FWIW, and not too get too off-topic, my S22, who had a perfect GPA through HS, a 1540 SAT, was an Eagle Scout and Captain of the crew team, couldn’t do ROTC because of both (1) his dyslexia and (2) his ADHD meds. He was told he’d need to do a full academic year without accommodations and without taking meds.
He doesn’t use the accommodations that were in his IEP anymore (now that he’s in college) but he couldn’t waive them senior year of HS, as we didn’t know if he would need the time accommodation for AP exams. And while he still takes ADHD meds, I’d argue that many young men in the appropriate demographic would serve better with meds and if the argument is that “well, what if we’re in a war zone and can’t get meds” ok, I’m pretty sure that ADHD meds, unlike something necessary for life (like insulin) could be foregone just fine in that situation.
Ultimately, it meant that he couldn’t apply to a school he was very interested in, because the only way we could afford it would be if he got a ROTC scholarship (the school does not give merit, we do not qualify for need). He was eager to serve, but has, instead, found a different path.
In critical situations, a military force may not want service members making additional errors in their jobs due to difficulty paying attention or focusing, being distracted, or not having sufficient attention to detail, because their ADHD drugs are not available.
Also, managing the distribution of the needed drugs (for whatever medical conditions that service members may have) is an additional logistical burden on a military force.
There were so many people in our area who thought we were “poor” because our house was smaller, our cars older, and our vacations minimal. When our older daughter was admitted to a top 10 college, I had friends asking me what sort of loans we intended on, as they with their big houses and fancy cars went though the process. When I said none, they were like “I thought that school didn’t have good financial aid” and then they were floored when we said “no aid, we have more than enough in the 529 plan.”
I have a couple of nephews who wouldn’t do well without their ADHD meds. Their teachers used to know if they went without when they were younger. My youngest daughter thought about the US naval academy for a second, high stats, very athletic, 4 year 3 season varsity athlete. Unfortunately has celiac, so a hard no.
Our niece applied to an in state school begrudgingly because she thought it would be the same people from high school. She was accepted. Then the buzz at school began to circulate, many people were denied or waitlisted. All of a sudden that school looked a bit more attractive. She eventually enrolled and couldn’t be happier.
It’s easy to avoid people from home at a big state school.
Interestingly, the branch that emphasizes hardship and discipline - the Marine Corps - has been making their recruiting goals while the other branches have been struggling. Based on articles I have read, the kinds of kids who used to be attracted to the military, especially the combat arms, are repelled by the social engineering policies that have been implemented the past few years. Worse yet, active duty servicemen who might have made careers in the military are leaving in disgust.
The military’s response to the recruiting issues has been to lower standards and grant more waivers. They also have a “pre-bootcamp” where out of shape recruits are whipped into shape so they can handle the rigors of bootcamp. PSA, your kid does not want to go a Marine Physical Conditioning Platoon where drill instructors thrash you into shape and you eat a calory restricted diet.
There was a time when a judge might give a misguided youth who committed a crime a choice between jail time or joining the Marines or Army, but that was a time when discipline was more harsh (read, beatings) and educational standards where lower. Today, those kids would not be eligible for service.
Abandoning merit based standards in favor of DEI based quotas mainly. Many of these policies filter down from civilian leadership, to senior officers to the various branches. Historically, the Marine Corps has resisted these programs more than the other services.
For example, the SgtMajor of the Marines had a Marine bring the combat loadout for a mortarman (over 100lbs) into congress during a hearing on women in the military to help explain why women should not be in the combat arms like infantry and artillery.
This will be my last post on the military here because we are departing from the subject of the thread.
A parent may be willing to do without, to give their student more if the student has an opportunity that the student considers exceptional. That student will always know that the parent gave the greatest opportunity that was possible.
It is interesting to me that so many of the posters here seem to have a very specific “pile” for college. While we saved in a college account, it wasn’t clear to me exactly how much we could afford. Would an extra $50K over 4 years impact our retirement life or what we could pay for younger kids? $100K? What is one of us got sick or lost their job? It was not that straightforward to me. So to us, balancing a good education at the best price was a consideration, but it was worth paying more than in-state public for (in our view) a better education.
I think the “in-state public vs private” question depends to a large degree where you live. For example, there are many states where the public flagship have outstanding engineering schools - think UofM, UIUC, Purdue, Berkeley, etc. If you live in NM or SD that is a different story. To further complicate matters, an OOS public might be less expensive than a student’s state flagship; we are in MI and Purdue would have cost less than UofM.
A few states have flagship public universities that are among the best schools in the country in a wide array of fields. There are very few schools that are better than UC Berkeley or UofM, and both schools rank very high in a wide range of disciplines. (I am constantly amazed at how well CA public univerisities do in USNWR rankings.)
I think that there are good reasons to set a budget. However, yes it can be very tough to decide what the budget is.
We took the view that whatever we promised our older daughter in terms of budget, this much (adjusted for inflation) would also be available to our younger daughter. This meant that we were trying to look 8 or 9 years into the future (from the time that we set the budget for our older daughter before she applied to schools, until the younger daughter graduated university). Our crystal ball is quite fuzzy looking that far into the future.
We struggled with this also. Several years later, after one daughter had graduated university and the other was half way through, the budget grew a bit partly because we could, and partly because this meant being able to help with graduate school and allow a daughter to accomplish her dream (become a DVM) without a crippling debt. Again however we were careful to make sure that we could also do this for our younger daughter if needed.
And perhaps also to give our kids at least the sense that they have some degree of choice and control over the process.
This can be a tough thing to figure out. There can be in general a lot of money involved, and a kid’s future.
I do not think that we ever figured this out. “College cost inflation” might have been what might have been fair, but our youngest ended up under-spending the college budget by quite a bit (and continues to do so with a funded PhD program).
I guess with multiple kids you just try to be fair, and understand that the definition of “fair” will never be precise.
Our oldest also attended a university that was only affordable due to a merit based scholarship, and needed to maintain a 3.0 to maintain the scholarship past the first year. We never figured out what we would have done if she did not maintain the scholarship. Fortunately this never came up. In retrospect I do not know whether we should have figured this out, or if it was just as well to let it slide.
I continue to wonder whether Solomon had children, or if he figured out that even he was not smart enough to get this right.
We used 529 growth as a proxy (the same original cash contribution, but more time for it to grow for the youngest). That was definitely more than CPI and in our case also more than college cost inflation (since the UCs froze tuition for most of those years). Monthly allowance was increased based on something approximating to CPI inflation.
Not for kids like mine who wanted to go Greek or attend religious services on campus and are Jewish ( and went to a heavily Jewish high school) There are only a few Jewish houses. There is one Hillel. They knew from older kids that If you are involved with either of those you will literally see your high school acquaintances weekly if not daily. Its why my kids said no to our state school.