We set a budget for my son. All of his acceptances were within the budget, but the range was from exactly at the budget to $14,000 a year under. My son plans a major that will require at least one internship. We explained to him that if he goes to the school at the top of the budget, he will need to start saving now toward purchasing a car when the time comes, which is doable as he has a good job and is a saver. However, we also explained that if his choice is the school that came in at a lower price we will be happy to help him by matching his savings. Was it a bribe? I don’t think so. We were happy with all of his choices and comfortable with meeting the budget we set, but we did want him to have plenty of warning that he would have to save for a car. I don’t like to spring things on my kids.
Don’t be manipulative.
In my opinion, she should choose the college that seems the best fit (many variables to consider) AND that she can afford based on a set budget. For the majority of families, this is a compromise.
While parents “should” be up front before applications, unfortunately many do not really wrap their minds around the realities of how much four years of college actually costs until about now in the application season, when real scholarships and financial aid packages are on the table. The realities do sometimes result in a shift in thinking. You are still the parent and you are the one paying. At this point it would be wise to make a list of all the schools, their actual costs, subtracting her scholarships and aid, then decide which school has the best balance of cost/affordability and fit.
I appreciate the replies. Just to be clear, I did have the money conversation with my daughter before hand. I didn’t give her an exact figure but since we developed her list of schools together, that implied they were all feasible and I approved of them. However, she also understood that I was reluctant to pay full price for some schools on the list, and therefore the more money she could bring to the table through merit awards, the more flexibility she would have in choosing; to the point of me buying her a car of her choice if she got a full tuition scholarship.
Many of you suggest I should have given her a hard figure, but I think if I said $270K, she would have picked mostly expensive privates. Conversely, had I said, $120K, she would have stuck with in-state publics. By keeping my number vague, helped encourage her to continue doing well in school in order to get the most merit aid. Her efforts have paid off as she received generous offers and has some great choices. However, the remaining three schools on her list are her “favorites” but have yet to give us a decision. They are still players but she knows that without some sort of merit aid they will be harder for me to justify (even though one is my alma mater). And as I mentioned earlier, I don’t see that happening but I hope to be wrong.
So I was thinking of using the $40K bonus (cost of a “new car” to attend scholarship school), and the $27K debt (she pays 10%, I pay 90% for a fancy, name brand school) as incentives to help her make the best choice. Some of you say this is a bribe and see this as manipulative. I see it as a way to force her to closely analyze and evaluate her decision. Probably the first of many big decisions that will come, and as we all know, learning to compromise is an extremely valuable lesson. She’s a smart and practical young lady, but as some of you have pointed out, I’m not sure if she totally understands the implications of having $27K in debt (note that I plan to pay off her loans as long as she graduates in four years but she doesn’t know that yet). So yes, I am trying to be a parent here and guide her so she can hopefully see past the prestige factor, and realize the value of attending a less costly option and having a nice chunk of change to start her life with. And even if she chooses a more expensive route, I’m OK with that as long as she has thought it through and can explain to me why it is the best choice for her.
It sounds like you’re not forcing her to analyze her decision in a neutral way. You’re putting a thumb on the side of the scale that represents the outcome you want. Is it at all possible that you still are as uninformed about the colleges in question as your D is about the value of money?
The key question is whether college A is or is not worth $N more than college B, given the value of $N for your family. Apparently, you don’t depend on that extra money for retirement. That does not mean $N has no value … but, you can afford to spend it on college A if you truly believe it is significantly “better” than college B. So that’s what you need to investigate, isn’t it?
If you’re confident you’ve already done that, and are still convinced college A is a waste of that extra dollars, then it’s your prerogative to just say no to college A. It’s your money … and you can make that be the message. If however you really want this to be your D’s decision, then be willing to accept that her preferences may differ from yours. Then congratulate yourself that you’re in a position to let her make a real choice.
You asked for opinions, but rather than hearing them, you are arguing with them. It’s fine if you’re mind is made up, but then why come here and ask what people think?
I will say though, that to me, mandating loans that secretively you are going to pay off to sway her away from the possibility of the last three schools is definitely manipulative.
The issue of the four year graduation deal is a big red herring here.
Presumably if you have an overall budget in mind as to what you plan to spend on her education, whether she spends it in four years or five years isn’t relevant. Same amount of money.
We told our kids “8 semesters on us”. Period end of story. We ended up being full pay at their “sky high” tuition schools, but each kid went into the process knowing that the onus of figuring out how many credits, which semesters would need to be brutal and which ones would have a little flexibility in order to graduate on time would be on them. Any kid who needed a semester off- to work, to get an unpaid internship, etc. needed to get their college’s permission to withdraw on time, before financial penalties kicked in, etc. Nobody needed to race through in four years if they wanted or needed to something else- but we were on the hook for 8 semesters.
One kid thought it would make sense to do an accelerated Master’s degree for the fifth year (same institution- a special program open to juniors) and we were receptive- but told him he’d have to line up his financial options and present them to us as part of the discussion.
The idea of making your kid take out loans and then secretly paying them off seems to reinforce the idea that you actually can afford to pay for any of your D’s options- you just don’t want to.
So why not just tell her that?
“Honey, I don’t think it’s worth paying full freight at BU for you to study early childhood education, and so I’d like to discuss whether you realize the implications of paying 65K per year to enter a profession which will pay you 24K per year”. That’s a conversation. Trying to force her to attend Framingham State seems a little circuitous. Why not treat her like an adult and get her to participate in the discussion? You don’t want to sacrifice financially so she can get a degree in law enforcement from a private U to become a probation officer making 30K-- I get it. But why not lay out the reasons why you think that’s a bad idea?
If this is the case, putting unnecessary money into the mix (cost of a new car, 10% of the expensive school) just clouds the discussion. You said you didn’t want prestige or emotions to cloud her thinking. I agree. But you’re substituting money for prestige. Now the decision centers around your money “incentives”, not the schools.
I’m not saying cost isn’t important. It’s very important. It usually is the main reason why a student turns down a very good school. I guess you need to explain to your child what you think is worth paying the premium. How much “better” does the school have to be to warrant the extra cost? What are the specific factors? Because if you only say “I will pay but only if you can explain why it’s the best choice” then you need to say what you will pay for.
It sounds like you have a smart responsible child. After all the decisions are in and laid out, have a family discussion on which college choice would be best for everyone, not just your child. Obviously your concerns will be different from hers. You will be looking at cost, maybe distance from home, and support system while she will be looking at the academic and social aspects.
Last, and this is something I never understood, if you say your daughter doesn’t understand the implications of a loan, show her. Don’t make her “loans” with the intention of paying it off for her. How is she going to learn the implications if you pay it off? All she learned from the long four year exercise is the parents will pay off her loans. You aren’t the only parents who do this but it always puzzled me.
This post sounds a bit different than the first one in that you did have the discussion on money ahead of time. I didn’t give my kids a hard number , but they knew there was a range we would pay and that did not include full pay at a private. What most here are saying is treat her like an adult. If you can afford her top picks why take out a loan? Has she given you a reason to believe she won’t be a successful student? Is the loan a cushion in case your financial situation changes (the stock market this week could have changed some people’s plans)? You could tell her that you may be able to help with the loans, depending on your situation, but not to count on it.
By the way, I’m not convinced that having a loan makes a kid more motivated to do well in school. The repayment of the loan at some distant time may not feel real to a college student. It may just make it harder for them to move out on their own without parental support. That can impact where they can job hunt.
Do you have any other kids? Will they have the same options?
i’m an adult and to be honest, neither of your scenarios really make a lot of sense to me, and even I cant really weigh all the factors based on the information you’ve given. I pretty much heard blah, blah, blah.
let alone an 18 year old faced with the same info.
you will either pay for college or you wont. your child will need to take loans or they wont. your child will need to pursue merit or they wont. you will either pay the full lofty amount or you wont.
what on earth does a car have to do with any of that? its no incentive to me either way…i’m in the here and now, not the future. that carrot is dangled so far away (in your case, possibly 8! years from now–for all i know, cars may be obsolete by then-its an eternity from today) that I really cant factor it into todays decision.
you are the parent. set your guidelines and stick to them.
and if she plans to pursue further education, you might want to think twice about blowing the budget on a fancy-dancy undergrad degree, particularly in business…unless of course you yourself are only going to foot the first four.
I’m trying to wrap my head around thinking 40k is a new car, lol!
None of my kids (or nieces and nephews for that matter) own cars. This is such a geographically based/professionally based issue.
A kid living and working in DC- a car is an albatross. A kid living and working in SF or NYC- where do you stick the car, and what kid can afford to insure it, even if mom and dad paid for the car?
I even have a nephew who is in grad school in a city with terrible mass transit- and HE didn’t want a car (the family clunker). He takes ubers on the occasional late night, rents a Zipcar twice a year to go to Sam’s Club or Walmart to stock up on detergent, and uses his bike the rest of the time. The idea of making an undergrad decision (they were full pay at elite college although it wasn’t without some sacrifices) on the basis of the future car he never wanted and wouldn’t have wanted to be stuck with- that’s hilarious.
^^ I thought it was $40,000 cash, what the OP said was the cost of a new car, not an actual car. In any case, my reaction was the same as @ordinarylives - wow, nice car. Obviously affordability is not an issue with the OP.
Loans are not skin in the game, because, as previously mentioned, the student does not ‘pay’ until later…by then it is too late to make any decisions.
It is never too late to set boundaries. If your life situation changed drastically from a financial standpoint, you would have to adjust. You student may need to adjust as well.
We told ours that college was on them. Our choice, not saying it would work for anyone else. So far, so good.
I would suggest perhaps setting a rational figure…maybe the cost of the closest state school as a baseline. Then you can offer something like a ‘family scholarship’. Offer to match dollar for dollar any merit-based money. Anything over full-tuition goes into a trust account to be available upon graduation.
Now your student has a budget and a method by which they can reach their dream school(s).
Sometimes you just have to sit them down and do the math. How long will it take to pay of the debt.
Also agree with earlier poster…just because you can afford something does not mean you should spend on it.
I hear you guys (especially Blossom, SlackerMom, GMT and Torveaux). Sorry if I appear to be argumentative; just trying to have a respectful discussion here, which is harder to do on a web board than having it over coffee at Starbucks. And I realize that I may be rambling, so thanks for humoring him…
The idea of bringing financial incentives/disincentives into the discussion was my way of countering the prestige/emotional factors of the decision process. By introducing them, I was hoping it would force her to think long and hard about it, and come up with a well thought out response on her own. Not “Dad, I like school A over school B because of it’s location, and who doesn’t want to go to school A?” But more like “Dad, school A costs more, but it has this amazing program that will allow me to do X,Y and Z, that school B, C and D don’t offer.” The problem is all her choices offer what she is looking for thanks to the time we put into developing her school list. So yes, it comes down to justifying the cost to attend a more prestigious name brand school, hence the introduction of monetary incentives to help level the playing field for the other schools. I wish we could somehow remove the names of all the schools and just focus on what they have to offer, and why she truly likes them.
I think SlackerMom and Blossom may be right, and waiting until all the offers are in and then sitting down to a family meeting to discuss all her options would be best. I was just hoping she would come to the realization on her own, but now see how my monetary incentives approach may be stacking the deck against the big three.
Thanks for listening.
OP- sometimes the emotion IS the correct response. Williams college may not have the top Art History department in the country (although it is usually considered in the top 10, even against some huge universities) but their graduates are not known as the “Art Mafia” for nothing. The alumni network at global auction houses, galleries, museums and historical societies, academic libraries and archives is truly outstanding. Why?
There is no why. But a tiny college out in the middle of nowhere has built a world-class faculty and attracts students who want to learn from them. And decades after graduating, they still constitute the “powers that be” in the art world.
Should your kid care if she plans to study biology? I don’t know. But for some kids, being at a college with a world class something truly is worthwhile. She may double-major. Or just take three or four art history courses which make her a better biologist.
I was a Classics major, and sophomore year I roomed with a political science “I’m going to law school and can’t take any classes which will impact my GPA” friend. By second semester of that year I was taking a class on the history of the Supreme Court (one of the most interesting and challenging classes I have ever taken- both undergrad and grad) and she was taking a class on the modern novel and why and how it could trace its origins from Greek and Roman tragedy/comedy.
She’s a better lawyer for it (or so she has always claimed) and I for sure have been forever grateful she talked me into a class I thought I’d have zero interest in.
THAT’s why sometimes kids get an emotional vibe from a college- a sense that the atmosphere will force them out of their intellectual comfort zone. The kids from my HS who commuted to the local college who started out as early ed majors ended up as early ed majors (and never took a single class they didn’t “have to” for their distribution requirements). The kids from my HS who went to the state flagship to become engineers roomed with other engineers.
Can your D get pushed out of her comfort zone at any college in the country? Of course, that’s not my argument. But if she has emotional reaction to the vibe at a college- it’s worth asking her why.
And sometimes prestige is worth paying for (especially if you can afford it) and sometimes it’s not. My kid went to MIT vs. what could have been no tuition at a bunch of other colleges. I was lucky- two income family, we had kids young so had plenty more working years ahead of us. What would/could I have done with the money I spent on his tuition? Have a nicer kitchen (that’s a form of prestige). Take better and more frequent vacations. Drive a nicer car.
Why are those choices any less “emotional” and prestige-oriented than MIT vs. free ride at second tier state U??? Again, if you can afford it???
What would you do with the money you aren’t spending on college? Paying for a liver transplant for your brother-in-law? Then don’t spend it on college. Upgrading to a Lexus from a Honda Civic? To me, that’s an easy decision since I LOVE my 10 year old Honda Civic!!!
^Thanks @blossom for eloquently saying so much of what I’ve felt reading this thread. My DH and I were fortunate to be each “gifted” world class educations at amazing private institutions (through no small sacrifice of our full-pay parents), and we have been fortunate to be able to gift our two children the same. I treasure the years I spent at Swarthmore, and my husband the years he spent at Princeton, and we were happy to do similar for our kids.
So “best” is defined as the choice you want her to make, i.e. accept the less expensive school? If you want her to enroll in the least expensive school, just tell her that.
We told our kids we’d pay for 4 years of college, anywhere (well, there were some schools we would not pay for, but neither kid was interested in Bob Jones or Liberty), but they had to finish in 4 years. So far, they are on track to do so.
Grad school is a matter of debate for us. My husband thinks we should cover it because his parents did that for him. I paid my own way and think that is what our kids should do. Even though we haven’t resolved our disagreement about grad school, the one thing we’ve made clear to the kids is that the only thing we’re definitely covering is their undergrad degree and that they shouldn’t count on parental help for grad school. They’ve known this since they were in middle school. I think it’s only fair that parents lay out their financial plans as soon as they can.
I see way too many kids on this site posting about a change in expectations that had nothing to do with a change in circumstances; rather, their parents suddenly balked at spending the money. To me, this isn’t fair.
Thanks Blossom. That’s what I needed, someone to remind me why these pricier institutions are worth pursuing. My alma mater didn’t necessarily inspire me as your’s did and I’m the only one to blame for that. My daughter on the other hand is a much more mature than I was and I feel she wouldn’t let that happen to her. As a parent, it’s easy to focus on the costs and forget about the intangibles. Obviously, not all of these institutions are of the same caliber and the challenge becomes determining which one is the best fit and worth the money. So after all the decisions are in, we will sit down like you suggest and carefully evaluate them. In the end, I will trust in my daughter’s instincts. And by the way, I drive a 15 year old BMW that I don’t plan on selling anytime soon. I believe in paying for value. Same for colleges. Thank you for the reminder!