Yes, I guess we kind of fit this question. We are paying for S19 to go oos to Ga Tech for Engineering instead of in state to UVA or VT, which he was both accepted to. He probably could have got significant merit scholarship at VCU for engineering but he did not apply there. Our cheapest option was actually WVU as they gave significant merit. We have a 529 for him that will cover ~2.5 to 3 years at it current value. He understands that he (possibly with our help) may have to incur a loan at some point. He plans to do some paid internships or co-ops during his college carrier which he will put back towards his education.
I am sure there are those out there that donāt think this is smart for an engineering degree.
Are you willing to pay or loan for the expensive ivy or top 20 schools instead of cheap state Univ.?
Your decision may be correct because you have saved on 529 and it is the time to use it for a good school regardless of its costs. For those low income families without such as 525 etc it may be a different story while facing expensive top school and inexpensive in state tuition with the same major study.
I think the question mainly pertains to people who canāt afford to be full pay but who donāt get enough aid to cover an expensive school. People who can write a check for $50k/year are in a much different situation than people who are signing $50k/year loan documents.
Today I was leading a workshop for interested K-12 teachers, from different grades and subjects, in my K-12 public school district. The workshop focused on developing studentsā discussion skills. It began with a review of research and a group conversation about why it is important to engage students in discussions, then went into a variety of instructional moves and strategies for engaging students in various types of conversations (from Socratic seminars to discussions of controversial issues to book clubs to restorative justice circles), and teaching students the discussion skills needed to engage successfully in such conversations.
I made a mental note of a few comments made by teachers during the āwhyā portion, thinking Iād bring these comments back to College Confidential tonight. Several teachers remarked that we were teaching students for ālifeāā participation in the public sphere and boardroom, etc.ā more than for their immediate scholastic future, as there is a disconnect between what we believe to be good teaching in our district and what colleges expect of students. Specifically, they stated that discussions do not occur in college classes, āwhere students spend their first two years just sitting in large lecture halls.ā
These remarks were interesting to me, because the large lecture classes they described were so different from my sonās college experience so far. In his freshman year, only Intro Psychology was a large lecture. All his other classes both semesters involved extensive discussion.
It made me think about this thread, because one consideration in weighing which type of college you want to attend is which type of classroom environment suits you best. If you look at class size distribution charts in the common data sets, you can get an idea of what percentage of classes are large lectures, with and without smaller breakout sessions.
This may not always correlate with selectivity, in terms of this threadās premise, but it may. Certainly this aspect of the college experience is worth consideration if participation in active class discussions is part of what you are looking forward to about college.
For me, this assumption on the part of several teachers (based on their own experiences or those of their own progeny or students they taught) reinforced for me that it is worth every penny for my son to have had the type of freshman year experience he had. Apparently, it is not typical of many American colleges.
I would not extrapolate from the experiences of a group of K-12 educators re: what is typical of many American colleges. Most of the teachers in my school district graduated from one of about 8 public colleges (with a few outliers from other parts of the country). Our district publishes a handbook about the school system and you can quickly see that the elementary school level is dominated by two ādirectionalā state schools- makes sense, they used to be teaching colleges before they became part of the state university system. The high school level is dominated by either our state flagship, or a few neighboring state flagships.
You arenāt going to hear about the vast range of colleges and universities if your district is anything like mine. Iāve got many schoolteachers in my family- some who graduated from elite universities, some from small LACās, some from the Ed school of huge flagships- and all of them had seminar type classes, small discussion groups, etc. I was at commencement a few years ago at one of the largest public Uās in the country, and after my family member walked across the stage, several faculty members ābroke rankā to give hugs, shake hands, and cheer. The Ed school is small, classes are small, there is no place to hide after Freshman year. And this is at one of the largest universities in the country.
Small classes are quite typical in some disciplines btw. Iād love to hear about a Classics major who ever had more than 20 students in a course beyond freshman year???
Iāll agree with @runswimyoga having two go to the state flagship and one go to a top 20 university their is a world of difference, but none of my kids will graduate with a dime of debt, so no I wouldnāt take out $200K in loans especially if they were majoring in Poly Sci, now if the went to MIT and majored in CS I would.
For a degree outside of finance and engineering itās a tough math equation to justify. But we all do it and will defend it to the end. Thatās why these threads are circular and usually end up in the same place. Different courses for different horses.
My oldest went to our cheap flagship. He sought out the biggest possible classes. He preferred total anonymity. We learned on graduation day from his friends that he went to almost zero classes his senior year. Just got the notes, read the book and self-taught.
Heās got one of those āfat jobs on Wall Streetā now, by the way. As an IB he works 100 hours a week but manages to shoot dear old mom a text every couple of days.
One of my kids stayed instate and attended one of our very small colleges that most have never heard of. Her friend was a math major and landed a six figure Wall Street job right out of school. Sometimes those things happen.
My other kid just graduated from a very strong OOS flagship and would cringe at one of those Wall Street jobs. She is also the type who despises anonymity and prefers to be in classes where she can engage in deep conversation and debate with her profs and peersā¦she most definitely had that in school. She also has it now in her gap year positionā¦where she is spending the summer engaged all day in small group discussions with peers from all across the country. These recent grads are from all sorts of schoolsā¦including Yale and Berkeleyā¦as well as TCNJ (gasp). Sheās in her zoneā¦small group intellectual discussions all day. This is who she is working with. This is who she is living with.
My point is that the 4 years go very fast and we canāt arrange young adults into neat little groupsā¦if you are in this group over here you will be in large classes where you only sit and listen and where professors will never know your name, but if you are in that group over thereā¦you will remain in small classes fully engaged in conversation and you will eventually fly out into the world and rise to the top. Thatās not reality.
Life is fluid. College is fluid. These students have internships and research positions in all kinds of cool places. They study abroad and travel all over the globeā¦while in college. The world after college is also fluid. There are no neat little boxes. When my D was in college she navigated lecture halls that were fully meant to be conversationalā¦designed from current research that she participated in. She didnāt sit and passively listenā¦thatās not herā¦and she learned that she didnāt have to. She also had plentyā¦plentyā¦of opportunities to sit and participate in smaller classrooms with under 30 studentsā¦sometimes less than 10. She also had many Friday night dinners with professors, at their homesā¦as well as dinners with officials from her university.
Againā¦life in the young adult world is fluid. They weave in and out of various scenarios, class sizes, jobs, countries, internships, peer groups, etc. Living in a bubble doesnāt do anybody any good. I am not suggesting that LACs are bubblesā¦far from it. They are among the best learning institutions in the world. What I am suggesting is very simpleā¦we canāt place these experiences into neat little boxes and make judgements about skills, experiences, and intellectual capabilities etc based on which box you emerge from.
Thatās. Not. Reality.
It also depends on the type of classes being taken. Even at a LAC, an intro to psych or intro to bio will not be a small discussion-oriented class. There may not be as many students as in the same course at a state U, but even 100 students is large enough to be relatively anonymous. Those courses are about imparting information. My state school kids had plenty of small classes in science as they moved up in their major as well as in humanities classes. The trade-off for one kid was the opportunity, from freshman year on, to conduct interesting, cutting edge research.
But itās not all about the small classes. Itās the atmosphere thatās different at a LAC. Itās just a different experience. Most likely, kids live on campus all four years as opposed to getting apartments off campus. They are able to participate in any EC they want and donāt have to interview or apply to volunteer for the most popular clubs. They donāt have to work to make school less anonymous. It just is. Professors are known to even call kids if they are absent more than one day to check in on them. Many of the most highly ranked LACs have very high alumni donor participation because those adults had an experience there that they feel worthy and they want to contribute so other kids can have it as well. And no grad students. I think thatās a pretty big deal. One doesnāt have to wait until the break out session for the bigger classes and then get a grad student instead of a professor leading the discussion. Iām sure some grad students are terrific but Iād rather have our kids with a professor. We recently visited UW Madison and I thought the tour guide did an amazing job explaining how she made the school smaller. I agree that it seemed pretty easy. But that just wasnāt enough for D21 who looked at how big the campus was, how busy it felt, how far the dorms were from class and still thinks sheād like a smaller campus.
Now, if our kids wanted bigger schools, I wouldnāt force a LAC on them. But I would be on them about getting to those office hours and stalking the career center starting freshman year. And Iād be researching which schools have the best undergraduate teaching rankings. When S19 was looking, we found that Vanderbilt does a bang up job of teaching those undergrads with small classes and full time professors as well as a ton of extracurricular events to help each class bond freshman year. And, as I said above, i think Madison does a good job too with a lot of ways to make the social life smaller if one chooses.
The moving off campus thing really gets to me. Having to find roommates as early as Dec of freshman year and then apartment hunt seems daunting, especially when these kids hardly know each other and are learning the ropes at school. I want our kids as comfortable as possible so they can focus on their work.
I went to a university. I lived on campus all four years except for a semester abroad. I had small classes (even the lecture based classes were small) and seminars, and to be candid- the quality of the experience hearing a lecture from a phenomenal professor who is one of the worldās experts in his field vs. sitting around a table hearing from the blabbermouths- guess what, discussion based classes are overrated on CC. I ate dinner at professorās homes, ate lunch with them when invited, cherish the āgood byeā notes I received when I graduated, etc.
My kids all went to universities and their experiences mirrored mine-- except I never took a class from a Nobel Laureate (who would wander the cafeteria at lunch looking for Freshmen to sit with!) and never had my writing critiqued by a Pulitzer prize winning professor who ran the undergraduate writing program.
The āLAC vs. universityā argument is so superficial as to be irrelevant. There are some universities where the size, quality of instruction, relationships between professors and students are every bit as potent as the mythic LAC, and there are LACās which hire large numbers of adjuncts, have a significant proportion of their faculty on Sabbatical, parental leave, or emeritus status (on the faculty but not teaching- what good does that do for your freshman kid?)
A friend has just finished a post-doc year at one of the LACās which get a ton of love on CC for small, discussion based classes, no grad students as TAās, etc. Both of those factors are true. But the college hires post-docs and adjuncts out the wazoo (hey, they arenāt grad students, they already have doctorates!) who have to spend the bulk of their time going to conferences and flying around the country interviewing for tenure track roles. The dirty secret of academia- donāt call them TAās, they are post-docās, and believe me, they arenāt having dinner with your kid if an interview at Berkeley or UIUC or U Michigan crops up.
@blossom Iād love someone to name these universities that mirror the experience of an LAC when it comes to class and housing. Iāve done a ridiculous amount of research and have come up short on that one.
I went to Brown. I thought the housing options were robust-- one year (when I wanted a single) I had to live on a single sex floor in order to get one, but that was due to a bad lottery number, not the unavailability of a bunch of different types of rooms, floors, halls, etc.
I majored in Classics- tiny classes, even the intro type classes. The biggest class I took was a Shakespeare course, but it was given by Sears Jayne who was both a renowned scholar of the Renaissance, AND an incredible teacher. Enrollment was capped, but kids sat on the floor, radiators, crowded the doors, etc. just to hear his lectures even if they couldnāt enroll for credit.
So you went to Brown and are arguing that its more like a large University then a LAC??? 
It really is different types of schools fitting different students. Iām not really sure why thatās so difficult to grasp. Two of my lads preferred LACs and had a great time at the schools they graduated from. One of mine wanted āmore.ā He preferred the larger number of research opportunities and clubs, etc, of a research U and had a great time. He can agree with those who say that most of his classes were small and there was plenty of discussion in those small classes - more than a class he sat in on with his younger brother at his LAC!
Thereās no way Iād have wanted to force a different experience on any of them since we found affordable options for each of them. I see no reason to fit every student into the same mold.
@blossom well ok. I mean Brown for Classics? That explains that. Reading your earlier post makes it sound like you were at a big state university. Itās important that people understand the details. I know there must be readers out there who read some of these posts and are convinced that OSU will give kids the same experience as Amherst. Obviously, elite universities can give a very personalized educationā¦especially in such a small major like Classics.
Two of the top ranked programs in Classics in the country are public Uās- Berkeley and Michigan, if they have not dipped significantly over the last decade.
OSU and Amherst- not the same experience and thatās not my claim. But take a look at any list of the āheavily discounted- we give a lot of merit aidā LACās and you are going to see SOME institutions which are coasting off the backs of Amherst and Williams. They donāt have any magic math-- if their revenues go down due to discounting, thatās dough thatās coming out of somebodies pocket. So the CC fetish ābig university equals adjuncts and grad students pretending to be professors but LACās equal full time faculty who love freshmanā is not always true when you do the deep dive.
Rutgers does not equal Princeton. But if you have a kid who is serious about academics and your choice is third tier LAC vs. Rutgers, particularly if you are in-stateā¦ boy, Iād think long and hard about that one. U Mass does not equal Stonehill. (Just picking in-state LACās for comparison). But Iād need a ton of convincing that a kid is going to get a better academic experience at Stonehill. Not so with Holy Cross btw- or BC, so this is not an anti-Catholic argument.
@homerdog But isnāt that the point? Context and details matter. Like others, I just canāt wrap my head around the fetishizing that some on CC do for LACs. It happens only on CC and is mind-boggling.
I went to an elite LAC and absolutely hated it and have never donated. It was a tiny bubble of quirky kids with nothing to do. I know many who hated it as well, but like me, stuck it out for the financial aid and prestige. I took my D to one her junior year to confirm what I already knew, which is that LACs would not be a good fit.
My D attends an OOS flagship in an honors program and has lived off campus since sophomore year. She loves living off campus and would have hated the dorms for more than one year. She lives in a 4 bedroom apartment with some super smart accomplished students and is one floor above another apartment of 4 friends who are equally smart and accomplished. They have plenty of intellectual conversations and they also have a lot of fun together. Out of the 8 of them, my D is the only one not doing research (her choice) and traveling around the country and internationally to do research and present their work.
My D is a rising junior and has had very few large lecture classes. But one of her favorite classes so far was a large lecture class. She still was not just a number in that class. The prof knew her name, wrote her a great recommendation, and has given her a standing offer to help with internships and other opportunities. Next semester my D has a class that the prof added just for her, so she will be the only student because itās a tiny department. They havenāt even worked out the schedule yet. Sheās had only 1 non-tenured professor and he was an excellent lecturer. She loved his class and based on his almost perfect RMP ratings, everyone else did as well.
Clubs have been competitive, but my D has had no problem getting the clubs she wanted.
Bottom line is sheās having exactly the type of college experience she wants. For those who want an LAC, great. But I do think they are a fit for only a small proportion of college students and donāt think they are superior because of small classes, etc. LACs do not have a monopoly on small classes and professor contact/mentoring.
LACs are basically college versions of the boarding schools. Small classes. Similar demographics. Theyāre great for general and relatively unspecialized education, if thatās what your kid needs. For kids who know what they want to do or specialize in, however, they usually arenāt the best choices (with a few exceptions).