem to decrease significantly.</p>
<p>I think this is seriously overdrawn. I agree that the situation in some fields such as English is tough, and it has been for decades! But it doesn’t take 8 years for a PhD in any field (unless you’re in one of those rare programs that seems to prolong doctoral studies–most are making an effort to shorten the time to completion).</p>
<p>Whether to take on loans – and how much – for undergraduate study is an individual decision. But starting salaries in the sciences, engineering, and social sciences are far from being as dismal as you make them out to be – if you’re competitive for a decent appointment. In my own “middling” salaried social science we’re starting folks at about $75K. You can live on that and make payment on loans. (Admittedly, I’m a lot more advanced in my career but I make more than twice that salary now.)</p>
<p>OP has not clarified whether the 80K would actually be debt.</p>
<p>Mackinaw,</p>
<p>This varies by field, I’m sure. I was specifically thinking of Philosophy graduate school, as described here:</p>
<p>[The</a> Philosophical Gourmet Report 2009 :: Perspective](<a href=“http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/perspective.asp]The”>http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/perspective.asp)</p>
<p>I also know humanities professors here at Reed that spent eight years on their PhDs (at top schools). I don’t think it’s extremely uncommon. The humanities have a long PhD cycle.</p>
<p>The academic job market for humanities PhDs is notoriously poor. Tenure track positions are vanishing, as colleges in tight predicaments quickly realize that hiring visitors or adjuncts to teach a class or two is a hell of a lot cheaper. Even here at Reed, where supposedly scholarship and teaching are paramount, many of my classmates in the humanities are being taught by people who do not hold a PhD (they’re usually finishing it concurrently). It’s cheaper this way. One of the complaints that these students have is that there is so much turnover in their departments that it’s hard to build relationships with professors. And this is Reed! The humanities people have a very serious uphill battle to wage.</p>
<p>The pure sciences have it better, with 5 or 6 (or 7…) year PhDs, but you can’t actually touch research with that. You’ll need a postdoc. These range from 30-70K a year depending on your years in and badassness.</p>
<p>It seems incredibly daunting to have 80k of loans on your back while you try to fight for an adjunct position or live off a postdoc stipend.</p>
<p>Which social science field are you in? Are things quite different there?</p>
<p>You say that, </p>
<p>“In my own “middling” salaried social science we’re starting folks at about $75K.”</p>
<p>But what is the acceptance rate of applicants to your (tenure track?) position? It is my understanding that a search committee will receive hundreds upon hundreds of strong applications for a spot as strong as the one you describe.</p>
<p>And to clarify, I’m not saying that Your Life Will Be Ruined Forever. You can manage to pay back 80k. But it’s a LOT easier to do so if you leave academe (for the sciences, you can just hop into industry and times your salary by three!). If you’re considering Reed, you’re probably considering an academic career, and it would be ill advised to set yourself up to have strong financial burdens in the future, since academe is generally not a fantastic place to be financially.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, that 80k would not be debt, just extra money that I would rather my parents didn’t have to spend.</p>
<p>“If you’re considering Reed, you’re probably considering an academic career”</p>
<p>I think this is a stereotype that Reed itself promotes excessively (it’s Reed’s “branding” strategy to link a Reed education to a particularly attractive career path for the intellectually inclined student). While Reed is near the top in the percentage of graduates who go on to earn PhD’s (and PhD is the degree that is most likely to lead to an academic career – though not necessarily in all fields), only about 20 to 25% of Reed grads get PhD’s – a substantial number but far from a majority. And not all PhD’s go into academic careers. There are PhD’s in all branches of industry and government. </p>
<p>My take on the sentence that you quote would be “If you’re considering Reed, you’re probably commited to thinking independently and to the life of the mind.” For a substantial number of Reed graduates this leads to an academic career, but for many more it leads to work in professions (law, medicine, public health, the arts, computer science, etc.), government, industry, and the nonprofit sector.</p>
<p>Reed and the other better LAC’s contribute disportionately to the number of PhD’s, partly because they ‘select’ applicants who are interested in the life of the mind and partly because they ‘nurture’ ways of thinking and doing research that suit academic careers. But you can be a thinker, writer and researcher outside of academia; and although it may help, you don’t need to have a doctoral degree to do this.</p>
<p>As far as the number of applicants for academic jobs is concerned, one thing that has characterized academia over the last several decades is that the good jobs are not monopolized by a few “leading” institutions. While it’s true that there is steep competition for the best jobs, that’s true in every branch of industry, not just academia. But you can have a very satisfying academic career across a large range of institutional settings, from LAC’s, to public institutions, to large private institutions – as well as in the wide nonprofit sector.</p>
<p>If you’re considering an academic career then you do have to think about the number of opportunities in different fields of study. Take a look at the typical large university and you’re going to see that departments of philosophy, for example, are much smaller than departments of sociology, political science, psychology, and economics. But geography, which is a field that lost many major departments a couple of decades ago (e.g., Chicago, Columbia, UMichigan), has had some resurgence on the more technologically leading edge, such as in remote sensing and geographic information systems.</p>
<p>I’ll restate what I wrote before. When I entered Reed I wasn’t thinking about a career. It’s true that when I was in high school an uncle of mine who was a professor of geology “predicted” that I would eventually earn a doctorate. But that wasn’t why I chose Reed. I chose it for the perhaps naive reason that it was a great place to learn. My career interests took shape over a period of years – to be sure, shaped by my Reed experience but not predestined (AFIK: the great unmoved mover hasn’t ever revealed that s/he had a plan for me).</p>
<p>My daughter chose Reed over a couple of schools that offered her $15-20k in merit aid and is finishing up her freshman year. While we will not go too far in debt, it still hurt to see her turn down those offers, but she truly loves Reed and can’t imagine herself anywhere else. She’s been able to make up some of that difference in cost by getting a few local scholarships, working in the summer and winter break, and having a small part-time job on campus. Next year she will be an RA at Reed, which is worth room & board, $10k/year toward her Reed education. If you really want to go to Reed, you can figure out ways to do it.</p>