<p>You hit my question exactly! Being a NJ neighbor ¶ our state schools are VERY expensive compared to the West Coast and the South (VA esp). I have heard many tales similiar to yours – the merit from the privates offsets cost diffence.</p>
<p>My son is only in 9th, but our current mode of thinking is for him to work hard thru HS & get merit for private school. He just isn’t the type to thrive in a big environment. And I have NO love for any PA state school – either too big or too isoluted for my personal taste.</p>
<p>I will encourage all my kids to apply to a mix of state/private because overall the least amount of debt will be our biggest factor.</p>
<p>If you are looking for scholarships from private colleges, may I suggest that your son apply at a college where he’d be in the upper 25%. Look at the average SAT score for that school and if you son’s SAT is higher by a good amount, then that school will be more likely to offer a merit scholarship.<br>
Worked for us.</p>
<p>Oh, and I am also stunned at how cheap some state universities can be. In my state, they are not cheap at all. Fellow CCers have mentioned state uni tuition prices that leave me jealous!</p>
<p>Notnim, your state schools cost more than west coast publics including the UC’S? I’d never heard that before. I was under the impression that UC’s were pretty expensive for public schools.</p>
<p>I have not looked at UC costs, but believe NJ in-state costs --tuition, room, board and fees can be about $22K, which is at least $5k more than nearby states. As NJ is a gnerally high tax state (for various reasons) many NJ parents are upset about this. The governor’s goal of granting in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens has created quite a controversy.
Bookreader, will you share the name of the private college?</p>
<p>“The grading is slightly better at private schools. Stare schools don’t care about retaining students. In fact, one professor honestly noted that they have to make room for the junior college transfers. Thus, getting A’s and even B’s are harder at state universities than that of the private schools that I have encounters. This was reaffirmed by each school’s instituionalized statistics that noted that the average GPA for state schools were lower than the private schools that I have sseen. This has a lot of implications for profossional schools, grad schools etc.”</p>
<p>Xiggi, take a look at the url for the National “Trends in grade inflation” shown in post 46. I rest my case! It is as I expected. Private schools tend to have a .2-.3 higher overall GPA than that of state schools.</p>
<p>Admittedly, this seems to be the overall general rule,but there are certainly exceptions. This is why I suggested that all prospective students should check out the average GPA for that school for each year. Usually these numbers are kept and published by some institutional statistics department.</p>
<p>If my daughter made the same grades at our state schools that she is making at her private school, she would graduate with a 4.0. Her school gives a grade of A- for scores of 90-92 and the public Us give an A for the same scores. She also feels that her school provides more depth in her classes than her friends get for similar classes at the public Us. The depth in the subject matter is what she needed to thrive, she would have been miserable at the state U. The career services are amazing - and not just the formal ones at the career center.</p>
<p>I do not doubt that students that graduate from public Us have the necessary education to move on to the next level (I’m from Ga, home of GaTech), but she wanted more and I think that her letters of recommendation for grad school will reflect that drive. I do not think she would have had the same experiences working with profs if she had gone to UGA. </p>
<p>I believe in fit and as long as each student is happy and gets what they need to thrive, as parents we’re happy. It would have been nice, if she could have thrived at a large state U, but it was not meant to be.</p>
<p>Also, for merit scholarships, our experience in 2006 was that distance from home was a factor - the farther from home, the better the scholarship.</p>
<p>“If my daughter made the same grades at our state schools that she is making at her private school, she would graduate with a 4.0. Her school gives a grade of A- for scores of 90-92 and the public Us give an A for the same scores.”</p>
<p>Grading is up to the professor where my son goes. 90-92 is usually an A-. Some professors only give letter grades, no + or -.</p>
<p>“She also feels that her school provides more depth in her classes than her friends get for similar classes at the public Us. The depth in the subject matter is what she needed to thrive, she would have been miserable at the state U.”</p>
<p>I have the feeling that our son’s state u is rigorous, especially given how many students that don’t survive in his program. He studies the course material in both more depth and breadth than is provided by his classes on his own. He sometimes startles his professors answering questions that he couldn’t possibly know the answers to.</p>
<p>But, you know, that’s what my daughter didn’t want - that she would have to get the depth and breadth alone. She wanted to be in a situation where there were like minds in her classes. This is a fall out from her high school program. She was in a competitive magnet program, where the students that didn’t want to do as much made fun of the ones that did. The teachers loved her, but she definitely felt out of place. Many of these same kids are at UGA in the honors program.</p>
<p>Going private does not guarantee you will be with like minds. She transferred from the first college she attended because of the same attitude, but has found her place at the second school. And not all publics are filled with imagination-less grade grubbers. I have great respect for William and Mary, GaTech and others, but it takes a certain type of student to navigate large, public unis where many students attend because of the football games.</p>
<p>I also agree that there are great programs at the large unis, but my d had only a vague idea of what she wanted, but really didn’t know what she would end up majoring in until she started taking classes and getting involved in her ECs. I don’t think that the big state schools are optimal for this type of exploration.</p>
<p>My son was homeschooled and became an independent learner at a young age. He’s an unusual kid. Our daughter isn’t like that. Sports and drinking have been big on his campus but I sense a change on campus this year. I see far more students on campus this year and I have a feeling that the student body this year is much better than in previous years academically. My reasoning is that this is being forced by the difficult economic times.</p>
<p>In the upper-level classes, you can get grad students taking courses as prereqs for grad school so you can get some highly motivated kids and hopefully they are highly motivated by then. Or they’re just muddling through.</p>
<p>I have a niece at Amherst that now wants to go to Harvard for grad school. She’s been involved in research since her freshman year and interned at Harvard this past summer and has a great recommendation to get in. My guess is that connections at Amherst helped her get her multiple intern offers at Harvard. That sort of thing is useful.</p>
<p>Our daughter started her classes at a community college today. She’s a high-school senior doing dual-enrollment. I have no clue what she’s going to do but the default is to go to CC until she figures out what she wants to do. She wouldn’t survive the state u where our son is going.</p>
<p>yabeyabe2
You asked what school my son attends.</p>
<p>He attends Fairleigh Dickinson University. He went there for undergrad and is currently in grad school there. We have been very pleased with his experience there. They have an exceptional study abroad program which I think every student should partake in as it is life changing.</p>
<p>This figure includes dorm, meal plan and estimated pers expenses for books etc.
Tuition alone at a UC is in the $10,000 - $12000 range, depending upon which campus. Freshman do not have to live on campus, so many don’t. Actual cost of attendance can be under $15K</p>
<p>Thanks doame–the tuition only rate seems close to NJ state schools (some of which use fees and surcharges to keep tuition fees articificiially low); does anyone know of states charging more than $12k for tuition?</p>
<p>thanks bookreader–it seems you made an excellent decision. I believe FD has a much nicer campus than Rutgers</p>
<p>bookreader and yabeyabe, I agree with you about NJ instate tuition. We are looking at private schools. We even looked at a couple of OOS publics in the south because their OOS tuition is not that much more than our instate tuition (perhaps 1k more). When we visited a public U in NC we were told that instate tuition with R&B was 12k per year!!! Some costs might have been left out of the mix, but even at 14-15k, what a bargain that is next to our instate tuition (a friend whose child is going Rutgers if he is accepted told me that the COA is/will be about 24k). Why does the instate student in NJ need to pay 2x more than the student who instate in NC?</p>
<p>^perhaps it has to do with the cost of living difference between NY/NJ and North Carolina. Everything costs more-including running a college (higher salaries for college employees, higher costs in electricity/heating costs in the winter/food service contracts, etc.). I don’t know if this is the reason, but it does sound like a logical explanation for some of the differences.</p>
<p>Assuming the projected increases described in the morning paper kick in, UC tuition will rise next fall to $10,302 plus an average $938 set of fees, bringing the grand total to $11,240. For what it is worth, 10 years ago that was around $3500.</p>
<p>nysmile, you might be right, but as you know, SUNYs are less expensive than NJ public Us. NY can be a pretty expensive place to live too (just depends upon where in NY). I do not think the cost of living where SUNY Stonybrook or SUNY Purchase is located is low. </p>
<p>Well, we are probably voting with our feet.</p>