<p>So, we are now in the big dilemma that we didn't want to be in, choosing finances over fit.
D was accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill Honors program. She will be OOS, no financial aid (EFC is higher than cost) and no merit - total cost $36,000. She wants to study English and does love the program. They have excellent research and internship abroad opportunities. She likes the fact that they are "sister" school to Kings college in London, where she eventually wants to pursue Graduate school. BTW- she applied to King's for undergraduate and was accepted.</p>
<p>She was accepted to U of Chicago, with a Merit Scholarship $10,000 and a $4,000 grant. Total out of pocket this year. 44K, which is our EFC. I expect the tuition will continue to steadily rise as just recently was announced to $58K.. Initially we thought that UNC was the better choice. However, after visiting both schools, U of Chicago is the better fit. She is not very social, hates loud parties and has always attended smaller schools. I believe she would thrive in U of C atmosphere and feel a little intimidated in the largeness of UNC. However, I also believe at some point you have to enter the real world. </p>
<p>I want her to be able to work part-time while at college for spending money and books I don't want her to take out more than the $25K in stafford loans for all four years, which means we have to foot the bill for the rest. Obviously, as parents would prefer the smaller price tag.</p>
<p>Would love to hear opinions or your similar experiences and what was the outcome.</p>
<p>Last year, my daughter was in a similar situation. Chicago had been her first choice for a LONG time and she was admitted EA, but was not offered a scholarship and we do not even apply for aid. We told her that we wanted her to contribute to her education rather than us footing the entire bill. We talked about applying for the SMART scholarship or NSA money (depending on which direction she took for a major) after her first year, and we thought that she could probably get a fairly good government internship for summer employment because of DH contacts.</p>
<p>Some time in January or February, DD received a full tuition offer from Pitt. She held that letter in the air and said that if she didn’t get any money from Chicago she was going to Pitt. That is what she did. The funny thing is that as it turns out, Pitt has one of the finest Japanese programs in the country. It also has a fine Russian program, a good physics program and because it is pretty generous with AP credit, DD will be able to double major if she wants to and learn more than one language. Her AP classes filled a good number of her core requirements, she will attend a summer Japanese program to complete her second year in that language, and she will have junior status at the beginning of her second year.</p>
<p>She loves where she is and hasn’t looked back. She will graduate with no debt. Because our cost is low, she can travel abroad and not worry too much about how much a summer job pays–or even if she gets one. Having to worry about getting internships and competing for scholarships would have added a great deal of stress to her life–and she is able to pressure herself pretty well on many other things.</p>
<p>She also decided that she did not need to be in a pressure cooker type of school or be around a high percentage of very competitive kids. She has found plenty of other really smart kids–like her–who also went for the lower cost option. Good luck on the decision.</p>
<p>Chicago is a very special place for the right kid. It is all that it is claimed to be and more. After four years I believe it has been worth every penny (and more) for S1 to attend. He has received an extraordinary education and it is hard to believe all the areas he has studied and with which he is conversant. Perhaps this will be true of UNC as well, but one will leave Chicago an educated person. He has a solid job offer and is putting off grad school to work for a year even though he has been offered admission to a top grad program at an Ivy (they will let him postpone a year, very unusual for grad school, I believe). Both of these opportunities came from having attended Chicago.</p>
<p>Chicago may provide a lot more opportunities. If it is a better fit Chicago is the way to go. Please understand that OOS tuition can also go up at UNC</p>
<p>That’s a “14% off” sale on UNC. Now if you’re going to choose a public flagship university over Chicago, UNC is certainly a defensible choice, and for many students it would be the top choice. But if someone feels a special fit at Chicago, they’re connecting with an entirely different culture than they’d likely find at Chapel Hill. If I’m at a department store, choosing one sweater over another, and the one that I like “OK” is half the price of the one I wild about, I’ll consider it. But if it’s 14% less, I’m really not swayed.</p>
<p>That said, $44,000 x 4 sounds daunting. But it wouldn’t be all that daunting if I thought $38,000 x 4 was do-able.</p>
<p>Thank you for your thoughts. Interestingly enough I thought more people who go for the lower cost flagship public. We are thinking about appealing aid to see if it softens the blow a little bit at Chicago. However, I have read in other forums, they are not that flexible. I should point out that in addition to the 25K in stafford for D, we would have to incur about $75K in debt for Chicago vs. 25K at UNC to fill in the gap for between our EFC and our savings/income over the four years.</p>
<p>I’m a BIG fan of UoC for its academics, but for someone who HAS to work PT, I vote for the state public. However, what about your instate public? (I’m not a big fan of OOS publics…) Someone who plans for grad school in the humanities ought to think long and hard about incurring undergrad debt.</p>
<p>They way you phrased it, Chicago is the better choice. If you said, my daughter would thrive at UNC, is social, etc. then it would have gone the other way. If you’d say, we’re neutral, you’d likely get a mix of people who have liked each. In other words, the dollar difference is not that large in the abstract. Only you can say if it’s large in your life.</p>
<p>Finances and academics aside there will be very different student bodies at the two schools, as well as very different cities surrounding them. The different weather seems a minor point for you. A large school/medium city or small school huge city- either is composed of smaller neighborhoods/social groupings. She should probably look at the peer groups she can be a part of. If the least expensive school has the academics and people go there since the other will be relatively overpriced for the benefits. Good luck deciding.</p>
<p>my experience with Chicago is that they stay pretty close to the FAFSA calculation for EFC and hence they are not known for overwhelming generosity in FinAid. That said, I appealed to them twice. Once when my son was first admitted and I realized that I had used the wrong figure for my the appraised value of our house. They gave us some addditional grant money. This year I appealed the zero grant money he received based on my 2008 income. Well when the economy tanked and my income went down, they advised me to wait until I filed my 2009 tax return. Once I had my adjusted gross income figure for 2009, I wrote another appeal letter that included a chart of declining income over the previous year and declining savings and they gave us a grant for the last quarter of this academic year that was the equivalent of what we would have gotten for the entire year. This was possible because our EFC was substantially lower. So you can appeal to them but you need to show them why the aid should be increased. My S is very happy there, I think because he feels he fits in there. He was considering William and Mary but once he went to the accepted students weekend and assured himself that there was true diversity at Chicago, he made up his mind and we supported his decision.</p>