My child was neither First Gen or Low Income, so I cannot comment on how effective this program is, but Yale offers a lot of resources to various groups, including First Gen.
There are also dozens of programs that offer stipends for summer research and/or travel, even for students who do not receive any financial aid. The stipends my child received covered his living costs for the summer but didn’t leave him with a great deal of savings. This may not appeal to you if you are trying to land a high-paying internship.
Undergraduate Learning Assistant positions (TA, at other schools) are available to those w/o any financial need, and can easily net $200/week during the school term, but not available until the fourth or fifth semesters typically.
If the OP is going to turn down Yale because of concerns for parental finances, then getting a high-paying job (i.e., consulting or IB) for a few years and repaying them is a viable option to make Yale possible. How many 17 or 18 years old know anything about any of these fields?
It sounds as if she has researched it. However, as an adult, I know something about these careers, and would be hesitant to push anyone into a job with an 80 hour work week if they weren’t truly interested in the field.
As an adult, I also know these careers and multiple people working in all of them and have no hesitation of encouraging 20-somethings to work hard to repay their parents if that’s what enables them to attend Yale.
Yale and your parents think your family can afford full cost. So I’m guessing income and assets support that assessment.
I understand 300k is a lot of money. But I think you need to do an analysis of if the marginal cost of Yale is unreasonable for your family. Have you done that, based on income and expenses?
If your parents had 300k in a 529 would you be fine? Why isn’t the real estate equity viewed the same way?
I wouldn’t borrow based on the expectation of forgiveness but at the same time your parents and Yale might have a better understanding than you do of your family’s financial position.
If it’s a matter of your parents needing to retire one year later, well that might sound horrible to you but as a parent I can tell you I’d do that every time and enjoy it.
ETA: By all means if you think Yale missed something I’d call and talk to them. Let them know it doesn’t seem affordable. Mistakes do happen and they definitely can adjust based on circumstances.
I agree with @cinnamon1212. I was also a partner at BigLaw and very involved with hiring. I linked an interesting article on this thread about where Supreme Court clerks attended undergrad. More relevant, the article also cited where Harvard law school students went undergrad . NYT Article on Supreme Court Clerkships and Undergrad College (NYT article gifted within that thread).
From the article:
"The study, which considered 22,475 Harvard Law graduates, took account of three data points: where they went to college, whether they qualified for academic honors in law school (graduating cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude) and whether they obtained a Supreme Court clerkship.
About half of the graduates had attended one of 22 selective undergraduate institutions, and more than a fifth of the graduates had gone to college at Harvard, Yale or Princeton."
Sure Harvard law grads come from all varieties of schools, but the top 22, and especially HYP, over indexed beyond what you can account for if only GPA and LSAT scores were considered.
I was aware that a high proportion of T14 law graduates came from HYP, but I thought that was only because HYP selected the best of the best (so naturally…)
This somehow makes me feel better in my decision. I’ll definitely use this a factor in my confidence of where I’ll ultimately attend. Thanks.
I agree with the article’s premise that five law schools are disproportionately represented among Supreme Court clerks, and if the Supreme Court and appellate litigation is op’s goal, attending one of these law schools would really help. A major flaw in the study, however is that it is based on four decades of Supreme Court hiring. Law school admissions has changed significantly over that time. The old boy’s club was a lot stronger in the 1980s than today.
Moreover, even according to the article, less than half of the Harvard law students came from one of the 21 selective colleges they focused on. So, the majority of the class not only didn’t attend an Ivy, they also didn’t attend the additional 14 schools someone deemed selective. Does UCLA fall within the 21 selective colleges? It doesn’t seem to indicate in the article.
Yale isn’t $300k and the likelihood of one becoming a big time attorney or I banker, even from Yale, isn’t huge. Plus, even if they were, their law school costs add another several hundred thousand potentially.
It could be based on Yale’s not giving of need aid that OP’s parents are well off and the tuition price isn’t an issue. Many kids don’t know their parents financials. It could be OP is value conscious without realizing.
I’m unsure what this means. For undergrad…it’s over $80,000 a year…so definitely $300,000 or more.
Law school is “only” 3 years. Tuition alone is about $70,000 a year…add in living expenses, and I’m betting those three years will be very close to $300,000
I don’t agree. This is a decision that is completely up to this family. I’m sure there were people who wondered why we paid full ticket for two kids at pricey private colleges. Well…because we decided it was worth it and we did.
The OP also said the parents believe that loan forgiveness will take care of the finances, and didn’t attend college themselves. I’ve been on enough parent Facebook pages to know that there are so many families who really don’t understand the loan process. I think the OP needs to ask the parents HOW they plan to pay. So many folks just say they’ll figure it out.
OP noted Yale is $88k. Yale shows this as COA for next year. Then you have 3 years of inflation. This next year costs are up $3k.
So we are talking $360k plus.
If her family is taking out the loans she is talking about (we don’t know this as her parents may very well have the cash to pay outright) - any guidance to tell someone to take out hundreds of thousands of loans for ANY college is malpractice in my opinion.
My comment that Yale is $300k is because it’s not. More likely $360k or more and that’s a HUGE difference.
Btw the average Yale grad (if they’re working) made $76k.
If you go to law school, that’s another hundreds of thousands.
Everyone is free to post their opinions of course. But I’m scratching my head at the guidance I’m reading that OP should attend Yale and it will all work out.
Btw - what if the economy tanks and all these high paying jobs disappear when they graduate. Kids impacted in those years often never recover.
Unless the parents are in better shape than OP believes and I’m guessing when one of the country’s most generous schools offers nothing that they are - but if what OP is mentioning is true, she shouldn’t get within 1000 miles of New Haven. It’s likely financial suicide for life. And if a UC doesn’t come through, them Alabama or Arizona or another similar where btw you won’t find any shortage of smart people, including those they bought, not brought, away from the Ivies.
I don’t disagree with this…but IF these parents say they can pay…and decide to do so…it’s their family decision.
They just need to be sure they will actually qualify for loans for all four years. It would be a shame to start and over leverage loans in a couple of years…and not quality after that.
I agree with this, also regardless of how the parents fund this, she has also said her parents intend for her to pay them back so it is essentially a $300,000 loan for her, if that’s truly the case. I don’t think op can make a decision until she sits down with her parents and talks all this out.
My guess is OPs parents can cash flow this or have assets to sell to pay. Getting no aid from Yale shows a certain level of wealth.
However, OP was concerned in message one she couldn’t afford $65k and in earlier messages (one hr ago) OP noted a lot of loans but that Biden will wipe out the debt. I can’t get a message # on phone but it was an hr ago.
There are all sorts of reasons why those law schools dominate the clerkships, IMO the big one is where the Supremes went to law school themselves.
The relevance to the article though has to do with whether top law schools favor certain undergrad programs vs the notion that undergrad doesn’t matter. At Harvard it certainly does. Yes, approximately half the grads did not come from the 22, but then we are talking spreading those roughly 275 spots (assume a class of 550) across about 150 other colleges (I am using the HLS class profile as a reference https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/).
Using rough numbers based on the cited percentages, out of a class of 550, on average 110 graduated from HYP, or almost 37 each; 165 graduated from the 19 remining 22 elite schools (UCLA may or may not be among those) or almost 9 each; for the remaining 275 spots spread among about 150 other institutions, it is less than 2 each. I would guess that there are a lot of onesies, including from some very large undergrad programs.
I do think doing well at UCLA and scoring high on the LSAT is going to give OP plenty of good law school options, it is still a cut below Yale.
