<p>Some states participate in an academic common market…whereby students receive a reduced tuition rate at out of state public universities for majors that are not offered in their state.I believe Texas does NOT particpate in ANY academic common market exchange programs at the undergrad level. I think they do so only for grad schools and only with North Carolina and Florida. I could be wrong…so someone should check.</p>
<p>However, there are many public universities in Texas with a huge variety of majors…and for instate residents these are a financial bargain. A student who is competitive for admissions to MIT, Cornell, Princeton might garner some merit aid from the UT system…wouldn’t they?</p>
<p>Oh yes…he’d qualify for merit at several Texas universities…but he wants out of Texas.</p>
<p>I think another problem is this… The student has high stats and might be thinking…“I DESERVE to go to an elite school, therefore a mid-tier with scholarship money is beneath me.”</p>
<p>See, I completely understand that mindset. It only makes sense that someone would think something like that, because that’s how we tend to train people. We tell them that if they work hard, they will get good things based on how hard they worked and how well they did. So, logically, anyone who gets straight As should go to the Ivy Leagues and anyone who gets straight Fs should go to a community college, and so on so forth. That’s a perfectly logical inference to draw for a high school student.</p>
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<p>Bearing that in mind, a CollegeBoard search might be helpful if the OP hasn’t done that yet. If the OP knows his maximum on how much he can spend per year (including parental contributions, any scholarships/grants, and loans), he can find a list of every college on CollegeBoard, selected against the state of Texas and by price.</p>
<p>For example, I ran a quick search just now for 4-year colleges that have Out of State tuition of less than $20,000 per year that are not in Texas and I got 1005 results. They’re probably not all good options depending on what the OP wants to do in college, but I doubt they’re all cesspools.</p>
<p>*I think another problem is this… The student has high stats and might be thinking…“I DESERVE to go to an elite school, therefore a mid-tier with scholarship money is beneath me.”</p>
<p>See, I completely understand that mindset. It only makes sense that someone would think something like that, because that’s how we tend to train people. We tell them that if they work hard, they will get good things based on how hard they worked and how well they did.*</p>
<p>That’s the problem when we don’t explain to kids from a young age that money also comes into play. </p>
<p>It always amazes me to see posts on CC where kids just think they can pick schools like kids in a penny-candy store without thinking that money should be an issue. </p>
<p>Maybe because K-12 education is free (for those who go to public schools), that also encourages that kind of thinking - even tho people don’t get to choose their public school to attend - unless they move to the area.</p>
<p>They might not get to pick the public school (although in many areas only certain schools have certain specialty programs and you can transfer around based on what specialty program; in my own county, for example, there were two schools that hosted the IB program on the opposite ends of the county; there was also one high school that hosted a kind of pre-nursing program – students didn’t have to go there to do the program but if they went somewhere else they had to take a bus from their base school to attend the pre-nursing program’s school even though they took all of their other classes at the base school).</p>
<p>Free universal public education might play into it, but I don’t think anyone actually believes that college is free. Often, what I tend to notice in threads in my short time here is the assumption that the cost of the school doesn’t matter because if you have amazing grades and activities you’ll win a full-ride or another substantial scholarship that will let you go wherever you want. That does occasionally happen but it doesn’t happen often enough to make it a good idea to rely on that. </p>
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<p>Yeah. I’ve also noticed an odd tendency (at least according to posters here) that a lot of kids have no idea how much their parents make or what kind of property they own. If your parents own half of Dubai and several mansions on in the Bay State, you’re probably not going to qualify for the Pell grant.</p>
<p>*If your parents own half of Dubai and several mansions on in the Bay State, you’re probably not going to qualify for the Pell grant. *</p>
<p>LOL…</p>
<p>What’s even more shocking for many is that even if they have an EFC that is lower than COA, that does NOT mean that the difference will be paid for with free money. It’s usually gets covered in LOANS…that the family doesn’t want.</p>