Are good but not great students potentially more expensive in terms of college costs?
Great students may be able to get large merit scholarships and/or admission to colleges with the best need-based financial aid.
Marginal students may not have much choice (from an admission standpoint) besides community colleges or less selective non-flagship state universities (though for some families, these may still be an affordability problem).
Good but not great students and their parents may have more aspirations than community colleges or less selective non-flagship state universities, but not be able to get large merit scholarships or admission to colleges with good need-based financial aid.
You can't always get what you want. The good but no cigar kid is often a pretty strong student. What is your definition of good? I think a big factor that seems to get little attention is the cost of R&B. This is an expensive luxury. My state 4 yr is mostly non res, a suitcase school if you will, and they push and push to get kids living on campus at kids that can drive in less than a half hour. 17% are residential.
IMO the good not great student shows his stripes early in the game, you set the expectations accordingly. You set the application list. CC is a rarified audience.
@ucbalumnus Your post is an accurate description of our kids’ cost options. Our top academic kids actually cost us less and have attended better schools on larger scholarships. Our weaker students have fewer options and may cost us more even though they attend a local directional U and live at home. They don’t have the option of higher college selection aspirations bc cost is their boundary.
(ETA: I should clarify my definition of weaker. They are still solidly qualified academic students. They just don’t fit the competitive scholarship/high merit profile. When our kids miss that slight notch up, their college options drop off significantly. It is what it is.)
@twogirls, I think the point the OP is making is that good-not-great (GNG) students are close enough to great that they want a really good, quasi-elite college, and don’t want to settle for a mediocre school where they would stand out. And unfortunately at these quasi-elite schools they don’t stand out enough to get big merit aid, & the schools aren’t wealthy enough to provide huge need aid.
Although it seems dogmatic to prestige hounds on College Confidential that you should go to the very best college that you can get into, but those who do that seem destined to be at the bottom of the heap (unless they are top students).
Life is indeed easier if you’re really smart. Also really good looking, really athletic, have good teeth, smell good, etc. It is so despite, as Nietzsche said, so many movements in the world intent on leveling the playing field (democracy, Christianity, Communism, etc).
really good but not great, athletes also have a really hard time making a living in the NFL, even though they really really want to play. I, frankly, don’t understand the premise of this post.
@donnaleighg I do bc we live the premise. Our really competitive students have attended college on full or near full scholarships. Our less competitive kids are academically stronger than our local CC or directional U students. They are academically strong, just not “super stars” (used simply as shorthand for top stats/ECs, etc). They would be accepted to more competitive schools, but unlike their really competitive siblings, it would cost more for them to attend.
So, for parents willing to pay, then the answer to the question is, yes, those students would cost more. They can go down in rank and end up being more competitive there and see if they qualify for merit at the lower ranked school. But, our experience is that even those lower ranked schools tend to have really competitive students qualifying for their top merit, so it really boils down to how much merit they will receive. You go down much more in rank, and you are pretty much on par with most avg directional Us. (I guess some directional Us are really bad options, but that is not a universally true assessment.)
For our kids, we have seen significant merit get significantly more competitive over time. (Our oldest applied to colleges in 2006. Our experience our Dd last yr was quite different than just over a decade ago.) Token merit, not so much. Those $$ amts are pretty much available to these mid-students, but costs will go up to follow that path.