<p>Median home prices are radically different throughout the USA, from below $179K to above $417K, so housing costs are more than double in some areas over others, as is income. College aid calculations consider income, but to what extent are local housing costs considered? A family making $100K in Iowa has a lot more spending money than one in Connecticut. Are such differences considered?</p>
<p>momma…unless you are in the classroom, I really don’t see how you can judge the quality of education.</p>
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<p>We are a single earner family, with DW off/on with a low paying teaching job (off since 2008), have always thought of sending DD to private full pay.
We presently are able to pay upward of $55K a year, from our current income ($200K) without dipping into savings, while living in a very high cost area.</p>
<p>So I’ll reiterate that “It’s not how much you make but how you spend is the key”.</p>
<p>$150-$250K is a good income if used properly.</p>
<p>“unless you are in the classroom, I really don’t see how you can judge the quality of education.”</p>
<p>How does being in one school’s classrooms help with objectively judging quality of various schools’ educations? Correctly comparing various schools’ graduates’ outcomes seems better.</p>
<p>^their outcomes probably are more of a reflection of their own attributes. If a kid is an average student and attends the state flagship, and gets an average job…I don’t think that can be attributed to the quality of the education.</p>
<p>Isn’t this fairly simple… highly intelligent kids get into the top schools and land higher paying jobs. Is it the quality of the teachers or the kids intelligence and prestige of the college that gets him the job?</p>
<p>On the flip side, average student gets into average school and lands average job. If the student’s professors were of the same quality of the higher rated school’s professors, would it make that much of a difference at all?</p>
<p>momma-three - I need help understanding what you are categorizing as a “state” school. I am in Minnesota so lets use that as an example. Are you talking about the University of Minnesota? The three smaller regional feeder schools in to the U of MN? Or are you talking about Minnesota State and 4 other “state” schools which is not connected to the state flagship?</p>
<p>Still to answer the OP question
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<p>For DD’s college (MIT) we still are glad to pay for her increasing tuition without any remorse.
Uptill now it feel like MIT is worth the full pay for us. I’m not sure what’ll happen in future 2/3 years down the lane but the first two years have been productive and we feel the college is worth the expenses.</p>
<p>Higher home prices usually means larger borrowing capacity (and more assets). Wealthier people choose either to live in more expensive or less expensive homes, just as they can decide to send their kids to fancy private colleges or not. Poorer people don’t usually have those choices. </p>
<p>I also want to note that, at least for my younger d., level of intense mentoring and advising turned out to be far more important than the quality of teaching at her private u., saved us a full-year of tuition, got her access to very high paying internships and future employment, access to a one-year M.S. degree (at lower cost than the fourth year of undergrad), and gave her friends for life. I can’t imagine that happening at our high-ranking but cash-strapped flagship - it hasn’t happened for any of her friends there, some of whom will be there for five years in order to get the required courses.</p>
<p>“Is it the quality of the teachers or the kids intelligence and prestige of the college that gets him the job?”</p>
<p>It’s all of these factors and others, of course.</p>
<p>Back to judging the quality of education, one way (and only one of many!) would be to construct a standardized exit score from GRE, MCAT, LSAT, etc., scores, and subtract from this a standardized entrance score from SAT and ACT, giving an imperfect score of what schools did for their students. Ivies would have a large subtrahend, podunks a small one. Then we’d have something to talk about!</p>
<p>Kajon- I believe momma-three (or four or five) is talking about a school I would put below MN State Moorhead.</p>
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<p>Sorry, I guess I was basing this on the kids whose parents fly to school in their private jets as well as the kids who bring their horses to school and board them nearby. That is exactly what these students (at the public school) do. I think those thing do indicate some wealth.</p>
<p>As for my child’s (private college)friends, several have visited our home and have remarked later how large it is. It isn’t. It also needs a lot of updating and such.</p>
<p>Mini, problems with advising and mentoring aren’t just happening at cash strapped state schools. In the school my h and I attended, which is one of the top schools on everyone;s list and has a top price to go along with it, while the classes were great and most feloow students were quite bright, the advising was very, very poor, the mentoring was very hit and miss (hit for h, miss for me) and the overall caring atmosphere of the college was close to nil. It really is the biggest reason that both h and I were so hesistant in allowing d to apply. She hasn’t been accepted yet and may not be but if she is, I will strongly suggest to her to not go there unless that aspect of our experiences has changed. It really wasn’t until we had experiences with our children going to schools that we realized what we actually had missed in our college experience.</p>
<p>Just as an example MIT’s cognitive and brain science phd program enrolls about 15 Phd students a year. In 2009 those students admitted came from U Maryland, Boston college, UC Davis, Stoneybrook, NYU, Penn State, Yale Stanford, Johns Hopkin, Case Western Brown, Ponoma and one student from Germany. Obviously all these schools are teaching their students very well.</p>
<p>" Every January we rant, every April some families feel good about the outcome (kid heading off to a school with appropriate academics at a cost they can afford with a little bit of pain) and some families either feel rotten, guilty, or both (Kid didn’t get into an option they can afford with that little bit of pain, or never applied to any options that would be academically appropriate and somewhat affordable.) And then we get the “told you so” crowd, whose kids get full rides, or have so many AP Credits that they’ve got sophomore standing plus significant merit aid, etc.</p>
<p>As an old and wizened CC’er, all I can advise is that paying for college needs to be a collaboration between parents and child"</p>
<p>Your entire post #133 really is a gem, blossom. Those words in particular are very wise, indeed!</p>
<p>Military Mom - I know what you mean. The generally poor or non-existent advising/mentoring at my alma mater (#1 LAC) is generally well-known. In my older one’s case, the emphasis on advising at the college she chose over my alma mater (Smith) was critical to her education. But what surprised us greatly (and we are still in awe over it) was the quality of advising/mentoring at where my younger one went - American U. Now I am not sure whether that is generally the case, or just the business school. But, when told she had an unexpected interview for the next day, for example, the business advisors scheduled a mock interview and coaching session that very evening. And on and on it’s gone…</p>
<p>nice to hear about Amer. U mini. I was so impressed with that school.</p>
<p>I think to OP’s original post- “at what point point does merit -less- colleges price themselves out…” I think it’s now. Parents are looking at the value of college education in terms that were familiar to me in the 70s & 80s. In the affluent suburb I grew up in most kids didn’t know the difference b/w a Williams or Gettysburg or a GW. If they could afford to look at a private, they went b/c their parents, aunt, or coworker suggested it…</p>
<p>If family had no $$ they went to a state school or CC. The kids didn’t care- they just wanted a bachelors degree and some version of either Animal House or Elite academics.</p>
<p>The difference:
1986 any NE private = $14K and most could get hired making $20K (42% increase)
2011 any NE private = $50K and I don’t think kids are getting hired $71K (tuition + 42%)</p>
<p>Lucky if they get a job at $50K…</p>
<p>Ah, but the assets of their parents (if in the top 20%) went up faster than tuition, so if parents took out the loans, the students could actually earn less and the family still comes out ahead.</p>
<p>An NPR reporter went to a workshop on financial planning for new parents. She has twin boys a little over a year old, and was told to plan on paying something like $95k a year per twin for private school. :eek: Let’s say $400k per kid for a college education. Now, upthread we’re talking about house prices of $200k, which is about full-pay COA for a private school. So if people on CC in 16 years 
are somewhat accepting about paying $400k for a house, we won’t have reached the point when the upper class are being priced out of private colleges.</p>
<p>One thing I have noticed is that my parents were able to pay for all of their children to attend state schools (mostly UC) out of current income, taking advantage of some state financial aid and all us kids working during the school year. The spouse and I, with a higher household income (in constant dollars) wouldn’t be able to send our two kids through UC without college savings. The entire enterprise has become far more expensive. But we all already knew that.</p>
<p>Mini said "but the assets of their parents (if in the top 20%) went up faster than tuition, so if parents took out the loans, the students could actually earn less and the family still comes out ahead. "</p>
<p>Where did you get that statistic? It certainly isn’t true for us (renters) nor for many who bought homes in maybe the 2000-2006 time frame and are now upside down on their homes and may very well have negative assets. We are in the top 20% on a nationwide basis but squarely at 50% in our county. We and probably many of the parents of teens that I know have less assets than FAFSA thinks we should have and therefore we don’t have to fill out FAFSA asset measures.</p>
<p>How many colleges don’t give out some degree of merit aid? The purely need-based aid schools include the very generous elites which in a sense give middle class kids merit aid just by admitting them and defining them as needy. </p>
<p>Are there mid-tier schools surviving without giving merit aid? I can’t think of any off the top of my head. But the top non-merit schools don’t seem to be having a problem.</p>
<p>I feel bad for the working class kids who have a really hard time paying for instate publics. They’re too rich for Pell grants and all that but way too poor for their parents to pay 25K without a lot of pain/loans.</p>