At what point is it worth it to go to a state school instead of a expensive private?

sakky · December 6, 2010, 11:15pm

I’m afraid I have to challenge the notion of who exactly is being accepted with little FA? Harvard, for example, guarantees as a matter of rule that anybody whose family makes less than a whopping $180k a year will not have to contribute any more than 10% (hence, $18k) a year to their child’s education. {And if the family makes less than $60k a year, then the family contributes nothing.} Nor does Harvard force the remainder to be paid by loan. The remainder is covered either through grants, work-study, and the child’s summer employment.

In other words, if you make $180k a year, you’re only expected to foot $18*4 = $72k total, not the $200k figure that has been bandied about. You will contribute even less if you make less than $180k a year. What that means is that, for most students, Harvard will actually be cheaper than their state schools, a point remarked upon by Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau:

*Jennie D’Amico first heard the news in an ecstatic e-mail from her father in Brewer, Maine. It was December 2007—the middle of her sophomore year—and Harvard had just announced a range of new financial-aid policies aimed at easing the strain on middle- and upper-middle- income families like hers. The bottom line for D’Amico’s parents: their expected contribution would plunge from a little more than $30,000 per year to about $13,000. It was, she says, “sort of, ‘Wow, Harvard now costs less for me than the University of Maine’,” where D’Amico had originally thought of going, largely for financial reasons. Until then, she and her family felt as if they were in a “financial-aid black hole,” as she puts it—neither poor enough to qualify for free tuition nor rich enough to easily afford an Ivy League education. (The D’Amicos’ family income is a little over $90,000.) “It’s almost like Harvard is rewarding you for doing hard work.”.

…Parents in the $120,000 bracket, for instance, will now pay about $7,000 less for a child studying at Harvard than at the University of California system, according to figures compiled by the Project on Student Debt. Harvard’s move “obviously raises the bar for public universities,” says UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau… *

[Harvard</a> announces sweeping middle-income initiative | Harvard Gazette](<a href=“http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/12/harvard-announces-sweeping-middle-income-initiative/]Harvard”>Harvard announces sweeping middle-income initiative — Harvard Gazette)

Nor is Harvard the only one. Many of the other top private schools also offer similarly generous financial aid packages. For example, Yale’s financial aid system is probably at least as good, and in certain respects is even better than Harvard’s.

Families earning less than $60,000 annually will not make any contribution toward the cost of a child’s education, and families earning $60,000 to $120,000 will typically contribute from 1% to 10% of total family income. The contribution of aided families earning above $120,000 will average 10% of income.

[Yale</a> Cuts Costs for Families and Students](<a href=“http://opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=2320]Yale”>http://opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=2320)

Yale announced cost reductions for families earning as much as $200,000 (which made it more affordable than Harvard for some income categories),

<a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/08/a-financial-earthquake.print.html[/url]”>http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/08/a-financial-earthquake.print.html</a>

Princeton similarly offers tremendously generous aid.

[Princeton</a> University | Who Qualifies for Aid?](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/)

Hence, unless you happen to be within the small percentage of families who are extraordinarily wealthy, in which case you should be able to afford the tuition, you will find that the top private schools will be highly cost-competitive with state schools, to the point that the top private school may actually be cheaper.

Of course all of that presumes that you can get into a top private school. But that leads to my basic point that you should work hard to get into one of those schools to enjoy their lavish aid packages.

noimagination · December 6, 2010, 11:27pm

Okay, sakky. I’m going to try to walk through your argument. Let me know if this is right:

SAKKY’S PROBLEM
Talented students attend state schools for engineering, find the curricula too challenging, are failed by the harsh curves, and are then stuck without a good option.

The warrant: Engineering programs have a reputation for weed-out rigor, and UC Berkeley is an example where the curve is set quite low.

My response:

Berkeley is a) renowned for harsh curves and b) one of the top three or four EECS departments in the nation. Hardly average. Is it representative of public flagships across the nation?

In particular, the applicant pool at UCB is well above what is found at most flagships.

Still, these are minor quibbles. I’m mostly okay with the harms you identify.

SAKKY’S SOLUTION
At first, you seemed to be advocating for top schools in general. But you yourself have said that “plenty of Caltech students perform poorly - with some even flunking out.” So, attending Caltech doesn’t really solve for the harms you identified, does it? Nor does MIT: “I know many MIT grad students who recoiled from taking undergraduate-designated or even undergrad/grad-student-mixed courses simply because they feared the grading.”

Do Ivies with grade inflation also inflate grades in engineering? I haven’t seen any warrant for the idea that the engineering program at, say, Princeton is easier than at KU or Texas A&M.

So, what exactly should students be doing?

EDIT: Regarding costs, there are a number of OOS publics that offer very generous merit aid. You can find the lists in the Financial Aid subforum if you are so inclined. This is especially true for National Merit Finalists.

ldinct · December 6, 2010, 11:31pm

Uh, we all know about the FA at Harvard & Yale, again we are talking about schools that reject 4.0 valedictorians. So if you are one of the many 4.0 valedictorians with perfect SATs that get rejected from one of these schools how do you work harder.
Wow, I must be extraordinarily wealthy, who knew. Time to retire.

sakky · December 7, 2010, 12:15am

If I’m advocating for anything, it is for engineering and natural science grading reform. To this day, I have never seen a reasonable rationale as to why those majors have to be consistently graded harder than other majors.

Regarding top schools, if nothing else, you will at least have the power of the brand and the ancillary (but important) benefits. So let’s say that you do go to Princeton for engineering and earn lousy grades to the point of being forced out of the engineering program and having to choose an easier major. Well, at least you’ll still have the power of the Princeton brand working in your favor. At least you’ll still have access to the Princeton alumni network. At least you’ll still have access to the Princeton recruiting office.

The better counterexample is not KU or Texas A&M, but rather some state school that has an engineering program that is higher ranked than Princeton’s, which would be the incentive to go there. So let’s say that you turn down Princeton for Purdue because of its higher ranked engineering program…only to then be weeded out of engineering. What are you going to do now? You’re not going to have access to a powerful brand. You’re not really going to have access to top-flight recruiting or a high-powered alumni network. You’re probably wishing that you had chosen Princeton instead. But there’s no mulligan available.

KU and Texas A&M do not seem to be comparable choices for the simple reason that they don’t have engineering programs that are ranked higher than Princeton, which then begs the question of why you would choose them. If the issue is money, then, as we established, Princeton offers excellent aid packages to the vast majority of students - arguably even better than what KU or TAMU would offer.

Granted, there are students who are obviously rich enough to not qualify for aid at Princeton, but many of those students will be so rich as to not care about having to pay full freight anyway. Hence, we are talking about only a small fraction of students who are truly too rich to qualify for extensive aid at Princeton but not rich enough to not care.

But the upshot is that the top schools are the risk-averse choice. The truth of the matter is that many, probably most, students do not end up majoring in the subject that they think they will major in when they entered college. This seems to be especially true for engineering where the sheer difficulty of the material and especially the grading weeds plenty of students out, voluntarily or otherwise. For example, I estimate that no more than 1/3 of all of the students that are sitting in the lecture hall for the very first class of Berkeley EECS 40, which is the gateway (and weeder) course for the major, are actually going to successfully complete the EECS major. The rest will have to find something else to do. What if you had turned down Harvard or Yale for Berkeley EECS…only to be weeded out of Berkeley EECS? You’re probably wishing for a do-over.

sakky · December 7, 2010, 12:24am

We all know that being a 4.0 valedictorian with perfect SAT’s is, by itself, insufficient to get into HYP. You also need EC’s. You also need outside accolades. Work harder to accomplish those goals.

As a case in point, my brother, in addition to his regular school accomplishments, was also a contender in a slew of national mathematics competitions, a level of expertise for which he worked very hard to accomplish. I know other students who had either already published or were in the process of submitting research papers to academic journals while they were still in high school. I know others who had started successful computer/information-technology consulting businesses while they were still in high school.

That’s the sort of thing I mean when I say that you can work harder.

zapfino · December 7, 2010, 12:25am

sakky, your comments about the potential adverse outcomes of passing up the elite private uni to attend the public uni are well worth considering. Clearly, in your Delaware example, the student who drops out of engineering is left with much less attractive alternatives than if he drops out of engineering at the elite school. At many other public universities, however, the alternatives might be less depressing than at Delaware. While admittedly not as attractive as majoring in an alternative field at the elite uni, coming out of a Big 10 uni with the alternative major doesn’t necessarily seem as bad as doing so at a less prestigious public. Let’s even assume that as an entering engineering major, the student had quite decent quantitative skills, but just couldn’t hack it under the harsh grading practices in engineering, yet, after switching majors, his quantitative skills serve him very well in economics or psychology. Even if the student had opted to attend the elite uni in the first place, the same scenario of dropping out of engineering is a potential outcome, for example, as Cornell adheres to those same harsh grading practices. I realize this doesn’t change the validity of your point that technical disciplines grade harder, but it describes a less dismal potential outcome than the one you painted for our hypothetical student.

Here’s another scenario to consider: Student A loves physics, doing well in it in high school, and plans to major in it at the Ivy League uni to which he is admitted. He gets through his intro physics and math courses with OK but not outstanding grades. He would like to continue in physics, but looking around, he realizes that he will never be able to match the performance of the extremely bright, science competition winners among his fellow students, who also chose to major in physics. Discouraged, he switches fields to history of science or philosophy. Student B also loves physics, did well in it in high school, and plans to major in it at the state university, which offered him significant merit aid. He also gets through his intro physics and math courses with OK but not outstanding grade, surviving these weed-out courses (many of whose students are pre-meds or engineering majors). Nonetheless, he perseveres and actually finishes his degree with a quite respectable GPA. He remains in the field, works for a number of years for an industrial lab, and along the way, completes a master’s degree in applied physics, paid for by his employer. After retiring early, he becomes a very good science and math teacher at his local high school. These contrasting scenarios of attrition and retention are fairly common to my understanding. The operative factor seems to have been how he sized himself up to his peers. In the case of student B, it was perhaps a wise choice to select the public uni.

sakky · December 7, 2010, 12:50am

Here’s another scenario to consider: Student A loves physics, doing well in it in high school, and plans to major in it at the Ivy League uni to which he is admitted. He gets through his intro physics and math courses with OK but not outstanding grades. He would like to continue in physics, but looking around, he realizes that he will never be able to match the performance of the extremely bright, science competition winners among his fellow students, who also chose to major in physics. Discouraged, he switches fields to history of science or philosophy. Student B also loves physics, did well in it in high school, and plans to major in it at the state university, which offered him significant merit aid. He also gets through his intro physics and math courses with OK but not outstanding grade, surviving these weed-out courses (many of whose students are pre-meds or engineering majors). Nonetheless, he perseveres and actually finishes his degree with a quite respectable GPA. He remains in the field, works for a number of years for an industrial lab, and along the way, completes a master’s degree in applied physics, paid for by his employer. After retiring early, he becomes a very good science and math teacher at his local high school. These contrasting scenarios of attrition and retention are fairly common to my understanding. The operative factor seems to have been how he sized himself up to his peers. In the case of student B, it was perhaps a wise choice to select the public uni.

Actually, it seems to me that the opposite is more likely to be true. You say that student A is likely to become demoralized and leave the sciences completely because of his relatively mediocre performance in physics because he sees that he will never be able to match the performance of other top science students. On the other hand, it would seem that student B is actually the likelier student to become demoralized and leave the sciences entirely. After all, he would probably think: “Here I am competing against science students who aren’t really that strong, yet my relative performance is only ‘OK’, but not exceptional? Shouldn’t I be crushing this level of competition if I am to have a promising science career?”

Another scenario may also be possible. Born from a retired physics professor, Student A grows up loving physics, and chooses to major in physics at a top college, only to perform poorly and realize that he’s not actually highly talented in physics. But rather than abandon his hopes of a career in science entirely, he switches to chemistry, where he graduates as valedictorian of his college class, earns a PhD in chemistry at the #1 ranked chemistry graduate program in the country, and then places back at his old undergraduate college to take a faculty position, and then shortly thereafter receives tenure - becoming one of the youngest tenure professors in the history of that school.

That, in a nutshell, is the David Liu story. He chose to major in physics at Harvard, only to find out that, in his own words, he was “not very good in physics”. He switched to chemistry, graduating as valedictorian of his Harvard class. Then he earned a PhD at Berkeley, whereupon he immediately placed - with no postdoc - as an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard, and was promoted to tenure as full professor at age 31, being one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard history.

Not bad for a guy who is “not very good at physics”.

Later that year, as a Harvard freshman, Liu thought he’d pursue a degree in physics - a hope that was rather quickly dashed, he notes, by the realization that he was “not very good in physics.”…

[Harvard</a> Gazette: Chemist, card shark Liu takes off](<a href=“http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/06.02/03-liu.html]Harvard”>http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/06.02/03-liu.html)

<a href=“http://evolve.harvard.edu/drlcv.htm[/url]”>http://evolve.harvard.edu/drlcv.htm</a>

<a href=“http://evolve.harvard.edu/DRLCV.pdf[/url]”>http://evolve.harvard.edu/DRLCV.pdf</a>

zapfino · December 7, 2010, 5:32am

^ “Actually, it seems to me that the opposite is more likely to be true. You say that student A is likely to become demoralized and leave the sciences completely because of his relatively mediocre performance in physics because he sees that he will never be able to match the performance of other top science students. On the other hand, it would seem that student B is actually the likelier student to become demoralized and leave the sciences entirely.”

Admittedly, I didn’t describe student B’s scenario very well. In a more realistic scenario, he probably would have done somewhat better relative to his peers than just “OK” to continue as a physics major. Nonetheless, it’s quite plausible, and not far-fetched at all, that a bright student might be more likely to continue in a major like physics at a lower-ranked university than he would if he attended a higher-ranked university. This might have little to do with significant differences in the difficulty of the course material at the two universities; rather, the key factor might be how the student evaluates his performance relative to his peers. It simply seems more likely that even if he didn’t perform a great deal better than his less bright peers at the lower-ranked uni, he might still consider it quite possible for him to finish the major that interests him and maintain a realistic hope that he will improve enough in his subsequent courses to finish much higher. At the higher-ranked university, the performance of many of his peers might be so far ahead of his that he realizes he could never attain a similar level, and, therefore, switches majors. Note the point at which the hypothetical student might make his decision whether to continue as a physics major or to switch fields: in these scenarios, he is making it after getting through the intro weed-out courses, and he might very well change his decision to continue after going through subsequent courses. At both decision points, however, I think it’s more likely he’ll continue to evaluate his performance relative to brighter students who successfully entered the major, rather than against less bright would-be entrants. Since these are hypothetical situations,of course, there are no hard data either way, just anecdotes and counter-anecdotes.

The David Liu story was pretty amazing, though don’t you think it’s probably not very common that someone who didn’t do well in one physical science to then switch to another? I don’t think I can match that story. Off topic perhaps, but the best field switching story I can come up with is that of Robert Millikan, who went from classics to physics and won the Nobel in 1923. He wrote about his time at Oberlin:

“At the close of my sophomore year […] my Greek professor […] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, ‘Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics.’ ‘All right,’ said I, ‘you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it.’ I at once purchased an Avery’s Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home – trying to master the subject. […] I doubt if I have ever taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm.”

Maybe I’ll show that quote to my Classics + Chinese major daughter. Who knows? If she gets started right now, she might have a Nobel by 2044. lol

mom2collegekids · December 7, 2010, 10:21am

* Quote:
Elite schools don’t give merit,

They don’t?

Then apparently forgot to tell my brother that, who could have paid to go to a state school, but instead chose Caltech who offered him a full merit scholarship plus stipend. Yes, that’s right - merit. So instead of paying to go to a state school, he got paid to attend Caltech.

Schools such as Chicago and Duke also offer merit scholarships.

Quote:
Unless you can get substantial FA or have no problems with the $240K for each kid, you are out of luck.

I know this is going to sound harsh, but I would say that if that is indeed your problem, then frankly, you didn’t work hard enough to get one of those aforementioned merit scholarships from elite schools. My answer would then be to work harder. *

If you think for a minute that those who weren’t chosen for the same scholarship that your bro got didn’t work hard enough, you’re not being realistic. Your brother could have easily been overlooked for someone else with equally (maybe better) stats. The limited number of scholarships that elites give out are “hit and miss” - meaning that they have MANY qualified possible recipients, but are only handing out a limited number. Those who weren’t awarded should not be smacked-down by suggesting that they didn’t work hard enough. How insulting!

And, yes, there are about 4 elites that give “Super Aid”…however the rest of the elites do not give super aid. They may give great aid, but for many families who aren’t rich, affording them is still an issue.

And, even at the elites that give super aid, many families that aren’t really rich, still don’t qualify for aid. For families where there are 2 income-earners, who live in pricey areas, it’s not unusual for them to have combined incomes of $200k+…but they are hardly rich.

Furthermore…since admission into an elite (especially a Super Aid elite) is a crapshoot, a family earning $150k per year can’t depend on their high-stats child getting into one and getting great aid. Many families face getting gapped at their child’s school. So, in addition to paying their EFC, they also have to cover a big ol’ gap.

Also, at the “non super aid elites,” a family that earns - say $150k - could be expected to pay an unaffordable amount. And, since some of these schools put loans in FA packages, a student can’t even take out a student loan to help with an unaffordable EFC. :(

Last spring, a mom posted on CC that her D had gotten accepted to Cornell and they were elated. They knew their FAFSA EFC was about $34k…which they thought was doable…but a stretch. They did have some college funds for each of their kids. However, Cornell put their “family contribution” at $46k, which at first they thought might be do-able if their D took a student loan and worked. However, as they looked at her FA package, they quickly saw that her FA package contained no grants…just loans and work-study. So, in reality, their family would be paying the entire amount thru family funds, loans, and work-study.

But, there was even more shocking info to come. The mom asked Cornell what they could expect if their son went to Cornell the following year. Yes, they would get grants at that point, but their total family contribution would be about $65k, which again couldn’t be softened with student loans because they would already be in the FA packages.

Family contribution is based on the idea that families should have been saving for 18 years. However, that evaluation is based on current income. If a FA applicant has an income of $150, there is an assumption that this family has been a highish income family and therefore should have some serious dollars saved for college. But…What if the mom only recently joined the work-force so the highish income is rather new? What if the family went thru a bout of unemployment and had to go thru their savings. A $150k income reported in 2009 and 2010 does not tell the whole story.

That’s why some families turn to big merit alternatives. It’s the only way to really reduce a high EFC (other than commuting to a local state school). As long as the student maintains the req’d GPA, then the family has some peace of mind knowing what they’ll be expected to pay.

Turning to big merit is also a way for a family to reserve funds for Med, Law, or Business school after undergrad graduation. Spending a college fund on undergrad can be a bad idea if it means taking out $250k in loans for med school. :(

monydad · December 7, 2010, 11:40am

“However, I would say that the honors program at Kansas was perhaps stronger than the average MIT student.”

I can’t speak for when you went there, however my perception as of about 2005, based on which KS residents did or did not get admitted to each of these two destinations at D1 and D2s two schools in KCMO & KS suburbs, is that this does not approach contemporary reality.

“Even if the student had opted to attend the elite uni in the first place, the same scenario of dropping out of engineering is a potential outcome, for example, as Cornell adheres to those same harsh grading practices.”

I have no idea how Cornell engineering college’s grading practices compare to other schools, for comparable students. Do you?

I have however seen numbers showing that,of the most recent class analyzed, 83% of its entering freshmen graduated from the engineering college. Another 10% transferred internally to, and then graduated from, other colleges within the university.

Internal transfer is not automatic. Poor grades, especially in courses at the destination college, would likely inhibit a transfer to the Arts & Sciences college. There are indeed some people who have to leave the university. But over 90% don’t leave. I imagine any of those who do transfer do so for reasons other than poor performance. But someone who just can’t do the work at the level the university requires is probably better off leaving, IMO.

al6200 · December 7, 2010, 6:22pm

I think that we should remember that there is a big difference between state flagships. I would choose any top 40 school over Arizona State, but I would choose UVA/Berkeley over any school not in the top 15 or so.

mdcamw · December 7, 2010, 6:33pm

While I am not an advocate for spending unnecessarily or going into extreme debt, fit is extremely important, as is the alum network, and access to employment after graduation. Notre Dame is expensive, but many alum will tell you it was worth every cent. The small size is ideal for some (not everyone can survive in school with 20,000+ students) and the contacts/employment opportunties post graduation are incredible. I also agree with al6200 – not all flagships are created equal.

debrockman · December 7, 2010, 7:16pm

While I, am not opposed to schools that one can afford, and while I DEFINITELY agree that different students perform better in different environments, flagship state schools ALSO have huge active alumni networks. If you are fortunate to live in a state with an exceptional public school (our state is blessed with TWO) a pure cost benefit analysis might suggest a second look at the public. My son will complete 4 years in a top 20 business school for less that the cost of one year in an elite private. Sure leaves a lot of money for grad school and a down payment on a house.

noimagination · December 7, 2010, 7:33pm

Regarding top schools, if nothing else, you will at least have the power of the brand and the ancillary (but important) benefits. So let’s say that you do go to Princeton for engineering and earn lousy grades to the point of being forced out of the engineering program and having to choose an easier major. Well, at least you’ll still have the power of the Princeton brand working in your favor. At least you’ll still have access to the Princeton alumni network. At least you’ll still have access to the Princeton recruiting office.
…
KU and Texas A&M do not seem to be comparable choices for the simple reason that they don’t have engineering programs that are ranked higher than Princeton, which then begs the question of why you would choose them. If the issue is money, then, as we established, Princeton offers excellent aid packages to the vast majority of students - arguably even better than what KU or TAMU would offer. 

Granted, there are students who are obviously rich enough to not qualify for aid at Princeton, but many of those students will be so rich as to not care about having to pay full freight anyway. Hence, we are talking about only a small fraction of students who are truly too rich to qualify for extensive aid at Princeton but not rich enough to not care.

I don’t buy it. In order to be rich enough to “not care” about $150k+, you’d have to be very, very wealthy.

In any case, what you’re really suggesting is a $150k insurance policy against the possibility that the student will either a) behave in a radically different fashion from in HS and as such perform poorly or b) have the worst possible luck on multiple tests in multiple classes at about the same time.

Scenario A can probably be avoided if the student is capable enough. Remember, I’m advocating for choosing the dramatically cheaper state school (as stated in the OP). That will probably be somewhere with big merit aid, which means that the student in question is well above the statistical profile of the student body. They should be more than capable of beating the curve.

Scenario B just seems ridiculously unlikely, certainly not worth the large insurance investment. Unless you can prove that a significant risk of failing an engineering program through pure bad luck and nothing else exists, I wouldn’t want to spend the extra cash based on that factor.

lyndeenj · December 7, 2010, 7:48pm

I’m finding it quite interesting how passionate people on cc are about elite private colleges, especially because I recently interviewed quite a few “out of work” graduates, some with Phd’s from Elite colleges. They are interviewing for $30K entry level jobs! Who you know is going to get you in the door of a job–the relationships you develop during your college years is going to get you in the door. What you do with your time while in college, ANY college is going to matter. Have you guys seen the credentials of kids going to State Colleges today? Many are just as competitive as Harvard, Yale and the like. And the last time I checked some of the Yale and Columbia MBA grads that I know, are still slaving away at a job like everybody else. It’s ridiculous, in this economy, to argue or compare what school is better or have smarter kids! How about they just get a darn education, period! The snobbery is incredible on this thread. I worked just as hard as my Columbia University colleagues, and they’re no more professionally ahead than I am. Work hard, be passionate, and success will come regardless of what college you graduate from!

br10pb · December 7, 2010, 7:56pm

Words of wisdom. ^^

debrockman · December 7, 2010, 7:56pm

I just turned away a Harvard kid from our company because I was concerned he wouldn’t stay with our small, growing firm. I suspect that happens more often than people suspect.

sakky · December 7, 2010, 8:05pm

Look, I am not exempting myself. I freely admit that I worked nowhere near as hard as my brother did, and so I did not receive the sort of accolades that he did, and rightfully so. So if I’m insulting anybody, I’m insulting myself. But I long ago accepted the truth that I should have worked harder. Sometimes the truth hurts, but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth.

Let’s excise the emotionality from the discussion and think about what I’m talking about. I’ve now provided a litany of possibilities. You can win admission to one of the top private schools that provides lavish financial aid. You can try to win one of the merit scholarships at one of the top private schools. You can win outside scholarships. You can pursue at least 1 year of ROTC, and possibly more if you’re willing to assume a military commitment (which, as I said, more of our most talented youths should be seriously considering anyway, rather than becoming bankers, mgmt consultants, or other professions of dubious social utility). Any or all of these options (especially the ROTC option) are available to students who are willing to put in the work.

And I’m afraid that that’s where you’re starting to lose my sympathy. Hey, my family never made anywhere near $200k. You say that those families aren’t rich: but they’re pretty darn rich compared to what my brother and I had, which wasn’t much.

Last spring, a mom posted on CC that her D had gotten accepted to Cornell and they were elated. They knew their FAFSA EFC was about $34k…which they thought was doable…but a stretch. They did have some college funds for each of their kids. However, Cornell put their “family contribution” at $46k, which at first they thought might be do-able if their D took a student loan and worked. However, as they looked at her FA package, they quickly saw that her FA package contained no grants…just loans and work-study. So, in reality, their family would be paying the entire amount thru family funds, loans, and work-study.

But, there was even more shocking info to come. The mom asked Cornell what they could expect if their son went to Cornell the following year. Yes, they would get grants at that point, but their total family contribution would be about $65k, which again couldn’t be softened with student loans because they would already be in the FA packages.

And to that, I would say that ROTC, at least for one year, might have been the way to go. Let’s face it: if you’re good enough to get into Cornell, you’re surely good enough to win a Cornell ROTC scholarship for which you will get paid to attend school for 1 year with absolutely no obligation.

[Top</a> Guns: Cornell ROTC | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/node/41974]Top”>http://cornellsun.com/node/41974)

After that year is complete, you can then consider your options. You can have the military pay for the rest of your Cornell degree in return for a service obligation. You can leave ROTC and attempt to pay for it yourself - possibly through outside scholarships. Another possibility, if you’ve done well at Cornell, is attempt to transfer to one of those top private schools such as Harvard that offer extensive financial aid.

Here’s a related option: more of our best youths should seriously consider enrolling at one of our military academies. It’s hard for me to think of any other colleges that will teach the key life skills of leadership, responsibility, and maturity the way that the academies will. Furthermore, not only do you not pay a dime to attend an academy, you actually get paid. You also do not incur any service obligation during your first two years, after which you can transfer to another school, hence effectively cutting your college costs in half.

My point simply is that there are things you can do to reduce the financial burden of college, as long as the student is willing to put in the work. This is far from a hopeless situation.

Personally, I think what more young people should do is put in the hard work to develop marketable skills, a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that our high schools largely refuse to teach skills that are immediately marketable. Let’s face it - most teenagers waste ridiculous amounts of time on unproductive socializing, video game playing, and other ridiculous activities; I know I certainly did. But it’s not that hard for somebody in junior high or even elementary school to, say, learn computer programming or Web design. Hence, instead of having high school students mindlessly playing video games in their spare time, why don’t they learn to design their own video games during that spare time? Instead of high school students mindlessly surfing Facebook or other Internet sites, why not have them learn to design their own Web applications? Instead of teens fiddling around with apps on their Iphone or Droid, why don’t they learn how to build their own apps? Nor is it difficult for even a kid in junior high school to start learning how to configure servers and routers, or cybersecurity techniques. This is not rocket science. Some of the most killer coders that I know - including one guy who I swear is a professional hacker - are just high school kids.

Nor is the conversation restricted to purely computer technologies. Plenty of teenagers spend plenty of time driving cars, but how many have actually learned how to fix their cars? Plenty of teenagers, especially girls, are interested in fashion, but how many of them actually learn how to tailor their own clothes, or even to customize clothing from scratch (i.e. from cloth)? Plenty of teenagers are interested in taking photos, but how many actually become so skilled at it to, say, become a professional photographer, i.e., say, a wedding photographer?

The point is that these are all marketable skills that any reasonably enterprising high school student can develop. Once have you have these skills, you can use them to defray the costs of college. I can think of quite a few guys who put themselves through school without asking for much money from their parents simply by working part-time as computer programmers and IT administrators. If you can earn the CCIE, OCM, or SAS computer certificate - which I think is highly realistic for most high school or even junior high schools students after a couple of years of part-time study - you can be making $25-40+ an hour without even needing a college degree, or heck, perhaps without even graduating from high school. {I heard of one high school senior who has multiple computer certificates who is thinking of not even going to college at all, as he’s already being offered a near 6-figure salary right out of high school.}

You can consider these skills to be just another form of extracurricular activity, only this time, it’s one that is actually marketable. Let’s face it - for all of the obsession that most high school boys have with school sports, the vast majority of them will never make a single dime from their sports skills. What if they had instead spent that time playing sports to develop computer skills? Unless you’re a pro, nobody cares that you know how to throw a football, but they do know (and will pay handsomely) if you know how to properly build an Oracle database.

sefago · December 7, 2010, 8:17pm

Yawn*

Same old threads where people who screwed up in high school try to claim that their easy to enter state schools with no grade inflation is superior to Harvard.

sakky · December 7, 2010, 8:35pm

And I ask again, for the example of Princeton (which was the school in question), exactly who’s paying $150k+? Given the lavishness of Princeton’s financial aid, their stated financial aid brackets make it quite clear that such people are mostly comprised of only the truly rich.

Now, where I would agree is that there are plenty of students who aren’t good enough to get into Princeton (or other top school with lavish aid). But that’s why I’ve been suggesting other possibilities, such as pursuing outside scholarships or considering ROTC or a military academy. There are things you can do.

I never said that the conversation was restricted to only flunking out. That’s only an extreme outcome.

I was talking about being weeded out, which often times happens voluntarily. For example, let’s say that you do choose a state-school engineering program, and you end up with a GPA of 3.0 after your weeders. That’s actually an above-average GPA for most engineering programs - certainly compared to, say, Berkeley EECS (for which the aforementioned typical lower-division engineering GPA was around a 2.7). So you’re actually doing better than most.

But at the same time, you’re still not really doing that well. Your engineering grades may rise after the weeders, but they’re probably never going to be great. {For example, even in the upper-division, the typical Berkeley EECS grade is a 2.9, which is only 0.2 higher than the lower-division). Hence, you’re not really going to be competitive for the very best engineering jobs. Hence, you’re probably going to end up with just an average engineering job at an average company.

So then the question is, was it really worth it? While we may be delving into speculative psychology, I would say that for most of them, it probably is not. Remember, we’re talking about people who were superstar performers in high school - good enough to get into a top private school. Now they’re just at a state school where their GPA - while higher than the average in their (engineering) major - isn’t really that great. They know that if they complete the major, they aren’t really going to have a great engineering job waiting for them upon graduation. Their fate, if they stay in the major, is probably to just become an average engineer. Is that really why they chose that state school? Was that the really great purpose of them turning down that elite private school - just to end up as an average engineer? {As a case in point, I can think of plenty of Berkeley chemical engineers who ended up with average engineering jobs - yet Berkeley has a much higher ranked ChemE program than Delaware does.} A job as an average engineer may be an excellent outcome for somebody who was just an average high school student. But for somebody who was a star?

Given that, the guy is probably going to weed himself out from the difficult engineering grading schemes in order to earn better grades in an easier major. But therein lies the problem: where is he going to go? What is his future? If he’s at UDelaware, having dropped out of the ChemE program, there are not very many other strongly-regarded majors available. Elite employers such as Goldman or McKinsey don’t really recruit at Delaware.

Now, let’s consider the alternative. He chooses an elite private school such as Princeton and he is mediocre there as well. Yet like I said, at least he still has access to the brand name, the recruiting, and the alumni network. He can still talk to top banking and consulting recruiters. {For example, I know a number of Harvard students who had rather unimpressive GPA’s yet nevertheless were hired by consulting and banking firms. They weren’t elite such firms, but they were still high-paying consulting and banking firms.} In short, he still has hope.

At what point is it worth it to go to a state school instead of a expensive private?

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