I’d go with Western Washington just because I like the area. I know several kids there who love it.
If your daughter has an interest in medical school, then a smaller LAC is a better choice. Getting into med school is highly dependent on GPA and MCAT. The smaller colleges, while having less competition, also tend to have more personalized committee letters. Reed is known for grade deflation, so another LAC might be better choice where she can graduate at the top of her class.
But if your daughter is definitely not interested in med school, then I agree with your suggestion to send her to in-state flagship.
Well I doubt the $200,000 is worth the Reed’s of the world for the majority of the people living in the US and especially with another child on the college train later down the line, U of W has a great science rep and a better choice in 98 out of 100 times, you correctly point out you could go instate and send here abroad for a year w less issues. You will also be paying tuition for 2 kids overlapping for at least one year. You mention grad school, all the more reason to save cost on undergrad. You have a great instate flagship, shoot for a honors college there to make it smaller like a LAC if that is important. Lastly you are a graduate of Reed and you know the school better than most, if you were looking at Smith college instead would you even be debating spending 200k? ( I am just guessing Smith is the east coast version of Reed)
She has absolutely ZERO interest in med school. My wife is a physician who leaves for work at 5:30 am and is often not home until after 7 pm and often still has more charts to finish from home. My daughter wants NO part of that. She is also not much of a people person and not particularly motivated by money or status. She’ll probably be more happy working in a lab, living in a modest apartment with her cat, and enjoying life, rather than doing the doctor lifestyle. She is also extremely interested in animation and visual arts so may end up in a career that intersects the two. I could see her doing things like advanced 3-D animation and imagery of complex biomolecules and viruses and that sort of thing.
My experience at Reed in the 1980s was that it was super successful in tracking students into PhD track graduate school, law school, and med school, but absoultel nothing else. Basically they were VERY good at preparing students for more schooling, but honestly not much else. Professors basically only knew how to push you further into academia and barely anything else about the outside world. Career advice for anyone not going directly into grad/med/law school barely even existed. You were more or less on your own. The career counseling I got leaving the Peace Corps was far superior to what I got leaving Reed.
I expect things have changed to some extent. But that was my experience. What my daughter likes about Reed isn’t so much the small classes as the quirky intellectual nature of the place, the super-bright oddball students. And the woodsy Oxford/Hogworts flavor of the campus. So a more mainstream generic upscale LAC with varsity sports and sororities and lots of pretty people is not going to appeal nearly as much.
Sounds very like my 2 Ds. Some schools they liked (all LACs) that offer some merit aid were Kenyon, Denison, Oberlin, and L&C. D2 also liked Carleton for the bright oddballs but no merit aid there except $2K for NMF. Unfortunately I don’t have much direct experience with public Us except in OH.
My wife is Latin American and has a higher expectation of keeping her flock closer at hand than is the typical American experience. So going across the country to find a LAC with lots of merit aid is not likely in the cards unless D really presses for it which she is not. She is interested in staying within striking distance of home or maybe California which is a long day’s drive to the Bay Area. So all those hundreds of LAC colleges scattered about New England and the upper midwest are not on the radar.
L&C is a nice place in a hilly upscale suburban part of Portland. But it is laid out kind of weirdly without one central main quad or center. It kind of sprawls along a hillside in the trees overlooking Portland so it doesn’t have quite the same sense of place as Reed which is more architecturally planned with walks and quads and main lawns. The tour was a little too focused on athletics which put my daughter off. But it is in the running and if they offered generous merit aid we’d give it consideration. It is only 30 min away from our house and reachable by transit (as is Reed) so that is a plus.
Comparing the two I would say that Lewis & Clark is more “old money” Portland while Reed is more of a east-coast style intellectual powerhouse transplanted into Portland but with less connection to the community.
If you have to postpone your retirement to afford Reed, then the answer is no. Especially if you have to say “Sorry, Child #3, you can’t go to a private school even though Child #2 did. So sad too bad.” I think in-state or reasonably priced out-of -state schools are the way to go w/ 3 kids.
For those who can easily pay the $200k difference, the matter is moot. Their kids go the schools they and parents agree are the best choices without regard to price. For those who have no way to pay the extra $50k a year, the decision is easy. The pricy LAC is not an option.
For you, it’s a matter of how painful, how dangerous, how resentful will you and your wife be to go through what it will take to cough up $200k in the next 4 years. It will likely be even more than that because unexpected stuff does tend to happen that cost money. If you are paying what is relatively comfortable, the stress isn’t as great to cover that root canal, emergency glasses, unexpected trip home due to grandma’s funeral, taking an opportunity that costs money, etc. when you are at the brink and even over what you can afford, every new development that involves money can be harrowing.
Thanks guys. You all basically confirmed my instincts. I think we will probably not bother to apply at the most elite LAC and private universities that don’t do merit aid (Reed, Pomona, etc.) as that is just going to be more to bite off than we really want at this point. Running through some net price calculators for some less elite liberal arts schools and private universities like University of Puget Sound, Lewis & Clark, Gonzaga, and Santa Clara suggests that there may be one or two out there who may cough up enough merit aid to make us more comfortable. University of Pugit Sound kicks out $25,000 in merit aid on their Net Price Calculator, which I understand is no guarantee of anything. But it would bend the total cost down closer to a state school. Or close enough that we aren’t so pinched.
It is kind of like being really house poor. There are people who buy WAY too much house relative to their income and then every month is a white-knuckle experience to scrape up that mortgage payment, and any unexpected setback and be a crisis. I have no doubt that we could reorganize our lives and finances to come up with the tuition for a place like Reed but it would be nip and tuck to avoid loans (which is a major objective) and unexpected emergencies like my wife flying down to South America to take care of aging parents would be problematic.
The child has plenty of good options, all of which will provide her with a top quality education. She doesn’t NEED to go to Reed or Pomona or Stanford/USC with us paying full freight. She’s not looking for the status-y types of law or medicine or consulting careers in which having the fanciest diploma makes a difference anyway.
Sounds like your questions are answered. That was easy!
Onto the next life challenge…
Think you did a good job of reasoning through it.
Yeah, sounds like OP is one of those “word processors”, like me…who need to type out their reasoning and then it all becomes clear. OP, we have benefitted from reading along!
Sometimes having clear parameters help. Seems like you have a nice list of in state publics (U Dub and WWU) and Pacific Northwest privates (UPS, maybe Whitman, L&C, SCU if you stretch the northwest a bit) with reaches (UDub honours), matches and safeties including financial safeties all ready to go, and can compare cost and fit at your leisure.
I particularly enjoyed your musings on handholding at LACs…I do hope for more threads exploring this interesting question.
I think the thing to do is to tell your child that you can afford up to $XX,000 per year for them for college, including travel. If they can find schools with merit scholarships or full price at XX,000 that is on them.
Yes, I need to write out my thoughts to process them. But I also welcome comments on what I have right or am missing. It is a big life decision so you want to get it right.
By way of background, I did my graduate studies at UW in marine science, worked there as a graduate teaching and research assistant. And then maintained connections for about a decade as I worked for NOAA but continued to work with some UW professors and grad students on various projects over the years. After moving about the country following my wife’s career I’m not teaching HS science so see the college admissions process from the other side.
What I have noticed is that big public universities like UW have a MUCH more diverse student population, especially socio-economic diversity compared to upscale LACs. And what happens is that the most highly motivated kids, which are often those from immigrant backgrounds and such, tend to form their own ad-hoc social support networks, build their own connections, and are just more self-sufficient about their educations. Often because they have been more self-sufficient their entire lives. They had to do the same thing at big impersonal inner-city public high schools. They just learn to make things work for them because that is what they have always had to do.
There is another stereotypical subset of students, usually affluent, who have gone through life with over-involved and over-protective parents. And have always been in environments (the best private schools, or affluent public schools in cloistered suburbs) and who expect the same sort of hand-holding to continue on into college. Shockingly some parents continue it on into college. My daughter has a friend who’s parents plan on moving to wherever she goes to college. Seriously? It seems to me that LACs which get a much larger percentage of students from that sort of background so they have more or less gone along with the flow because that is what the market demands. “In loco parentus” If you are paying $75,000 a year you do not want your child slipping through the cracks because they decided to drink and play video games 24/7 their first semester and no one bothered to do anything about it or let you know.
As a teacher at a big public HS, when I have highly motivated top students from immigrant backgrounds or more modest economic circumstances, they tend to be laser focused on what steps are required to get to where they want to be: Dentist, Surgeon, Computer Engineer, etc. They often leave HS with enough credits to start as sophomores in college You never hear them talking about things like “small class sizes” or “personal touches” If there are 200 students in their Chem 101 class, shrug. They just do what it takes to get an A and move on. When I speak with affluent parents (and there are many in my daughter’s circle) I frequently hear things like “we think she will do better in a smaller and more personal environment” “We are afraid she might get lost in a larger university” That sort of thing. The KIDS aren’t saying that. Their parents are. And to the extent that kids, themselves, say it, they are mostly reflecting back what they hear their parents saying. Especially kids who have come up through private school environments in which class size has been a MAJOR marketing point over the public schools their entire school lives. Look at any expensive prep school web site and small class sizes is one of their most prominent marketing hooks.
I’m not saying my own child wouldn’t benefit from a small cloistered LAC environment with small classes and attentive professors and administration. Obviously anyone would. But I think she has been raised to be self-sufficient and is level-headed and motivated enough to do fine in any environment. So I have to question whether the special features of an elite LAC education are really worth the extra $50,000/year it will cost us for full pay. If we find one that is willing to cut that margin in half with merit aid, then fine. That is a different conversation. That puts us into the same range as Daughter #1 who has been attending an SEC school as an out-of-state student to the tune of about $40,000/year all in. Which we know we can manage because we have for the past four years already.
The thing is, she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. This isn’t a process in which I just set the parameters and sit back while the kid goes out on her own and finds her perfect match that comports with the sideboards that we set out for her. She doesn’t really know what most of these schools are actually like until we go visit and research. So I am basically putting together the list of options that I think are most appropriate and we go visit together. Sometimes she vetoes one (WSU-Pullman she vetoed while I thought the campus and facilities were impressive). Sometimes she really likes a place that I wasn’t really expecting (Western Washington she quite liked). And sometimes we agree that a place looks fantastic but then the price tag gives me shock (Reed College).
When I told her that Reed was probably out of our price range she understood and wasn’t heartbroken. She is mentally leaning to UW at this point because she already has friends there from her HS a year or two ahead of her, and has friends her age for whom it is also their #1 choice. She also thinks that she wants to do marching band for a year or two in college. She can do that at UW and there are already probably half dozen or more of her former HS band-mates who are already on the UW marching band. So that is also a plus. I just want to make sure that she has explored all of her options. And that if by chance she doesn’t get into UW she has various other choices that she has analyzed and comfortable with.
It’s all about what you can afford. If you have your own money or financial aid money, smaller, personal, prestigious and rigorous schools are absolutely worth it.
If you are a donut hole family with limited aid and limited money then it’s up to your priorities and liabilities, it may be worth it for one family and other rather spend it on something else.
For an average poster, $200K is a much bigger amount than it is for a high income poster so take our answers with a grain of salt. It’s like Bill Gates asking people with few millions, if a $43 million estate is worth it compared to a million$ Mac mansion.
That being said, if money is the biggest concern, any affordable school will work fine. Lucky and hard working kids go places from every school.
I haven’t read all the replies, but it doesn’t have to be those two options. You mentioned a couple of other LACS in your region who offer really great merit aid. If she doesn’t want to go to UW (my midwestern kid REALLY wanted to go there), expand your search to others that do offer merit aid. Focus on the fit, the campus vibe, the programs they offer, and she might one she loves at a price very close to your in-state option. Hopefully my D20 will actually get to go in the fall, but that’s how things shook out for her.
Of course not. And those aren’t our only two options. We were sort of half-way through the initial survey of likely prospects when the virus shut down our planned in-person visits this spring. We were planning a CA road trip over spring break and some more day-trips to see other schools in the Northwest. We have seen six schools in person so far. She probably has them ranked as follows
- UW and Reed (tied)
- Lewis & Clark
- Western Washington and UO (tied)
- WSU (vetoed....too rural and isolated)
We still plan to visit here in the Pacific Northwest
University of Puget Sound
University of Portland (only 25 min away but we have never been there)
Whitman
University of British Columbia
University of Victoria
maybe Gonzaga
On our CA road trip we were planning to visit
Santa Clara
Occidental
Claremont Colleges
Loyola Marymount
University of San Franciso
and maybe Stanford, USC, and University of San Diego if we can squeeze them in. More as tourists as I doubt she is really motivated to try for Stanford or USC anyway and I don’t know if we will have time to make it to San Diego.
We aren’t looking at any of the UC public schools because they don’t seem realistic for an out of state student and we already have a big flagship option here with UW. I can maybe see paying enormous tuition for Stanford, but not for UCLA or Berkeley when UW essentially provides the same experience for hundreds of thousands less.
I have high hopes about University of Puget Sound as they are reportedly generous with merit aid. But we haven’t seen the campus yet. Nice that it is 2 hours from home. I am also curious about the Canadian schools. We have visited Victoria and Vancouver BC various times on vacations but never in the context of school shopping so we don’t know what those schools are really like.
If visiting 10 or 15 other schools just ends up making us more comfortable with UW then it will have been worth the effort. And it is a fun bonding experience anyway.
It can hurt when you have a great kid who has done well and been such a joy in your life, hardly demanding, and that kid really likes a school that is difficult to afford. I don’t say unaffordable because with loans out there, it comes down to how much a family wants to go out on the financial branch to pay for anything when they have options to make it possible but it’s not going to be an easy check to the school. I really very badly wanted to give each of my kids their hearts’ choices in schools.
But it can be no pleasure of a gift if that extra $50k a year is being blipped up your Whazzoo every quarter of a time and more if and when additional costs arise. We got hit with those with all of our kids, more with some than others. When you’re uncomfortable with the expenses, it causes agitation and stress. You can buy a lot of extras and put out a lot of fires with $200k.
You are so correct. I guess what sits wrong with me is the fact that I was able to easily attend Reed in the early 1980s when my parents (middle school teacher and part-time nurse) were much less affluent than my wife and I. And I was honestly a less accomplished student than my daughter is. And after getting 30 years worth of alumni fundraising letters and propaganda from Reed we find ourselves in a position where it is just an enormous financial stretch to give my daughter the same experience. I somehow had always just assumed that it would be a reasonable and cool choice for my daughter until we finally dived deep into the funding issue and realized that there is zero chance that Reed will lift a finger to help with even a single dollar off its exorbitant tuition.
It is what it is. We are hardly the first parents to discover this. And we are hardly deserving of sympathy sitting squarely in the upper middle class with secure jobs and futures despite this current pandemic. But there is a certain process I’m going through to accept the fact that times have changed and we still have tremendous options.
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If you and your wife were a middle school teacher and a part time nurse, you could afford Reed now too, as all aid is need based. Now the question isn’t CAN you afford Reed but do you want to.