Reply to Looking back, do you wish your child attended the least expensive college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Excellent question.

I'll answer as the parent of a twice exceptional child (gifted with disabilities). DS will have lifelong issues, which might impact his professional and private life. With that in mind, we want to avoid closing doors for him, so we're ready to pay for an expensive, name-brand college, if it means that hiring managers will look at the diploma and be impressed. I am willing to pay for the brand, to compensate for whatever issues will come up in his working life.

My best friends have Ivy diplomas, and my husband has an MD/PhD. I've seen how their resumes automatically open doors for them that might not be as wide open had they gone to other schools, or had fewer terminal degrees. So... I can't actually solve my son's problems for him, but I try to work on the edges.

[/quote]

I wish I'd saved the link, but there was a mom with a very gifted autistic child. Academics came easily to him, in a way that little else did, so she supported him all the way through a top 10 PhD program, which he sailed through. And then he was unemployable.  Maybe one or two postdoc positions that never went anywhere. Cognitive and social issues that could be worked around in an academic context made it impossible for him to have a career in his field. Or most other places. She thought, now, that he would be able to do well as a mechanic's assistant at an auto repair shop, if he went through technician training. But all the money had been spent, and he was older, and she was older, and she wasn't sure if she could make it happen.

I lie awake sometimes and think about this. [/quote]

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