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<p>More germane, I would think, is where professors’ kids go to college.</p>
<p>[Where</a> Professors Send Their Children to College - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37244508/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/]Where”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37244508/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/)</p>
<p>(a Vanderbilt University site has a pdf of the Siegfried & Getz paper)</p>
<p>cbreeze, if your future daughter in law has a huge debt load, you may want to tell your son to not pay it down more quickly than the way it was originally set up. The student debt is considered ‘her’ debt, even in a divorce, so if the marriage doesn’t work out, your son won’t have paid down a debt that wasn’t his to begin with, and he won’t be responsible for it if she ever leaves him.</p>
<p>Egads! Seriously? </p>
<p>I’m sure you will have a great marriage lagunal. </p>
<p>My daughters have no debt and trust funds. If they marry a guy with SL debt, I would hardly advise them to leave the guys hanging.</p>
<p>lagunal, my S is aware of the implications of her debt, thank you.
My S is currently purchasing a co-op in Manhattan. As a single purchaser, he will probably satisfy the co-op board’s strict financial qualifications. If he had waited until marriage and purchasing as a couple, it is possible many co-op boards would reject them because of her debt.</p>
<p>poetgirl, I never said ‘leave the guy hanging.’ I said to pay the loan the way it was meant to be paid as it was originally set up. What some people do is try to pay off their debts faster if they have the ‘extra’ cash, which is, in most cases, great financial advice with car loans, etc. But with a student loan, that is not the responsibility of the marriage to pay off quickly. Better to put money away for child’s college education fund or a retirement fund if you want to not spend it. The student loan will eventually get paid off, in time. And in the WORST case scenario, if the partner with the huge loan leaves the marriage, it will be his/her debt alone to pay back.</p>
<p>“WCC”- now I am sure we never had one. We had to buy ours (short) from the medical section of the bookstore (they moved the campus during my tenure- long story of dissociating from a private U et al). Residents and beyond got to wear long white coats- usually inscribed with at least the institution’s name and sometimes the department (my residency program gave us name tags to pin on the two coats they provided). In private practice the hospitals had white coats for anyone to throw on over scrubs when leaving the surgical area. Personally I think a white coat ceremony is a huge expense that proud parents shouldn’t spend the extra travel, time and money on. The big moment is graduation. At the beginning of the first year the students have done nothing special- they need to survive the four years.</p>
<p>There is definitely a separate issue of where to go for premed. The instate public U- flagship or not- is the most cost effective and works just as well as the elite schools. This assumes one considers any medical school- the instate ones being the most likely for admission. If not premed I would avoid some schools where the majority of science majors are premed.</p>
<p>Notice that many of us did not have much money before earning it as physicians. Some of us taught our kids values that helped us attain our goals. We always consider if something is worth purchasing, not just if we can afford it. Son is frugal, especially with his own money. We once had an upscale vacation condo an hour or two from home. I noticed the rich businessmen’s kids seemed into a different lifestyle than we were- more ostentatious. Also different lifestyles for different physicians.</p>
<p>On that note- just got 4 clearance embellished T shirts from Sears at $3 each- plus one for $5 (all originally listed at $30). Living the casual retired in Florida lifestyle.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting thread, and I agree with bclintonk that it is nice to see some new or infrequent posters here.</p>
<p>I also agree with the regional differences. I live in midwestern state school country and I often feel “other” with my elite private college degree. I have numerous friends here who also attended prestigious schools and most of them (not all:)) are proud to send their kids to state flagships or the better directionals.</p>
<p>“the better directionals”</p>
<p>I love that phrase. I plan to start using it all the time. I also want to figure out how to tell the better directionals from the worse ones (or at least the non-better ones).</p>
<p>JHS, I can’t tell if you are being facetious so I will clarify. My state (WI) has an extensive network of “system” schools as well as the flagship, UW-Madison. Of the 13 “directionals” (no one calls them that, but I have adopted CC language here), several (UW-LaCrosse, Eau Claire) are pretty highly respected overall, others are known for strength in individual programs (UW-Milwaukee has a fantastic arts school, Stevens Point has the nation’s top program in natural resource management, etc.), and most of the others simply serve a local or not very competitive student body. So yeah, there are better directionals.</p>
<p>Well, we will know that the introduction of this new phrase into the CC lexicon has been successful once people start referring to them as “BDs.” :)</p>
<p>I apologize for the overly dry humor. I was just appreciating that “better” and “directionals” (usually a mildly deprecatory term) are not often juxtaposed. Also, “direction” is about as morally neutral a concept as there is, and the phrase could be (mis)read as suggesting that some directions are better than others, which also amused me.</p>
<p>Of course there are quality differences among the tier of colleges we (yes, I) sometimes call “directionals”, and of course parents can feel proud of their children there. We have the same kind of system in Pennsylvania that you have in Wisconsin, and the same sense that some of the “PASSHE” colleges are quite good. I didn’t mean to imply that “directional” state schools were so horrible that they couldn’t possibly be “better” than anything, although in fairness I probably intended mockery of anyone who would be snobby about which directional school his kid was attending.</p>
<p>I thought “directionals” referred to compass-point schools: Northwestern, Southeastern, etc. No? What exactly does “directional” mean then?</p>
<p>In the CC context it refers to any non flagship or quasi flagship four year state school which attracts a significant portion of its students from a fifty mile radius. In California, we have the CSU system which was set up to primarily serve local students. Today, there are a few schools within the system that could be considered to have “evolved” into a non directional (most notably, Cal Poly SLO and Cal Maritime) but the vast majority have little on campus life and few students from outside of the region. In most other states the CSUs would be given “compass point” monickers, but because of the sheer number of schools, it’s easier to name them after the city/county they’re located in.</p>
<p>In Michigan, for example, there are the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Then there are Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan. The latter two are “directionals.” Generally, directionals are a lower tier within the hierarchy of state schools.<br>
(My state doesn’t have directionals, but we do have what one might consider satellite campuses with city names. Some of those have particular specialties.)</p>
<p>I might wince once they start calling some the “BVDs” (Better Vocational Directionals).:)</p>
<p>^^ And don’t forget Northern Michigan! Three different directionals, three very different schools.</p>
<p>And Central Michigan…</p>
<p>I never did figure out the SUNY system. As far as I could tell this is the gist:
There is no flagship. But if there were a flagship it’s probably Binghamton. And maybe Geneseo too, which is almost like an LAC though it’s twice as big as most private LACs. And Stony Brook is kind of a runner up. Especially if you like STEM. And like going home on weekends. Everything else is a directional. Definitely. Sort of. May be. No, not at all, not directionals in NYS. We are all created equal.</p>
<p>“most notably, Cal Poly SLO and Cal Maritime”</p>
<p>Cal Maritime is a “BD”? That’s MY county! Woop woop!</p>
<p>Examples of schools that are the likely reason for non-flagship state universities to be called “directionals”:</p>
<p>North/South/West Alabama
Northern Arizona
Northern Colorado
Western State Colorado
Central/Eastern/Western/Southern Connecticut State
East/South Georgia State
West Georgia
Georgia Southern/Southwestern
Southern Polytechnic State (Georgia)
North/South/West Florida
Eastern/Northern/Northeastern/Southern/Western Illinois
Northern Iowa
Eastern/Northern/Western Kentucky
Central/Eastern/Western Michigan
Southern Mississippi
Southeast Missouri State
East/Western Carolina (North Carolina)
Central State (Ohio)
Central Oklahoma
Northwestern/Southeastern/Southwestern Oklahoma State
East Central (Oklahoma)
Northeastern State (Oklahoma)
Eastern/Western/Southern Oregon
East/Middle Tennessee State
North Texas
Midwestern State (Texas)
Southern Utah
Central/Eastern/Western Washington</p>
<p>Not included are state universities where name of the state includes a direction, such as University of North/South Carolina/Dakota, West Virginia University.</p>
<p>There are a few private schools whose names look like “directional” university names, such as University of Southern California and Southern New Hampshire University.</p>