He would love to go to USC, we did a tour, I lean what’s not to like. But it’s for sure out of budget, and doubt they would give him enough of a discount to make it work. We went to see Michigan and he liked the campus. But obviously, a tough admit for anyone, especially OOS. We visited Wisconsin Madison, he thought the campus was too big and spread out. Funny, he’s been to Urbana Champaign and like that campus. I, on the other hand, found it depressingly Midwestern. The UMinn might as well be in Viking land, no offense to anyone.
If you ask me today, given where the markets are, I’d say we can afford $400k in the the next 7-8 years. Or course, if you asked last year, I’d be hiding cash under the mattress, forget spending amounts like that.
Run the net price calculator for any college being considered to see if the cost comes in within your budget.
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I’ve run them all, we are a donut hole family. Everything depends on offered merit.
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That suggests that a “safe” budget for both kids’ college costs is somewhat less than $400k, if the money is currently in assets with pricing volatility.
Also, college price inflation is often higher than general CPI inflation, though the year to year pattern may be different (e.g. public universities tend to have the greatest college price inflation during economic downturns when state budgets get squeezed by falling tax revenues and increased social spending costs, so tuition gets increased to make up for the shortfall in state subsidies).
Agree, a “safe” budget is less than $400K. Hence the concern to find appropriate schools to apply to given what the overall application looks like.
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Should he even bother to apply to schools like Richmond, William and Mary, Wake Forest? Yes, he would like to spend four years in the warmer climate then Chicago where it’s 41 and raining today.
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One daughter went to a very good but small and pretty much “not known at all in the US” university in Canada. After graduation she did not find a job in her part of Canada, traveled for a few months, and came home (to our home in the US) and started looking for a job down here. In 5 weeks she had 3 good job offers.
McGill would probably have been easier since it is far better known in the US. She did need to say “I am a US citizen” multiple times when asked during job interviews. Personally I thought she should put one line on her resume of where she went to high school (which was in the US). She did have one line that specified her citizenship (dual in her case) but it is not a surprise that companies would want to verify this.
I do know a few people who got their bachelor’s at either McGill or Toronto and then got a graduate degree in the US (at either Princeton, Stanford, or U.Washington in the examples that I know).
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If you want to go OOS with merit, you need to apply to less selective colleges. Some of my kids with similar stats (but more EC’s) got enough merit at some publics bringing costs down close to $35,000 (UMASS Amherst, UCONN, UDEL, URI, privates like Marist, Scranton, Saint Joseph’s, Scranton, Pitt and UMD came in to high after merit). College of Charleston was another option. Could they have been accepted at northeastern? Maybe, one is at BU for graduate school, but schools with those acceptance rates were out of our league financially with our donut joke income.
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I feel like he needs to be in a small to medium size school. He is a strong student but needs to be challenged to excel, and that, in my mind, eliminates large public U’s, where he may get lost in the crowd.
Large public U’s have honors colleges and other ways to break into smaller units. The smallest English classes I ever took were at UMass Boston, and the professor did all the teaching, no TA’s. It is worth looking into schools with deeper research.
BTW I imagine many kids are light on EC’s due to COVID.
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It’s highly unlikely that William & Mary, Richmond or Wake would give enough merit to bring your COA down to $50k. I have an oos kid at William & Mary and tuition alone is close to $50k and will be increasing by 5 percent for next year. It’s a wonderful school, but expect to pay full price. If your son is interested in smaller schools in the South, both Furman and Rhodes can be quite generous with merit. Furman awarded my kid $35k a year with similar stats as your son.
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Well, there goes our summer vacation/college tour trip🤣
I wish all these LACs would stop cluttering our mailbox with their marketing literature every single day.
It would be extremely unlikely that he’d get enough merit aid at those schools to be in your stated budget.
Does he care about being in/near a city versus somewhere more remote? Are there preferred areas of the country and/or areas that he is not at all interested in?
A few smaller LACs to consider that might offer good merit aid:
St. Olaf (Northfield, MN - this school is beautiful and Northfield is an awesome college town. A hidden gem and they give very good merit.)
Rhodes College
Macalester (this is a top tier LAC, so merit aid is less likely here, but I know a student who did receive merit aid there last year with a somewhat lower GPA)
Furman
A couple of mid-sized schools where merit aid might be possible:
Loyola Marymount
University of Denver
Fordham
Elon (they are somewhat stingy with merit aid, but tuition is already a bit lower there)
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He put College of Charleston on he lost in Naviance. Probably because we vacationed there before Covid and really likes the town vibe. I know nothing about the school except what I’ve read from one of the parents on CC whose D goes there and loves it.
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McGill is a good suggestion. International reputation. Love Montreal.
A good honors college at a public school can help. Not all honors programs are equal.
It’s probably too close but my kids liked DePaul. It should be affordable with merit. It won’t be HS 2.0. Fordham and SMU were high on S20’s list. Fordham was around $50k with merit. SMU was a little lower.
Some smaller southern schools that might work Trinity U, Rollins, Rhodes or Furman. Furman’s campus is beautiful and the focus is on teaching. They left the Baptist church years ago so probably not conservative anymore.
I’m not a financial advisor but your 529’s shouldn’t be fluctuating much at this point. You’re one year from needing the money.
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His high school places well at SMU and TCU, but his mother drew the line under Methodist and Christian. We are Jewish.
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Lol. We are Jewish too. College of Charleston and Elon both have sizeable Jewish populations, so would be worth taking a look.
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Elon is well known in his ha as a backup school. I read it has a good reputation in business(?) but is sort of very rural. No idea what the tuition would be even with good merit.
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