<p>^My group of friends (from Harvard) now in our 50s
Episcopal priest
Lutheran minister
head of small non-profit
something or other at Microsoft
at various times - librarian, nursery school teacher, high school teacher and would be developer of a workforce housing project
retired fabric designer
freelance artist
architect
violinist in Boston symphony
a handful of doctors
a handful of professors - wide variety of prestige of institutions they teach at
at least one lawyer</p>
<p>Note no Fortune 500 companies, or I Bankers in the lot. OTOH I did have a reunion event at the estate of someone who was the 8th richest person in the world for a while. So what?</p>
<p>From where you get your undergrad degree is totally meaningless for 99% of majors. What matters is what you DO with it. </p>
<p>Once you get your first job the degree is simply a checkbox on the app. Your experience and results are what matters. Where you went to undergrad will never come up. </p>
<p>^While in getting hired that is probably true. However my husband has been at business meetings over the years where the subject of where people got their undergrad has come up. On more than one occasion some has said to him “What? how did someone with a degree from there end up where you are now?” … My husband then has to go on to explain where he got his MBA and what companies he has worked at. There are college snobs in the business world. lol</p>
<p>There are college snobs all over. I sent my son to Bama, but he applied to MIT and would be there now if he’d been accepted (of course since they meet 100% need it would cost roughly the same as we’re paying now). If I ran across someone who graduated from MIT now (and my great-uncle did get 2 Master’s there although he has since passed away), I’d pause and say, “Wow! That’s a great school. I’m impressed.”</p>
<p>My S travelled abroad after his sophomore year of high school. One of the other students in his group has been accepted to Harvard. She’ll be starting there soon and majoring in economics. I joked with my S that he should stay in touch with her in case she can one day fund the projects he’s working on. (Of course one of the students he knows at a state school may become the next young-billionaire and she may choose to be a stay at home mom…you never know).</p>
<p>But if you’re selecting a college to impress ‘the man on the street’, it’s probably not a very good reason, but I suppose there are worse…</p>
<p>I live in an area where most of the families do pay full freight for their kids. Most eshew the state options, though that is changing, and so it’s a big college tab. If you can afford it, it’s not an issue. You pay for preferences in all sorts of things in life, so college is just another, albeit very pricey such thing. Many here send their kids to private school even before college, and I am one of them. All choicess dictated by personal and family issues.</p>
<p>Few publics offer much need based aid beyond STATE and federal aid. I don’t know why UWash was mentioned. It may have state aid to give instate, but I’ve never seen much given to OOS students.</p>
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<p>Wow…you really don’t know how to use stats…or should I say, you really know how to misuse stats (I guess for the purposes that you want to convey).</p>
<p>Those stats that you’ve quoted are for instate and OOS students. Since Bama has a boatload of OOS students (who are charged MUCH higher rates), the fact that Bama does little to meet their “need” plays into those “% of need met” stats. </p>
<p>Plus, Bama really over pads its COA so that those who want to, can borrow to pay for the priciest dorms…which are several thousand more than standard doubles. For the instate student who is more concerned about covering “direct costs” and basic housing, the gap isn’t that high. Also, Bama doesn’t have a different COA for the “townies”. So, meeting COA isn’t necessary for those kids to cover costs (Bama isn’t going to hand over $25k per year to the townie kid who lives 5 blocks away). </p>
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<p>Again, you don’t “get it”. When a major institution sets a goal, it’s usually a LONG TERM goal which takes years to see results. Yet, Bama has seen good results in the short term. It climbed over 20 spots on USNEWs within a few short years. </p>
<p>It’s top quartile, which you’ve said is unimpressive, is quite good for a state school…with the upper quartile being an ACT 31+. When you have 25% of a public univ with stats in about the 96th percentile, why isn’t that significant?</p>
<p>* while at the same time handing out free rides to high-stats OOS students. What the heck?*</p>
<p>You really need to know your facts before you post. Free rides to OOS students? Really where? Yes, Bama gives some free tuition scholarships to OOS students (not free rides), but only about 10% of OOS students get them. And, a small % get the NMF scholarship, but that’s not a free ride either. Housing for one year. No meals, no books, etc. </p>
<p>It may surprise you, but most OOS students at Bama are full pay or near full pay.</p>
<p>but I would have to question the priorities of a taxpayer-supported public university that severely “gaps” in-state students with need</p>
<p>Again, you don’t know that because the stats for instate students aren’t broken out…and the COA is highly padded. </p>
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<p>Why don’t you visit so that you’ll have some sense of knowing what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Washington has good financial aid for in-state students, but not for out-of-state students.</p>
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<p>I ran the Alabama NPC ( [Financial</a> Aid - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://financialaid.ua.edu/net-price-calculator/]Financial”>http://financialaid.ua.edu/net-price-calculator/) ) for a student from a $30,000 income Alabama resident family with a GPA too low to get the typical merit scholarships that the school is known for (but high enough to get admitted). It came up with a net price of $23,367 (versus an EFC of $1,473). The only grant aid listed was a $4,100 Pell grant (no grants from the school). While the list price seems to be well padded, even a frugal student would have a hard time cutting that net price down to what s/he could handle with just Stafford loans and a typical amount of work earnings.</p>
<p>So, yes, Alabama is not a good place to go looking for need-based financial aid, even for Alabama residents.</p>
<p>GolfFather: if you’re comparing the full pool of 26,400 2012 UA applicants vs. say the 22,300 2012 Dartmouth applicants, then no, of course not. But if you separate out the UA Honors College students/applicants and compare them to HYP applicants, then there’s probably more overlap than you’d suspect. Dartmouth’s 25-75% ACT scores are 30-35. To be in the UA Honors College, you have to have a 28+ACT, and a 32+ to qualify for the full tuition Presidential scholarship. I’m sure the bell curve between 28-36 skews higher at Dartmouth, and lower at UA, but that’s still a critical mass of high testing kiddos. </p>
<p>There’s 4000+ students in the UA Honors College (can’t find a more recent total than 2010, I’m sure someone else has more current #'s) which is a larger enrollment than students bodies of top ranked liberal arts colleges which range from 1,198-2,507. So a student in the UA Honors College has a large group of peers to go to class with, socialize with, etc. And 26,000 other students who aren’t in honors but might end up being equally great classmates or friends. </p>
<p>There’s also specialty programs within UA for super high achieving students such as computer based honors program (CBHP,) University Fellows Experience, Emerging Scholars, and University Scholars (where you can work on your Masters as an undergrad; lots of students come in with 40+ AP/IB/Dual Enrollment credit and can use their scholarships to get both a Bachelors & Masters degree.)</p>
<p>D1 has been very happy with her 3 years so far at UA. D2 applied but just couldn’t see herself there. She decided to enroll in a different state university honors college in a Fellows program. Did they both have other options? Yup, with significant price tags. They will both graduate with no debt. The jury is still out for D2 since she hasn’t moved in yet, but D1 has had no problem finding a peer group. </p>
<p>BTW, I love your screen name GolfFather; if my DH ever knew what CC was and wanted to post, that’s a screen name he’d want ;)</p>
<p>So, yes, Alabama is not a good place to go looking for need-based financial aid, even for Alabama residents.</p>
<p>I agree that it’s not great for FA for low income, modest stats instate students. My point was that the use of average need met wasn’t accurate. </p>
<p>A 0 EFC instate student at Bama will likely get…full Pell, some SEOG, full Stafford, some Perkins, $2000 work study…and some merit if his stats are at least an ACT 25. So, about $17k-20k in aid. that’s not too bad. </p>
<p>Few publics (w/o state aid help) do a great job with low income students because their need is just too much to cover…especially if they’re FAFSA only schools. To give better aid, they often need to be CSS schools and ask for NCP info to capture the true financial picture of half the kids who come from divorced homes. </p>
<p>even the UCs, which do give great aid (because of state aid) aren’t open to all students. They’re hard to get into if you have modest stats, and forget admission if you don’t have at least a 3.0 (actually higher). </p>
<p>The mission of state schools is to educate its own residents, but that doesn’t mean that any/all of the state schools should be made affordable to every instate student. The purpose of having regional state schools is to provide higher education at a lower cost. Otherwise, why bother having regional schools?</p>
<p>But only a small part of it would be in grants, leaving a lot more than $10,000 to be covered by loans and work earnings ($10,000 seems to be a typical outer limit for reasonable expectation of Stafford loan and work or work-study earnings), based on the net price calculator experiment.</p>
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<p>A more modest stat (2.0-3.0 HS GPA) California resident from a low income family would be looking at a net price of about $9,789 at CSUDH (on-campus), discounted from a list price of $22,284 with $5,550 Pell grant, $1,473 Cal grant, and $5,472 state university grant, based on the CSU net price calculator at [CSUMentor</a> - Financial Aid - PAIS](<a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”>CSU Costs | CSU) . Yes, it may be a stretch to cover that net price since it needs both Stafford loans and some work earnings, but it is not the same kind of financial stretch that Alabama expects for a similar (Alabama resident) student.</p>
<p>Sure, OOS “plays into those ‘% of need’ stats.” That’s true for every public university, especially those with a significant number of OOS students… But last time I checked, the University of Alabama was about 60% in-state and it says it meets full need for only 22% of its students with need. So a ton of in-state kids are getting gapped, as ucbalumnus’ check of the university’s own Net Price Calculator confirms. </p>
<p>According to Alabama’s Common Data Set, it spends $51 million annually in institutional funds on merit (non-need-based) scholarship/grant aid, and only $22 million on need-based scholarship/grant aid. That’s nearly 2.5 times as much on merit aid, much of it going to students without demonstrated need (about 5,000 of them, according to Alabama’s CDS) as it spends on need-based aid, while very substantial need goes unmet. And a huge fraction of the need-based aid it dispenses–nearly 60% of it–is “self-help,” i.e. loans and work-study, which means the student is really paying, with the payment just taking alternative forms. Again, I just find such a policy unconscionable for a taxpayer-supported public university. But it’s their money, not mine. If it were my state university, I wouldn’t stand for it.</p>
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<p>Not according to the University of Alabama’s most recent Common Data Set, which for 2012-13 says the 75th percentile entering class is ACT 30, SAT CR 620, SAT M 640. The ACT number is better than the SAT numbers; ACT 30 is 95th percentile, SAT CR 620 is 83rd percentile, and SAT M 640 is also 83rd percentile. I’m not sure why the ACT number would be so much stronger than the SAT numbers, but in any event, these figures are no better than those for Alabama’s in-state archrival Auburn (75th percentile ACT 30, 75th percentile SAT CR 630, 75th percentile SAT M 650). But Auburn spends much less on merit money to get those results, with about 1/3 as many students without need getting merit awards, and the average merit award being worth about 1/4 as much as at Alabama. So it’s hard to see exactly what Alabama is buying with all that largesse.</p>
<p>Thank you for your frank answer, Blossom. I’m glad to hear it was a positive and worthwhile experience for your child. </p>
<p>And for the record I would never consider someone who chose to send their student to an Ivy or otherwise top school a prestige whore or an elitist. I was just really curious if you thought it was a good and worthwhile value for your money. Of course, so much depends on the student and what he or she puts into the opportunity.</p>
<p>Granted my kid is not going to UA but I’m starting to feel like this is becoming UA bashing. Also I’m having trouble understanding why someone would comparing UA to CSUDH. CSUDH is a regional university and UA is National university…</p>
<p>That to me would be like comparing DS’s Georgia Tech to University of West Georgia where I currently take classes part-time.</p>
<p>Here is what I have seen over a lot of years of financial aid packages that have been shared with me: Yes, those schools that do not guarantee to meet full need and whose common data shows clearly that few student get full need met, and that % of need met is not in the higher ranges, gap a lot of students. That still does not mean that SOME kids are not going to get full need met. THose students that the school wants the most are the ones most likely to get full need met., and some of them get some might fine need packages even from some of the stingiest schools that have low numbers for those getting full need met and the % of need met overall. Those schools using EFC as need can give an awful lot of money, even beating out the more generous schoools whose formulas usually define need less generously than FAFSA does. Kids with NCPs, family businesses in the picture, high home equity can do much better if they are among the lucky few that such schools really want. </p>
<p>H was just complaining today about a coworker that was complaining his kids had $100,000 + in loans at UDub ( instate) after his BA and 5th yr accounting program.
I then piped up that he must have taken out private loans and that the parents werent contributing much if anything.
H then scornfully said I didnt know what I was taking about.
Oh, if he only knew.
:rolleyes:
How did he think I got so many posts?</p>
<p>Max still believes college is $1000 a term. When I try to enlighten him he, for all practical purposes, sticks his fingers in his ears and mumbles, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” </p>
<p>Denial is a lovely place to be this time of year :)</p>
So what?</p>