Why include expensive colleges on list??

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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<p>I've just finished reading thru results of searches on debt, full ride & merit aid, within the MT forum.</p>

<p>There seems to be two "schools" (no pun intended) of thought when it comes to the more expensive top name, top ranked MT programs:</p>

<p>--Put on your list, apply. Many of these schools give good merit aid. You won't know until you try.</p>

<p>--Only include schools on your list that your student could attend financially. No use wasting time & money, and getting your student's hopes up, visiting X program if there's no way you can pay to attend.</p>

<p>At our high school, most kids go to in-state public schools using TOPS money. Going out of state signals you're rich or weird! And I thought that way, too, just a few years ago when my S graduated in '09. Two kids from his class applied to an OOS school and we thought that was dumb...just stay in-state and get it free.</p>

<p>Yea...I've come a long way, baby!</p>

<p>So now my MT wanna be D (a junior in HS) has been saying for about a year now that she doesn't wanna stay in-state at all. We visited the one MT program in LA in her freshman year and it has no connections to NYC, no guest artists, no senior showcase. There have been a few alums that have gone on to tours, one right now with tour of Color Purple. She would get a full ride there. But hates the town and says she won't go.</p>

<p>She could get full rides at two schools in MS with MT degrees....both have some connections to NYC, summer programs abroad, etc. But she wants to try to get into a well-known program OOS.</p>

<p>She has a good GPA (4.0 unweighted) and fairly good SAT score (1350/1920) and it taking SAT again 10/1. She probably won't make national merit as she has been scoring right under the cutoff...she's been studying some but is overwhelmed with school, too.</p>

<p>I am fairly practical and realize money doesn't grow on trees...and while we have some money saved for college for her, it's not enough to prevent her from graduating with debt if she went to a truly big name program.</p>

<p>My DH is an engineer...much more practical than me. Doesn't even think she should major in MT....needs a major that she can get a guaranteed job in. yada yada... Still working on him..</p>

<p>So, we are meeting with a coach for a non-binding consultation to assess her skills...but as I've been researching schools and compiling her list, I've become very depressed!</p>

<p>We do not qualify for financial aid, so she will have to get money through scholarships, either merit and/or talent.</p>

<p>I can't see spending time and money over the next two years visiting schools and then applying, auditioning there when there's just NO way we could afford them unless she got practically a full ride! I don't want her to fall in love with a school and say sorry we can't afford it!</p>

<p>I want to help her pursue her dreams, but ....</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for reading this long post and offering any words of wisdom. I just needed to vent more than anything....and we are in the VERY early stages of this. My hat is off to all of you who have already gone through this!!</p>

<p>Allison</p>

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<p>I sent you a long Private Message.</p>

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<p>Allison,</p>

<p>I think the answer is to craft a mix of schools – reach/safeties – and that INCLUDES finncial safeties. With auditioned schools, you have no idea what the acceptance outcome will be, much less the final cost. If you have a carefully constructed list, and go into it with the idea that your kid only needs one acceptance at a school you can afford…it WILL work out. It helps if that guaranteed financial safety is a nonaudition school that your kid likes (!!!) so that you know, at the end of the day/year, she will have somewhere to go.</p>

<p>Your child has some good academic stats that may unlock guaranteed merit dolllars at some schools. Don’t sweat the NM stuff – my daughter is a National Merit Scholar at her MT program, and the award was pretty minimal (appreciated, to be sure, but not a full ride). Many schools with good MT programs don’t participate in National Merit at all, and for those that do, the dollar awards are often far from a full ride. If anyone wants my treatise on the National Merit process and MT auditions, feel free to PM me…it’s another piece of a complicated puzzle.</p>

<p>So…what did we do in crafting d’s list last year? She had a mix of schools, with pricetags ranging from $18,000 for an in-state program to $47,000+ at a school not known for lots of scholarships and aid. We sat down early and did the FAFSA Forecaster, which gave an idea of what we would be expected to come up with financially, and after the heart attack of seeing what the Feds thought we could afford, went back and researched scholarship options. </p>

<p>Once the list was solid, auditions were scheduled, etc. we also looked at each college to see about academic scholarship and competitions. Many of these were through the school’s honors college. </p>

<p>At the end of the school year, our h.s. likes to list the $$ amounts of scholarships offered to the kids. D’s total amount (80% academic, 20% talent offerings) was 1/10th of the entire amount the senior class was offered. Why? Because she had to apply to more schools, to work her tail off for scholarships (some automatic by grades similar to your daughter’s, some competitive) as if she were going to attend each school, as she had academic admits to each school long before she heard the artistic results…and by then, the scholarship opportunities would have been gone. (She also thought it was great scholarship karma to be able to release these awards when she chose not to attend the other schools…knowing that a kid on the alternate list for an Elon Fellowship got a happy phone call, that another student could receive funding to attend a dream school…)</p>

<p>In the end, she was astoundingly fortunate to receive an artistic admittance to the school that also awarded her a competed-for full ride. I remember when she was invited to campus to compete for that award, she almost didn’t go, as she hadn’t heard back on her artisitc admit there, and was in the midst of other auditions, etc. She was also a bit intimidated, as she was competing university-wide, against kids with all sorts of “braniac” majors… This was a school in the mid-to-upper end of the price range. </p>

<p>So keep building that list – it’s not just kids in MT who are creating lists of dream/unaffordable/hard to be admitted schools…other students are doing it too, but they don’t have the extra hurdle of the artistic admission (then again, nor the opportunity for a talent scholarship…). Financial safety? Yes – get it on the list!! MT nonaudition safety? Ditto. A go for broke school, with the understanding that the stars have to align (acceptance, financial aid…the whole ballpark) for a student to attend? Sure…it’s a time of uncertainty…which will make you crazy…but in a couple of years you will be on the “We Survived” side of things, knowing the outcome. And hooray for you in starting your research now…your d will thank you for it.</p>

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<p>We sat down with our kids early on and told them exactly what we could afford to pay (and would pay) per year - tuition, room & board, books, transportation, etc. They were free to apply to any school they chose with the understanding that unless it came in at or below our financial limit, it was a non-starter. So, D1 applied to 10 schools is all different price points and was accepted to 4. Three of those came in at or below our limit - so she was free to choose her favorite. S2 is a HS junior and he already knows his price tag, so he’s busy looking for acceptable financial safeties. Once he finds those, he can choose some “go for broke” dream schools. Hit them hard, early on, with the financial realities and there will be no drama in the end (IMO).</p>

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<p>I enjoyed reading, “Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College” by Andrew Ferguson. This book has little to do with the MT process, but I thought that it presented some perspectives that I found interesting as well as entertaining on the whole college admission/selection process from a parent’s “tell me again why we have to go through this?” point of view, as opposed to most of the books that present it as a “fait accompli.” We just sent our oldest (non-MTer) to college this fall and we have an aspiring MTer on the way up. The book made me wonder a lot about the cost vs. benefit for various colleges and it added a whole lot of questions to our list for future schools.</p>

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<p>Pls excuse my ignorance… what is MT?</p>

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<p>MT = Musical Theatre</p>

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<p>ahhhhh…ok thank you!!</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>We saw a number of pricey private schools come down in tuition by way of academic and/or talent awards to levels similar to our in state schools. My daughter is smart but not a national merit finalist! :slight_smile: Darn math…</p></li>
<li><p>A student can actually double major in MT and engineering at UMich.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>If you are sure that you will not qualify for any financial aid, then you need to be practical in your expectation of what good merit aid is and what that means your total expenses would be.</p>

<p>I would say that good merit aid is about $10K/ year. Really good merit aid is in the $15K/year range and you should be doing the happy dance if you get to $20K/ year.</p>

<p>In other words, if your daughter is able to get merit aid, chances are you will still have to pay approximately $40K+ a year for tuition/room /board in many schools.</p>

<p>Can you afford that? Would it require your D (or you) to take on too much debt? </p>

<p>Also understand that if your EFC is above the cost of attendance, you will NOT qualify for scholarships/ merit aid set aside for those with financial need. Sometimes people receiving financial aid will talk about their big merit scholarships. You can only be in the applicant pool for those if your EFC is lower than the cost of the school.</p>

<p>good luck</p>

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<p>We are somewhat in the same situation as you mom2them- while we saved for college, there is no way we could come up with $50,000/year unless we took out huge loans, which we won’t do (not just because she is MT, but because we would not let any of our kids go into such huge debt for college). I would echo what others have said- we let our kids know up front what the financial limitations were and told them that they could include more expensive schools on their application lists with the understanding that if they were granted great financial aid, then it might be a possibility. That being said, it is so important to include not only academic and talent safeties, fits and reaches on the list, but also financial safeties, fits and reaches. Our D was fortunate in that in her first BFA Conservatory program, she received enough of a talent scholarship to make the school affordable for us. She actually ended up deciding to leave the program and transfer to a university setting BFA program, and again received a very generous talent award, making it cost much less than any of our in-state programs. If we had limited her to schools that were affordable, she would have had a much more limited choice of programs. Just be very up-front about your financial limitations and hopefully the drama of being accepted to a school that is out of reach financially will not happen!</p>

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<p>It’s heartbreaking to see your child gain admittance to a prestigious or desired MT program, only to tell them that they cannot attend. Make sure you have the emotional constitution to handle this situation if it arises.</p>

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<p>@dianemtmom - I don’t mean to pick on your comment, but I have to admit that as a jaded marketing VP, I just wish that our company’s potential customers would be “heartbroken” because they wanted to buy our products but couldn’t because they were just too darn expensive. It turns that in a normal world (and not the topsy-turvy world of higher ed and other luxury goods) customers just go buy what they can afford and are generally more than happy to do so. I would love to have the aura and gestalt that the higher education system has managed to create in the minds of the middle class. But is it really worth it?</p>

<p>“It Depends on What You Pay” from the Fantasticks keeps popping into my head whenever I think about college costs.</p>

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<p>^^^lol…</p>

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<p>@emsdad - My comment was not to imply a student could not be happy and equally/better educated at a less expensive school. I just noticed it was not discussed in the previous posts, and wish I had given it more thought when my D took the “apply to all schools and see what happens” approach.</p>

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<p>To echo emsdad…</p>

<p>When I shop for cars, I don’t go to the Volvo or Cadillac lots. I check out Ford or Chevy… even if Volvo or Cadillac are offering great discounts. I comparison shop and see what’s the best rated mid-price car with the most features I want that I can afford.</p>

<p>I do that with most everything I buy now, from cars to TVs, computers, cameras, etc. And I’m doing that now with colleges for my D.</p>

<p>I’m not even looking at the top rated, most expensive schools because as uskoolfish said, even with good merit aid, it would be $40K a year. And I just don’t think it is worth it. I wouldn’t agree to pay that or have my D/S go into debt for that for ANY degree, much less MT! (BTW, my S is a junior pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at a public in-state school in LA. He will graduate will very little debt and has several internships.)</p>

<p>For me personally, I don’t think the value of a “top name” university is worth going into $200,000 in debt! I’m truly sorry if I’m offending anyone, but we have all seen stories of the kids who graduate with a ton of debt and can’t find jobs. I don’t want my kids to go through that, and frankly, they don’t want to either!! (Some of my bargain hunting over the years has rubbed off on them! lol)</p>

<p>I believe in auditions and in the workplace, you are hired by what you can do, not where you studied. Now, obviously where you study can help improve your skills so that you can “do” more things better --whether dance and sing or master a complicated engineering software program. Although I realize that where you studied can open doors (in MT AND engineering, etc), but it may not necessarily get you the job.</p>

<p>I really don’t mean to offend anyone. I just don’t think it is right for us.</p>

<p>My kids could have gone to parochial high schools in the NOLA area…we would have had to spend about 6-10K a year and they would have received a great education. But we chose to put them in a public school, saving the money, and they still received a great education. My son’s stats 4.0GPA UW, 31 ACT, 4AP courses, honors/gifted. Got credit for all AP courses. My D’s stats thus far as a current junior 4.0GPA UW, 26ACT as a freshman, 1350 SAT (CR&M) as a sophomore. We will use that money now to help pay for their college!</p>

<p>I believe there are some gems out there, not top name, but are willing to give merit money and I have found some, a mix of publics and privates, audition and non-audition. I’ve spent the last 24 hours putting together a spread sheet of MT colleges in the SE listing tuition and merit aid, some aid is even guaranteed that D has already earned based on her stats thus far…assuming same aid is available next year.</p>

<p>We may still include one or two financial / audition stretch programs on the list, but I am feeling better now that T’ve looked at the numbers and the aid available that she will end up somewhere studying MT two years from now.</p>

<p>Thanks for all your replies!</p>

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<p>I think there are two issues here.</p>

<ol>
<li>What can YOU afford to GIVE your student for college expenses; and</li>
<li>What does YOUR STUDENT feel they want to contribute over and above that for their college training (scholarships, student loans, jobs, etc)</li>
</ol>

<p>When parents say “We can’t AFFORD it” it means they can’t afford to GIVE the student this for FREE. But students can take out loans against what they feel is value for their money. We explained to our son that if he wanted the $40K school, we could give him the $20K money and he would have to take out loans for the rest. We did not judge his decision or try to sway him, other than to say that graduating with $80K in loans as a struggling actor would be difficult. But that he wouldn’t be the first person to decide it was worth it. In the end, he decided on a school he loved and could afford, and with his (not full-ride) scholarship he can graduate debt-free. A great place for an actor to be. But he could’ve chose the loan, and I would’ve understood that, too.</p>

<p>Not everyone who is middle income chooses the Chevy or only looks on the Chevy lot (to use the above example.) Some really do choose the Volvo or Cadillac and sacrifice something else and they can still live within their means. Just because I wouldn’t do that, doesn’t mean I can’t AFFORD it, it means I don’t VALUE it enough to sacrifice what it takes to cover the loan I would have to take out…it means I think the Chevy is good enough and will get the job done. But I respect the people who want the Caddy…it has a well-earned reputation.</p>

<p>That is the discussion I would have with my child in advance…how much does it MEAN to you? Is the value of that school worth what you would have to sacrifice to make it happen…</p>

<p>And I try to remember that ultimately it is my SON’s decision and not MINE.</p>

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<p>I think much that has been said has been said well and all have valid points. As some have stated above we had the conversation with our daughter prior to auditioning what we could afford to contribute to her education, but had we limited her to only auditioning for programs we could afford she would not be where she is today! We went into the audition season with the knowledge that if she didn’t go for the programs she most wanted to attend, she would always have doubts or a case of what ifs. We also had to limit the number of programs she auditioned for, so her selection of schools was very precise. She had non-audition full ride safeties in state so she knew she had something, but she definitely would not have been satisfied without giving it her best shot.</p>

<p>Having said all of that…we were so fortunate that she was accepted to all, except a waitlist from one. Each offered her both merit and academic scholarships that made all of her choices affordable, but one. If we had limited her on where she could have auditioned based on cost, we would have always questioned what if…</p>

<p>We had a happy ending I know, but if it happened to us, it can happen.</p>

<p>Best of luck in your search.</p>

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<p>. . . and my daughter is at her finacial ‘reach’ school, NYU, because they gave her a $20,000 artistic/merit scholarship combined with an additional generous possibility in work study. Our financial college counselor, who had remarked that NYU was known to be quite stingy with money, apologized for his comment:-)</p>

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<p>^^^Same happened to my D at NYU. And in senior year at NYU, she got three more scholarships from them (not as big as the four year one). Countless times people have remarked to me about letting my kid go to such an expensive college but we did not pay the sticker price. That said, I’m gonna be paying the price we did pay for many years still to come. </p>

<p>Nobody can count on this but as some of us have experienced, it does happen.</p>