@CrackintoPieces
Forgot to mention: at my college one of the most common majors students drop is Elementary/Secondary Ed. A lot of students think they want to be teachers, and then they take a course where they have to create multiple lesson plans. We have other students that make it past the lesson plans, but then change their minds once they have their student teaching assignment for a semester during junior or senior year. The expectation and reality of being in a classroom with students all day don’t always match. Moreover, a lot of students don’t realize that the classes they take in high school are not the same classes they take at the college level. (It’s always interesting to see students complain that their HS AP Psych class was nothing like their Psych 101 class in college.) Plans will (and do) change.
Actually, it may be the case that the $$ being spent by these economists to perform this research is actually being spent in the “wrong way” 
I’ll continue to spend my $$ as I see fit. Thanks anyway…
@ProfSD
I have zero bitterness … I really don’t care if a different family chooses differently or looks at the expense from a different perspective from my own. Their money their choice, it really is that simple.
My own D is all over the map and has no clear idea what exactly she wants to do. HOWEVER of the fields she is interested in or dreams about becoming as a career path, none of them are anywhere close to high paying nor with the potential to become so. She knows she has zero interest in Medicine, Engineering, CS, Business … she is interested in writing, poli sci, history and philosophy …
She does know that nearly everything she is interested in requires grad school … so limiting funds paid on UG and going with a financial safety, so there are funds to handle grad work at a more prestigious institution is just playing the cards we have in the most prudent manner possible.
@CrackintoPieces I completely understand. I was responding to @coolguy40 's comment that people who pay a certain amount for UG “have more money than sense.” I find the judgmental tone on CC a bit much sometimes.
There is a lot of judgmental tones on this site. I suspect one’s view of it (or even noticing any given occurrence of it) will tend to depend on one’s view of the thing itself being judged.
I’d see this as a question that could have different answers pending the subject involved. Are we talking about someone buying and using illegal drugs that will cost a bit to society in many ways? Then yes, there is a wrong answer.
One could even go a bit further and talk about things that are bad for the planet and thus to society. (eg Is auto racing helpful or hurtful overall? What about fireworks? There are oodles of plausible debating questions.)
But which college one attends isn’t much different than where one goes for vacation - or if they even opt to take a vacation. There’s a wide variety of options pretty much any of which are just fine to choose overall. The “right” choice depends upon the individual, how much they are willing to spend, and what they want from it. Whichever place wins the final decision will get some economic benefit from the spending involved.
With colleges the economic benefit “someplace” can extend a lifetime. For some that can be the folks who benefit from the interest paid on the debt involved. For many (statistically) that will be higher taxes from the higher income college grads (overall) earn. Then there’s less unemployment.
Something does not necessarily have to be illegal to impose costs on bystanders or unsuspecting users. A drug example would be overly aggressively marketed (as not addictive) opioid pain drugs that physicians were encouraged to prescribe lots of.
Those are only a very small number of students who have the top prizes, and they have only a few peers anywhere they go. Harvard doesn’t have 200 national prize winners in their Class of 2023.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the parents here who are looking for “peers” for their kids have kids who are academically well accomplished, not superstar award winners or profoundly gifted kids.
Since only 30% of the students accepted to Harvard are in their top academic decile, and 85% of kids like that are rejected, and likely rejected from other, similar colleges. On the other hand, all of the kids of that academic achievement who apply to a place like Wisconsin or UIUC are almost all accepted. A kid of that category is almost 6 times more likely to be accepted at a public flagship as at Harvard or similar colleges. Do the math.
If peer quality is the only benefit you see at selective colleges, they do have a much higher saturation of that. You put one spoon of sugar in a glass, it taste sweet. If you put one spoon of sugar in a 2 gallon pitcher, you can hardly taste it.
Does saturation really make a difference, though? It seems to me that 200 people is 200 people.
Of course, I’m thoroughly unconvinced that this whole “peers” thing is valid. I mean, by the time I was a college senior, I was pretty well advanced in linguistic analysis, and if my nearest peer was just as academically talented as me but in, say, mechanical engineering, I would never have even met that individual, let alone be able to bask in the peerness.
I must not have any common sense since I had a goal to provide the best college education for my kids that I could afford and set about a long-term plan on how to achieve that goal by saving money in a college fund for the past 18 years. I wanted to give my kids the option to go to the best fit college for them, without restrictions. If I’m teaching my kids the wrong values, than I guess I’m guilty as charged…
I’ll vote with Socaldad. I have one child, and when he started UG, the cost was $35,000. When he was young, he asked me if he got into MIT, Harvard or the like, would I be able to send him? I told him I’d find a way. I guess the carrot trick worked. Nonetheless, I’m still working as I approach 70, to keep from touching my retirement fund. (No tears, as I’m not working full time.)
I can’t imagine paying $65,000, as I’m not earning much more than I did in 2006. The UG school he attended was ranked “best value” at the time, and offered some merit awards for upperclassmen. Also, at $65,000, we would have received financial aid.
It’s such a hard choice these days, and I suspect will get worse for our grandchildren.
I’m sorry. The experience at UIUC is nothing like a top LAC. Period. People who think it is are just wrong. Yes there are tons of smart kids at UIUC. I’m struggling with why some posters don’t get that undergrad is not just about the degree you end up with at the end. It’s not the “very same degree”.
Undersgrad is four years of a student’s life and a pretty important four years. I could list a ton of ways that our niece’s experience at UIUC is different than our S19’s at Bowdoin. Both are bright kids and taking advantage of what their school offers. Not the same by a long stretch.
As for honors programs at state schools, some are very exclusive. From what I see here, places like Georgia or Michigan have pretty amazing honors programs. ASU? The average ACT in Barrett is 29. All of that analysis about state school students and how a huge percentage are super similar to Harvard kids is not true. A good friend’s daughter was in the honors program at Indiana and it was awful. In the honors dorm too. She said kids just drank all of the time. No one cared about school. And classes were way easier than her high school classes. She transferred out.
If we’re talking about engineering or business, this is a different conversation. For liberal arts kids or undecided kids, where they go to undergrad matters. S19 is learning to write. Really write. Not happening at a big school. He’s supported in all of his classes whether it is math or archeology. Has the chance to really dive deep and see what interests him.
We already know that people spend their money differently. If we couldn’t pay full sticker price, S19 would still have gone to a smaller school but just one that gave him merit. One doesn’t need to break the bank to get the right fit.
There is nothing wrong with sending your kid to Harvard etc if you can afford to do so without turning your entire life into a pretzel. I know several kids at Harvard and none of them won major international awards. Two are legacy and one had major volunteering…but no national awards. All three had stats that were lower than my daughters, who did not apply to Harvard. She did, however, apply to several highly ranked schools.
I agree 100% that one does not have to break the bank to find the right fit. What I don’t agree with is the concept of “ivy caliber” students not being able to find their fit at a public school. As with all things, it depends on the school and possibly the major. I don’t believe for a minute that engineering students at a “lesser” school will not find their peers.
My daughter recently graduated from a very strong and well regarded flagship university. You would not believe how many people asked…Will she be able to find her academic peers?
She had classes with her academic peers, she lived with her academic peers, she volunteered and did research with her academic peers. At no point in her 4 years did she ever feel intellectually superior to any of them. And yes… her Friday nights often involved sitting in a coffee shop having a variety of interesting discussions.
Find your fit school, period. Whether it’s big, small, public, private etc… if you are happy and can afford it… that’s what matters.
@creekland Yes, it is a common comment on CC.
We have a student majoring in foreign languages who writes 1000s of words per week in multiple languages and who writes at a very elevated level. Yes, “learning to write. Really write” does happen at a big school.
Sciences like physics are considered liberal arts. Where our physics grad student attended for UG didn’t impact his grad school options.
Our kids have equally been able to dive deep and find their interests. Nothing you wrote is exclusive to an LAC.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek so at a large state flagship, kids are in classes where the professors cover the kids’ papers in red ink and then meet with them multiple times privately to answer questions and guide them? And the students get this experience as freshman?
Would the professors also be super flexible with their time because the student is a three season athlete and has very little available time to meet? If that’s true, then I’ll certainly bow to being wrong. S19 usually can’t make set office hours and has still been able to make appointments and see his profs.
@homerdog my daughter wrote a lab report as a freshman. It was her first one in college, and it came back covered in red pen. And yes… she met privately with professors starting in her freshman year… not just during office hours.
She completed a research project her first semester and presented it at a conference on campus, and her professor was always available to meet with her… not just during office hours.
I am not suggesting that this holds true at all large public universities. It might not, but it did at hers. All schools are not created equal… but that is true whether big, small, private, public etc.
Yes, profs mark up papers and tell them what needs to be reworked. Yes, starting freshman yr. Yes, kids can make appts to meet with profs outside of standard scheduled office hrs.
My kids have great relationships with their profs. Profs have lent them books out of their personal libraries, met with them to talk about topics outside the scope of their classes, etc.
Your questions are stereotypes my kids have not encountered.
Ok. I obviously believe both of you. It’s just not what I see from kids who go to Big Ten schools like Iowa, Wisconsin, UIUC and Indiana. First hand info from S19’s friends. Maybe his friends are not trying hard enough to get individualized attention. They certainly are not surrounded by kids whose profiles are the same as the kids at Harvard. I think it was those comments that set me off.
As I mentioned already, honors programs at certain big universities offer lots of attention. @twogirls I believe this was the case for your daughter.
I am amazed at all the kids who apparently did not learn to write in high school. We chose high schools that emphasized and produced strong writers so that skill was acquired before college.