Reply to Watching your friends relocate to the burbs for "schools"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Paying for college is a real concern for us.  Our oldest is in 5th grade - and we are in a good feeder school.  But the reality of saving for and paying for college may drive us to move out of DC.[/quote]
Are you familiar with the DC Tuition Assistance program? It is a reason many stay and/or move to DC to help pay for college.[/quote]
Yes - I am familiar with this.

Let's pretend my children decide that they are going to William and Mary.  I have 3 children so 12 years of tuition.
The difference between In State and Out of State is ~ 20K.  (Note - at UVA it is 30K). DC Tag right now covers $10K.

3 children and 4 years of college, it will cost me an additional $120K to live in DC vs moving to VA.[/quote]
Suppose they want to go to UC-Berkeley or Penn State?[/quote]
Berkeley is close to impossible to get in.

Why would one go to Penn State instead of one of the best VA or MD schools?[/quote]
People who move to NoVa thinking they bought a ticket to a UVa or W&M bargain are going to be sorely disappointed; admission to those schools for NoVa students is unbelievably difficult now.

UVa, for example, takes a third of its students from out of state (UC schools take something like 5% out of staters), and it has to have geographic diversity from within Virginia. Relatively few kids from any given NoVa HS are going to get in, and considering NoVa's explosive growth the competition is fierce. Same for W&M...but it's much smaller than UVa.

There are lots of other good schools in Virginia, and sending kids there at in-state rates is a bargain. But don't move to Arlington there thinking you've eased your kid's path to UVa.[/quote]
Well, we live in DC and went on the William and Mary tour this summer. The Admission folks made it clear that out of state students are judged by different criteria. It's easier to get in if you are a Virginia resident. We've stuck it out in DC but given that Virginia has some excellent state schools, including William & Mary and UVA, it makes good fiscal sense to get out of the District.[/quote]
Maybe if you rent. But if you own a home in DC, moving has serious transaction costs -- figure $100,000 on a $1M home ($60K to a real estate agent; $20K in transfer taxes; $20K for fixing small things in one house or the other plus the actual move). And that's real money that evaporates, with no uncertainty about it, today. Now, maybe you can make that back several years down the road IF you have multiple kids AND they all go to in-state public colleges AND your financial situation is such that you actually would pay full sticker price both in-state and out-of-state...but strike any of those conditions and moving is a losing proposition financially (and if you preferred VA for other reasons, you'd probably already live there, right?).

And if your kid (like the vast majority of NOVA kids) doesn't get admitted to UVA or W&M (or VT for engineering), the whole thesis falls apart. I mean, how many kids would prefer VCU for $26,872 all-in per year as a VA resident ( http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1565 ) over, e.g., the University of Minnesota for $26,304 all-in as a DC resident with TAG ( http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=991 )?[/quote]
 
So what are all the factors that should go into a spreadsheet when trying to make this decision?[/quote]

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