Paying for a second or third tier college
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Anonymous
Would your mind change if the student was using the GI bill and could get in state tuition? |
Anonymous
Assuming it changes the COA meaningfully, probably. If it resulted in access to in-state tuition, sure. It would expand what I’d consider. |
Anonymous
Solid list (except Brown is in the 2nd tier and Northeastern belongs in none of the above). |
Anonymous
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William & Mary is a fine school, but I would have no problem paying more for Carleton which is an academic powerhouse, offers a world-class education and reputationally is valued by knowledgeable, discerning, sophisticated bodies of influence in the U.S. and around the world. Nitpickers who actually think that Northwestern is a third-tier school reveal their own lack of these qualities.
In any case, a smarter, more commonsensical way to approach the issue is to stipulate that as a general rule, you'd be willing to pay above and beyond in-state tuition for any school with an undergraduate student body that is "more accomplished" than Rutgers' which can be crudely evaluated, statistically speaking, here: https://admissions.rutgers.edu/apply/how-we-make-decisions#tab=panel-3. Rutgers is not Berkeley. But NE public flagships get much, much less credit for the strength of their offerings and student bodies than they deserve, in no small part because, as one poster mentioned, the most established schools in the region are amongst the oldest and most prestigious private institutions in the country. Below is a partial list of schools based upon academic quality alone for which I'd be willing to shell out beyond the price of Rutgers: Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Cal Tech, Carleton, Columbia, Cornell University, Dartmouth, Davidson, Deep Springs, Duke, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Grinnell, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Oberlin, Pomona, Princeton, Reed, Rice, Smith, St. John's, Stanford, Swarthmore, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UChicago, UNC-Chapel Hill, UPenn, UVA, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams, Yale |
Anonymous
Do you have kids in college (or out of college)? A number of the "second tier" schools (SLACs ranked 20 to 50) offer merit that would have brought my younger kid's tuition to below that of my older who attends a notoriously stingy state flagship. Some would have been cheaper than her high school. Ultimately, she chose a higher tier SLAC with more limited merit, but the difference over four years is less than $100K. |
Anonymous
| Some people are happy to spend $70 for a filet mignon, other people won't spend more on a meal than the cost of a Big Mac. This is a silly thread because what one is willing to pay for is more a function of the extent of their resources and the kinds of things they appreciate rather than the intrinsic value of the thing being considered. |
Anonymous
If you base off of who who gets from my DCs private. Theres several students that get into Cornell and Dartmouth but rejected or waitlisted from Vandy, Rice, or Emory. You rarely if ever see that with Brown. |
Anonymous
Why would you automatically assume the DC is a better student than the cc transfer? Every single state university has a program that allows automatic admission to students with at least a 3.4 GPA. Here is UVAs statement ..” The University of Virginia (UVA) offers seamless transfer pathways for community college graduates, most notably through the Guaranteed Admission Agreement (GAA) with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS)” Here’s a very generous program that UT Austin has …” If you are currently at Austin Community College (ACC), look into the ACC PACE Program. This co-enrollment program allows you to take classes at ACC while living on the UT campus, with a guaranteed path to full-time admission to UT Austin after your first year if you meet program requirements.” Stop being ignorant. |