<p>middsmith:
Those should be some of the more employable degrees, hopefully some of these new infrastructure jobs will start kicking in, or this person will be able to find a job in the oil industry or something. </p>
<p>I know how tough it is out there. In my office we have a recent EE grad who is working for free as an intern while looking constantly. He is an excellent worker, and extremely flexible but hes having a real tough time. The economy has not been this bad for a long time, and a lot of places can pick and choose from among applicants. I occasionally hire and Ive never seen stacks of resumes from such qualified candidates.</p>
<p>I know about this personally too. I was laid off in a round of aerospace layoffs in California back in the early 90s and it took me 6 months and 50 interviews to find a job in the semiconductor field. Thank God for the high tech boom or I would have had to look longer.</p>
<p>Good luck to your friend, and you would think it goes without saying that you do need a job to survive and pay back those loans.</p>
<p>One thing I have noticed about this economy is the service sector (retail and food service) jobs are now being filled by competent people who are actually trying. You now seldom run across the clerk that just doesn’t care. In many ways the listless economy makes life much more pleasant when you are running less than exciting errands but are met with smiles and answers rather than apathy and disgruntled employees.</p>
<p>^ or to put it another way, I keep wondering who these people are - they are so well groomed, well spoken, etc. Some of them can’t be at the best job they ever had.</p>
<p>Interesting contrast between my son and his cousin. </p>
<p>I took them both to UF to visit (they were both NMF’s and were offered the “full ride” - now long gone, but available in 2005). He fell in love and decided to attend, knowing he would graduate with his college fund intact. She decided it was beneath her (her sister was at Cornell and basically said UF was a cr@p school and that she had better join her in Ithica if she wanted any future), so she headed off to Cornell.</p>
<p>This past May, my son graduated and started his job in commercial banking for a large national bank who heavily recruits through the career center at UF. My niece graduated and is now working at a resort in Cabo because she couldn’t find a job in her field (which ended being banking after a few twists and turns).</p>
<p>Now, I’m not sure if he was just more motivated (he got married in June) so started looking for jobs earlier, or if being part of the Gator Nation opened doors, but whatever it was, he’s employed in his field. He also just used his college fund to put a down payment on a house in Florida, so saving that investment worked out for him.</p>
<p>I have to say though that my niece is having a ball in Cabo, and hopefully just riding out the bad economy in style!!! :)</p>
You need to make decision for the right reasons and not for the wrong one. DD went to a private HS at $34000 a year far exceeding the in state flagship university. The only reason was that she will be able to cherish her HS years for her whole life. She made some very good friends who all went on to top 10 schools.
DD is now a full paying student at a cost of $52000 a year not including the air tickets and hotel for us when we visit her. The cost would have been less if she has joined the equally strong private college closer to home. The only reason was that she wanted to be there and she seems to be very happy and fitting there. I think that whats matter most.
Children in college need to be responsible on there own to realize the importance of what to do with life. As only they can control that we as parent can only provide the means to better equip them to deal with it.
The decision to send her to this college at $52000/year is not an experiment and so there is nothing to pass or fail it.
As a parent you need to think if you can afford it or not. If you can then pay if not then don’t overdo it. Don’t put the pressure on you or your child of $120000 in loan.</p>
<p>^^ So, between highschool and college you will have shelled out $344,000 + expenses (provided your DD graduates in 4 years).</p>
<p>Wow! I’m glad that she was able to go where she wanted and seems to be happy and fitting in there, since it is what matters most to y’all.</p>
<p>You say though, “that children in college need to be responsible on their own to realize the importance of what to do with life.” Is this real life you’re talking about? The kind where eventually they have to pay bills and scrimp? :)</p>
Certainly, children do need to be responsible that sooner or later they will need to pay the bills. DD has already started a paid internship during the semester, even though she had around $5000 saved from internships and jobs she did during the summers of her HS years.</p>
Of course, this, i.e. cherishing the HS experience, making friends, and heading to a top school, can happen at the $0 additional out-of-pocket public HS as well (with the exception that not every student will head to a top 10 school but some usually will - not all private HS students usually head to a top 10 either).</p>
You can eat at a roadside joint too and cherish but you cherish the food at the upscale restaurant too. The difference is in the ambiance and service. Similarly the difference in a private HS and public HS is in the environment, the peer group and the resources.
I said before and reiterate if you can afford it do it.</p>
<p>ParentOfIvyHope, I know English is not your first language and you are not always in command of nuance, but your last post is especially insulting, intentionally or not.</p>
<p>My children spent over a decade at a famous private school here, and then moved to a large, public academic magnet high school, so they (and we) experienced both worlds, at least as they exist here. The difference was nothing like “roadside joint” vs. “upscale restaurant”. A better analogy would be Pomona vs. UCLA.</p>
I don’t buy things just because I can afford them - value and necessity enter the equation. I feel that my kids actually gained something from being at a public HS with a very diverse student population which included kids from all socio-economic backgrounds. </p>
<p>I responded because your post implied that ‘the only reason’ for going to the very expensive private HS was to ‘cherish her HS years’ and ‘friends’ and ability to go ‘to top ten schools’ when in fact these items aren’t dependent on a very expensive private HS and aren’t guaranteed at one either. </p>
<p>I’m glad you’re happy with your D’s experience there though and that you feel it was worth the cost. I’m not judging that.</p>
<p>JHS: true, that I might lack words but correct analogy might be of Caltech vs UCLA.</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad:
I didn’t say that you buy things just because you can afford it. The point was that even if something is good enough and you want to buy it don’t buy it if you cann’t afford it.
The point was made to convey that taking loan to send a child to private school over flagship state university might not be the best thing to do.</p>
<p>Still, I favor a control environment over an uncontrolled one when it comes to raising a child. I can experiment with other things but not my child.</p>
<p>Yeah, I have to respond too. My oldest decided on his own that he wanted to go to a private highschool, and for him, it was the right choice - those were “his people”. We could afford it, didn’t have to take out of our or his savings.</p>
<p>My second and third sons, who had the choice (albeit, we are very fortunate that our public is a great school where kids routinely go to top colleges), decided they wanted the public school experience, and we were fine with that.</p>
<p>It all depends on the kids and who they are. I know that ALL my sons had incredible experiences, made life long friends, and were in the best environment to fit their needs, both academically and emotionally.</p>
<p>So, just because you can afford steak, hamburger might suit your appetite much better, and the experience of enjoying it is strictly a personal preference. </p>
<p>I like the ambiance of a good Cajun restaurant myself, complete with the newspaper on the table to ease the clean up of all the crawfish shells ;)</p>
<p>I have a recent graduate who has planned all along to take a year between graduating and, hopefully, med school. She had a location in mind and used every connection she could muster to visit and connect last fall. She had no thoughts that anything would work out, no one was hiring when she was there, but she made the in person connection with all of them and emailed updated resume info in the spring.</p>
<p>Out of the blue, the day after graduation she received an offer working in exactly the field she wanted for a wage that allows her to rent a condo (w/roomie) and pay her own expenses plus benefits. On Saturday graduation, no realistic prospect, Monday a great job offer and within 2 weeks one of the summer internships for which she had applied also came through. She took the 12 month position and i am thrilled she is fully self-supporting (except those app costs we agreed previously to pay)</p>
<p>In some ways her method was perfect, but had the previous person in that position not moved on, it would have appeared she had not done ‘enough’ so it can be very tough to judge the efforts people are making.</p>
<p>Blossom’s post aside, because I think I have met those people, thinking of a 35 year old guy living with his mother for the past 5 years who has had a series of short term, “beneath him” jobs and who in that time, despite encouragement and a nearby university, has never bothered to complete his bachelor’s degree! He doesn’t need that piece of paper, you know, because he already knows that info!</p>
Are you trying to imply that the $34K/yr private was 'controlled vs the ‘uncontrolled’ public HS and therefore the child at the public HS was somehow ‘experimented with’? That makes no sense and to imply that people who don’t follow the private vs public HS path are somehow ‘experimenting’ with their child is a ridiculous statement. But maybe I interpreted what you said incorrectly.</p>
You did get it right. Even you did the same thing I preassume as I’m sure you have not sent your children to inner city public HS but to a suburban public HS because you also believed in a controlled environment. I’m sure even President Obama doesn’t believe in experimenting with his children even though people tag him as extreem leftist liberal.</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t ‘experiment’ with my kids by having them go to the local public HS and I doubt most other posters here feel that they did that with their kids either. I suppose if you consider your local HS a dangerous place it could make sense to drop the big bucks on the private for that reason but if you could afford that I doubt that your local HS is a dangerous place. </p>
<p>Your reasons just seem way over the top and others who didn’t choose your path were not necessarily doing any less of a job in providing for their kids, i.e. not ‘experimenting’ to use your words, but again, I’m glad you’re happy with your decisions.</p>
<p>I fail to see what “experimenting” on your children and being a “leftist liberal” have in common. People who send their kids to public HS aren’t experimenting on them, and for your information, some of the country’s best and oldest public high schools ARE in inner cities (Bronx Science, Boston Latin you may have heard of those two, just to name a couple). </p>
<p>And I don’t know what (other than it being easier to implement the required security measures) President Obama’s reasons are for sending his kids to private school, but I bet thinking that they will be “experimented on” is not among them.</p>
<p>POIH, I’m glad your daughter had a good experience at the private high school but D1’s best friend also graduated from the same private high school and said there were some of the meanest and competitive kids that she ever came across. She did not have a very good experience there. I was surprised to hear that and I was glad I did not shelved out $200K for that kind of atmosphere.</p>
<p>It is very difficult to pass judgement on another’s experience if you don’t know the details. You don’t know the kid, the local public schools, the available private schools, the other person’s available income. Everyone has a different experience, so how do you judge? There are some phenomenal public schools and crappy private ones, exceptional private schools and public schools you’d never send your kids to. </p>
<p>I sent two kids to private schools most of their lives. Will have spent 500K by the time the last kid gets out of high school, before even paying the first dollar towards college. Had I known how much it was going to cost us eventually, I doubt I would have let them set foot in private school for one day. But in the end, I have two very happy, challenged kids who have amazing friends and were able to attend one of the best schools-public or private-in the nation. The kids at this school are compassionate and generous, they have been so lucky to even be accepted there. It would have been an experiment to take them away from their practically guaranteed phenomenal high school experience to put them in our local so-so public school. Maybe they would have been fine. I suspect I would have had one kid do well and another kid suffer. So in the end, I would have loved to have that money in my bank account but how can I regret it when things have worked out so well for them?</p>