College is more expensive than when I attended in the 80’s. I remember paying less than $35.00 per credit hour. Not anymore.
Therefore, I am wondering, what is your Out of Pocket Limit for Tuition, Room, and Board. I am not talking about travel, books, etc. Mine is around $15,000 per year, and that may be high. Unfortunately, this will eliminate my D from attending some of the bigger programs should she be accepted.
What is your limit? Why is it set so high or so low?
Here is some data from my d’s experience in 2015:
18 schools total
9 public out of state
9 private
17 were from the Midwest or South, 1 Mid-Atlantic.
She had a 3.71 unweighted GPA, 4.23 weighted, 30 ACT, top 15% of class in a US News top 100 high school (PAHS). She received the top or 2nd-from-the-top academic merit award at the majority of the schools. EC’s were basically all from theatre. She received talent awards from about 25% of the schools, which were significantly less than the academic merit awards. For a couple of the schools, the scholarships did not “stack,” so she was only awarded one of the two types.
Costs are tuition plus room and board for a double room:
3 @ $15,000 or less (all 3 were public schools)
4 @ $15,000-$20,000
4 @ $20,000-$25,000
5 @ $25,000-$30,000
2 @ $35,000-$37,000 (private schools)
Lowest was $7,000, highest was $37,000.
The highest full-pay amount was $50,000 (reduced to $23,000), the lowest was $17,000 (reduced to $7,000). She was granted in-state tuition at a couple of the public schools. Only 1 public school exceeded $30,000 after scholarships.
The highest “discount” was 58% and the lowest was 7%. The average discount was 32%.
She received at least one artistic acceptance in each group listed.
Our target was $25,000 per year or less, no loans. She chose a school which came in at $25,000 per year.
I forgot to give the basis for our maximum amount - we set a maximum of $100,000 for each child based on our internal value judgement of the amount that we were willing to pay for a college education. Since my wife is an MBA and I am an MS in Computer Science with many years of management experience, our judgement was based on a kind of personal calculus for ROIC (Return On Invested Capital) for college which took into account how much we had available to spend, our perception of the “college experience” today, our personal experiences based on lots of college hours, and our observations and research into the career trajectory of people in the fields that our children were interested in. Some factors were based on “hard” data, some on totally subjective perceptions and conclusions.
I would expect that there is a very wide variance in parental perceptions and expectations in this area.
As a footnote, I found it interesting that d took a class during her senior year in high school called “Advanced Qualitative Analysis” (which was a lot less advanced than one might have expected from the title) in which the students researched and analyzed college costs, college loans, expected salaries, and loan repayment requirements. After completing her project in this area, she completely agreed with our conclusion on the maximum investment for college. No doubt, her conclusions were influenced greatly by her up-bringing, but it was a relief that we didn’t face any push-back from her on college spending.
@EmsDad Great information.
This was a tough one for us as my daughter got some incredible academic awards from some of the schools to which she was also accepted artistically but the top contender ended up being a conservatory program that provides talent money, but no academic merit so the award, while a good one and very welcome, was less than most of her academic awards. We had hoped to keep the cost in the $25,000-$30,000 range max and several of the schools would have been at that level or even much lower. However, when we started this process my husband and I agreed that we would base the final decision on the quality of the program and fit over finances as long as it made sense within our means. Ultimately we chose based on those criteria over cost so we are paying slightly more than we planned but still within our financial comfort zone. This is certainly something that is very personal to each family and definitely a topic that should be thought out well in advance of the audition process.
My outside limit is the cost of a SUNY school. S17 received a total of $4,500 in merit aid and $600 in local private scholarships towards the cost of about $21K. I have enough to cover the first year in his 529. He is planning to apply for an RA position and is looking into institutional scholarships he can apply for for next year. He plans to get a job for spending money and to strengthen his RA application (he plans to apply for a dorm attendant job). If he doesn’t get an RA position, he may have to take a loan the second year and move off campus after that - his school requires on campus for two years.
S17 will be pursuing a BFA in theater tech.
I might see it differently if my children were prodigy types, but being just normal study hard 28-32 ACT kids with normal career dreams I am not willing to break the bank. I’ve worked at too many Fortune 25 companies where engineers from the top 5 schools were working right next to the public universities to put any real value on the premium some of these school charge, at least when the end game is a normal careers.
20k/yr +/- per kid with a gpa requirement each semester…graduate school we said we will wait and see. We are making them take out 5500/yr loans each!
Our main deal was that our daughter would take out no student loans. Taking out the amount usually allowed for subsidized loans- about $25K over four years, the payment will be almost $300/month. She wants to live in NYC after she graduates so not having any student debt will be invaluable. We told her $25,000 a year; $15,000 out of pocket (ouch) and we’d come up with the rest somehow (home equity loan probably). In the end, she turned down the expensive East Coast schools that we would have figured out a way to pay for, and picked a school that gave her a huge talent award. Combined with her academic award, she has out-of-state tuition fully covered, so we are only paying $12K a year for room & board. I think she made a smart choice. My advice to all her younger MT friends & parents that aren’t rolling in cash is to take the SAT/ACT prep class- it will teach you the strategies for doing well on the tests and most academic scholarships are tied to GPA AND test scores. Then look for schools that give large guaranteed/assured academic awards and make sure you have those schools on your audition list. The academic awards make this whole business quite a bit more affordable.