<p>stanford is my dream school, and i'm so happy i was accepted! the only thing is, i also got a full ride (room, board, and tuition for all four years - over 200k) at washington and lee university in virginia, and my parents really want me to take it, because we're getting zero financial aid from stanford. (i also got accepted to Duke, cornell, chicago, and georgetown, but i've ruled those options down to stanford and washington and lee.) </p>
<p>i'm planning to major in english and then go to law school afterwards, so if i really did end up going to stanford, i would have over 400k in debt by the time i graduated. another thing is it may be easier for me to stand out at washington and lee than at stanford; don't get me wrong - both are great schools, but washington and lee is much smaller (about 1800 people) and a bit less competitive. </p>
<p>i do like washington and lee, but at the same time... it's stanford. i've been dreaming about it since forever, and i cannot believe my dream's finally come true. any advice???</p>
<p>This is an insanely troublesome decision to make. The best way to look at it is that both options are ridiculously good ones From that perspective, you can’t really go wrong.</p>
<p>I agree with firelily though, given the choice, although I absolutely adore Stanford, I would choose Washington and Lee. A full ride to a school like that is incredible.</p>
<p>im in the same dilemma. not totally full ride but $36K difference. stanford vs cal with regents scholarship. ucla is exactly same amt of difference for me. i tried to appeal at stanford FA, but :(</p>
<p>still cant decide if i’ll take that $120K loan difference, not counting grad/med school.</p>
<p>stanford is the dream, but the question bugging us now is if it is worth the difference fr other options/offers fr great schools.</p>
<p>Stanford vs. Washington & Lee seems like a poor construct to set up for yourself. There is a reason that W&L is offering you a full ride: They know that they could never attract a student of your caliber without that. It also means, while you will stand out, you will also be surrounded for four years by students who do not necessarily challenge you intellectually and by faculty who have to shoot for the lowest common denominator in class. I am not suggesting, by the way, that W&L students aren’t good students and that some aren’t brilliant. Rather, that the students at Stanford are in an entirely different category academically in terms of drive, passion, and diversity.</p>
<p>I would suggest you revisit some of your other options (Duke, cornell, chicago, and georgetown) all of which are likely to offer you an environment more similar to Stanford’s, perhaps at a cost that is much more affordable.</p>
<p>If your family is truly financially strapped, then of course, go to Washington & Lee. But if you have any financial flexibility, I’d figure out how much intellectual challenge you can buy, and then pay for it. In the long term, it is money well spent.</p>
<p>M’s Mom, whoaaa, hold your horses for a second.</p>
<p>Normally I would fully agree with you regarding the sacrificing of significant financial aid to attend a school the caliber of Stanford. However, this is Washington & Lee we are talking about, one of the finest LAC’s in the country. The 14th ranked LAC, it is ranked at the same level as Wesleyan, Vassar, Smith and Claremont McKenna, all of which take cross-admits away from the OP’s other choices, namely Chicago, Duke, Cornell and and Georgetown.</p>
<p>I agree that Stanford is much better academically than Washington & Lee, but how much better?</p>
<p>Is the differnce worth about $50,000 per year?</p>
<p>If your plan is to do English -> Law school, then you may not be able to survive the debt coming out of Stanford and law school (depending on how likely you’ll score a law school scholarship). I’d recommend following abovethelaw.com blog for updates on legal career trends. You’ll see that many law school grads have difficulty landing a first job in the current market. Then again, the undergrad experience helps you determine whether Eng > law is really the path for you.</p>
<p>Here are some financial reasons to consider Stanford, however:
-The vast amount of entrepreneurship resources available at Stanford, including multiple business competitions for undergrads that could net you $50k+ or set you for life :).
-Internships in Silicon Valley and job opportunities in the Bay Area.
-The most lucrative areas of law are tax and IP, and for IP law you’ll definitely want to hang out in Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>take the full-ride at Washington and Lee. It’s a no brainer! you’ve obviously worked very hard to have the stats to get into these two fabulous schools so why not get paid to go to college?!?!</p>
<p>I’ve always said that if a college is willing to pay you to go to college then take them up on it. Why would you pass up a “free” education from a wonderful school like Washington and Lee?</p>
<p>Millions years ago, I was involved in trading commodities at Merrill. Sometimes I was really confused with copper and gold: they had similar colors, and it was difficult to tell them apart from the untrained eyes. The price for copper then was $1.5/lb, and for the gold it was $400/oz.</p>
<p>"Is the differnce worth about $50,000 per year? "</p>
<p>No, japanoko, it’s not worth $50k p.a. which is why I was suggesting that OP look at other schools where he or she no doubt got financial aid offers that were more generous than the one provided by Stanford. It’s not a zero sum game here:full-ride vs. full-pay. Sometimes you can find a compromise that works.</p>
<p>thanks for all the advice! haha i appreciate your suggestion to make a compromise with another school M’s Mom, but i’m actually getting zero financial aid from all of those schools, which is what makes this decision even tougher. does anyone have any advice for negotiating to get better financial aid? i’ve tried emailing and calling, but none of the schools seem to match merit scholarships.</p>
<p>The other schools don’t offer “merit” scholarship (aka cost discounting) because none of them has to in order to attract students of your caliber. Washington and Lee does have to offer discounts (in your case, a complete discount ) because while it’s a good college, it’s not in the same echelon as any of your other choices. But only you can decide how much debt you are willing to incur for your undergraduate education.</p>
<p>So I’m confused here: You applied only to schools that would offer you nothing (given your family income and the fact that none of these schools give merit aid) - or a safety that offered you a free ride? Nothing in between? </p>
<p>I don’t understand why you would spend the time and money applying to expensive top schools if the free ride was really your only choice. Seems like it would have made more sense to apply to a few schools that offered merit aid and only to the top schools that your parents were willing to pay for if you got in. As it stands, you’ve been set up for disappointment, it appears.</p>
<p>Are you a minority student? If so, when you visited Washington & Lee did you feel comfortable there? Where do you live/where do you think you’d like to live after graduation? Does W&L have any name recognition there? You can certainly get into a top law school coming out of W&L, but you will have to achieve a very high GPA and near perfect LSAT scores. Not that that wouldn’t be true of Stanford too, but you might have a little more latitude. Remember also, that while you think you are going to grad school as of now, you might change your mind.</p>
<p>My son was also offered a full ride at W&L and we also pushed him to accept that. It was a lot of money! But he wasn’t thrilled with the social life on campus, nor the Confederate mentality (he’s Hispanic). Also, he spoke with a number of lawyers and asked their advice. They all told him that the prestige of the undergrad school matters in law, so he should go to the best school he can get into. He chose one of the Ivies where he was accepted. It turned out he changed his mind and didn’t want to go to law school right away. His Ivy degree landed him a great job in banking. He will pay off his college loans in about a year and a half, and they were sizeable.</p>
<p>All of that debt for an English degree from Stanford when you can get a full ride from a top notch LAC???- no way is it worth it. You will never recoup the difference! If you are planning on attending law school, save your money and use it for a prestigious law school. After law school, no employer will care where you got your BA.</p>
<p>I went to W&L. Had an awesome time there. I am now a lawyer at a large firm. Some of my friends from W&L went on to top law schools: University of Chicago, NYU, Yale, Fordham, etc., and work at some fancy white shoe firms in NYC. If that’s what you want, you can certainly get it coming out of W&L. I’d take the full ride. It’s a great deal. If you really don’t like it, you can always transfer. They don’t hand out money like that often.</p>
<p>My S was in a similiar situation. He got into Duke, Notre Dame, Vandy, Rice, Dartmouth and a full ride to Tulane.</p>
<p>He had received likely letters to Duke and Vandy, and EA to ND. Rice notified him early and Dartmouth he wasn’t at all interested in (not sure why he even applied.) However, he loved loved loved Tulane, as did we. At the end it came down to Duke and Tulane and then Stanford notified him in late March and we didn’t get any fin aid either. He went to the admit weekend at Duke and was pretty disappointed. It paled in comparison to Tulane’s admit weekend. In addition, they didn’t give any fin aid either. So Duke fell out of the competition. Hence it came down to Tulane and Stanford. At the end of Stanford’s admit weekend, it was a no brainer------ Stanford all the way!!! Any yes we are broke (lol) Oh well easy come easy go!</p>
<p>I realize this thread is incredibly old, and I am curious about the decision the OP eventually made, but for anyone that casually stumbles upon this post:</p>
<p>Although Stanford is incredible and the people there are incredible, it’s not worth 200-300k–it’s not worth being a lifelong slave to debt.</p>
<p>Go where the money’s at: Washington & Lee is giving you everything.</p>
<p>Gonzalo, no one here at Stanford has anything near that amount of college debt, since Stanford meets the financial need of all accepted students. A few will incur small loans for miscellaneous things, but nothing unmanageable. For affluent families who aren’t eligible for aid, and who would be paying most of the costs out of pocket, that’s a different issue and each of those families needs to decide whether saving the $ by taking the merit discount at another school is worth it to them. This comes up every year at all the top schools, since those admitted to top schools are often offered big merit discounts at next-tier schools to lure them there.</p>
From that perspective, you can’t really go wrong.</p>