My kid has loved Hamilton from the start and was thrilled to get in, but of course they had to make the decision extra difficult by charging us more. Ham is a better fit for him than Denison, but Den is also a good fit; he made friends immediately at the admitted students event. Both are the same travel time from our house whether driving or flying. Neither is in a good location, though Den has proximity to Columbus (for concerts or field trips) and Hamilton is near the Adirondacks and has an active outdoor club, which he loves. I’m sure they both have great faculty, but we LOVE Ham’s focus on writing and public speaking. Both seem to have great connections for career search, which is v important as my son has no idea what he wants to do for work. (Ham has great Wall St. connections with big banks that hire their humanities graduates–he thinks that sounds great, to make big money right out of school to get some savings or pay off ed loans and then have flexibility moving forward from there.) Administration at both seems to be doing a great job; both are well-managed.
Both prices are going to be difficult for us to pay, but we thought we could try to pay for Denison without him having to take out subsidized loans. Is Hamilton’s reputation worth $6K extra a year? (And probably more next year, as I’ve gone from 75% to 100% employed to pay for college.) $25K of Denison’s aid is merit, so we know that won’t go away. We couldn’t afford to live in a fancy neighborhood with great public schools, so I really want my kid to have great college experience that makes up for his so-so high school, but we are also very averse to debt and don’t want him to have any.
At a time when Forbes had such an article, Hamilton appeared among “10 Expensive Colleges Worth Every Penny”:
In this current WalletHub — a personal finance website — analysis, Hamilton receives recognition as one of just four featured schools, along with Princeton, Yale and Swarthmore:
This really has to be a family decision.
I always wonder about Hamilton’s Wall Street Pipeline. Forty percent of Hamilton students went to private schools. Looking at the schools represented, I have to wonder if the Wall St. connections are solely based on attending Hamilton, or do they reach back even further?
As a case example, David Solomon, Hamilton graduate and CEO of Goldman Sachs, attended a public high school.
With respect to substantive academic aspects at Hamilton that might pertain to a career on Wall Street or in finance generally, Hamilton’s economics and mathematics programs are among the best in the nation.
Not all educational debt is bad. Moderate debt (having him take the loans up to the government limit) may or may not be crippling, horrific, life altering, etc.
Time to sit down with a loan calculator and look at the actual cash flow once he’s paying back his loans.
Do not over-estimate what he’ll be earning right out of undergrad (those hefty salaries are very competitive to get- and if the country tips into a recession soon, there are no guarantees that the banking industry won’t have a major reshuffle in the next few years). But his loans, he needs to figure out if it’s worth it for he sees as a better experience.
Both are fine colleges with terrific outcomes; he won’t be “settling” if he ends up at Denison…
Good luck.
And in high rent districts.
Understood! It was just an example of something that piqued our attention about Hamilton.
With respect to your son’s interest in philosophy, you should keep Hamilton’s Summer Program in Philosophy in mind. This program is open to applicants from any college or university, regardless of major:
That said, if this was my child I’d find a way to finance Hamilton. I am very familiar with both schools, and in my opinion Hamilton is the clear choice here.
It is. We all want Hamilton, but have nothing bad to say about Denison, so it’s hard to justify coming up with the extra money. I am astounded by the people on this forum that decided to spend $80k more for Hamilton, or who can’t decide between school A for $0 and B for $25k. Those would be very clear cut for me.
Thank you, that’s good to know. We all want Hamilton for him, but don’t know how to justify it objectively. When the difference is larger (such as the people who are debating between $0K and $25K+ schools) it seems more clear cut.
This appears to raise the question, What are you seeking with your topic here? Your son can resolve your financial concerns by choosing Denison, a school with which he has become quite comfortable.
As an opinion, I’d say that for most students various aspects — particularly academic aspects, but some others as well — decidedly favor Hamilton. However, values and priorities differ, and Denison may be the preferred choice for this particular situation.
IMO, the best gift you can give your young adult is that s/he come out of college debt free. Your son can do that by attending Denison; he can not do that if he attends Hamilton. He is undecided and well may need that financial support later for grad school in one field or another.
Debt might be justified as an investment if return on investment can be anticipated. Engineering, for example, is a high paying field which might justify the debt because a high salaried job can be anticipated upon graduation. But again, your son is undecided.
Will Hamilton lead to a higher paying job after graduation. Some anecdotal reports have been cited in this thread. But Payscale researches post college salaries as it’s bread and butter. It ranks colleges based on the reported earnings of their alumni - with all colleges in a single group, no separate categories for big schools or small or anything else. The ranks of these two are:
#125 - Denison
#138 - Hamilton
In other words, the data isn’t there to support the claim that Hamilton will lead to higher pay. Basically they’re quite similar.
These two schools are more alike than they are different in general. Both are highly selective. Both offer small classes with identical 9:1 student:teacher ratios. Denison is slightly larger and offers a few more majors but it isn’t a significant difference in either case. The biggest difference is that Hamilton offers an open curriculum while Denison has distribution requirements. Personally, I prefer the open curriculum, but I don’t think it’s worth going into debt for.
I think it’s fantastic that your son has two great options for what are equivalent to state college prices. Even more fantastic is the fact that he can attend one of them and graduate in 4 years debt free! I would celebrate that.
Actually, with respect to career outcomes generally, data have been offered in this topic. In the WalletHub analysis posted earlier the OP can find a Career Outcomes Rank for both Hamilton and Denison. Based on the methodology noted within the site, several factors contribute to this category, including information from PayScale. By this measure, Hamilton placed 59th nationally and Denison placed 214th nationally.
My two cents is there is no way to “objectively” justify paying more for Hamilton. Too much of what happens in terms of career just depends on the individual, sometimes the family, and the choices they make. And of course less debt is a hard benefit, not just financially but also in terms of being more free to make choices that could pay less in the short term but lead to more fulfilling educational and career paths in the long run. No statistics or studies I know of are going to do a good job evaluating any of that.
However, to me that is not at all the end of the question. Just because something is subjective does not make it insubstantial. Indeed, ultimately the things that tend to really matter in life are in some sense subjective. And this is four years of your life, plus there are possible long term effects which cannot be monetized but are nonetheless potentially significant–the friends you make, the way you develop and evolve as a person, and so on.
OK, so if your kid would subjectively prefer Hamilton, that is a real benefit to consider. But less debt going to Denison is also a real benefit to consider. And somehow you have to trade these off.
Which really no one here can do for you, it is a very personal, complex, and dare I say subjective issue. But I do think it isn’t a great idea to try to turn it into an objective decision. You just have to embrace the subjectivity of the issue, make a decision, and then make the most of whatever you decide. Such is life.
As another approach, perhaps consider where your son might be more comfortable academically. For example, these are the ACT middle-ranges from these schools’ websites:
Hamilton: 33–35
Denison: 29–33
If, say, your son scored a 35 on his ACT, he might be more comfortable at Hamilton; if he scored, say, a 29, he might be more comfortable at Denison.
@Merc81, you’re comparing apples and oranges. The WalletHub ranking uses 7 different categories upon which they base their rankings with multiple factors in each category . In this respect, they are more akin to the US News rankings to identify the “best” colleges - a fool’s errand IMO.
The fact is that out of 100 points to determine their rankings, career earnings received a weight of only 5 points. So, 95% of their rankings were based on other factors.
I pulled out the Payscale information separately and provided it here. I am not making a case for which is the “better” college as WalletHub is. I’m simply saying that as a matter of dollars and cents, Payscale does not show an advantage in career earnings for Hamilton alums to justify taking on debt. My point was strictly limited to debt vs return on investment.
My apologies that I firgot the fact that data was provided. It’s just not the kind of data that I was focusing on.
I based my post on a single WalletHub category, Career Outcomes, however.
I’ve been trying to stay out of this discussion, as I don’t want to sound like a cheerleader for Denison, but this formulation seems a little simplistic. Our S19 received a terrific education at Denison and loved his time there. He is now in graduate school in the UK but will be flying back to Ohio next month to see a couple of his teammates graduate. (He didn’t apply to Hamilton after being put off by an unfortunate alumni group we met at a college fair in Tokyo.) Although my son was a psychology/sports science major, he took a number of history and philosophy classes at Denison and his professors in those departments were really good. Until the very end, he was trying to figure out whether he could squeeze in a history minor on top of his double major. He did not take any communication or journalism classes, but those departments are highly regarded. Your son may want to take a look if he is interested in writing and public speaking. Denison’s location was very good from our perspective. Granville is a perfect little college town, where students and faculty really do hang out and mingle; Newark/Heath, which has Target, Krogers, etc. is ten minutes away; and Columbus/Easton/Columbus Airport is less than a half hour away. So if the kids begin to get a little bored with Granville after a couple of years, they have plenty of places to go. We didn’t know anything about Columbus going in, but it is a great city with a lot of positive energy. I understand your son loves Hamilton, and that gut feeling is important - that’s how my son felt when he visited Denison - but Denison is also a great school with a lot to offer, and being debt-free would be a long-term blessing.
The WalletHub Career Outcomes category is fairly complex, actually:
That noted, I recognize Denison as a rising institution, and as a school that may represent an excellent fit for the OP’s son. However, the OP did inquire about objective bases for comparison, which is what a disinterested source such as WalletHub may provide.