Reply to Anyone regret sending their dc to an OOS college and paying $$$ prices for a state school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No regrets sending mine OOS to William and Mary. Wanted a smaller campus with smart peers, low Greek presence. Very beautiful place to spend four years. Didn't have a similar school in NC. Mine didn't like the size or feel of Chapel Hill. [/quote]

+ My kid had a similar decision with OOS William and Mary (ultimately chose somewhere else but it was a hard decision!). Our state doesn’t have an equivalent of W & M[/quote]

+1. W&M is a fantastic fit for my OOS DD in IR and she loves it there. Zero regrets (except living in MD, instead of VA: $$$j. But W&M OOS cost is about $60k (vs $80k for UVA and $90k+ for SLACs).  Guess UVA is charging what the market will bear?

We felt strongly that our kids should attended a smaller, undergrad focused, SLAC type school. We didn’t force it (and both kids, and we, also Pitt). We are full pay, and many SLACs on her initial list didn’t offer merit.  The Midwestern SLAC generally do, but tend to spread the merit around, with some for each kids vs. fewer full tuition scholarships. Therefore, those that do get merit generally don’t go much above $30k-$35k/year.

In the end, we had one kid at a well respected SLAC w/merit and one at WM. Different vibes from the schools and different kids— my DS applied to W&M, was admitted, did not click with the college, and chose a SLAC with some merit.  Now graduated, had a good outcome, and loved his SLAC. DD looked at DS’s SLAC, spent the weekend with him on campus and went to classes with him—  and had no interest in applying.  Different stokes.

In terms of cost, first year was about the same cost for both kids (and several offers from Midwestern SLACs used the price down to about the cost of W&M.  It felt like they knew about the W&M admit or knew what other schools were offering.  SLAC tuition rose faster than WM and we probably will send approx $20k more all in for the SLAC vs WM.  It would be hard to swallow full pay at SLAC w/ mo merit ($90k+), vs full pay W&M OOS. Although W&M and DS’s SLAC did not attract the same type of students, their academics were on par (or W &M get the edge on rigor), both kids had similar research opportunities, connection with professors, registration issues (both made if hard/impossible for students to get exactly what they wanted the first couple of years, but they did get what they needed to stay on track. But, electives that fulfilled general college requirements sometime came down to their 3rd choice), class size, responsiveness of administration, etc. WM had about 400 kids per class, but I didn’t know W&M public, I would have assumed it was private.

So yes, W&M was worth it OOS. But we thought comparing it to a large state flagship when looking at cost was apples and oranges. W&M is a unicorn in terms of public, size, selectivity and academic rigor. Comparing it to an OOS flagship in terms of cost misses the fact it’s more the size of Wake Forest than any flagship or T100 national U. I do think WM should be ranked by USNWR as a SLAC, not a national U, even with the R1 distinction.[/quote]

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