Hi everyone! I am listening to you once again.
Now, my son has got 2 offers, perhaps he will get more offers in a few months.
Many Chinese parents and students besides me pay more attention to the rankings of colleges .
I do not know how to choose between a college which ranks 20-30 and needs 40K dollars per year and a college which ranks 70-80 and give my son 14k awards per year.
The college with awards normally costs an international student about 30k tuition per year, so I need only pay 16K per year.
The college without scholarship costs an international student about 43k tuition per year.
Is it worth 28K dollars per year or 112K four years to get a better ranking?
On a side note, the 14k award is likely to be a merit-based one for a school ranks 70-80. It often comes with a contingency that your S needs to maintain a certain level of GPA. At my university that ranks 50-100, close to a half of international Chinese students cannot deliver that level of GPA and lose the award eventually (BTW, male students tend to lose the award due to spending too much time on video games when they suddenly are free from parents’ supervising). This is something you need to factor in your decision as well.
Excellent answers from both @intparent and @prof2dad . Is it worth it to you, the parent, to go into debt to finance an American education? I certainly would not go into debt for a difference of $60k. It will be many, many years before your son will earn enough to offset that difference, even if he does attend a higher ranked school.
Is your child fluent in English? Is your child the type of kid that will make the most of the opportunities presented anywhere he goes? Is your son able to easily make friends and will he be happy to assimiliate with American kids? If the answer to those three questions is yes, then he will do well at any college. It is possible that there will be a higher percentage of international students at the college that didn’t offer merit money, so you both should look at the percentages of international students at each college if that is important. What school does your son prefer, and if going into debt is an issue, does he know that? He should have a say in his choice, if finances are not an issue.
He is an international student. When he graduates, depending on his major he will be able to work here for up to two years. After that unless he is unusually lucky and can ge a work visa (H1B), he will need to leave. What we think about any particular university is not important at all. The only thing that matters is what his potential employers back in China think. Will the name of the university matter to them if he has good work experience here after graduation and before returning to China?
It is OK for him to ask the career centers at each university about job placement for international students like him.
These types of merit awards are ones my parents and some older relatives were most concerned about with some of their kids and especially with me considering my dismal HS GPA/performance.
Some parents are of the view its best to spend more for higher rank than taking the lower ranked school with a merit award which could be rescinded with one bad semester or two.
As an aside, I still find the remark about international students…especially East Asian ones having issues maintaining high GPAs to be strange despite the fact my perspective comes from my undergrad experience 2 decades ago. Of all the international students I knew at my college and others, the vast majority had no issues maintaining topflight GPAs.
Only 2 international students I know of in my entire undergrad career ended up being placed on academic probation/repeating freshman year…and that was because they assimilated a bit too much with mostly Native-born American groups who were part of the party/beer/weed crowd and neglected to attend class for most of the semester. And they became punchlines to inside jokes among classmates from their respective societies as a result.
This cannot be emphasized enough, especially considering hiring over there still places a premium on the perceived ranking/prestige of one’s undergrad college/university unless one has a respectable/elite grad degree to compensate.
And it’s not always the usual suspects as many of us Americans may think. OP and the kid should check with Chinese employers they know of to see their perceptions.
Not for the ranking per se, but there may be other reasons where that difference is worth it. Are the quality of opportunities that much better for the higher ranked school?
Of course it depends what $112K is worth to you in the scheme of life and what your priorities are. I gladly paid full price at private schools to give my daughters the best education that I could give them. It was worth every penny to me and price was not a consideration as we had saved up since they were babies and lived below our means for many years. We’ve still never bought a new car.
“As an aside, I still find the remark about international students…especially East Asian ones having issues maintaining high GPAs to be strange despite the fact my perspective comes from my undergrad experience 2 decades ago.”
@cobrat I understand your sentiment; I was one of those international students from East Asia slightly more than 2 decades ago. Things have changed quite a bit at the undergraduate level for the past 2 decades. For one, distractions due to electronic devices/media, such as mobile games, Facebook, Youtube, texting, did not exist 2 decades ago.
While electronic distractions are much more convenient and widespread, that doesn’t mean there weren’t electronic distractions which could cause unwary/uncaring undergrads to prioritize those distractions over classes and campus life back in the '90s.
For instance, I had a roommate who nearly got placed on academic suspension because of his addictions to MUDs on his PC and knew of several undergrads at other colleges who flunked out/came very close to flunking out because of their addictions to IRC chat or gaming on PCs and gaming consoles of the day.
And the vast majority of those tended to be Native-born Americans, not internationals.
Then again, back then most international students…especially from East/South Asia weren’t in a financial position to afford such devices compared with their native-born American counterparts.
@cobrat You are right; there were PCs and big-box gaming consoles in those good old days. Like many international students from East Asia those days, I was too poor to afford them. So I was not distracted then.
“Chinese students used to be considered top-notch but over the past five years their image has changed completely — wealthy kids who cheat,” said Chen Hang, chief development officer at WholeRen, which is based in Pittsburgh, Pa.
But back to the topic at hand, I don’t think a college ranked as #30 vs. #80 is significant enough to warrant spending tens of thousands of dollars per year. You’ll still get a good education at either college if you apply yourself and take advantage of opportunities.
If your son’s goal is to return to China to work after getting his undergraduate degree, then look for the school with the best alumni network in your country.
If he is planning to attend a US graduate program, then the rank (30 vs 80) is not going to matter. Choose the school that will better help your son get into a good graduate program in his field. Also look to see if one school offers better undergraduate research opportunities which will be useful in both job and graduate school placement.
" Is it worth 28K dollars per year or 112K four years to get a better ranking?"
Is it worth spending more for a Lexus than a Toyota?
There’s only one right answer to this. It depends.
How much money do you have to spend? What is your kid going to study? What school is the better fit for your kid (academic programs, size, location, social, weather, etc.)?
But only you can decide how you want to balance the trade off between cost and general academic reputation.
All things being equal, some folks would pay that much more for a 20-30 ranked school (example #27 Tufts) and some others would instead take the deal at the 70-80 ranked school (example #74 American University).
Both Tufts and American sell out their seats every year. Just like Lexus and Toyota both sell plenty of vehicles every year.
My son like liberal and arts education, so he does not decide his major.
He would like to attend a top LAC with scholarship or a Liberal and arts college in a big university without financial aid.
Because many LACS only receive ED applying. So, he select one LAC to apply with ED ( very difficult to get an offer). Others with EA are all universities including UVA \ U MICHIGAN\ UNC.
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For a Liberal Arts education, it probably is not worth paying the extra $100k+. Many good schools can provide a fine LA education.
If your son was going into Wall Street banking, then the school’s name matters. For any other career, the school name matters very little, if at all.
It sounds like you live in the US now? Is your son fluent in English? If so, then he probably would do fine and not lose his scholarship.
If spending the extra $100K+ will not put a dent in your lifestyle or affect your long term savings/retirement plans, then congrats- you are in the enviable position of being able to choose whatever school your child feels is the best fit, and will provide the best return on your investment as he looks towards job prospects. The college application and admission process has seen many changes, year after year. Stay focused on current information.
