real cost of private college?

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02/01/2016 20:50

Subject: real cost of private college?

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One final thought: SAT prep is money well spent. People might balk at spending 1000 per child for SAT prep, but it boosted our kid's scores by 300 points and got them much better positioned for merit aid. 1000 dollar investment with an 80,000 dollar payoff. Good odds.

There is a ton of research showing that SAT prep really doesn't help that much. Most kids improve by 60-90 points from the first to the second test. I'd guess that your kid just had a really bad day the first time and the second score was a much better representation of what they know than the first.

Not PP but mine improved by 450 points with tutoring, although it cost more than $1000. The first test was probably low, but I am confident that he would have been 300+ points lower without the tutoring based on previous standardized testing.

There are always outliers; my sister went through extensive prepping and her score went down. Prepping generally doesn't produce large gains.

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02/01/2016 21:04

Subject: Re:real cost of private college?

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When face with the same question, we moved to Virginia for the in state tuition.

That backfired for us. First child went out of state and second child is headed there too. If you child is really good in math/physics, they will want to go out of state. If your child is really good in engineering, they will want to go out of state.

Then my child can get a solar ship or just deal with tech or uva.

Anyone with half a brain isn't taking out loans for such nonsense.

Haha - my DC with high grades and high scores would have been delighted to "just deal with UVA" but unfortunately they did not feel the same way. You might want to have a back up plan.

DC didn't apply to other VA schools?

No, money was not an issue so DC looked at private and OOS schools in addition to UVA. Ended up at a higher ranked school (although ranking was not the driver in selecting it). My point was that relying on UVA is risky.