I was referring to @MassDaD68 's statement that:
What are they missing?
Don’t forget that North Carolina is also a large state, as well. People who come from Boone and Asheville to attend UNC Wilmington are coming from 5-6 hours away. Meanwhile, a New Jerseyan can attend school in CT or MD and still be relatively close to home.
Just from the perspective of climate change the number of airplane trips involved in sending your child across the country for four years is not such a great thing (and I’m pleading guilty here). But there’s a growing disparity between the locations of of schools with national reputations in the US and the people who want to attend them. Also it’s not just the ability to travel that makes a difference but just generally, I think more people are aware of more schools (in the same way that people have become aware of – and have strong opinions about – typefaces). You see a list of “best colleges” and you’re gonna learn these names, just like they’re Pokemon cards.
My thought here is that it’s not very “green” for a school to seek geographic diversity by discriminating against locals. I’m not sure the difference between an estimated 10% acceptance rate for Coloradans at Colorado College versus an overall acceptance rate of 17% is hugely significant. But Colorado has a population of over five million people and they represent a market that someone could be serving. I’ve heard that the perception at CU Boulder is that it’s full of kids from New York who either didn’t get into or couldn’t afford NYU.
There are some schools that assign quotas to particular states, such as Bowdoin, where they attempt to ensure that 10% of every class is from Maine. I’ve often wondered if Bowdoin had a “location-blind” admissions policy whether they would wind up with more than 10% of their students from Maine, or fewer than 10%?
CU-Boulder is another story. They do have to keep in-state enrollment over 50%, but with extremely limited state funding they need as many OOS and interenational students as will pay. I think there are more Californians than New Yorkers, but there is not a shortage of either.
The vast majority of my HS classmates wanted to leave NYC when we were applying to colleges including yours truly.
In my case, it worked out that going away was not only optimal from a personal desirability standpoint, it was also much better financially even when accounting for travelling cost*, especially considering the local public colleges budgets were cut so much to the bone the FA on offer would have made attending them more expensive.
Not worth it from an ROI perspective considering the quality of education on offer back then was so poor due to those institutions prioritizing the needs of remedial students over those of regular/advanced students back then. OOS at a respectable private college at a lower cost with strong academics in my chosen fields? No brainer, here.
- Simply only go home at the end of the terms. Only exception was when I went home for spring break one year because one of my research projects required access to Columbia U's rare books/materials collection.
I think there is something to be said for going away to college. It doesn’t have to be across the country, though that is in and of itself an experience of note. I left my small, very, very, working class town on the Washington coast to attend the University of Washington in Seattle. Trust me: in 1985, for a kid from Aberdeen, WA, that was a journey, and it was, in most respects, “going away to school.” Though it was a mere 85 miles, it may as well have been 850.
Also, of the kids who tend to stay in-state, I think the vast majority still do leave home and live at school. In Seattle, UW is considered a commuter school, but there are a ton of kids living on campus.
I think living at home during one’s college years should be a do or die economic decision. If at all possible, one should experience all of college, which is hard to do when you head back home every day.
I honestly think that it depends on the student. For me, I couldn’t wait to get as far away as home as possible, simpl y because I found my home environment to be too stressful and I knew that the kind of intellectual environment i wanted to be surrounded in could only be found somewhere else. This is saying a lot considering the fact that I lived in urban South Florida.
My kids went to 3 high schools and lived in 3 states during that time. They really had no need to ‘get away and try something new.’ One picked a school about 130 miles away, the other about 2000.
I went to school about 40 miles from home and my parents moved while I was in school. No difference to me. I rarely went home during the first year, and of course never went the rest of my time in school.
One of my biggest regrets in life was staying home for college. Although I received a great education and came out with a salary-earning career, I will forever regret not having the experience of living on a campus in a dorm.
@mom2collegekids: Regarding shell shocked parents just learning what their FA packages are and assuming a bunch of grants would be given, leaving them heartbroken… that is just ignorance leading to false expectations and poor financial planning.
I don’t pity them. How hard is it to google college costs and financial aid information? It’s everywhere. By the time my kids left middle school, I knew roughly what we would be able to afford, what FA we could expect, and thus what colleges we could consider. It’s no mystery. The information is out there and accessible to anyone with internet access.
Barring a sudden drastic change in income/debt, there’s really no reason for anyone to hope for or expect a huge FA package, then get totally blindsided.
Despite the existence of net price calculators and other information, it does look like it is unfortunately common that parents and students get surprised in April when all or most of the admissions are too expensive.
I feel the same way. I grew up in a town with a regional university most parents saw no reason for their children to go elsewhere. I did join a sorority and lived in the house for a couple of years but my control-freak dad still stalked me every chance he got. So when my kids’ time came, I insisted they go away. Both of them ended up at my alma mater, which is 50 miles away from where my H and I ended up. It was just far enough that they were “away at school,” and it worked out well.
I just starting posting, but I’ve read this forum for years. Many of the posters have been here for years.
There is a clearly identifiable, and somewhat pedantic, cohort on CC that puts forth a fairly narrow view of what college is supposed to be. There is often a rescuing, “it all depends on the kid”, qualifier, but in the end, the view tends towards the pragmatic, and things like living in a dorm and going away and being exposed to this or that seldom makes their list of priorities or values. Their focus is almost entirely on career outcomes, and tends to pooh-pooh the idea of learning for learning’s sake, and also tends to dismiss the important of liberal educations in the classic sense.
There’s no mystery from whence that view originates: it is all about economics. And on that point, I can’t really blame them. It doesn’t change the underlying merits when it comes to considering some of the non-pragmatic benefits of college, but it’s there nonetheless.
There is no question - you will not have the same college experience if you live at home. It’s a fundamentally different animal. If I had grown up in Seattle, I still would have found a way to live on campus - I know many, many people who didn’t, and to a person they regret it.
Your school does not need to be 3,000 miles away, though, again, living in a different part of the country has its own benefits as well. But even if you attend school in your home town, live on campus and near or with other students.
The average distance our first two kids went for college is 2,627.5 miles. The first choice for our 3rd is 2,438 miles away. (She hasn’t gotten in yet, so she may end up going to the in-state flagship.)
For most college students and parents, such pragmatism is forced on them by college costs. When faced with the choice of the “optimal” college experience at unreasonable debt, not going to college at all because it is too expensive, or the “budget” college experience that may not include living in the dorm, etc. but is affordable, many will choose the latter.
It is true that this forum is disproportionately populated by students and parents who have more choice in the matter, with students who have high enough credentials to earn large merit scholarships or admission to the best financial aid colleges, and/or parents with enough income and wealth to pay for more than commuting to the local state university. These students certainly have more ability to choose the “optimal” college experience (though those with professional school aspirations need to consider the costs of those as well).
I.e. the 4.0/34/1500 student with wealthy parents who can comfortably pay the list price anywhere has a lot more choice in the possibility of choosing the “optimal” college experience than the 3.3/25/1200 student with middle income parents. But the latter type of student is much more common than the former.
@ucbalumnus , agreed. That’s why I wrote this: “There’s no mystery from whence that view originates: it is all about economics. And on that point, I can’t really blame them.”
So, I completely get it.
I’m not sure I agree with your statement that this forum is disproportionately populated by families who have more choice on the matter. Maybe one group is louder than the other, but there seems to be plenty of advocates for the practical view of things (for lack of a better description).
But I personally know a lot of people who have gone for “optimal”, whatever that really means to them, by sacrificing and figuring it out.
I think we tend to oversimplify when we assume excessive wealth for everyone sending their kid where they want to go, be it some expensive private college or out-of-state to a Berkeley or UVa, or Michigan, all three of which are going to cost you around what you’d pay for a private college. I know a lot of people “figuring it out”. They’re not having their lights turned off or saddling their kid with unreasonable debt, but they’re also having to make some changes for a few years, or made those changes earlier and saved for it.
The median household income is around $57k per year. Households headed by those age 45-54 (likely age with high school or college age kids) are somewhat higher at around $74k per year. Unless such a household has been doing aggressively frugal saving since before the college-bound kids were born, it is unlikely to be able to pay anywhere near list price of a private or out-of-state college (which would basically be their entire income). Obviously, high stat kids who can get good scholarships and/or financial aid helps, but the more typical kids have limited choices.
Note also this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1975814-article-families-earning-105k-cant-afford-more-than-half-of-us-colleges.html
I think that those who commute to college from home for whatever reason should still try to study abroad so they get the experience of living away. These days, almost every school has study-abroad programs. I checked the tiny non-name private college 10 minutes away from where I live and they have study-abroad programs that they say would be cheaper than regular costs even for commuters.
How about for the nearest commuter-based state university?
Checking some of the commuter-based state universities, it seems that tuition and other school related costs are supposed to be the same, but living expenses could vary. Of course, if the study abroad location is in a low cost country, it is possible for living expenses there to be comparable or less than living at home and commuting expenses to the local state university (although many families are willing to subsidize the student living and home and commuting more than living away from home while attending school – i.e. they pretend that the living and commuting costs at home are $0 for comparing to other living situations).