Hello everyone: I am new here and I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this. I have a child in her senior year of high school. We live in Pennsylvania and her first choice for college is Villanova. She has good grades not great SATs (a bit below 1300 but taking again). Fortunately, most colleges are still test optional for this application cycle. She is considering applying ED to Villanova School of Business. She would be a legacy but is not likely to be accepted. We feel she has almost no chance of acceptance as a RD applicant. More on this later.
We have visited a lot of schools, and she liked some a lot of them. She particularly liked the University of Delaware. She doesnât like the idea of Penn State but did like Pitt. She also liked Bucknell and Lehigh but not enough to apply ED.
We are just a middle-class family, unfortunately and I worry about the expense of these private colleges. Our family income is a bit over $300k and, from what I have heard, this is likely too much to expect any aid. We have some assets, but we made less money when first married and we donât have more than a couple hundred thousand saved (minus retirement accounts we can touch). I am sure we could make something work but Villanova (or Lehigh, Bucknell, etc.) would likely cost around $350k for 4 years. Delaware would be around $200k over 4 years. Penn State or Pitt would be around $120k. We have enough saved to comfortably pay for Penn State or Pitt. Delaware would be manageable. A private university like Villanova would be tough.
Culturally, I think Villanova would be a perfect fit. I also think it would provide a better education than the state schools I mentioned. Still, a student who works hard should be able to get a decent education at any of these schools. Her preferred major will be business related (possibly accounting). Would spending so much money be worth it for better career options? I want the best for her and will do whatever I have to do, but I want to know it is worth it before making the commitment. I am 50 so I donât have as much earnings ahead of me as a younger guy.
I would appreciate unbiased opinions and suggestions. I know the earnings of the private schools are significantly higher, on average, than the state school we are considering. However, $200k+ is a lot of ground to make up. I also know those numbers are averages and are not reliably applied across the board. Thanks.
Have you used the NPCs for the schools on your list- such as Lehigh etc?
Pitt is a great school, and being in-state makes it even better. Your daughter will not be disadvantaged at all if that is where she ends up.
I have not heard that attending one of the fine privates on your list will lead to a higher salary than Pitt. What matters is the student, not whether they attended Pitt, Villanova, or Bucknell.
Pitt is often underestimated. There is a lot going on there to take advantage of.
The Villanova School of Business was my childâs âdream schoolâ but they were not accepted. They are an accounting major at another, less expensive school, where they are getting a BS/MS in four years. Honestly, I think it has been fantastic for them. I think clubs are competitive at Villanova. At the smaller school, my child has thrived and, through their own initiative, got internships after their freshman, sophomore and junior years, and has an accounting job lined up with a major company for after graduation. The good news is accountants are in demand. Your child may enjoy Villanova, and thatâs great, but a student can absolutely be successful with a degree from many other, less expensive colleges.
I believe the studentâs attributes are more important than the school. Good luck to your student.
Start with facts first. Run the Net Price Calculator on the relevant schoolsâ websites. It wonât be perfect as it changes each year, but you will know whether you will be expected to pay full list price or a different number. After that, this is an individual decision and pretty much impossible to quantify. We are a full pay family and paid full list price at expensive colleges. Having said that, we had saved for them to have that choice and it did not impact our overall financial health. If this will impact retirement savings etc, that is a very different calculation. There is no weâll pay X more and theyâll earn Y more over their lifetime. It just doesnât work that way. More than anything, figure out what youâre willing to pay NOW. By far the most difficult situations we heard about were students who were led to believe their parents would pay for college they couldnât afford and didnât learn until after acceptances. Lots and lots of my kids friends were told, weâre paying for the state flagship and thatâs where they applied and thatâs where they attended. Much less drama than letting them get accepted to their dream school and then say oopsie.
My daughter was accepted in Villanova, honors. It wouldâve been a good fit (at the time she was involved in our Catholic Church, plus I think they have a nice Irish dance team and she was accepted competitive dancer). Our income is significantly less, and we received zero FA.
She ended up at University of Delaware with a $17,000 annual scholarship. She just got her doctorate at BU in physical therapy, but Delaware has a top program (she chose BU because she wanted urban for grad school). After a month or so at UD she told me she couldnât imagine being that happy anywhere else.
In general, though, I really think it is critical for the college choice to be comfortably affordable for the family if at all possible. Among other reasons, if a kid knows their family is paying an uncomfortable amount, it can add stress, make them rule out further education or first-step job options that could be great for them, and so on.
It is challenging enough for college-bound kids these days. They just donât need that hanging over them. And so whether or not they really understand this yet, a comfortably affordable college choice is truly an excellent gift.
Most wouldnât say this is middle income. You can run the net price calculator to see if there will be aid. But I donât think so - but you need to validate. I linked below this note for you.
That the student likes UD and Nova or Lehigh and likes Pitt but not Penn State tells me huge campus schools - like Va Tech, UGA, Bama, UF and others with large campuses should be out.
If you are full pay, that will be music to Novaâs ears. To be blunt, itâs a school for the wealthy - far less than 50% receive any type of need based aid. They will say - weâre need blind - it doesnât matter - so you need to decide, ED or not, if youâre willing to pay $90K. If youâre not, then donât ED. Period, end of story. Yes, she needs to apply TO but TO doesnât mean exactly that. Well, at Nova it might - only 28% submitted a test. But at other schools, it might be TO but 75% submitted - and when you take out athletes, etc. itâs really higher. But yes, for Nova, you should be ok TO.
If you arenât willing to pay $90K, donât apply there ED. They accepted 920 ED per the last CDS. And yet admitted 6174 total. They need you, if they admit you, more than you need them.
Only 1730 enrolled so if you assume 810 enrolled, non ED, that means their yield was roughly 1/6 (actually 15%) when removing ED. This will be because maybe kids got into higher ranked schools but Iâm guessing mostly due to cost. So I donât buy the ED or bust for a school like this.
btw - there are no dream schools - all have bad profs, roomies, food, dorms whatever.
So my guidance - set a budget - what are you willing to spend? if itâs $375-400K, then apply NovaâŠ.ED even. If itâs not, apply RD and donât apply ED anywhere!!
What is it about Nova she likes? The environment - suburban. Close to home (how close does she need to be if so)? The religion? Basketball.
There are certainly less expensive schools (at least likely less expensive) - whether a Dayton or a Loyola (MD, Chicago). If she likes the smaller campus, Miami of Ohio (rural-ish) feels like a big liberal arts college and depending on her GPA which I donât think you mentioned, she could score great merit. Perhaps a school like Bentley that is business focused would be an interest? Or if the Catholic/Jesuit matters, maybe a Fordham or Fairfield, Sacred Hart, Creighton, Xavier and if distance is no issue, U of Portland gives mad merit aid - big merit aid.
If her goal is a âMain Streetâ job, especially in the Mid Atlantic area, I donât think there is a great if any differential in first job outcome between the privates you mentioned vs the states. What may matter is if the campus environment affects her enjoyment of school and ability to do well. A more expensive school in that case may be worth the investment but I canât see the state schools you listed being bad choices for a college experience.
Yeah, this isnât specific to Villanova, but it is a fact privates like that are now experiencing a lot of competitive pressure from publics like Pitt and Delaware that have really leveled up the quality of the experience, and indeed their selectivity. I think they always had good teaching, but everything else about them has gotten more competitive too.
Of course if you can comfortably afford any of them, then thatâs fine. But if Villanova wonât get competitive on price, and your family is not comfortably full pay, well, thatâs kinda their problem. It doesnât have to be yours.
btw - this title - is a controversial one that people can go off in a million directions - but Villanova full pay would probably sink on any list where this came up
Furman and Marist might be two more to look at - with substantial merit aid. And if the student wants to be a CPA, donât forget, more schooling (and expense) will be involved.
Due to the 150 semester credit hours required by some states ?
If yes, note that several states have moved back to requiring just 120 semester credit hours in order to sit for the CPA exam; Pennsylvania is among those states which will reduce the requirement starting in 2026.
In the end, weâre the consumers, and therefore the ultimate decision makers. The application process can make it seem like they have all the cards at that stage, but once they want you as a student, now they are basically applying to you.
And honestly, thatâs the fun part! Competing offers from colleges which all want you, how cool is that?
So thatâs the spirit of that comment. If a college that wants you doesnât given you a good enough offer, well, now you get to reject them. Not that you have to be mean about it, but it is a competitive world and they simply did not win your business.
In a very similar situation as the OP both in terms of the types of schools on the list and feeling squeezed on costs as a $300k/yr income. Instead of PA, weâre in MA. Senior son was considering ED to BC (parentsâ alma mater) but didnât absolutely love BC enough to only apply there (nor did we feel committed to $400k for an undergraduate degree without seeing what other options might exist). Heâs a very good student, but not an elite student and will have 6-8APs on his transcript and 4,4,5 AP tests scores from last spring to boast about. Was hoping to get to 1400 on his SAT but his last sitting got him to 1360 and heâs mentally done with the exam after figuring out that he probably wonât submit scores to the more selective schools on his list anyway.
He has decided that patience and a balanced list of schools will be his gameplan, and weâll evaluate after he sees where it all shakes out. He is conscious of cost, and Iâm proud of him for it. His list includes:
BC
Villanova
U Richmond
UVA
Holy Cross
Fairfield
Providence College
Loyola MD
University of Mass.
St. Michaels College (VT)
I predict heâll get into 1/2-2/3 of these schools. Heâll get no merit at BC, âNova, Richmond, UVA or UMass (in-state) if he gets in. He might get some merit at Holy Cross and Providence, and will likely get significant merit ($15-20k+/yr) at Fairfield and Loyola and Saint Mikeâs.
Overall, I detest the ED option and feel it puts anyone who is the least bit cost conscious at a real disadvantage.
I think that there are three main things that impact the average earnings for graduates from any particular university.
A very big one is the mix of majors that the university offers, and the number of students who graduate with each major. As an obvious example, a university that graduates a large number of people with engineering and computer science degrees will tend to have high average earnings just because these are majors that tend to have high salaries. While it might be less obvious, math majors also tend to do relatively well, and for starting salaries straight out of university with just a bachelorâs degree nursing is also a relatively good major.
Another issue is where the university is located. A lot of graduates will stay relatively close to the university for their first job. Not all will, but quite a few will. Jobs in expensive areas (San Francisco Bay Area, New York, âŠ) tend to pay a bit better compared to jobs in less expensive areas. They might not pay enough better to make up for the higher living costs, but will pay somewhat better. This implies that universities in expensive areas might tend to have more graduates with slightly higher salaries compared to universities in areas that are less expensive to live.
Finally, the personality and drive on average of the students will matter some. Famous and highly ranked schools will tend to have a higher percentage of students who are likely to succeed. Any one highly driven student might be likely to do well wherever they attend university, and there will be some of these at any university, but there might be a higher percentage of them at a highly ranked university.
I have said this before in other threads but it might be worth repeating: The smartest and most highly driven graduates who I have met coming from U. Mass are just as strong and just as driven and just as successful as the smartest and most highly driven graduates who I have met coming from Harvard and MIT. The latter two schools just have a higher percentage of such graduates which impacts the average salary across all graduates from each school.
This is of course a major that tends to lead to a good job. I was a math major in university, and my understanding is that some math majors end up in accounting (I went into something else, which was in high tech â a lot of careers can make use of math skills).
There are a very small number of careers where the âprestigeâ of the undergraduate school matters. Investment banking and management consulting come to mind. For most careers this really does not matter much. Certainly in high tech (where I spent my career) graduates from MIT and Stanford and U.Mass and Rutgers and San Jose State and a very, very long list of other schools work alongside each other and no one cares where anyone got their degrees. In most cases we do not even know where anyone got their degrees. We do care about whether someone is reasonable to work with and whether whatever they produce actually works.
All of which might lead to the question of whether investment banking or management consulting is a career which your child might want to pursue. Personally I would consider these to be areas which pay well, but which are not work environments where I would be comfortable. When I see high school students considering these areas I think about a friend who got a degree in math from MIT, then a law degree from Harvard, passed the bar, went to work for a prestigious high end law firm in New York City, and lasted one week. He could do it. He did not want to do it. He hated the environment and instead went back to university to get a masterâs degree in a different field. Fortunately his parents could afford all those degrees with no debt and no hardship.
Which to me implies that in most cases IMHO the very expensive private universities are not likely to be worth it if you are full pay. There are however exceptions, some of which involve parents who can afford to pay something over $300,000 per child for university with no hardship. Somewhat oddly enough the one family I know who would find this cost the easiest to handle instead had their one child attend an in-state public university (which was an excellent school in their case).
And I do know multiple people (including both daughters and my wife) who got their bachelorâs degree at an affordable public university, and who then got (or are currently getting) some form of graduate degree at a more famous and highly ranked university. This is common. Also as a graduate student at a highly ranked university (Stanford in my case for a masterâs), I knew a large number of the other students in the same program who had gotten their bachelorâs degrees at an affordable public university. Many then got some work experience. They they paid the big bucks but just for a one year masterâs degree. Thus if a graduate degree is a possibility (a big if) you do not necessarily need to spend the big bucks for a bachelorâs degree in order to at least have a chance of attending the well known famous graduate program.
And I agree that if you have this choice available, it can be tough to decide what is worth it and what choice makes more sense for any particular family.
Yes, I believe Georgia is also one of the states that has rolled back the 150 hour requirement. You can now, or will be able to soon, sit for the CPA exam with 120 hours and 2 years of work. Accountants are in huge demand. Plenty of the accounting and finance double majors we know ended up in accounting because that is where many of the jobs are. It is also not a major where undergraduate prestige matters. An accounting degree from a state school will get you a very nice job.I certainly would not pay a premium for an accounting undergraduate degree.
Companies typically pay the same, no matter the college. Location is the biggest determinant of salary at most places - not school.
Not accounting but my low ranked public school kid - makes the same as the grads from the top 10s he works with and at trivia night (in Utah), found out he makes more than a Columbia kid at a competing company.
I think your statement is not correct. Sure, a Stanford or MIT will have higher earnings but if it was like jobs, not necessarily. But their jobs may be higher level. But your student isnât in that level of school discussion.
Nova doesnât even list salary by major - they list it by the b school (an average salary) and donât define if it includes signing bonus or expected bonuses - so Iâd ask for deeper info or take that one with a grain of salt. They should define better.
