One would hope that counselors could tell all students interested in going to college to “talk to your parents about how much they will contribute for your college costs, and check the net price calculator on the web site of each college you are interested in before you make your application list.” No need for any student or family to reveal any household finances to the counselor for the counselor to say that (and/or put it in a printed or web site checklist given to all students before application season).
Time article- title says it all........"My son was accepted to a College he can't afford- now what?"
@garland there are a number of colleges that seem to reach for OOS students but don’t show the love for the high performers IS. It’s a shame because I think they lose them.
The problem with Rutgers is not the quality of education, but the fact that it is huge and the campus is poorly laid out. I was once told the Rutgers bus system was only second in size to NJ Transit. Class size is also huge. Student on student crime. Just not the experience either of my kids was looking for. Both of my kids attend out of state private schools with merit aid so cost is about the same as Rutgers.
One of my kids went to Rutgers and had no issue with student on student crime. Another kid I know went to a private NJ school and had things stolen and had to use an in-room safe. There is probably petty theft at most colleges.
I was referring to the story involving the football players that broke last fall. To be honest, the timing on that story was horrible as I was going to take my S16 to see it but it is just too big for us and that story was kind of the nail in the coffin. My D goes to school in Baltimore and has never had anything stolen either; I agree that ther is probably petty crime on all campuses. FWIIW, I would have sent my kids to Rutgers over Penn State as we are in state for Rutgers and I don’t feel Penn Stare is worth almost twice as much. Similar college experience and just as good of an education, IMO. I do think the campus layout and need for so much busing is a big reason why so many NJ residents pass it up.
"One would hope that counselors could tell all students interested in going to college to “talk to your parents about how much they will contribute”
You can tell them all you want…
This is a quote from a recent parental post here on CC:
Nominated for the Famous Last Words award.
Hopefully she will read this thread.
Child of privilege shares anecdote, suggests undergrad prestige is irrelevant. Unfortunately the data shows students with weaker undergrad pedigrees very rarely catch up to their graduate school peers: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238
A top student from a “weaker undergraduate pedigree” will do just as well.
I’d be willing to bet the house that nearly all can be accounted for by SAT/ACT scores. By definition, those colleges with “strong undergrad pedigrees” sort out low test-ability students. And low test-takers will not be able to ace the LSAT/GRE/MCAT, thus hindering Grad/professional program.
Yes, and some would interpret those findings to mean that it's all over in high school too:
So, again, how much of this has to do with differences in grad school student “inputs,” rather than the “outputs”?
Also, I didn’t read through the entire paper, but according to that New York Times article, it sounds like a huge range of schools are lumped into “Tier 4”:
Where are the majority of state flagships located? Tier 3 or Tier 4? What if you broke it down into 10 Tiers? Would the findings be as notable?
And did Prof. Hersch factor in any debt the student graduated with when she measured success, or was it just earnings and positions ultimately attained in “prestige” firms?
Also, I had to chuckle at the irony of her own educational background:
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/joni-hersch
■■■■■■ undergrad school didn’t seem to have hurt her!
This is the paper which has an odd definition of prestige tiers.
Tier 1 (highest prestige) includes schools like Syracuse University, Boston University, New York University, Saint Louis University, Brigham Young University, and Howard University. Tier 4 (lowest prestige) includes Harvey Mudd College, due to its absence in the other three lists. The tiers also assume that private research university (tier 1) > private liberal arts college (tier 2) > public university (tier 3).
Yep. According to that paper, going from undergrad at Syracuse to grad at Cal is going down in prestige while going from Dartmouth/Williams in undergrad to SLU for grad is going up in prestige.
I broke down that paper a bunch when it first surfaced on CC.
Another absurd flaw with that 2014 article is the report that fewer gone to a tier 2 grad schools. Well, duh, if the tier 2 schools are described as the LACs, the LACs don’t have grad programs.
Don’t forget the rest of the sentence, "and they deserve it!
Ack autocorrect. Fewer go to a tier 2 grad school (which don’t exist at LACs).
That author’s definition of tiers is way off the mark.
I know this thread is from May, but I just found this now and I want to add something. My dad really wanted me to apply to Rutgers about two years back, but my mom and I wanted no part of it. Part of the reason honestly was because we felt the academics weren’t as good as other schools OOS. Also felt, at the time, that a lot of the students who attended Rutgers were typical Jersey meatheads and Guidos, the type of people whose excessively loudmouthed pride in their home state sounds insufferable, unwarranted, and only makes you hate the state even more. None of the other in-state publics caught my eye, and I eventually settled on applying to an in-state private as my safety. I probably would have gone absolutely mental if I was forced to stay in-state. For one, @TomSrOfBoston is correct that NJ really sorely lacks prestigious universities - Princeton is the only world-class university in the state, whereas other states have at least three. Stevens is the only other decent private, but that’s all it is - decent. Rutgers and TCNJ are good in the way of public Us, and Rowan is decent overall, but that’s it. NJ’s top five Us consist of one Ivy, two good publics, one decent (but expensive) private, and one decent public. There is a huge drop-off in academic quality after that. Rutgers Newark, Monmouth, Stockton, Drew, NJIT are all okay; strictly average and nothing more. Some of that bunch are more expensive than others, but none of them are particularly cheap. Seton Hall is the only NJ univ with somewhat decent sports, but there’s not much else to it at all besides an unjustifiably high price tag. You could go through at least six or seven of the top 10 schools in some other states before you’d see a NJ school not named Princeton mentioned anywhere. That is part of the reason why all NJ schools not named Princeton all struggle to attract any decent quantity or quality OOS talent to attend school in the Garden State. Another reason was that I REALLY wanted and NEEDED to get away from the socially toxic environment created by my HS schoolmates (my class in particular was awful, but all the grades after the most recent graduates are even worse).
A year later, I’ve realized that it really has nothing to do with academics at all - Rutgers is a good school. It’s more to do with the huge size and my own perception of the school as a whole based on the size, crime statistics, the surrounding area, and the attitudes of my close friends towards the school. One of my dear friends is a rising senior at Loyola MD. I visited her house during winter break last year and Rutgers came up. Although she wanted me to apply to Rutgers, she later told me that it was good that I didn’t. Her reasoning had nothing to do with the academics, I’ll say that much. I agreed with her and said that I would never have attended even if I had gotten in. The fact that a bunch of my HS classmates would attend (Rutgers is normally the 4-year school that my HS sends the most students to - Penn State took that crown this year) was enough of a turn off already. Obviously, they weren’t gonna be the only people I would’ve seen there, but I still really didn’t want anything to do with them in the first place. I’m my graduating class’s sole representative at my university, which is just the way I like it. Then there was the huge student-on-student crime which seems to be a problem on all three campuses. And of course, the enrollment size was way too big for my liking. The mere idea of having to take a bus to multiple classes…no thank you.
I actually visited Rutgers yesterday with a friend. Nothing official or anything like that, just driving around. While I did note that everything around the school seemed Rutgers-related, my feelings about the campus being too large were confirmed. In addition, the campus is actually pretty ugly. Not gonna lie. The area the school is located in only hurts its cause - the surrounding area of my own school blows Rutgers’ out of the water in addition to the two schools being academically comparable. So no, I wouldn’t have liked it there at all. Not to mention that more of my HS classmates are actually transferring there this fall after spending their freshman years OOS, some of whom attended the likes of UMass Amherst (notably similar to Rutgers in that the sports teams are woeful) and URI. But my dear friend and senior prom date is heading there this fall, so I guess I can ease up on it now. 
Those who look down on Rutgers because they think it’s a poor school are being ridiculous. I’m saying that as someone who used to be one of those people. Just ignore the people who say that, because they’re not reasonable. Those who think that a lot of Rutgers students are guidos and overly prideful and the girls are a little trashier than most - I can see how they would come to that conclusion, but painting them ALL like that is also totally false. But I do also have to address some comments upthread. Asserting that all 30,000+ NJ students go OOS solely because they hate Rutgers or their state is just as ridiculous as saying that all 30,000 Rutgers students are trashy ruffians, if not even more so. Coming from someone who attends an OOS public and plans on staying in that particular state for several years after, the stereotyping on both sides HAS to stop.
This family, which resides in a suburb that is even more affluent than my own snooty north Jersey hometown, did very poor planning and are now made to pay the price for it. Instead of complaining about OOS publics not giving you full aid and crying about the types of girls you fear your son will date, maybe you should’ve taken the time to run NPCs BEFOREHAND. But since you didn’t, I guess try to be at least somewhat excited about it? I understand it must suck, but don’t have your son go into a school with one foot out of the door. Surely he will find some aspects of Rutgers that may make it tolerable enough to stay. But if he goes this year, he’s probably going to have to attend all four years. Because if you can’t afford an OOS flagship now, surely you won’t ever be able to.