Middle class family being bamboozled with large "scholarships" from tier 5 LACs

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I find it so interesting that so many kids from my DC's public MCPS high school go to these no name D3 colleges to play a sport. It's not like they are getting a full scholarship. Just seems so short sighted to pick a school with low return on investment for the privilege of playing in a mediocre league for 4 years. Some of these kids could clearly get better educations for the same price.

Wealthy parents trying to save face and not feel like they wasted ten plus years on travel sports, hotels, travel, lessons, etc. One wealthy couple we knew said their daughter was going to play soccer at an obscure D3 college in Boston. Turns out she is not even on the varsity team, she is only playing club soccer at the college.

That's not a waste if the child wanted to play and enjoyed soccer.

Can't basically anyone who played travel easily walk on a club team at a no-name lower rung D3? Don't mislead people and spin yarn about how your teen is going to college across the country to play a sport at the next level when they're going to play club, barely a step up from intramurals, at some bottom tier D3. Even the varsity teams at bottom tier D3s are mediocre.

Then you clearly do not follow NCAA D1-3 soccer with schools you've "never heard of" in the 2023 championship playoffs right now.

I... can't imagine caring about this. Let alone using this as a basis for college choice.

Really? So little imagination and empathy that you can’t imagine someone has different joys, loves, and goals than you? I think what you mean is you judge other people for having different priorities. I bet it scares you a little too, the thought that a kid could do what brings them joy (prioritize their activity when choosing a college) and then actually end up a happy and productive adult. Since you’ve prioritized prestige, money, and a constrained career path it is threatening to know there was another way to a good life.

Not to sidetrack things, but I know way too many baseball players who pick obscure D3 colleges to play baseball and know literally nothing about the school otherwise. There are too many conversations where the parents can tell you where it is located, that their kid can play baseball...and literally nothing else.

What majors do they offer, what are some of their special programs, how are the dorms, how did the faculty seem, talk to any of the students (other than some of the current baseball players), etc. Every single question met with a shrug.

Maybe it all works out, but there are families that have these blinders on that are pretty dramatic.

How do you know all these ball players? And do you seriously engage in this level of questioning with parents? I can’t imagine doing so or anyone doing this with me about my DCs’ college choices. There’s a level of obsession here that may strike readers as unhealthy.

I mean my kid has played on competitive teams and all the players/parents tweet out the college commitments.

Asking some basic questions on how the picked the school is pretty normal.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I find it so interesting that so many kids from my DC's public MCPS high school go to these no name D3 colleges to play a sport. It's not like they are getting a full scholarship. Just seems so short sighted to pick a school with low return on investment for the privilege of playing in a mediocre league for 4 years. Some of these kids could clearly get better educations for the same price.

Wealthy parents trying to save face and not feel like they wasted ten plus years on travel sports, hotels, travel, lessons, etc. One wealthy couple we knew said their daughter was going to play soccer at an obscure D3 college in Boston. Turns out she is not even on the varsity team, she is only playing club soccer at the college.

That's not a waste if the child wanted to play and enjoyed soccer.

Can't basically anyone who played travel easily walk on a club team at a no-name lower rung D3? Don't mislead people and spin yarn about how your teen is going to college across the country to play a sport at the next level when they're going to play club, barely a step up from intramurals, at some bottom tier D3. Even the varsity teams at bottom tier D3s are mediocre.

Then you clearly do not follow NCAA D1-3 soccer with schools you've "never heard of" in the 2023 championship playoffs right now.

I... can't imagine caring about this. Let alone using this as a basis for college choice.

Really? So little imagination and empathy that you can’t imagine someone has different joys, loves, and goals than you? I think what you mean is you judge other people for having different priorities. I bet it scares you a little too, the thought that a kid could do what brings them joy (prioritize their activity when choosing a college) and then actually end up a happy and productive adult. Since you’ve prioritized prestige, money, and a constrained career path it is threatening to know there was another way to a good life.

Not to sidetrack things, but I know way too many baseball players who pick obscure D3 colleges to play baseball and know literally nothing about the school otherwise. There are too many conversations where the parents can tell you where it is located, that their kid can play baseball...and literally nothing else.

What majors do they offer, what are some of their special programs, how are the dorms, how did the faculty seem, talk to any of the students (other than some of the current baseball players), etc. Every single question met with a shrug.

Maybe it all works out, but there are families that have these blinders on that are pretty dramatic.

How do you know all these ball players? And do you seriously engage in this level of questioning with parents? I can’t imagine doing so or anyone doing this with me about my DCs’ college choices. There’s a level of obsession here that may strike readers as unhealthy.

I mean my kid has played on competitive teams and all the players/parents tweet out the college commitments.

Asking some basic questions on how the picked the school is pretty normal.

Yep. They go to poverty colleges they’ve never heard in deadend towns just to be able to say their kid still plays sports. It’s nuts. A handful of sporty girls we know did this and they end up back home with a worthless degree, then go back to college locally to get a nursing degree to get a career going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many kids go to these colleges, see their high school friends having fun at a handful of public universities or GW/GU, get homesick, and transfer out to rejoin friends. It ends up being a waste of time. There’s a reason they have to bribe you with six-figures of scholarships to get you even consider applying.

This is why it's important to look at retention rate. Some do very well, others are crappy (and can say the same about public Us).

FWIW, one of my kids chose an OOS LAC in part because she did not want to know anyone on campus. Probably in reaction to seeing my first go to Virginia Tech and still choose to mostly hang out with his HS friends. Yes, I realize you can go to VT and never see anyone from HS but that was not how he has chosen to do college.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:so, they have to spend even more money to get a good paying job? Even more bamboozling.

Tell us, is there some secret way to making millions as a BigLaw partner with only an undergraduate degree?

Aggressive smart kids in 2023 who want to go to a hyper-competitive T14 law school and hyper-competitive "Big Law" career aren't going to podunk bottom tier private colleges nobody has heard of, where their average classmate is some nitwit who scored 1,100 on the SAT, and one-third of their class never graduates.

Ha! Have you even looked at the bios of the partners of the biggest firms? A lot of “podunk” undergrads in there (but usually, but not always, top law schools).

You see what you want to see. And you're also comparing boomers and old gen X law partners to gen Y kids entering undergrad? You are deluded if you think going to a podunk LOW RANKED or UNRANKED regional private college is a ticket to anything. If your teen is really smart, competitive and aggressive – and wants to be some hot shot law firm attorney – they want to be around peers who push them, not a bunch of nitwits in a podunk small town in the middle of nowhere. Again, we are NOT talking about Williams or even Trinity. We are talking about colleges nobody has ever heard of who throw fake scholarship money discounts to everyone on their email list.

Honestly, where you went to undergrad for law doesn’t really matter.

This. Law school matters a lot and they care about GPA and LSAT and very little about where the undergrad degree is from.

This is wrong, unless you're a minority. All things being equal, an Ivy or flagship public university applicant is getting in over a peer from a no-name non-selective private college. And admissions data for lower rung private colleges are public record. Dime a dozen high school students with fake inflated grades and 50-80 percentile SAT scores do not miraculously score 95-99.9 percentile on the LSAT. It is magical thinking to think some teen who ends up at a slacker private college turns into a fierce elbowy gunner with a 178 LSAT score hungry for HLS. Kids wired for prestige and competitiveness for law or medical school want that environment coming out of high school. They would be miserable at a random regional private college full of average nidwits.

Your defensiveness is bizarre. And so strange because you clearly are not in law. No, it doesn’t matter where you went to undergrad. And the LSAT is a very specific logic test. There are plenty of successful lawyers from lower ranked undergrads or, god forbid, community colleges.

You clearly struggle with math and statistics. Smart ambitious kids tend to seek out colleges with smart ambitious peers. Harvard and YLS aren’t full of middle class bumpkins who randomly scored 178 on the LSAT at their podunk college.

DP, at my top 5 law school there were plenty from lower ranked, unknown schools and they were really smart (our law review editor in chief went to a state school disparaged here). The Ivy League kids were definitely not uniformly the top of the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many kids go to these colleges, see their high school friends having fun at a handful of public universities or GW/GU, get homesick, and transfer out to rejoin friends. It ends up being a waste of time. There’s a reason they have to bribe you with six-figures of scholarships to get you even consider applying.

ITA. It's a wonder that these SLACS are able to stay open.