If I was in your son’s situation, I would want to attend Stanford. Stanford, despite the costs associated with attending the school, is a spectacular school that offers a crazy amount of good opportunities due to its close ties with Silicon Valley that you just won’t have in many other colleges. As long as using those college savings doesn’t conflict with any other thing you’re saving up for, I feel like Stanford would be a really good choice for your son. There’s also the bragging rights that come along with attending Stanford that would tip the scale a bit further towards attending Stanford if I was in that situation. However, the first step would probably be to visit the colleges and have your son see what seems to be a better fit for him.
@rickle1: “friends who had their M7 MBA paid for by their employer.”
How long ago was this? This is almost impossible these days (though the b-schools themselves are more generous with scholarships to offset the insane list prices).
We planned on making sure our kids (same age range as the OP) could graduate after 5 years (assuming a masters) debt free. That was the most important thing to us, so we saved early and often. Our commitment to our kids were: work hard in HS then you get to pick where you go to college based on your acceptances. Our S is currently a junior at Stanford and his sister is a freshman in HS. From a money perspective, everything is going as planned for our S (full pay) and is on track for our daughter. To be honest, we could have pressured our S to go to one of the other, less expensive but sound academically, colleges but that was not the deal. We could have diverted that “saved” money into his sisters account and saved even more down the road, but that money was always earmarked for college.
Not sure what, if any, understanding you had going in to the process, but I do agree money does play its part and Wake is a great school. The debt free path is IMO the best path.
So how about all that $$ were sending to Stanford? We’d do it again in a heartbeat. Our S has flourished on that campus in Palo Alto and grown in ways we had only dreamed of.
The one thing we can all agree upon is with age comes experience and wisdom. Except when deciding on a college for our children. Much of it temporarily gets tossed to the side in the fever of the moment.
My vote would be Wake for ug and then take all the money you saved and go to Stanford for grad school.
Congrats! Do you want a Ferrari or a Corvette.(Its the actual cost difference your looking at). Their both crazy cool and nice, yet some might point out many nuances that make the Ferrari better. Some might by a house, car, vacation, vacation home or a multitude of other wonderful things with the savings. Yet, even others would say “Save the money to pay for MD program or get started in life”. You can make money later, experiences are hard to come by. Like it was stated before, if spending the money wont cause a hardship and this is important to the student, then Standford.
^ for my friends it was a long time ago because I’m old, but there are employers who have specific programs for this. Consulting comes to mind but there are others. Work for them out of UG for 2-3 yrs, get the MBA form top school and they pay for 50% -100% of tuition if you return to work for a few yrs. Corporate america does this as well based on the individual. Happens more than you think.
From a grad school perspective, it’s actually quite common for top students to receive scholarships for PHD programs. Don’t know about law school.
If the OP says they want to work in banking or consulting at Bain or a VC or tech start up I agree with @rickle1 to a degree.
But that’s not been indicated.
If not ,I don’t agree. And spending other people’s money is easy breezy here on CC. The OP has another kid going to school in five years. His income precludes any financial aid. He has 250k saved for a $560k need.
FYI. those same jobs and tuition reimbursement plans are available to wf grads too.
The top ten schools feeding IB only account for 30 percent of the incoming recruiting class. And no school, not even Wharton or Harvard account for more than 5 percent. And actually a school like UT is in this group.
So 70 percent come from somewhere else like WF.
OP. Direct real time example. One the associates on my team. BC Carrolll school. Worked for four years with us. That money and parents savings are paying for Duke MBA now.
He has a summer internship lined up to work for one of the “major” consulting firms in San Fran.
He is just one kid but sounds like your son in terms of options. He was a Gabelli scholar at BC. And had HYPS full or near full pay options.
He would beg to disagree with much of the advice here. Dm me and I can try and connect your son to him.
There are so many aspects to this decision.
How does your son feel? Does he have his heart set on Stanford for any reason other than the prestige of the name? Are there real opportunities that he can’t get at Wake Forest?
What about your second child? If he goes to Stanford full pay, will you be able to give the same opportunity to her? If not, what will that do to family relationships? Those kinds of decisions can sometimes tear a family apart and pit siblings against each other.
What about grad school? Will he have to take loans for grad school if he chooses Stanford? Does he understand the impact that could have on his future?
In our family, D1 chose a lower cost option over a more prestigious option. It met all her needs and she understood the money saved could eventually help her with grad school if she chose AND she knew it could help her sisters. She felt very proud to be able to help the family that way.
D2 chose a higher cost option (not full pay, but higher than her other choices) because it offered a program she could not get anywhere else.
Congrats on having a great choice to make! Please let us know how you decide.
I think MBA is passe now. A great (ranking) UG school is just as good as a graduate MBA.
I would go with Stanford because :1) your family can afford it (I wouldn’t do it if your family would need to go into great debt for it), 2) Wake Forest is “buying” your kid’s academic achievement, 3) even assuming he could get similar education at Stanford & WF (which I don’t really think so), the Stanford name recognition is greater world wide.
D1 had a similar decision to make between a top 20 school and a next tier down LAC. It was a hard decision, but I ultimately decided on the top 20 school because I’ve paid for 13+ years of private school for her and college wasn’t the time I was going to skim on her. (I was thinking I could get a new BMW every year if D1 had taken the scholarship). I am not going to leave much for my kids as inheritance, but they’ve got their education.
Another way to look at is so many people have paid millions to get their kids into top tier schools (latest admission scandal), and your kid got himself in fair and square, so why not take advantage of it.
To correct a misperception, Stanford is not an automatic ticket to Mckinsey. Yes, they interview on campus there. In a recent year, they interviewed 400 Stanford undergrads and made full time offers to 6 students. So I would not count on that. At Stanford, your student is just another undergrad; at Wake, he is a star, albeit at a slightly less prestigious school. Which does he prefer?
My vote would be to take the free undergrad, then go for a prestigious grad school.
I’ve known 2 kids offered the prestigious full ride scholarships at great institutions and both took them over their tippy top acceptances. As others said, these scholarships alone set the kids up for success. One student is now a PhD candidate at MIT (with some other elite scholarship), the other is still in undergrad, and doing great things. Very small pool, but who I know personally. The kids didn’t find the decisions hard, interestingly.
There is much to be said for being a big fish. I just don’t see Stanford being worth $300k (and it’s actually more when you factor in the extras the Stamps provides) more than Wake. The only arguments I’m hearing in favor of Stanford is mere speculation from posters starstruck by the Stanford brand. The education is better at Stanford? Really? How so? I would find that highly unlikely.
Also, consider where you son is most likely to flourish. One of my kids attends a school well down the prestige chain from Wake. And she has received summer internship offers from many of the most prominent investment banks, money center banks, and consulting firms (none of which do on campus recruiting at her school). Truly, it is very possible to do very well from any college if you take advantage of the opportunities presented.
@rickle1: MBB consulting is one of the few industries left that fund 100% of an M7 MBA (lots fund a portion). Let me know if there are others.
Yes, pretty much all STEM PhD programs worth attending are funded.
Nearly all law schools give merit/discounts these days.
To answer a poster above: He also earned the Stamp scholarship at WF so why not take advantage of that?
@PurpleTitan is right.
there are some level of merit to t20 law. You definitely don’t have to go to Stanford for those in any way. Lol
OP. I do believe you are receiving good advice for asking the CC prestige fever group to say no to Stanford. There’s more than one set of lips quivering and eyes twitching.
It’s akin to asking a Patriots or Jets question on a NY Post fan blog.
I don’t see this as a Stanford vs Wake question. That would be easy 
. This is a money/debt question and it’s easy to see that the debt free path is the best.
Now if money is not an issue, we can engage on the Stanford vs Wake discussion. Happy to play there.