Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Strongly disagree. Why would you want 17-18 year olds making life changing decisions without parental input? That's crazy. 17 year olds aren't even considered competent to enter into contracts.

+1. DC is not even sure what they want to major in. Has admission to several Big 10 schools and Virginia Tech. We can afford to pay for an OOS school but not willing to pay OOS to 'experiment'. Is "Go to Tech" a directive? Not really, but we sure are 'pushing/cajoling/enticing' them towards that decision because we want them to 'own' the decision.
Example conversation snippet..
DC: I want to go OOS and be far away from you guys. I think I like Penn State.
US: Do you realize Penn State is closer to us that Tech? And oh, btw, we'll buy you a car, junior year, if you go to Tech with the money saved. You can be farther away AND have a car!".

That's funny. Our kid likes us so much, she's prefer to be CLOSER to home. That means she prefers JMU and GMU over VT.

Why are you being mean to that person and implying her kid doesn't like her? It's un-useful and unkind, and likely even untrue: I liked my parents a lot and I was at a developmental stage where being a couple hours away was too close

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Strongly disagree. Why would you want 17-18 year olds making life changing decisions without parental input? That's crazy. 17 year olds aren't even considered competent to enter into contracts.

+1. DC is not even sure what they want to major in. Has admission to several Big 10 schools and Virginia Tech. We can afford to pay for an OOS school but not willing to pay OOS to 'experiment'. Is "Go to Tech" a directive? Not really, but we sure are 'pushing/cajoling/enticing' them towards that decision because we want them to 'own' the decision.
Example conversation snippet..
DC: I want to go OOS and be far away from you guys. I think I like Penn State.
US: Do you realize Penn State is closer to us that Tech? And oh, btw, we'll buy you a car, junior year, if you go to Tech with the money saved. You can be farther away AND have a car!".

That's funny. Our kid likes us so much, she's prefer to be CLOSER to home. That means she prefers JMU and GMU over VT.

LOL.

No Indian-American parent believes this kind of sheet!

Anonymous wrote:Luckily our kids value our opinions on this.

Mine better. I'm putting a LOT of research into the college admissions process, my kids is putting in zero. I can't even get here to study for the SAT's.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you're saying, if parents have plenty of money, they do not have a right to influence the college decision.

But if they have a budget, then they can influence the decision?

Is that right?

I'm saying that if parents have plenty of money, the impact of where the child goes, financially, are not as (proportionally) big. Obviously 100K is 100K, but it may be much bigger of a sacrifice for some parents than others.

And yeah, some parents seem to think that the child is 100% in control.

Some parents seem to think they are 100% in control.

Any parent can choose to influence their kid's college choice.
However, IMO, your job as a parent is to let your kid know by 10th/early 11th grade what the financial outlook is for college. That way you can help them pick a good list of colleges, and most importantly colleges that will be affordable (or most will be) for you. Don't let your kid apply to all $80K+ schools that don't give much merit if you wont' get FA and are only able to pay $40K/year. If you can afford 80K/year but will only pay that for Specific schools, then let your kid know that. Basically, don't let them apply to schools you cannot afford, or at least make sure they know the 2-3 expensive schools they apply to in hopes of getting merit are not really affordable, and make sure they have plenty that will be.

we let our kids pick their own schools, but we helped guide them thru discussions of what would be better schools (based on academics, fit, location, etc). Kid even realized on their own that large OOS schools that don't offer merit are probably not worth $65-70K/year when they got into 3 excellent (similarly ranked) private schools that would only cost us $40K/year after merit wards. So on their own, they realized the advantages of the smaller schools, advantages of smaller classes and better career centers and recognized that it was a much better financial deal---even though initially all the schools costs about the same (pre merit). Basically my kid who wanted football, big school spirit, recognized that OOS for a school ranked 50-100 is probably not worth it vs private schools ranked 50-100.
Had they not figured that out, we would have guided them, because while UColorado, CSU, and Michigan State U are all good schools, they are not really worth OOS tuition.

Anonymous wrote:So you're saying, if parents have plenty of money, they do not have a right to influence the college decision.

But if they have a budget, then they can influence the decision?

Is that right?

I'm saying that if parents have plenty of money, the impact of where the child goes, financially, are not as (proportionally) big. Obviously 100K is 100K, but it may be much bigger of a sacrifice for some parents than others.

And yeah, some parents seem to think that the child is 100% in control.

Some parents seem to think they are 100% in control.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Strongly disagree. Why would you want 17-18 year olds making life changing decisions without parental input? That's crazy. 17 year olds aren't even considered competent to enter into contracts.

+1 My kid is asking us a lot of questions and wants some guidance. I can't imagine shrugging that off and telling them they're on their own.

+2 I do generally think that once you have a set of acceptances in hand and they fit the parent's finances, the choice is the student's. If they want to bounce ideas off me, ask questions, etc. happy to do that. But I'm not going to tell them which one I'd choose, they need to own the decision and not feel like the are disappointing me if they pick differently.

For us, the building of the initial list was heavily parent-led. My kids were swamped with school work and intimidated about how to discern from so many schools what might be a fit. So I set up the initial set of tours to figure out if they had a size/setting/location/etc. preferences. From that I figured out what we could afford, learned about merit vs need aid, did a ton of research, proposed schools for them to go read about and say yes/no/maybe. We did some more tours and I suggested other schools to research based off that feedback. Basically, I did what people hire a college counselor to do. Most kids (unless they are research nerds like me and don't have to consider cost) are going to have a hard time building an appropriate list with zero guidance.

New to this process: can you really hire someone to do this? I thought college counselors were more about suggesting strategies etc. --

An essential part of college counseling is help in figuring out your list. IMO, that's really the most complicated part of the whole thing and really where the parent needs to be most involved. As the parent, I wanted to be 100% comfortable with every school on my kid's list and, for some, that meant having very up-front conversations with the kid that school X would only be a possibility if they got aid to meet our budget. Then, once the acceptances are in, you can back off and let them decide (from options that are in-budget if that matters for you) because you have already vetted the schools for the basic criteria so from there it's up to kid to decide what they prefer.

+1. We were heavily involved with the initial list and based the budget on what was needed without taking out parent loans, cutting retirement etc. Since all the schools on the list were a good fit on paper to some degree and either were within budget or had previously discussed caveats regarding aid needed, we were fine turning over the decision to our kid to decide.

In terms of stretching budget we never put it out there as an option to our kids but behind the scenes DH and I discussed among ourselves if it would be worth it for the no merit/no FA OOS school that was our child’s top choice. For many reasons we decided against even making the offer - it was a spring admission, it would have been at least 15K/yr difference with costs only increasing each year, we felt we couldn’t up our budget for one without being willing to do so for the younger one so it would be a 120K decision to do so for both kids not including the impact on retirement. We also thought - what if we do all this and our kid doesn’t so well at that college. In the end we didn’t offer to go beyond what we agreed for the budget and our kid ended up at a very good school that gave them merit and was maybe a half step down in prestige from the spring admissions school.

you people are so out of touch here!

the chance that your kid even has harvard as an option is very small anyway.

we are UMC. we told our kids the budget. kids picked schools based on that. if a school was over budget, then kids needed to get scholarships for it to still be on the list.

ultimately, it was kids' decisions, but not without parental input. that's dumb. 18 year old kids (most of them) don't have the experience to make a big decision like this on their own.

Anonymous wrote:WTF are you asking?

If you can stretch to full pay $90k at Harvard, by definition you can stretch to full pay at any school that charges $90k.

Seriously, this forum is going to the dogs.

Anonymous wrote:Disagree. Of course, I think the kid has the most important opinion. But as the financier and more experienced family member, the parent should have some input. And financial constraints are malleable. Many parents will make voluntary sacrifices (e.g., loans, delayed retirement, etc.) if their kid gets into, say, HYPSM that they wouldn't make for, say, Pepperdine (because their kid wants to be close to the beach). While recognizing that there are many unreasonable parents and many unreasonable kids, it should ideally be something of a team effort with the kid holding more sway.

Yeah the question OP is asking is crazy to me. It's okay for a parent to be a parent and also have some views on where their $ is going.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you can afford Harvard and the kid gets in but the kid wants to major in elementary education?

I would have to say no. The ROI just isn’t there.

+1

No way in h3ll I'm paying $360k for a degree that has low ROI. We don't have family money.

You don't need a degree from an expensive college to be an ES teacher.

Does Harvard even have that major ?

Or to work one year post-Harvard and then retire as a SAHM.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you can afford Harvard and the kid gets in but the kid wants to major in elementary education?

I would have to say no. The ROI just isn’t there.

+1

No way in h3ll I'm paying $360k for a degree that has low ROI. We don't have family money.

You don't need a degree from an expensive college to be an ES teacher.

Does Harvard even have that major ?