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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We did not choose the least expensive option for my oldest daughter, nor are we likely to do so for our current HS senior. But...we did/are choosing an option that was in budget that had the best fit for our children for their major, academically, socially, etc.

For my oldest daughter's case, her cheapest school was an in-state school that's kind of in the middle of nowhere, with little diversity. And while it had her major, we did not think there would be good internship opportunities. She really only applied to go there if she did not get in anywhere else. On the other end, she also applied to a "reach" school that she loved that is expensive and not known for giving good merit. I told her that unless the unlikely merit came back for her, it wasn't going to be an option because we had a budget we had set for college. As expected, it did not. So we picked the best school within our budget that met all of her and our important requirements and was a good fit. She absolutely loves it there and is thriving.

The situation is the same with my current senior. She has 4 options. One is in-state and is the absolute cheapest (about $12K/year cheaper than the next cheapest) and actually would be a decent fit. One is out-of-state (her favorite!), is twice the price of in-state option and not known for giving good merit, and they didn't. The other two options are within our budget (out of state with good merit) and both fall about midway in cost between the cheapest and most expensive.

All are pretty equal academically. We have ruled out the most expensive one, but are willing to pay for any of the other three because they are all within the set budget that she knew about before she started applying. It would be nice for her to take the cheapest one but it is unlikely as she wants to leave the state and spread her wings, and we are good with that. We would not have gone out of budget for that for her and she knows that because we were pretty firm before the whole application process that we had $xx to spend on college.

Good luck![/quote]
This is us, almost to a T, we're just a few years removed. The "reach" school is more so from a cost perspective but DC1 would be likely be happy at any of the ones they're applying to. DC2 is a bit more ambitious but still has a few more years and some Bio and Chem classes to pass in HS before deciding to really focus on a medical career. LOL.[/quote]

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