The problem with using the general Payscale Ranking is that it does not distinguish between the mix in majors. I am not familiar enough with either school, so I don’t know for example if Dennison has a higher mix of pre-professional majors in each class. The better comparison is to look at outcomes by major, especially the major your student is targeting.
While I don’t want to brush off a $6k a year difference, $24k ± over 4 years, I agree with @NiceUnparticularMan, when looking at “return”, we must consider the overall experience and not just the bare $$'s. Over the course of a lifetime, $24k is not that much so I don’t think the decision should be just driven by the difference in this cost.
As another happy parent of a successfully-launched Denison alum, I don’t see a significant difference between those two schools – a student is going to have excellent academic experiences and wonderful post-grad opportunities at both Hamilton and Denison. Only the OP can weigh the impact of debt on the family, which sounds like it would go up after year one because of increased income. Consider whether the lack of debt would mean a student could take advantage of other opportunities, such as unpaid internships or international travel and what it would mean for launching post-grad. I can say that my kid understood in theory the benefit of not having student loans, but once he was working in NYC post-grad, he really appreciated what it meant.
All of these measures are imprecise. Colleges with a substantial engineering school, for example, are going to do very well. So, in many ways it is preferable to compare colleges within categories - in this case liberal arts colleges. Payscale does recognize this and allows you to do comparisons by major.
Because they are both liberal arts colleges, Denison and Hamilton do not really have preprofessional majors.
$24,000 is not that much over the course of a life time, but unfortunately you have to pay it off in your first 10 years out of college, the period of your lowest income. You don’t have a lifetime to pay off that debt.
I think of education as a lifetime investment and would amortize the cost over life – money after all is fungible. If we do look at this as a cashflow issue, $24k over 10 years at 7% amortizes out to less than $280/month – just brown bag your lunch and skip Starbucks vs the company coffee. I’d have a real concern if the debt were $100/200k which could affect real choices. A small amount of debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Makes your young grad deal with budgeting for fixed costs.
Are you saying that a Hamilton education is so much better than a Denison education that a student should go into debt for it vs obtaining the other with no debt?
What exactly will the Hamilton student learn or experience that will make their 4 years there qualitatively better?
Not picking Hamilton over Dennison, just saying for a $24k difference pick the school where you think the kid will be happier and likely more successful. If there is indifference or just a slight marginal preference, pick the cheaper school. Iif Hamilton were the one $24k cheaper, I’d be saying the same thing.
I agree with others that if he’s so drawn to Hamilton, and cost is relatively close, I’d lean toward that. Is it worth an ask to Hamilton to see if they could match, or come closer to the Denison COA?
If that debt is manageable, I tend to agree with this. It’s not a huge amount of debt. Additionally, we don’t know where you live, but have you taken the cost of transportation into consideration as well? And whether or not you will have to pay to store items over the summer versus bring them home? These are all additional Factors that need to be taken into consideration.
I concur with those who point out that the student had a clear preference for Hamilton. This would be enough for me to do all that I could to make it work if it was my child. Also, if we are looking at a $6000 difference, could the child make this, or most of it, up with summer employment?
Mom said, “My kid loved Hamilton from the start and was thrilled to get in . . . 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.”
Although he prefers Hamilton, it sounds to me that he likes them both. Clear preference? I don’t know. . .
Thanks, everyone. We aren’t the type of people to pay more for a name brand (or in this case, a USNWR ranking), but we do pay more for quality, and I was having a hard time judging the difference in quality of the two schools. But we all feel like Hamilton is where he will be happiest, so what else can we do? He’ll contribute and we’ll pay what we can.
Denison was a better fit than his other well-priced choices of Vassar, Wesleyan, Washington College and UMd. The other acceptances were more $ and lower on his list, anyway.
merc81, It sounds like you work for Hamilton. All of the above is true, but the drive from Binghamton to Clinton is quite depressing, as is Utica. It’s a region that has been left behind, economically, but the people are very nice.
My daughter just did her taxes and she made $8K during her last year as a college student. Two months full time in the summer and a few hours a week during school.
I don’t think she earned less than $4K during any of her college years (six, since she got her masters).
It’s partly for these impressions that I believe Denison should be the choice here. However, this represents just one opinion of the many you have received here.
Not a vote for either one, but make sure you uncover ALL costs. S23s major requires an off campus summer class that they are pretty quiet about. Dorm prices might increase as they move into the nicer upperclassman dorms. How much have their prices historically gone up over 4 years? Do they fund off-campus research opportunities or travel abroad? The price difference might be more or less than it seems on the surface.