@ucbalumnus I think that OP might be a “reaching UMC” rather than a solid UMC. And if you’re not going to be wealthy enough to holiday in Europe like your friends, then at least having an elite school pedigree helps.
You are right @ucbalumnus, these schools, especially those with billion $ endowments, need to do a better job of enrolling poor kids - (Amherst is a bit better at it). But it really has to start much earlier. These top schools can’t enroll kids who are not college ready, and among the very poor, college readiness is a big issue. This country needs to do a much,much better job at educating poor kids starting in elementary school.
About 435,000 students or one-quarter of the 2014 high school graduates who took the ACT reported an annual family income of less than $36,000. Of that group, just 11 percent met all four ACT benchmarks (indicating they were likely to earn at least a C in an entry-level college course in English, reading, math, and science) compared to 26 percent of all ACT test takers.
Half of all low-income students failed to meet a single benchmark.
@elguapo1: Oh, I won’t disagree with you when it comes to the cost-benefit analysis of an undergraduate degree. That’s why I’m keen to find and point out undergrad options that would not cost over a quarter-million outlay and yet are good in many ways.
But when someone comes off with the attitude that it’s so unfair that Expensive Elite Private College is so expensive and so hard to get in to now and Junior worked so hard and is so smart and deserves to go there and it’s so heartbreaking that he/she won’t get The Best because it’s such a massive financial outlay and woe is me! (and can’t anyone–ANYONE–think of the poor upper-middle-class); this is such a Tragedy and Horror(!) . . . .
Yeah, that may strike others as a little entitled.
We’re OT.
But don’t assume, no matter the efforts and FA, that all lower SES kids want a Midd or Amherst, Colby, whatever, enough to actually matriculate. And that’s for a number of good reasons.
As ever, be careful with (purported) benchmarks.
I’ve just gone thru the college process with my son17. I live outside of Boston in a UMC suburb. I can testify that most parents are not “hoping” their kid ends up at U Mass, even though it might be considered a relative bargain. 98% percent of the kids go onto college and I’d say at least/ 3/4 of the class are not attending U Mass. Out of 350 kids maybe 40 end up at U Mass and 10 at U Mass Lowell for engineering.
The real argument is not whether any school is worth $250K, but whether that it’s worth the difference between between full play at U Mass or full pay at another private school, where the price can be any where between the same cost as U Mass or $35K more per year. So it’s really “Is it worth 35K x 4 ( $140k) more?” .
We struggled with this decision. Here is how we justified it.
Son17 got into U Mass and a several New England schools. We don’t qualify for any financial aid. We have the money set aside for college. He received some merit packages at a few schools, and at others got nothing.
Our son just didn’t really like U Mass on several visits. He didn’t like the size or the location. In the end he chose to attend Northeastern. He plans on studying overseas several terms and wants to do at least 2 co-ops. It should be a great experience for him. I don’t know if I believe that the NU experience will be worth more/equal to the 35K yearly up charge, I do think that there is some value though, so lets say that he gets 1/2 of that - 18K in extra value per year. The extra value may come in the form of quality co-ops, networking, learning environment, dorm situation, exposure to urban living, ease of travel to home and college, etc.
So if he gets 18K of value per year out of the 35K, then really maybe I’m foolishly spending and extra 18K per year x 4 years. So really I’m only “blowing”. 72K, ha.
We are fortunate that we have saved the money for tuition aside, and that our retirement and savings accounts are fully funded. We don’t have to take any loans or stress out about it. But we don’t necessarily feel great about it either, and I think that’s what the OP was kind of getting at. It’s getting harder and harder to afford the price of these schools and afford to live in the area. For the average UMC family they really need to start saving larger chunks of cash for college earlier, if they want to be able to “afford” the private schools. It’s not easy to save that much and it is a harsh realization for some when the college admissions process begins.
@PurpleTitan. Yep understand, but I would be careful with the term entitled, some folks have earned every dime they have in order to achieve UMC status, as such many may feel a little aggrieved that colleges feel entitled to charge them full freight because they own their own home, have saved prudently with 529 accounts, and have saved for their retirement, rather than spend like a drunken sailor their entire adult life and the corollary that suggests when it comes to financial aid. But as sites like CC can attest there is more than one way to skin a cat. My worry is the ballooning cost of college, long term is undermining the country, when it really should be a force for good.
Elguapo- here’s what you are missing:
No college goes into your bank account and vacuums out the money. The colleges don’t feel “entitled” to charge full freight, just like the Mercedes dealership isn’t “entitled” to charge you full freight. You want a Mercedes- that’s what it costs. You can’t afford it? Find a cheaper car.
There is an accepted “social good” to NOT limiting private colleges to those who can afford them, and colleges take this mission with a varying degree of commitment as their budgets or missions or strategies allow. Some do a better job than others of providing aid to needy families. And some provide aid to the not needy families in the form of merit aid.
But your post – again- comes off as very tone deaf that a college is entitled to charge anyone full freight. You don’t like it? Send your kid somewhere else. Problem solved. If you own your own home, have a 529, and some retirement-- your kids are pretty much on second or third base already compared to the majority of kids in America.
See why the complaining gets tiresome?
Going back to something from the OP:
These schools have changed. My left coast example is Pomona. Early 1980’s, it was a nice little place for those “good students”. I noted back then that they offered a National Merit scholarship, so I applied, was admitted, but was seriously gapped. So, like the vast majority of my friends, off I went to a UC. I look at the caliber of the students attending Pomona now, and it’s gone up significantly (though I know Pomona alums of my age or a bit older who’ve done just fine, including one professor at a tippy top school and one high ranking NASA manager).
Or USC, another west coast example–used to be for well-off kids who couldn’t get into UCLA (which was also a place for B kids back in the day).
Or Tufts, where D1 went and had a tremendous experience which gave her incredible opportunities and experiences. Again, a top-notch student body.
I’d bet that if you could go back in time and look at the qualifications of the kids admitted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and then come forward in time and say that you would admit the applicants now who came up to that mark, you’d have enough accepted kids to fill seats far beyond the entire Ivy League, not to mention the schools named above.
People need to stop looking at college tuition as a cost. At no-merit schools, it is solely an income tax based on one’s wealth and current income. If you don’t want to pay an income tax, and I certainly don’t, then find another college that uses a different pricing model, or offers discounts off the income tax due to merit.
As for the long-term costs on society, we are spending a larger and larger percentage of our wealth on an asset whose impact on GDP does not change with the cost.
If it is so tiring, then don’t respond to the thread.
@RightCoaster I’m sure no UMC Mass parent is hoping that their kid goes to UMass but that is not really an objective opinion for all majors IMO. We looked at schools in Mass for my son. We are actually in RI but my H is in a top technical position in a big Mass company. We looked at the cost difference between our state school (which is not as good as UMass for engineering though should be much better soon since we’re investing $130Million) and UMass Honors, WPI. Being really dorky, we did a salary analysis for graduates from the schools and they’re at the same point at the ten year mark. You don’t earn that extra money that was spent back.
If we lived in Mass this would be a tough decision. We thought that UMass was architecturally depressing but the engineering was very, very solid. And with the honor school, you’d have your own tribe. My H, who only graduated from URI, is working alongside grads from MIT, WPI and many, many from UMass who have made it to the top of the technical food chain. And with regards to networking, all schools now stress engineering internships and it’s my experience that at that first interview, UMass grads are going to look favorable on other UMass grads and there are so many of them. There are exceptions but for the most part, in technical fields after you’ve been hired, you’ll be judged on performance not your school.
All this being said, you’ve worked hard, you’ve saved your money, you can’t take it with you, why not have your S go to his favorite and Northeastern is a great school. Good luck to him.
@blossom “You don’t like it? Send your kid somewhere else.” Which is exactly what I did, it was never a problem, what makes you think it was? Tell me anything in my post which isn’t true.
elguapo, why do you resent folks in your income bracket who have made a different decision? We were full pay and were happy to. There is nothing I could have done with the money- upgrade my house, upgrade my kitchen, take fancy vacations, drive a luxury car- that means as much to me as allowing my kids to pick their colleges without regard to cost. I love my job and am not bothered by the fact that I’ll be working longer than I would have had I not spent so much money on college. I’ll retire at some point- but not yet and I’m fine with that.
That didn’t mean that we would pay full freight everywhere- and in fact, some of the colleges the OP seems to yearn for were absolutely off the table because we didn’t see the cost/value in those experiences. But I don’t resent folks who opt for a less expensive option for their kids, and I don’t resent colleges which I consider to be country clubs with a few books thrown in-- they have their place, and as long as there are families willing to send their kids there, god bless.
Your comment that you haven’t spent like a drunken sailor is weird. The primary driver of your aid (or not) is your income. Are you suggesting that folks who have been just as thrifty and prudent as you, but have opted to pay full freight are acting irresponsibly?
@ucbalumnus #485: Respectively, yes and (in many cases) yes.
Fortunately, as I mentioned at the beginning of the subthread, these conflicts have been eliminated, so we expect our time to degree to drop, and our degree completion rate to rise here as a direct result.
@blossom Well said.
I find it weird that people whose kids are out of college spend time on these boards judging folks just going through this process. If you are here to offer constructive suggestions, I get it. If you are here to demonstrably tell people what to do, judge them, ridicule them and tell everyone how amazing you are, why? How does this make your life better? If they make a mistake on their own dime, it shouldn’t affect you since your kids are done.
Most of us are here to learn about the process, learn about schools, trends, financial picture, where higher ed is headed, etc. since our kids are in the process, currently in college, or soon to be.
It is certainly a stretch to say that UMC is “locked out” of elite schools. Probably a better way to say it is that “The result of tuition/aid policies at the elite schools has resulted in decreasing numbers of student enrollments from the UMC over the past two decades.” I believe that is a true statement from where I can find data – Duke has shared that it is, indeed, a fact that enrollments from families with incomes between “low income” and $250K are steadily reducing, but nobody out there is funding studies to show what is happening to the MC and UMC, so you have to back into it. There are a lot of studies about low income students, and they show that the low income student enrollments at the elite universities are holding steady or slightly increasing. There are also a lot of studies about the “top 1%”, which often is described as annual income above $630K, that all show enrollments increasing over the past two decades. So obviously what is left in between is going down. The NYT study does show a marked decrease for those they put in the “above 20%, below 40%” income bracket. Nobody, it seems, spends a lot of time/money to study the middle of that sandwich, which includes the MC, UMC, and some stratifications of wealthy. But it is reasonable to assume, and supported where we do have data, that the MC and UMC is being squeezed out – not “locked out”, but encouraged through prudent financial decision making to seek education elsewhere.
Is this worth MC/UMC angst and rage? We have 34 pages and counting debating that, and I’ll choose to stay out of that fight. But I think it is worth acknowledging that the trends are real, not imagined.
@dfbdfb, looks like you guys have pretty cheap in-state tuition which is good and bad. The good part is obvious. The bad part is that there wasn’t pressure to rationalize all the requirements so they may have been added on willy-nilly.
@PurpleTitan, yeah, I’m pretty sure that was part of it. (And we have such a high proportion of part-time students that time to degree wasn’t actually something a lot of faculty/administrators or students/families were actually paying that much attention to.)
As a full pay parent–entirely agree that this is a useful way (in terms of giving additional insight) for full pay parents to frame the question. If your student has scholarship options that drop the COA at the lowest price even further, then the difference can be even larger.
@blossom Are you being deliberately obtuse?
“why do you resent folks in your income bracket who have made a different decision?” Where have I ever said that?
“Your comment that you haven’t spent like a drunken sailor is weird. The primary driver of your aid (or not) is your income.” So why is it important colleges determine your net worth, please enlighten me, why do you think that is because I can only think of one reason?
The takeaways from my comments have been.
IMO $250k for an undergrad is ridiculous and that there are much cheaper alternatives out there, particularly abroad. Just because I have the wealth on paper @ $250k per kid doesn’t mean I am going to pay it. Some folks are trying to infer that I think my kids are entitled to go to these schools, nothing can be further from the truth, they are just not on the radar. I neither want to pay the $250k nor do I need to.
Folks are free to choose what they want, horses for courses, but costs continue to rise and so choices are becoming less…
The cost of college is getting so high it is beginning to damage the economy rather than improve it.
If you have inferred anything different then maybe I just wasn’t clear enough, I just thought I had been.