<p>This may be derived from OP and H having differing perspectives on spending and perceptions on what’s worth spending money on. </p>
<p>Some folks are much more financially risk adverse…sometimes to extremes. Others are much more willing to take financial risks…sometimes to extremes. </p>
<p>The same could be said for parents. Some parents feel it’s fine to spend millions freely on vacation houses in the Hamptons, fancy cars, clothing and feel it’s worth it to show off while simultaneously feel it isn’t worth spending one cent for their straight-A near perfect SAT scoring child’s college tuition. </p>
<p>Others may feel it’s overindulgent to spend on such luxuries and yet, go all out on ensuring child who earned his/her way into a USAFA/W type college could go there…even if they have to subsist on rice & beans type meals for 4+ years. </p>
<p>Different Strokes for different folks and all that… :)</p>
<p>As with everything else in life, if you can afford it and you are willing to pay for it, then it is worth it. If you cannot afford it or you are not willing to pay for it, then it is not worth it.</p>
<p>Since most of us with college kids are older, here are a couple questions that I think is very important.</p>
<p>Will paying for Wellesley jerpordize your retirement? My cousins chip in every month financially to support my uncle because he didn’t plan his retirement well. You don’t want to put yourself or your daughters in that situation.</p>
<p>Will you/your husband have to delay retirement to pay for Wellesley? Keep in mind not everyone can work longer due to health conditions. As we get old, it is hard to tell how long we can stay healthy.</p>
<p>If you have a good retirement plan, you can pay for current living expenses and Wellesley, then the question really is do you want to? It sounds like your husband wants to. Have you talked to your husband and daughter about your concerns?</p>
<p>Will Wellesley give your daughter a better experience and a better future? Hard to tell. Everyone is different. Maybe, maybe not.</p>
<p>I agree with many other posters that being upfront and have open communication might help.</p>
<p>If your D wants law school, then you’re nuts to spend money on Wellesley. It’s much better to do IU undergrad and then G-town (or similar) law school, rather than Wellesley and then Indiana for law school. </p>
<p>Tell her that you will give her half of the difference between your costs for IU and for Wellesley for law school. For example, if IU would cost $60,000, and Wellesley would cost you $150,000, then give her $45k (i.e. half of $90k) for law school.</p>
<p>Actually, as another earlier commenter has indicated, if her plans are to return to Indiana to practice law and especially to enter the local political scene, it makes arguably more sense to do undergrad elsewhere and do law school at IU or another local/regional law school where she can establish effective local political and professional networks.</p>
<p>cobrat, The OP would not have to “subsist on rice & beans” if her daughter had decided to go to AFA since the OP would not have to be paying tuition there. Of course, as you note, husbands and wives often have different perspectives on money. That’s not unusual .But usually there is SOME attempt to compromise or negotiate on big ticket items like a college education . IU vs. Wellesley-big difference in price and apparently no attempt between the parents to agree on what they are willing to or want to spend . That is a problem.</p>
<p>This is a good point. Unfortunately, however, even in-state public law schools aren’t cheap anymore. Tuition and fees at Indiana University School of Law are over $30,000/year. Cheaper than a top private law school, but not cheap.</p>
<p>This family allowed their daughter to visit a number of VERY expensive schools…AS expensive dive as Wellesley. Their income is such that they knew in January that their FAFSA EFC was at or very near the cost of attendance at the schools on the kids list…with the exception of the service academies and IU. </p>
<p>If there was an issue with cost, in my opinion this should have been discussed MONTHS ago…like in January after the FAFSA was filed. </p>
<p>These parents don’t agree on the finances of this situation. For all we know, the father has no issue with this expense and feels the family can cover it. No mention whether the OP is working or not. </p>
<p>I think the parents gave tacit approval for a school the COST of Wellesley when they took the kid on these other college visits.</p>
<p>OK. To those of you who can tell I am unhappy with D’s decision to attend Wellesley, you are correct. It is an extraordinary amount of money. We were really between a rock and a hard place. We could tell that D was nervous about attending AFA, but had Wellesley not come through on wait list, she would have gone to AFA, because to her, IU was unacceptable. </p>
<p>When Wellesley called, D was in Africa on a mission trip and Wellesley put pressure on us to make a decision. To hold D’s place, we put down $300 and then she wrestled with decision in Africa and after she came home. Our position was that we did not want to force D to attend AFA and if she was wavering, it was probably not the best thing to do.</p>
<p>Re: older daughter. She was encouraged to apply to a range of schools and did, but for stretch schools, she only applied to ND and Wake, where she was wait listed. Older D wanted to go to IU and received a direct admit into the Kelley School of Business with scholarship that was less than younger daughter’s. Older daughter then fooled around Freshman year and lost scholarship (we then started making her pay for C’s). If the next semester she didn’t have any C’s we put the money (say $750…for a $250 credit hour course) back in her bank account.</p>
<p>We told D she had to pay for $30,000 of her education and take loans out for it to attend Wellesley. So, she will graduate with debt and then have more debt to go to law school.</p>
<p>I think she wants to be a “world leader.” This sounds funny, but I am serious. She wants to be President. I don’t know if she would come back to Indiana for law school, even though she has big political connections here.</p>
<p>“I think she wants to be a “world leader.” This sounds funny, but I am serious. She wants to be President. I don’t know if she would come back to Indiana for law school, even though she has big political connections here”</p>
<p>That doesn’t sound funny at all, though I personally don’t know why anyone would want that job! It actually makes more sense to go to Wellesley than it did initially, with HC as a prominent grad and their strong support of female leaders. I’m not saying that it is necessarily worth it for every family and student, but at least it sounds more logical now.</p>
<p>Hmm, seems like it would be worthwhile to directly compare the numbers. It actually doesn’t seem like a huge amount more when you compare the expenses directly. I am making the assumption that she would live on campus at both schools, and I realize that the price of Wellesley will probably increase every year in a greater amount than IU, and that there are more travel costs for Wellesley, but this is for comparisons sake, and I can’t put a total on those numbers.</p>
<p>IU instate tuition, room and board–19K/yr = 76K
Wellesley tuition, room and board–57K/ yr = 228K</p>
<p>At Wellesley, she pays 30K, school offers 11.7K/yr, that totals 76.8K
Total cost of Wellesley to family = 151.2K
Difference between the two colleges = 75.2K</p>
<p>I’m not saying that Wellesley is worth that kind of money for your child and your family in particular, I don’t know. I’m not a big supporter of liberal colleges either, but I don’t hold it against the college. Trust me, the college is not going to change whatever her values are at this point, and there will be political diversity at any college, no matter how little. I still would make sure she decides she loves this school.</p>
<p>That really is the bottom line. It’s a great school. Would she have been equally happy anywhere else, you’ll never know. It really comes down to you and your spouse and how much you are going/willing to pay. It is hard. It is difficult. My S3 got accepted at a school that cost less in the financial aid package than where he is going. The less expensive schoolt happens to be somewhere my H wanted him to go…but we’re paying more. S3 is happy and H and I are leaving it at that. Sometimes it’s one gigantic compromise.</p>
<p>Yes, but that is with 2 kids in college. Older sibling will be out of college next year, so they likely will lose that aid. So the Wellesley cost is more like $184K to the parents.</p>
<p>How can she take out $30K in loans? If you don’t cosign, she’ll probably only qualify for Stafford unsubsidized, which I believe caps out at $27 for the 4 years, IIRC.</p>
<p>I’ve been following this thread with interest; about halfway through, I was thinking, boy, this young lady sound very ambitious; she probably wants to be President some day. !! </p>
<p>So I agree with busdriver a few posts above - Wellesley is a great college to attend with that kind of ambition and resolve. Look at some of its alumni. It’s course offerings are amazing.</p>
<p>I think the problem lies in OP’s feeling about the purpose of college, a subject that many threads on CC address. Liberal Arts vs specific, goal-oriented major = good future career. Money well spent vs don’t break the bank, an education is an education and a top student will succeed anywhere. Atmosphere vs it’s only about this student and her academics… Etc. etc.</p>
<p>I think with dad and D on one side and OP on the other, the decision is made and this is a done deal. She sounds like the kind of young lady that will absolutely thrive and love a place like Wellesley. I would at this point just go with it, research all that Wellesley has to offer, and try to make this as positive an experience as you can, both for yourself and D. And if for some reason she does NOT like it there, she can always transfer.</p>
<p>LaBechtel, in many ways your D sounds like my D, who just graduated from Wellesley.</p>
<p>When she was looking at colleges, she really wanted to go “somewhere” - mainly to get to a different place as far as experience and geography, but also hoping the prestige and reputation of a school would open doors.</p>
<p>When I visited her at Wellesley her junior year, I ate dinner one night in the dining hall with her group of friends. They introduced themselves as the women who were going to rule the world, and each told me their areas of interest and their plans and hopes for the future.</p>
<p>With opportunities like the Albright Institute and some of the other amazing programs at Wellesley, it could be the perfect place for your D. </p>
<p>I know my D finally felt she was with “her people” at Wellesley. She had also been admitted off the waitlist and received a substantial amount of need-based aid, and that especially made her aware of and grateful and appreciative of her opportunity.</p>
<p>As you move forward, I wish you all the best.</p>
<p>While USAFA would be free for the parents, all the costs will be borne by the child in the form of attending one of the toughest colleges in the nation for 4 years where students routinely get dropped/voluntarily leave for not being able to balance above-average academic loads with living in a 24/7 military environment with its drills/physical training, finding themselves unable to cope in a highly restrictive environment where one is micromanaged from morning to night, physical injuries sustained in physical training/military drills, and upon graduation…if they made it through 4 years…being obligated to serve a 5 year active, 3 year reserve duty in the Air Force with all the risks being in the Air Force/armed forces entails. </p>
<p>And if one manages to get a pilot slot and passes training, there’s a minimum 8-10 year minimal utilization obligation with all the risks that entails. Only reason my older NROTC cousin got out in less than 8 was because of the implemented RIF in the US armed forces not too long after the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of the Cold War. </p>
<p>As a SA graduate was happy to point out in scatological terms, a SA graduate will be paying back that “free education” with every nickel passed from his/her own stool. </p>
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<p>She could become a world through starting local. Many successful world leaders did precisely that. However, that’s just one of many ways. </p>
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<p>Agreed. She could be faced with the nightmare of facing massive protests against her administration…especially passionate and infuriating ones to TPTB led by graduates of Oberlin College. :D</p>
<p>I can somewhat sympathize with that ambition as an ENTJ on the MBTI. </p>
<p>However, I feel it’s more fun to be the gadfly…the one who irritates authority figures by pointing out how many ways they could be afflicted by the Pointy-haired boss syndrome.</p>
<p>cobrat,I’m well aware of the obligations of the student related to the service academies and how difficult the college experience is at a place like the Air Force Academy.The point was a response to your statement about the parents in an earlier post(#162). They would certainly not be having to “subsist on rice & beans” if their daughter had chosen a service academy.</p>
<p>My post there was meant to point out that for some families, higher education is valued so highly it’s one area where they’d feel it’s worth it to spend much more…especially for a high achieving academically inclined child whereas in other areas…like food, they’ll happily live a “rice and beans” lifestyle. </p>
<p>Moreover, like the OP, many such families tend to live well below their actual means. However, some of those families…like some branches of mine tend to take to extremes most upper-middle/middle-class American families would be unwilling to go.</p>
<p>Well, I understand what point you are trying to make but you lumped AFA and Wellesley into your example, despite clear differences in cost to the OP. Clearly, the cost of Wellesley to the OP is the issue. They went from little out of pocket expense (for the parents) to looking at $200,000 + in expense in the blink of an eye (or the ring of the phone from the call from Wellesley offering the daughter a spot off the waitlist). But, let’s not get sidetracked. Good luck to the OP and her daughter!</p>
<p>As I tried to make clear in that post, I lumped them in solely for the purpose of conveying how they are perceived from an academic reputation/prestige perception and for their extensive lifelong alum networks.</p>