Is free college better than prestigious schools?

MrSamford2014
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:09:32 +0000

I agree with other posters that the answer to your question depends largely on what your longer-term educational and vocational goals are.

My daughter, a rising college sophomore, turned down a free-ride merit scholarship at a top-ranked “regional university” (to use the US News jargon) in order to be just another student–with financial aid and lots of loans–at a more prestigious national university. Was it the right decision? I think it’s too early to say.

In effect, her decision committed her to rejecting certain low-paying career paths that she might be interested in (e.g., public school teaching), since the loan debt she/we have taken on is too great to be discharged by her following those paths. Law school is a trickier question, since acceptance at T14 schools tends to be based more on GPA and LSAT scores than on the “prestige” of the undergraduate institution; if she ends up going to law school, she probably will have made the “wrong” decision, economically speaking, since she would have done just as well on these objective measures at the free-ride school . . . while saving tens of thousands of dollars that could have been allocated for law school tuition.

On the other hand, she didn’t like the vibe of the free-ride school and feared that she would end up feeling lonely and alienated there; it was also weak in her areas of academic interest.

In sum, you need to weigh a range of quantitative and qualitative factors that will be unique to your situation. All things being equal, free is good . . . but if you simply hate the free-ride school’s environment, or if it doesn’t offer you the academic resources you need, or if it doesn’t feature the industry/alumni connections (or the “prestige”) to get you into your dream vocation, then you’ll need to consider how much you are willing–and able–to pay for these benefits.