Miller…why is that useful? There isn’t any way for the students to know they are paying different costs unless it’s a subject of discussion.
It’s my opinion, I respect that you disagree.
Say you’re paying the full cost for tuition of $100,000.
The student next to you got a scholarship and will be paying $50,000.
Are you paying for a $100,000 education, or are you paying twice as much for a $50,000 education?
And, if you are paying the full amount, was that student next to you given a scholarship because you were willing to pay full price for the same thing? So maybe it’s a $75,000 education, and $25,000 of the cost you’re paying is going to the student next to you. I mean, right or wrong, this is how my thought process goes.
My son graduates next month, and yes, the topic of what everyone is paying has been discussed among he and his friends at college.
The subject of price and scholarships comes up frequently with athletes, and everyone is always trying to figure out what everyone else got and if they can get more. I think the only schools where it is even and fair are the military academies. Free for all, plus pay.
Right now, there are really two choices:
1° Attend Rutgers’ new Honors College with the state’s best students (anyone with a presidential scholarship has at least 2250 on their SAT’s, for example)
http://www.educatedquest.com/honors-college-rises-rutgers-new-brunswick/
http://www.njbiz.com/article/20140929/NJBIZ01/140929738/Time-lapse-video:-Construction-of-Rutgers-University’s-new-honors-college
http://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/academics/honors-programs
https://honorscollege.rutgers.edu/
or
2° Defer from Rutgers Honors, take a gap year during which she volunteers and reapplies to a more balanced list of colleges, after running NPCs.
@OP, the WSJ’s list of top 25 schools as ranked by job recruiters:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
21 Rutgers is right between UVA & Notre Dame.
I am a big fan or Northeastern, but the cost sounds too high.
Was she a NMSF? That’s usually an a big advantage for NEU scholarships. In your case, with 2 kids in college it seems like you should qualify for need-based financial aid (in the overlap years). Try calling the admissions office to make sure they have run all the numbers correctly. Plead your case.
Oooh… is this a case where you ex has high income (impacts need calculations) but won’t contribute?
I teach at a NJ state school, not Rutgers. Two students in one of my classes are refugees from NEU who couldn’t keep up with prices there, or otherwise didn’t feel they fit in at NEU. They seem pretty happy with their choice to transfer here (and this school is not quite at Rutgers level.)
Based on what you’ve described to us, it’d be a mature and financially smart decision to choose Rutgers for undergrad. If your daughter is in a STEM field, her tuition for a graduate degree–Northeastern or elsewhere–may be covered by her grad school (excepting med degrees). There is no way I’d go into six-digit debt for an undergraduate degree.
I would take NEU off the table as unaffordable ($120K is not worth it). If your D is totally against going to Rutgers in-state then the options are CC and transfer later or take a gap year and apply to a different set of schools. Make sure she doesn’t take any classes during that gap year or she might end up as a transfer student and very few options with any merit aid.
It does not matter where one goes for engineering. There is no way we would pay that much for UG, but you may have a different priorities. Our kid ilmited herself only to “cheap” schools and ended up attending in-state public on full tuition Merit award. I do not think that R&B is 10k though, I think it is more like $25k and we live in one of the cheapest states. Why she ended up at state public? Because, just like in your kid situation, it did not matter what college she attended. She just choose what she loved the most and it has worked. She was pre-med. There are some careers where the name of college is very important, but in most cases, it is up to a kid to get where they want to be, name of college is irrelevant as my D. confirmed later being in the same class at Med. School with many Ive / Elite college graduates. They all were on the same footing there, nobody cared where they came from…
Here’s another angle: you may look like the “bad guy” NOW by insisting your daughter attend the school were she will finish with considerably less debt upon graduation. But, there is a very good chance by the time she does graduate, she will be thanking you many times over that she is not looking at hefty student loans to pay off for years to come. It’s the “bad guy now, good guy later” scenario.
Our son went to a pricey private college, tho I would have preferred he go to a less expensive one. But he received scholarship money to pay more than half his tuition and after sophomore year, had a paid internship and bought his own books, food and paid half his rent. We had some savings for his college so never had to take out parent loans (he’s our only child) Son will have less than $10 thousand in student loans when he graduates.
Our only big, huge, blow out fight when he was a high school senior is when he was pushing to go to a different pricey college with little scholarship money. I screamed, “I am not having you saddled with 50 thousand dollars worth of debt when you graduate!”
He has been thanking me for the past year, knowing his debt will be manageable. He has friends who plan to move home after graduating to be able to pay back their loans. He’s astounded at some of the high debt some took on to get thru college.
I am looking like the smart, caring parent these days.
Miamidap, I don’t know of any school that has a $25k estimate for room and board. One of my kids paid about $8k (very cheap meal plan) and the other was $13,500, which was a single room in a suite (4 rooms, 2 baths, kitchenette but still had to have a full, very expensive meal plan). Of course that’s for 9 months, so if the student was at school year round it would be more.
I do think you need to give her a choice:
Rutgers Honors or gap year (to work/volunteer + apply to a list of more carefully-chosen colleges, not to mope at home).
This way she wont feel trapped and “forced” to choose Rutgers. Having a choice is very important for seniors.
My kids went to college in places with very expensive real estate. Neither one came close to spending $25,000 a year on room and board…either on or off campus. MiamiDAP, I think your numbers are “off”.
Never considered the concept of choice above (post # 32). Great idea. She applied to the expensive school to see if they would make it affordable, the school didn’t so it’s no longer an option. Her choice is Rutgers now or waiting a year to earn more money (at HS education wages) and apply to other schools. I would choose college now over no college. She sounds like she needs the intellectual stimulation of college and certainly will not be the only student with her level of credentials there.
I also agree with MYOS1634 - a choice does matter. She made the choice of the colleges that she applied to - she could spend some of the year volunteering with her intended major in mind, and she could apply to those other schools which give more merit. Or she could go to Rutgers.
“Miamidap, I don’t know of any school that has a $25k estimate for room and board. One of my kids paid about $8k (very cheap meal plan)”
-OK, my D. did not have an income to cover her other expenses, like clothes, travel, insurance, gas, vacations,…etc. Yes, if your child is covering big chunk of her living expenses, than it would not be $25k / year. I am not talking about specific school and dorm is only a temporary living arrangements, practically nobody lives in dorms in 3/4 year and Grad. school. Our estimate is based on average over 2 last years at college and 4 years of Grad. school. But D. was working for “pocket” money at college and nobody can afford working while in Med. School, so she could not cover any of her expenses.
Agree that these numbers seem really high for room/board and incidentals. My s also had a full tuition scholarship for undergrad. The cost for room/board/fees/books/travel (driving or airfare to/from school) etc was around $12k/yr. This was true for booth the 2 years he lived on campus and the 2 he lived off campus. We also gave him $250/month for the 10 mos he was in school, so I think we add $2500 to the $12K figure, yielding a total cost of $14,500 for his annual college expenses. However, I can’t recall for sure if the 12K/year figure included that extra $2500 allowance or not, as it was a while ago. It actually may have, come to think of it. Regardless ,thats a lot less than $25K, and his school is much more expensive than Miami of Ohio. So its hard to understand how one could spend double that, especially when one lives instate in Ohio, so travel would be less (we are several states away from DS’s college).
The savings for Miami/Ohio with a tuition scholarship was maybe around $10-12K/year for an instate student during the years Miami’s dau attended (which is much less than the tuition we didn’t pay at DS’s school.) But what we “saved” isn’t the issue. Its what we spent. We spent less than 60K for the 4 years. We didn’t spend $100k. Thats a lot of money. So DS attended one of his top choice schools. It was not a state school. It was a very expensive private. And it cost about as much or less for us to send him there as to our flagship public.
To clarify, the tuition cost for Miami of Ohio back 7-8 years ago (2007-11) was around (avg) $10k/year http://www.units.miamioh.edu/oir/factbook/FB201011/TuitionFinAid/TuitionFinAid1011A.html for instate tuition. Thats a nice savings, and is equivalent to the $10k/ year merit scholarships that many students get at other schools. Many schools give even bigger merit scholarships.
Room and board for my kids was in the $10k to $12k range…and they lived where the real estate was quite costly. There is NO way we gave them an additional $10,000 for clothing, vacations, travel, gas, etc.
There are many ways to conserve money on college, and one is to cut discretionary spending. The other is to get a 10 hour a week job to pay for it. Our kids did both.