@Sybylla : Breaking a ED comes with consequences. Both ED at Rice and RD deadine are both Nov 1. If accepted Rice ED, then that is communicated to the other schools and the UF application gets shredded. He will not be able to apply again to UF and free ride gone. So, it really is one or the other if ED accepted.
@jym626: I thought that Rice takes away FA dollar-for-dollar for any private scholarships that you get. Do I misunderstand that?
@willibeeatingriceandbeans - your SN (am assuming its tongue in cheek) suggests you will have to be making sacrifices to send your DS to Rice (assuming he gets in and assuming he doesn’t get significant merit $.) Can you help clarify how much belt tightening will be needed, as that can help you with your comfort in decision-making. You mentioned your wife going back to work. Is that something she wants to do? If she is looking forward to it, and has opportunities available with an income that will help defray the costs, and your family’s quality of life and long term planning isn’t affected, then you are in the fortunate position of letting your DS have the luxury of a choice like this.
IMO the issue (should he get in) isn’t the difference in quality of the schools, but in what challenges, if any, it will place on you and your family in the short and long term. A university of 3000-4000 is vastly different than one of 37,000. The experience will be different. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. Good luck in the decision. If you can afford to let him shoot for his dream school, that is a fabulous gift to offer.
@willibeeatingriceandbeans - many schools recalculate your need if your child gets outside scholarships, since one’s need is lessened by outside grants/scholarships. Many of these scholarships are only 1 year scholarships. And back in the day Rice gave a small (can’t quite recall if it was $750/semester or $750/year, but I think the latter) scholarship for NMF. But for us, we had no FA, so the scholarships defrayed our OOP expenses.
DS earned about $7000 in outside scholarships for his freshman year. Then he was awarded some departmental scholarship $. And earned a lot of $ in summer internships.
He has a friend who apparently was extremely successful in cobbling together/earning significant outside scholarship $ that essentially paid for her Rice tuition and fees. What’s quite impressive.
Regular decision deadline is Jan 1.
I would be all over the free UF. Rice might be “better”, but I can’t see it ever being 130K better.
If the resources are there without having to go in to debt or alter retirement plans then do what feels right. However, if they’re not, it could get difficult and / or life altering. What happens if there’s a hiccup? Are you able to weather the storm or does it change your retirement.
These are personal decisions and no one can answer them for you. Big difference between the family that can easily afford it (for whatever reason - income, savings, inheritance, etc) and just being able to make it happen. Assume hiccups along the way. Then reevaluate.
UF doesn’t shred your application if you get in ED at another school; UF wouldn’t know. There is not a big announcement of ED acceptances. You always have the option of declining the Rice if the FA (in YOUR opinion) doesn’t work. Once you accept the ED, yes, you are obligated to inform the other schools but not until you accept.
He could reapply to UF and use his BF even in year 2; you have 2 years to begin to use BF. Yes, it is only tuition and books, but that’s still a very good deal and if you have $65k saved, plenty to pay for college (room and board). He could even accept Rice and if something happened ask UF to reconsider the application before May 1. I think you have to apply for Benacquisto by May 1.
Your question is is Rice worth it. Only you can decide whether it is worth it to your family. There are plenty of charts that show Rice students get great jobs and internships and have a wonderful time in college. There are also charts that show UF students have great opportunities for internships and jobs and win engineering competitions (and more football games). There is no chart that will show if your son will get a better job or make more money or enjoy college more at Rice than at UF. We do know that the ROI starts out at -$130k at Rice.
OP needs to share what OP’s family values rather than asking the ambiguous “Is it worth it ?”.
Take the free ride; most likely you son will want to do grad school so save your money for that.
This is a family decision. Many of us have had to make this very same decision. We have to make it regarding g s lot of things in life; the less expensive house in a school district not as well regarded, not as nice, not as convenient when house hunting and buying. The Mercedes vs the Toyota when picking a car, private high school vs public. We all have to make these decisions
The question can be divided into
Yes, it’s going to be very different. Rice is a private university so he’ll have many amenities zbd opportunities even the honors college kids don’t have. No online classes. Ease of access to professors. Etc. Everything that’s different between a good public school and a top private school exists for universities, but magnified. People wouldn’t pay the difference in costs otherwise.
In terms of environment, you have a football powerhouse at UF. Some kids really thrive on the raw energy of an entre school vibrating with their team and plan their weekends around games. Others couldn’t care less or actively dislike that atmosphere.
Is it worth it?
A harder question.
Depends on whether he plans on going to Law or Med school (save your college money for law/med school) or grad school (any PhD worth doing will be funded).
Depends whether you can afford the premium via belt tightening or if it’d impact your retirement.
Depends if he’s interested in the rah-rah/big school experience or wants another type of experience.
If you have the money, let him choose. If you don’t want to or cannot pay, don’t let him apply ED.
Note that if he’s admitted ED and the financial aid isn’t sufficient, you can explain your circumstances and see if they can adjust the package. If they can’t you’re released from the ED contract.
Keep a screenshot of the NPC results.
If I were in your position and really wanted to support my kid’s desire to apply ED to Rice, I think I might propose an agreement where, if he were accepted, he would defer and take a worthwhile gap year so that the two kids would overlap for 3 years rather than 2.
That doesn’t answer the is-it-worth-it question (which is very subjective anyway) but it would at least shave $16K off the differential…
This is of course a family decision, and not an easy one.
One issue is that the majority of students do not graduate in 4 years. If your child goes for a 5th year, they will still be in-state in Florida. There are many reasons to go more than 4 years. One example that is very common is a late change in majors. One reason that applied to us is a child who decides to double major and only completes one of their two majors in the first four years. If you are going to run out of money after 4 years then this might not be possible. Sometimes students have a bad semester which leaves them a course or two short and requires another semester. Sometimes students in tough majors are better off taking four courses at once rather than five.
Many students end up going to graduate school. It is a lot easier to afford graduate school if you don’t use up your college funds for a bachelor’s degree.
Also, UF is a very good university.
How much is this really his dream school? My sister had an expensive LAC dream and when our dad offered her a car to start and 20K at graduation to go to the state school she decided she didn’t want the LAC that bad.
A couple of questions I would ask myself is:
It a very personal decision, but if Rice checks off most of the above boxes and UF does not, than I would lean towards Rice (and have him take out the 27K in loans and you make up the difference). Sometimes “free” does not mean “better deal”…
With that said, from a practical sense, he isn’t likely to get into Rice anyways as its so competitive, so at least you give it a shot but will have other opportunities with his stats.
That may be true at some schools, but at Rice the graduation rate in 4 years is 83%. And if he took the Benacquista award, he’d have up to 5 year to finish or the number of credit needed to finish one major.
I guess if he took the 5 year plan, his 5th year FA would be be based on his sister also being in school.
@willibeeatingriceandbeans Yes, if you receive any grant money from Rice/Rice Investment any outside scholarships apply to that first and reduce the aid from the school.
We left National Merit full rides at Florida and other state schools for another T20. It all depends upon your financial ability and priorities. For us, financial sacrifice was worth it. Everybody has different circumstances and wants, it’s not possible for me to decide a good education’s worth for you.
As more than 90% applicants get rejected from T20 schools, there are less than 10% chances that you’ll have to make such decision. I wouldn’t recommend ED if you aren’t sure. They do have merit scholarships, if he got one, it can be affordable for you.
OMG, a free ride from UF is the no-brainer of no-brainers. UF is a top 7 public university, one of the best alumni networks and just a fun school.
Thanks to everone for their advice. It was helpful.
My son will be studying BioEng or ChemE. He wants Rice because he wants to do undergraduate research, which is very limited at UF (due to its size). Hard to argue with this reason.
He has submitted to ED. We have told him that we will pay the first 3 years only. If he is passing up free ride, he will pay year 4+. It gives him 3 years to save up 23K and focuses him on finishing on time.
As for the NPC FA calculator, I’m surprised there were no comments on its accuracy. However, there are other threads on CC about how income and home equity skew these private school calculators. Specifically for me, the calculator says that if I ask my employer to reduce my pay by 14K, then my FA goes from 25K to 48.3K. Put another way, it seems to be saying that I get $23K less aid for earning $14K more (that $130K barrier). This seems inaccurate - will find out in December. (But then, life is not always fair.)