OP, my dh and I have advanced degrees, WORK at a university, and our siblings and niece/ nephew wanted absolutely no advice from us when looking at colleges. It made no sense, but we are the younger siblings, so I only assume our older siblings thought we knew nothing about our own profession. One nephew ended up dropping out and never getting a college degree, another had a very hard time but did graduate, and one niece did ok. There is nothing you can do if they don't want your advice or won't listen to it. I would have loved to have a relative to help me navigate college, but there was no one, so I don't understand either OP. |
No, they don’t. They use the sports teams to get people to go there. Half the school “plays” a sport. |
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Several of DD’s friends went to D3 schools to play their sport. They received academic merit money or needs based assistance and their out of pocket expenses were significantly less than their state university costs would have been. Every one of them played their sport all 4 years, loved their school, and either got good jobs after undergrad or went directly to grad school. It’s not for everyone. But for plenty of kids it’s a great path. Hardly a disaster. |
Congrats on your four degrees. I hope you're a troll because if not, you are the biggest stuck up pile of dung for a family member that I would only wish on my worst enemy. |
It’s challenging to talk to a niece or the parents when the parents’ egos seem so caught up in making sure she plays in college, any college. They’re being totally irrational. I think it’s a terrible decision to go to an obscure private college in the middle of nowhere when she could likely get into UVA. UVA will have the most recourses, the best departments, and best students. And again they have no money. Please don’t lie to me that some obscure d3 college is going to let her go there for free. Ain’t happening. |
+1 It is a perfectly reasonable option to choose especially for a student who wants a small, close-knit community vs. a huge public university. Absolutely, the priority should be a good program for the major (that's pretty easy to check out for nursing) and a reasonable cost. But you can find that at a lot of places. Sounds like OP is just an education snob and really dislikes her SIL. |
You would think someone as overeducated as OP and her husband would know you don’t really know the cost/debt until you get in and get your aid package.
Applying widely is very wise to compare grant packages. |
All of your daughters’ student-athlete friends shared their intimate family net worth and household income with you and you helped them fill out FAFSA and saw their “scholarship” letters? I find that hard to believe. And also, travel sports people lie to make the obscure school sound too hard to pass up. The reality is people are paying and taking out loans so their good not great athlete kid can keep playing a sport. It’s a disaster for middle class parents to get caught up in that. |
Suggest watching “Borrowed Future” (free on Prime) and STFU from there. |
1) You have no idea if she is likely to get into UVA, especially if you have not recently been involved in college admissions. 2) Yes, UVA can be a great deal if you have a high level of 'need" as determined by FAFSA. If it's just that they are middle class and haven't saved for college, they out-of-pocket for UVA is likely to be quite high. And, yes, D3 schools may be less. Not zero but my DD's LAC (that I'm sure you'd find unacceptable) costs us $28k after merit aid only |
Large endowment universities offer the best packages to middle class parents. Have the most resources. The best faculty. And being an alum of a name brand university pays dividends. These no-name private schools have no alumni base. Many of them will be defunct in ten years. |
Okay. If OP’s niece had the stats for a large endowment university I think it would have come up. So that’s nice but obviously irrelevant. |
Not necessarily at all. Small schools often give a lot of merit aid, so are often the cheaper option. Many of my middle class friends had their kids apply to both private and public options and found the cheapest option was a private one. And private ones are much more likely to have direct entry to nursing, which is of course a priority. It sounds like your niece and her parents know more about college admissions than you do, and you should probably let them make their own choice. |
Clearly your universities did an appalling job of educating you, so perhaps your niece is looking at you as a cautionary tale. If you are at all like you post here in real life, your education was a total failure. |
Agee. Apply widely but do also include a couple public Us as "financial safeties." For my kid who applied last year, their cheapest in-state option would have been UMW, about $17k. But OP probably would look down on their niece for going there. If she thinks the kid is competitive for UVA then they should also be looking at highly selective D3 schools that meet need. I'm guessing that's not the case. |