Reply to What's the Cutoff For Schools That Are Worth the Money?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think this is impossible to answer in general because it depends so much on intended major/career, need for grad school, how much will it put a dent in other family goals.

I have one friend with 3 kids -- oldest's goal was working in IB and he got into an Ivy. They paid full price for it and he is now in fact working in IB. #2 is doing CS and goes to an OOS flagship (they are in CA and he didn't get into Cal). #3 wants to be a doctor and is going to an inexpensive regional public U that has good pre-med support so they can save $$ for med school (the dad is a doctor so he understands the process). The "worth it" balance was different for each of them depending on their needs.

Another example... if you want to go to NYU just because you love New York and are undecided about what you want to do, no way is full price there worth it. But a friend's son is an amazing musical theater actor/singer and was already performing professionally in HS. He got into NYU Tisch and they are paying full price (and can do it without loans), which seems like a "worth it" for that field IMO.

Some of the possibly "worth it" schools mentioned in this discussion (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.) are not schools my kids would ever get into. So then the comparison is VA in-state school below UVA/W&M vs. OOS publics of similar tier vs. private schools of widely varying price. One is at VT in a CS/statistics major and I don't think any other school he was competitive for was worth it vs. what he can get at VT for its cost (fortunately it was also his 1st choice)

My other wanted a smaller school (and we agree that would be best for her) and so was looking at mid-range LACs vs. public options CNU, UMW. With merit the in-state were cheaper but the LACs that gave merit offered some unique things and strong employment/grad school records for her area of interest. So, it was worth it to us to spend around $35k for that vs. $17K for UMW (the cheapest option). But would not have been worth it to spend $50K+ when there were excellent $35k options available and grad school is in her future.[/quote]

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