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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I taught in a rural area in the middle of the country.  One of my students was very bright, had excellent ACT scores, had great leadership skills and extracurriculars, and was very diligent with her schoolwork.  We talked college one day (she was a junior) and I suggested she look at top tier schools, maybe one of the Ivies if any appealed to her.  I thought she had a good chance on paper especially since she was coming from a school and area that was essentially not represented at all in any of the schools we were talking about.

Her parents were FURIOUS with me.  [/quote]

Not defending the parents in any way.  But I also wouldn't have been happy with you.  I can't afford Ivies for my kids and, in most circumstances, I don't think it is wise to go into tens or even hundreds of thousand dollars of debt to go to an Ivy League school.  Ability to get in really isn't the only criteria for deciding to apply to a school.

It's wonderful that you were encouraging to this girl, but when you are talking to kids about things their parents will likely be paying for, you really need to be sure the parents are on board.[/quote]

Just for extra info, this family was the wealthiest family in the town (rural does not necessarily mean poor - there are some very well off farming and ranching families, they are just more spread out in rural areas).  The private college they ended up sending her to was not cheap and due to a pretty small endowment they had a far less substantial commitment to financial aid to admitted students than any of the Ivies.  She asked my opinion on colleges and where she should apply.  She was a scholarship candidate anywhere and I told her as much.  I had a similar profile to this student when I graduated high school and received full scholarships to several private universities including the one Ivy League school I applied to. I wasn't far removed from that experience at the time, so it was still the way things worked, maybe that is not so true anymore, I haven't taught in a rural area or a non-coastal state in several years now.

I think there is a misconception that nearby or state schools *always* translate to less debt for grads.  That can be true, it would almost certainly be true if you were talking UMD vs. say William and Mary for most local kids.  It's not necessarily true if you are applying to a school with a strong commitment to aid and you are representing a group that is underrepresented in some way, such as a kid from a rural community in a state that sends very very few people to that school.  The counselor for our school was shared between more than one school district (rotated days) due to size and since many of the kids were not college bound, her default was to push the nearby (relatively) religious college or for a top student like this girl she encouraged the closest satellite campus of the state university.  There were no college reps visiting this school outside of those 2 schools either so there weren't really any resources for a kid to even learn about any other schools.

As a postscript, she didn't apply to an Ivy, but she did apply to a couple of very competitive private schools.  She received really great scholarship offers.  At the religious college they didn't have much money to give - I think their largest scholarship was 10,000 for merit at the time.  She wouldn't have qualified for need based aid I don't think.  FWIW, she ended up at a very well regarded private university in California on scholarship.  Last I heard from her she was grad school bound, so everything worked out.  I do kind of wonder if her parents ever acknowledged that she was genuinely smart.  I hope so.  [/quote]

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