no. ha ha ha ha.

Anonymous wrote:Yes. There seems to be a theme in this thread that if you pay for college your kids will not appreciate it or work hard. That was not true in my experience. My parents paid my way and I'm very grateful that I was able to focus on doing well in school and didn't have any debt when I graduated.

+1

Anonymous wrote:Yes. We are moving away from the area to ensure W&M or UVa acceptance so all tuition, r & b, books, travel & miscellaneous expenses will be fully paid. I will consider private but only certain SLAC or Ivies and only if there is grant money. NO LOANS under any circumstances for kids.
We are fortunate that we have family money to do this otherwise no way.

How can you "ensure" acceptance to any college?

Anonymous wrote:Yes. We are moving away from the area to ensure W&M or UVa acceptance so all tuition, r & b, books, travel & miscellaneous expenses will be fully paid. I will consider private but only certain SLAC or Ivies and only if there is grant money. NO LOANS under any circumstances for kids.
We are fortunate that we have family money to do this otherwise no way.

How can you ensure acceptance by moving away...?

Yes. We are moving away from the area to ensure W&M or UVa acceptance so all tuition, r & b, books, travel & miscellaneous expenses will be fully paid. I will consider private but only certain SLAC or Ivies and only if there is grant money. NO LOANS under any circumstances for kids.
We are fortunate that we have family money to do this otherwise no way.

Yes.

Yes -- we just wrote our last tuition check to an Ivy -- yeah! My DH and I were dirt poor and didn't want our kid to go through what we did scraping and clawing our way up the chain.
We may have had more kids if we didn't have the pressing need to pay 100% of our kids tuition given our very unfortunate upbringings.

We hope to be able to cover tuition + room and board + books. They'll have to work for spending money.

We can do this for in state and for some privates/out of state publics, but not the ones that are approaching or over $60K.

Eldest starts college in another year and 1/2, and we'll have 10 straight years of kids in college. I'm a little terrified.

"My dad agreed to pay 4 years of in-state tuition for all 3 of his kids (or put that portion to private or out-of-state school)."

This is what my parents did. I chose a private that gave me enough in scholarships and financial aid to cover the difference. I would have chosen a different private if I didn't need the financial help, but I still got a great education and have turned out all right. I'd like to be able to give my child the opportunity to go anywhere regardless of cost, but I won't at the expense of my skipping vacations, taking out a second mortgage, or not fully-funding retirement. So at the point my goal is to be able to at least pay for four years at a state school - if I can swing private without excessive pain, then I'll do that.

Yes.

We have the finanical resources to do so and have been saving aggressively since they were born.

My dad agreed to pay 4 years of in-state tuition for all 3 of his kids (or put that portion to private or out-of-state school). We were on our own for grad school. He offered advice about student loans and how with VA's great public univ. it would be better to come out of college with zero loans for a fairly equivalent education. Now---if I had got into Harvard all of this would have been another story. This is one of the best gifts my parents gave us, btw.

We make significantly more $ than my parents did and I will not require my kids to have to choose in-state for a full-ride like my parents did (primarily due to financial reasons). I want them to go to the best school possible and that may not be in-state. They will have to earn their grades, get jobs and contribute in some manner. Hard work is important. I am not paying for one big party.

We're working towards an athletic scholarship.

Won't be able to afford it. My oldest will be in college in 10 years and by then 4 years will cost $250k+. And then all over again when our second child enters college.

Just typing the amounts sounds insane - it's like funny-money at that point.

No. Plan on 100% tuition at the state college and hopefully a big % of the room and board. I worked 10 hours a week at work study, loans, as well as earning money towards school during the summer. I think the key was that the loans and work study were not so overwhelming that it impacted my career choice but was enough that I lived in the world where my parents couldn't simply write a check. I want my kids to be motivated and have something to strive for but not pressured because we have mortgaged the house and haven't taken a vacation in years to pay for a private college or they have 50K in loans from undergrad.

I hope to. They are fully funded at UMD. A private school would cost another 100K each, which we could swing, but only if it is top tier.
No plans to make them struggle if they get good grades. Any grade less than a B would require some money out of their pockets. A failure of a class is totally on them.
Don't want them to work too hard in their summers, but they will work.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grades are not the be all and end all in life. When employers are looking to hire, they don't ask for a transcript.

When I hire, I would take someone with job experience over someone who hasn't worked. No job history is worrying and I stay away from anyone who is applying to a post-secondary education job as their first job. Someone who has worked while in school is a positive for me, and I don't care nor check to see what their GPA was. Grades are pretty immaterial. If you got the degree, you obviously met the standard. I can also see on your C.V. if you had scholarships, awards etc. Jobs teach so many skills that school doesn't and I want to hire someone who has proven they have those skills.

If I see no job history, the application goes in the round bin regardless of how much of a superstar you were in high school or your GPA. I just can't take the risk that comes with someone who has never proven themselves in a workplace.

Not sure which way the PP intended this but I read it as an argument in favor of paying your kids way if you can/shows the unfair advantage kids whose parents can afford to pay have. There is a huge difference in the quality of work experience you can get at an unpaid internship over a work study type job (like working the desk at a library for example) which lets you earn some cash but doesn't really provide any experience. Whether or not your parents pay is not determinative of whether you'll get a summer job but it might impact what kind of summer job you can accept.

I don't ask for a transcript, but I do ask for references. That isn't all that different from a transcript in the end.