Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are full pay at a private school that is lower than your list. It is the right fit for my DC.
When you have a child that has a hard path in getting through MS and HS - you rethink a lot of assumptions on costs.

This is us as well. Our kid has absolutely thrived at a $$$ SLAC whereas he struggled at a huge HS. He’s graduating in May and every penny we spent was worth it.

This is great to hear. (And this success is what bugs me about pps who insist “you’re wasting your money”)

DP (in a similar boat): I think people who say things like that assume everyone's kid is just like theirs or would be if everyone parented just like they do. It is a failure of observation and imagination.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are full pay at a private school that is lower than your list. It is the right fit for my DC.
When you have a child that has a hard path in getting through MS and HS - you rethink a lot of assumptions on costs.

This is us as well. Our kid has absolutely thrived at a $$$ SLAC whereas he struggled at a huge HS. He’s graduating in May and every penny we spent was worth it.

This is great to hear. (And this success is what bugs me about pps who insist “you’re wasting your money”)

You can find smaller schools that offer the same environment that will give your kid merit $$$. I do agree it can be worth it...but IMO, only if you can easily pay the bill. Otherwise, search for the environment you think is ideal but one that gives merit. There are plenty of smaller, enriching schools that offer the same as a top SLAC that don't cost $85K+/year. if you don't have $320K+ readily available, then find one of those so your kid can thrive and not be debt free after college. There are also plenty of mid size schools (for me, that's 5-8K undergrads) where the profs/staff care about undergrads, most classes are smaller and can be a great environment for someone not wanting a huge school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are full pay, Would you pay full price for
Emory
BC
UMiami
Villanova
GWU
….going down the rankings list, LMU?
Is there a cutoff for private colleges? Where you tell your kid to just take merit elsewhere, or go in state? What is your cutoff, or are you full pay so you will full pay anyplace ?

(If you are not full pay, and need FA, instate, or merit, please don’t respond, your considerations are different)

Well, money is the consideration. Even it you are wealthy. Multiple kids. Someone might want to go to med school. Another grad school. Another law school.

That's easily a million plus.

Do you really want to throw $500,000 at your stoner party boy to be mediocre at Miami? Is that doing him any favors? Is that going to make him a good man? Do you want to throw $400,000 so that your girl gets into the popular sorority at Tulane? Is that going to make her a good person and succeed at life?

We gave our kids choices. There's the public flagships. Totally good schools. They have duel citizenship - so there are those schools. Also very good. And there are about forty schools in the US that are extremely good. From MIT to Bowdoin. We will cover all of that.

But we are not dropping a gazillion dollars on Franklin and Marshall or Pepperdine or Landmark College.

Choose how you want to go about things. We will take care of things. But it's their initiative.

Not to quibble…but yeah your kid getting into the top fraternity/sorority could impact their success in life. Way more than getting a 4.0 or any number of things at State U.

Anonymous wrote:If you are full pay, Would you pay full price for
Emory
BC
UMiami
Villanova
GWU
….going down the rankings list, LMU?
Is there a cutoff for private colleges? Where you tell your kid to just take merit elsewhere, or go in state? What is your cutoff, or are you full pay so you will full pay anyplace ?

(If you are not full pay, and need FA, instate, or merit, please don’t respond, your considerations are different)

Well, money is the consideration. Even it you are wealthy. Multiple kids. Someone might want to go to med school. Another grad school. Another law school.

That's easily a million plus.

Do you really want to throw $500,000 at your stoner party boy to be mediocre at Miami? Is that doing him any favors? Is that going to make him a good man? Do you want to throw $400,000 so that your girl gets into the popular sorority at Tulane? Is that going to make her a good person and succeed at life?

We gave our kids choices. There's the public flagships. Totally good schools. They have duel citizenship - so there are those schools. Also very good. And there are about forty schools in the US that are extremely good. From MIT to Bowdoin. We will cover all of that.

But we are not dropping a gazillion dollars on Franklin and Marshall or Pepperdine or Landmark College.

Choose how you want to go about things. We will take care of things. But it's their initiative.

Told my kids if they get into Ivies, any Ivies, we would be full pay. They did and we did.

Unlike you he’s intelligent and understands what it takes to get into med school and understands that 300k is better spent on med school than undergrad that doesn’t mean shit for med school applications.

You have the money to send him to Colgate or Vandy AND pay for medical school no problem. You’ll be very lucky if your kid doesn’t resent you for making him go to VCU.

Anonymous wrote:If you are full pay, Would you pay full price for
Emory
BC
UMiami
Villanova
GWU
….going down the rankings list, LMU?
Is there a cutoff for private colleges? Where you tell your kid to just take merit elsewhere, or go in state? What is your cutoff, or are you full pay so you will full pay anyplace ?

(If you are not full pay, and need FA, instate, or merit, please don’t respond, your considerations are different)

For us it would really depend what the other options are and the reason DC wanted the more expensive option.

The question here rests upon some specific assumptions: first, that full pay is equivalent to 85k in all cases (which in itself is indicative of the fact that to most posters on this site, attending college means attending a comparatively small subset of U.S. schools and quibbling over the relatively minor differences between them); and second, that the in-state option is a public institution in VA or MD (which given the site is perfectly reasonable and to be expected).

First, there are some "schools" for which I would not contribute a single dime of spending money even if my student were to matriculate at one of them on an otherwise full ride scholarship: these institutions include Liberty, Hillsdale, High Point.

Second, except in the case of extenuating circumstances (e.g. the need to attend a school in close proximity because of health issues or professional ambitions that require a specialized program available only on an otherwise undistinguished campus), I would not be willing to pay full freight over the cost of in-state tuition for a school whose undergrad student body is academically weaker than those of the in-state schools to which my student had gained admission (and to be clear, when I say "weaker," I am not referring to, say, a mere 30 point difference between one school's 75th percentile and another's. The higher the scores are, the less meaningful difference there is between them; in addition, measuring the academic strength of a given school also involves consideration of qualitative factors such as intellectual curiosity).

Assuming that the student bodies of the OOS/private colleges under consideration are on par with or academically stronger than those of the in-state schools, however, my student would have to weigh pros and cons specific to his/her/their priorities and tolerance for the long-term consequences of tradeoffs. One poster here, for example, said s/he would not pay for UCLA over, I think, in-state UVA. If, say, my student were in-state for UVA but hell-bent on a career in film and had already shown sustained, demonstrated interest in the subject, I'd be wiling to shell out for UCLA. But if, say, that same student wanted to major in English and then go to grad school in the same subject, well, I happen to know that both schools offer very strong undergrad and grad programs in English, so I'd encourage him/her/them to consider what s/he/they could do with the extra 529 savings if it weren't spent on undergraduate tuition alone, although as someone who really values diversity--including and especially economic diversity--I think that spending four years at a school where a third of one's classmates qualify for Pell grants yet are still amongst the most academically competitive students in the U.S. is well worth the difference between in-state UVA tuition and out-of-state CA tuition. If, say, my student wanted English, were choosing between Michigan and in-state UVA and decided on the former, I'd be less enthusiastic but remind myself that college, if one has the luxury of being able to do so, is an excellent opportunity to live where one has never previously lived.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing now where the "full pay" but donut hole families are at quite the disadvantage.

Big difference. We’re “full pay” in the fully funded 529s that could cover also grad school, and plan to help with down payments, weddings, etc. So if you’re that level of “full pay” and still insist on JMU over BC, then you’re rich and sad. If it’s your retirement contributions or food on the table versus Tulane, then go Dukes.

Or it could just mean that even though they can afford it, they think paying $85k to attend BC is insane. Is your position that someone of means is living a “sad life” if they purchase a Honda instead of a Mercedes?

If you make $650k then the difference between BC and VCU is trivial, and it's insane (and yes, sad) to play hardball with the kid over it.

A degree from BC is worth a little more than a degree from VCU and a little less than a degree from VT or UMD. Or a lot less if you are studying STEM.

Nonsense

Daughter got instate UVa and W&M but is full pay at Georgetown. She absolutely loves it. Only three miles away but a totally different world.

Anonymous wrote:We have 3 kids and 400K hhi. We will discourage but not prohibit full pay for anything outside of an Ivy or equivalent. We hope to have 4 years of private tuition in each of their 529s, but then there is also room&board plus potential grad school to consider, and we would want to be able to help with that to some extent. We are in the midwest, so fortunately the kids are not caught up in college prestige / rankings, and I don't think any of my kids would be upset not to go Middlebury, say, over Denison with merit aid.

Both Midd and Denison are prestigious and have low admit rates. So, yes, they/you are concerned concerned with college prestige. Now if you had said Midd and Denison v. U. of Toledo or Akron, that may have made your point w/o being a hypocrite.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are full pay at a private school that is lower than your list. It is the right fit for my DC.
When you have a child that has a hard path in getting through MS and HS - you rethink a lot of assumptions on costs.

This is us as well. Our kid has absolutely thrived at a $$$ SLAC whereas he struggled at a huge HS. He’s graduating in May and every penny we spent was worth it.

This is great to hear. (And this success is what bugs me about pps who insist “you’re wasting your money”)

Anonymous wrote:We are full pay at a private school that is lower than your list. It is the right fit for my DC.
When you have a child that has a hard path in getting through MS and HS - you rethink a lot of assumptions on costs.

This is us as well. Our kid has absolutely thrived at a $$$ SLAC whereas he struggled at a huge HS. He’s graduating in May and every penny we spent was worth it.

We have 3 kids and 400K hhi. We will discourage but not prohibit full pay for anything outside of an Ivy or equivalent. We hope to have 4 years of private tuition in each of their 529s, but then there is also room&board plus potential grad school to consider, and we would want to be able to help with that to some extent. We are in the midwest, so fortunately the kids are not caught up in college prestige / rankings, and I don't think any of my kids would be upset not to go Middlebury, say, over Denison with merit aid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing now where the "full pay" but donut hole families are at quite the disadvantage.

Big difference. We’re “full pay” in the fully funded 529s that could cover also grad school, and plan to help with down payments, weddings, etc. So if you’re that level of “full pay” and still insist on JMU over BC, then you’re rich and sad. If it’s your retirement contributions or food on the table versus Tulane, then go Dukes.

Or it could just mean that even though they can afford it, they think paying $85k to attend BC is insane. Is your position that someone of means is living a “sad life” if they purchase a Honda instead of a Mercedes?

If you make $650k then the difference between BC and VCU is trivial, and it's insane (and yes, sad) to play hardball with the kid over it.

A degree from BC is worth a little more than a degree from VCU and a little less than a degree from VT or UMD. Or a lot less if you are studying STEM.