He has two younger siblings. If he does not use the 529, it transfers over to them. He’s pretty committed to dentistry. His other interest is med school. Either way, he’s going to grad school for 4 years.
As little as one’s DDS school matters, undergrad surely matters even less.
I suspect many people’s choice of dentist is based more on who takes their insurance and/or who can Make The Pain Stop Right Now than credentials and prestige.
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Yes, I agree 100%. Leaving undergrad debt free is especially important for dentistry, not only because of the cost of dental school, but also for the likely goal of setting up one’s own dental practice, which alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But, debt or no debt, please OP, make sure your son is going into dentistry with his eyes wide open. Ultimately, dentistry is a service—a repetitive, narrow service.
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It is not crazy to recognize that this is a small business, and college is a good place to learn about running a small business. Electives are there for a reason.
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But if I recall correctly, the student didn’t care for UT Austin on a visit.
There are many others schools that would come in affordable without spending all of the 529 that are worth checking out IMO.
Pre-meds/dent/vet all do best in a place and major that they like. There’s no need to be high debt to find one.
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Ultimately there are a lot of ‘fantastic’ lower ranked schools with great merit. You can go public…in state or not…such as OU. AZ. Mizzou. Ark. Bama. Auburn. Uah. Miami of Ohio. Ohio state maybe. If wants a LAC Hendrix has a program to match in state costs. Other schools have fantastic merit public and private as well. Schools like Bama roll out the red carpet hence smart kids abound, kids turning down Ivy.
Again when your son grows up short of a few majors, employers will not care where he went.
Your son’s experience and your wallet will.
What is his criteria if UT A is out. Is it small. Rural. Etc
Btw UT is not too 10 or 20 in most majors . I bet he’ll know kids who go there and won’t make fun of them for that. Same with Tx State. Tx Tech etc.
Hopefully as parents we’ve grown past the trappings of peer pressure.
It’s clear you know what you want to do. You just feel social pressure against. That’s a shame.
First, every family has its own set of values. And it may be different from that of your friends, and that’s okay. Talk to your son about what he wants, help him weigh the pros and cons, and decide accordingly.
But there is another consideration that should be mentioned here, that I don’t think has been mentioned yet. College is not just about outcomes in terms of career. The experience of the four years of college matter immensely in and of themselves.
For my family, we knew that, since my son was a baby, he was an “ideas” person. He was an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. As he grew older and able to articulate what he wanted from college, and as we visited colleges and thought about what would be a good “fit,” we all envisioned for him the type of college experience where he would be surrounded by other people who were as smart and as intellectually curious as he was. That type of intellectual stimulation was important.
Now a college senior, he is very happy with his college choice. When he calls home, he is excited to share tidbits from discussions he held in class, things his professors said or cool teaching techniques they used, books he read, discussions he had with his friends about their intellectual interests.
In addition, throughout the four years, he has chatted with friends who attended different sorts of colleges. And often he has commented to us on how very different his college experience is from theirs, and how glad he is to be attending the college he is attending and not their college. These friends are smart and capable… and they have secured fantastic employment outcomes. But the college experience they had DURING the four years was not what he would have wanted.
We were lucky to be able to save enough to afford my son’s college experience, and also lucky that he was able to get into a college that would have offered extremely generous financial aid if we had not been able to do so, as it has for many of his friends at his college.
But honestly, I would have done anything needed to pay for his education. As my parents did for me. My parents took out a home equity loan to send me to a top college and nobody even blinked when I turned down a full ride (four years of tuition and room and board) at a less prestigious school. This is the belief system in my family of origin, in my spouse’s family of origin, and in our own family. Besides love and emotional connection/happiness, for us there is no higher priority than education.
Each potential college student and their family must weigh what they want from the college experience. It is to be expected that different students will want or need different things.
Let what’s important to your son be his (and your) guide. And if he can refine and articulate what’s important to him and why his college choice relates to that, then he will be confident and happy in his choice. And nothing that anyone says to him will change that. I also think that, when someone says they are happy and excited about their college choice, any true friend will hear their sincerity and rejoice with them.
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Very valid point - I did make a point to aggressively draw down the 529 for everything permissible, for that exact reason.
For potential grad school I instead set up and funded IRAs in everyone’s name - at “worst” it becomes part of our/her retirement savings.
HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean one should forego good merit scholarships that might be offered, just so that more of the 529 can be spent!?
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The main issue is that selectivity (therefore indirectly price for many people) and intellectual stimulation often aren’t correlated. There are many very expensive, prestigious names that have giant lectures and heavy reliance on TAs and many non-selective schools that offer good merit aid where the environment is quite stimulating. Juniata, Whitman and Beloit are all great examples of the later.
College name or debt free?
Debt free. Hands down.
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That might be true at some schools but it wasn’t my experience. I was in the honors program at my state flagship and then attended a top 10 graduate school and the difference was night and day (granted my experience was between undergrad and grad). My biggest frustration was that my intellectual interests were so different from my undergrad classmates and, while I was considered a star during my undergrad years, it was not very satisfying because I wasn’t often challenged - whether in classroom discussions, on exams, etc.
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School A is not necessarily the same as School B, that’s for sure. That’s why different schools appeal to different students. Bio 101 isn’t the same everywhere either as I’ve mentioned on other threads.
However, it’s wrong to say one has to be full pay at a “doesn’t give merit aid” college to get a top notch experience. When my guy who got significant merit aid at a Top 30 private school went to Stanford for a paid research summer he was alongside some who went to “no merit aid” Top 10 schools and he fit right in with background and capability. Some others who were there were from top notch state schools too.
With a highly capable kid it’s good that they have peers, but it’s generally not necessary to be full pay unless one wants to be. It’s also not always their best experience to choose free - esp if the free school is well below their capability (average ACT around 20-23 for a ACT 30+ student).
For any school being considered for a pre-dental student (or pre-med, pre-vet) it can be helpful to find out how many students have recently been accepted into professional schools - and which schools those are (don’t want Caribbean, etc).
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You’re framing the choice too narrowly. First, the undergraduate and graduate experiences are completely different. Second, school choice and the perception of “intellectually stimulating” is very major dependent. Third, there’s a vast difference between the experiences among the “Top 20” and that leaves out completely the experience one can have at the LACs and the non-PhD granting schools that aren’t ranked with the doctoral schools. Lastly, there are plenty of non-“Top 20” schools that are affordable, intellectually stimulating and are not state flagships.
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I was reacting to your point that “selectivity (therefore indirectly price for many people) and intellectual stimulation often aren’t correlated” - from my experience, they are (i.e., my not very selective state flagship lacked intellectual stimulation for the most part, even though I was in the honors program). Note also I was touching on the peer experience rather than whether classes were in large halls or taught by TAs - I actually had several very good professors at my undergrad school but they had to go at the pace that suited the middle of the pack.
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If I haven’t mentioned it before, the Colleges that Change Lives website is a great resource and some of the school mentioned are on that. I know Clark gives merit.
I would think about the actual undergrad experience as a priority rather than prioritizing dentistry in the relatively far future, but that’s me.
Chances are he can go anywhere and major in anything and still attend dental school, as long as prereq’s are done during college or in a post bacc.
Using criteria of cost, location, size, academics and “vibe” makes sense for almost everyone. Maybe the choices won’t be so black and white.
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My Texas daughter is a freshman electrical engineering major at Texas Tech: rank #1 of 423, 36 ACT, 1590 SAT 14 APs, National Merit commended, AP scholar. Yes, her “try hard” friend group went to high ranked schools except the premeds and pre dental that also went to Texas Tech. So what, we had a goal of debt free. Edit Tech gave her 27, 500 a year in stacked admission/engineering scholarships. Which is full cost of attendance She will graduate debt free.
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I may have read it correctly that the Dallas dentistry school has an 11% acceptance rate. Is the main factor the dental test, undergrad grades and observation hours? Is a 3.7 GPA at UT-Austin treated the same as a much lower ranked school given similar test score, background and shadow hours?
Did any leave Texas for top 50 type schools?
Her best friend is at Princeton and some are at Rice, UT Austin, TAMU, Cornell.
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None of my East TX class of 440 went to a top 50 OOS school. In the class ahead of me, a doctor’s kid went to Princeton and a middle class guy went to Rice. Sine then, Indian-American doctor kids have gone to T20s.
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