<p>My sons’ high school did well in the admissions lottery this year. Terribly my son’s year. There has been more of a trend of more kids opting to go to SUNYs, however. When I first moved here, it was really only a handful of kids at these private schools who went to the SUNYs. Binghamton was my first son’s safety school. Now, there are a significant number of kids going to the SUNYs and the local colleges, and then to the top name schools. It seems to me that there is a drop in kids going to the most expensive schools unless some money is forthcoming, and we are talking about mostly full pay families here. </p>
<p>My good friend whose DH is a doctor flat out ran out of money after sending her older two to top Catholic school, paying full freight for both. So the youngest went to Binghamton. He got into both of his siblings’ alma maters, but when it came down to it, they told him that it would be a financial strain, and that the parents would give him a cash incentive, plus he would be loan free if he went to the state school. And so he is there. Has a car, has not loans, and the parents are able to pay for this one without borrowing themselves. They borrowed, as did the kids for top priced private colleges in earlier years. The mom has told me that they wish they had not. They will owe for a long time, and the kids do not have very lucrative jobs at all, and the kids’ loan payments are a problem, even with just the Staffords. 7% interest is an awful lot. It’s been 10 years for the first one, which means what she borrowed freshman year has doubled in amount. She was able to defer paying for 3 years and is on some 25 year plan or something. So she will have owed paid back about $50K in that time, and is still struggling to make the payments.</p>