<p>Not sure “worth” is exactly the right word.</p>
<p>There is a certain irony (or is it lack of irony) that applies here as well as to the other thread now active about School vs GPA.</p>
<p>The kids who go “prestigious” are also kids who would do exceedingly well (on a percentage basis) at schools at a “discount.” So those kids likely would succeed no matter what. I’m guessing there are few kids among the top tier who couldn’t figure out a way to be sufficient challenged in a flagship honors college. And so a few do go that route for the better bargain, but many do not.</p>
<p>So I’m not “worth” is the metric that carries the day when folks decide about enrolling at “prestigious” schools. Those kids most likely are going to succeed no matter which path they take. </p>
<p>A Smart car would get all of us to work and back just as well as all of the tiers of cars above that…from Kia, Hyundai, etc all the way to Lexus, Mercedes, etc. But we all don’t choose what will accomplish the same thing based on “value” or “will it get the job done.” There are probably very few among us who need more than a 2000 sq ft home with 2-2.5 baths, but many among us still choose 3500 sq ft with 3.5 baths and a 3 car garage or 5000 sg ft plus with more than 3.5 baths. </p>
<p>The easy thing would be to say it’s all just so much overkill, and overkill very may well play a role, but it’s probably much more complicated than that.</p>
<p>BTW, OP, congrats on getting on Featured Discussions basically immediately. Impressive.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on what you are looking for in college, what various elements of the difference are worth to you, what the actual monetary difference is, and what that means for your family.</p>
<p>I can make a limited number of comparisons between “Particular Prestige U” (PPU) and “Particular Large Public Research University” (PLPRU).</p>
<p>Books assigned in history classes: The number averages 10-12 per semester at PPU and 3-4 per semester at PLPRU.</p>
<p>Papers assigned in history courses: Noticeably more at PPU</p>
<p>Papers assigned in literature courses: Actually, about the same at PPU and PLPRU, but the assessment standards are higher at PPU</p>
<p>Number of small-ish seminar classes (15 or fewer students) available: Much higher at PPU</p>
<p>Senior thesis: PPU yes for everyone; PLPRU can be arranged in some majors</p>
<p>Texts used for abstract algebra and real analysis: More challenging texts at PPU</p>
<p>Speed of introductory German: The class goes about twice as fast at PPU (based on a comparison of the time before reaching a particular book read in both places)</p>
<p>These differences might not be “worth it” to quite a few people. They don’t necessarily factor into career success. I think the differences are worth it, if you value academics per se (as opposed to academics as a means to an outdome) <em>and</em> if PPU is financially within reach. If PPU imposes financial hardship, then even though the academics might be valued, PPU might still not be “worth it.”</p>
<p>Life is full of choices. Unless you are Bill Gates, you have to chose where you want to spend your money. If someone wants to spend it on a $10 million mansion on the lake, then that is their choice. If I had an EFC of $99,999, I would have no problem choosing to spend $60k/yr to send my kid to an elite school. BTW: I’m also the type of guy who choose to have one of our cars older than the D going to college, despite the whining of the rest of the family. It works, and is reliable. Don’t need to spend $20k for that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll be the first to admit that EFC is stretching it for most people. But, the nuance only goes so far. If you have an EFC of $99,999, you are in a much better position to pay than someone with an EFC of $40,000. I can’t imagine how you can nuance away $49,999 without similar nuances to the 50,000 person.</p>
<p>What are you looking for in an education? What would have to happen to make attending a top prestigious university be worth it to you? What outcome are you looking for in a college education?</p>
<p>OperaDad, it is because you implant the $99k EFC right into your personal life circumstance that you can make that statement. There’s all sorts of situations where a person with that EFC might not find it easy to pay a quarter of a million dollars for an education, another child with special needs, self paying for medical insurance with a chronic disease, attaining that earnings status relatively late and having to catch up on 401k contributions, multiple kids in college, alimony, child support, on and on and on. So please, don’t come out here and say how easy it will be. In return I won’t say you cheated the system by not paying full price. Deal?</p>
<p>This question is ever present and ever unanswerable, though the opinions offered on CC are slooooowly shifting.</p>
<p>People have a need to justify their own decisions, and we all look for reasons why our own decisions were correct. </p>
<p>How many people are going to write, “We paid full price at a presigious university and it was a complete bust for my kid”? it would be hard enough to admit tnat in your own head, let alone come back to CC and open yourself up to criticism by writing that. The people who choose to answer these threads are people who are happy with the choices they and their kids made. </p>
<p>These “which is better” threads are all opinions, and we all have very high regard for our own opinions and for our own decisions. And we resist any possibility that we spent a whole lot of unnecessary money, so we justify our decision.</p>
<p>Nobody gets a do-over. We can’t go back and do it over with the same kid at a cheaper (or more expensive) alternative to compare outcomes. </p>
<p>So use the “Flop Sweat” rule. If the cost of any given college is causing you to break out in flop sweat, it isn’t worth it, peroid. No matter what anyone else tells you.</p>
<p>In re: Distribution of majors affecting Payscale rankings. </p>
<p>Agreed. That’s why I selected three engineering schools for comparison. If I’d have included Rowan U for instance which has a high percentage of education majors even though it has a good engineering program, it wouldn’t have been a fair comparison. </p>
<p>Points for discussion:
First, a school like SUNY Maritime pops up with a high AROI because it is both a highly specialized engineering school and costs very little to attend (assuming you make it through)</p>
<p>Second, should graduation/engineering retention rate matter? If I’m looking at college as an investment, (and I am) I want one that graduates at least two-thirds of the entering freshmen cohort as engineers. How much more tuition is that worth?</p>
<p>Third, while I’d agree long term job success is determined by job performance, what about landing that first job. Much of it is based on who you know. How much is it worth to go to an engineering program where the professors have connections to talk you up for those jobs? Even more ephemeral, how about the social connections you make that could lead to a job. Would you rather go to a school where the CEOs son goes (and might be your roommate), or would you rather go to the school that reflects the general population?</p>
<p>I’m not arguing one way or another, I’d just like to see these intangibles discussed somewhere.</p>
<p>“we resist any possibility that we spent a whole lot of unnecessary money, so we justify our decision.”</p>
<p>And we’d also resist the admission that we should have spent more… I know two parents in that boat now. One has a son who took a nice track scholarship at a low-ranked school but is realizing the educational level is below that of his high school. In addition, the courses are fluffy and weak. He keeps staying another year because of the price. The other’s son graduated in a technical field. while job hunting, he kept getting told after the testing they do in interviews, that he should have been taught this in school and that in school but wasn’t. The parents love to talk about how much money they saved, but now the kid has to pay for extra classes to obtain the core knowledge he should have graduated with.</p>
<p>I think it’s fair to say that many of the benefits of going to a highly selective college are subjective, or intangible, or even just luxuries. There are some careers where it provides a benefit, especially at the beginning, but that disadvantage can be surmounted by a smart, hard-working kid who graduates from a (somewhat) lesser institution. If you’re strictly looking at financial return on investment, then it’s going to be hard to justify paying full freight at an Ivy League School vs. in-state tuition at a really good state flagship with an honors college.</p>
<p>But deciding on a college based on job-related ROI is, in my opinion, like choosing a house strictly based on resale value. While resale value is important, a lot more goes into choosing a house that you actually want to live in for a long time. Your college education is something that you will “live in” for the rest of your life. It will affect the kinds of interests you have, the long-term friends you have, possibly who your spouse is, and lots more. So people making this decision should do a lot of research to discover what really matters to them, what they value in an education. I think parents need to encourage this research, and not focus entirely on the financial bottom line.</p>
<p>How many of us have ever paid more to get a car in the color we wanted, or something equivalent?</p>
<p>Hind sight is 20/20 of course. I wonder how many are as happy upon graduation, or ten years after graduation as they were on the day they put down their deposit.</p>
<p>$99k EFC is annual, whereas “quarter of a million dollars for an education” is over 4 years. So, the equivalent number is $400k EFC vs $250k for the education.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Although the FAFSA does not collect information about un-reimbursed medical expenses or private school tuition, a college aid counselor may allow for these expenses and reduce the EFC under the “professional judgment” provision of the federal need formula.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With an EFC of $99k, and COA of $60k, that leaves $40k/yr you can add to your retirement account. </p>
<p>I used an EFC estimator, and a 3 person family with one kid in college needs an income of about $400k/yr to have an EFC of $99,999. Since the person recently entered the $99k EFC range (“attaining that earnings status relatively late”), I hope the person did not increase their lifestyle to require a $400k/yr retirement income. </p>
<p>If the family has no retirement savings, and is older (55+), I’m guessing that “professional judgement” is also possible.</p>
<p>Hunt…beautifully summarized. I went to a prestigious U on heavy financial aid which was cut my sophomore year. I spent two semesters living at home, earning money and taking classes at the state flagship. I went back to prestigeU even though 1) the profs were as good or better at the state school and 2) the cost was about 1/4 at the state flagship. I was not actually that keen on PrestigeU’s dominant culture (greek-jock-rich-entitled) but there was a strong core of intellectual students who were thoughtful, engaging, fun and interested in pursuing graduate degrees. Such students existed at the state college but they were hard to find in the classes of 100, 200 or even a video-taught class of 2,0000 (no joke!). My experience at prestige university shaped my long term goals (PhD), my choice of friends and spouse. We are strong supporters of public k-12 education but both kids are going to expensive well known universities----high EFC but it still hurts to write those checks…and the reasons we support their choice is not just about job prospects, or acceptance rates to grad schools but also about less tangible but very valuable life/culture that they will be surrounded by during their undergrad experience.</p>
<p>OperaDad, my point is that everyone’s circumstance is different and without knowing every detail, you can’t speak for other people’s situations so nonchalantly. </p>
<p>Your statements are as off base as someone saying that anyone who doesn’t make enough money to pay full tuition should be barred from attending.</p>
<p>Engineering is a vocation, and one can get standardized, quality vocational training anywhere. It makes as much sense to go to MIT to study engineering as it does to go to Harvard to study accounting (if H offered ACCT).</p>
<p>I know that you are partly joking about the comparison to car colors, Hunt, in post #69. I think we are generally in agreement on the main question.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the specific differences that I listed in #62 make a substantive difference in the quality of education, which is quite different from happiness/less than happiness with the color of one’s car. </p>
<p>The educational difference is irrelevant to later success in many fields. It is almost certainly irrelevant to getting into med school, and it is likely irrelevant to getting into law school. My spouse and I valued the purely academic difference, though, enough to pay for it. </p>
<p>I should emphasize that my comparisons are limited because they are all experience-based + 1 datum from a CC post–also, one can chart an easy course through PPU or a challenging course through PLPRU, to reduce the differential. Also, there are quite a few schools in between PPU and PLPRU, in terms of academic difficulty. And then again, the comparisons will vary by major. And EC’s and research experiences can be more on par or less on par, depending on many variables.</p>
<p>I’ll weigh in with some real life examples. I am a civil engineer, licensed as a PE in NJ, and have been for over 20 years. My degree is from Stevens Tech in Hoboken NJ. My work experience is in land development. The companies I have worked for and worked with tend to be small and local, which tends to be the nature of the business. </p>
<p>The majority of the engineers I have worked with are from local schools, with Rutgers, Stevens, NJIT and Rowan topping the list. I have also worked with PEs who graduated from a variety of different types of schools (Lafayette, Valpo, NC State and Fairmont State come to mind). The prestige level of the school has nothing to do with the engineering capability of the engineers that I have worked with. I have worked with good and bad ones from Stevens, NJIT, Rutgers and Rowan. I have not, to my knowledge, worked with anyone from an Ivy League school. </p>
<p>S2 is a HS senior and will be attending NJIT this fall as a computer engineering major. He was accepted at Stevens (his top choice), but the difference in cost (the premium) was up in the $30,000.00 range. There is no way we could justify that premium.</p>
<p>Given the well known grade inflation at numerous elite instahhtuuschuns…it would really depend on how well versed the interviewer is on this subject. </p>
<p>D is pursuing an accounting degree…it’s at a well know (at least regionally) institution (but not an ‘instahhtuuschun’). She recently had one of he highest exam grades in a physics course. This school is know for grade deflation! Almost across the board there is no grading to a curve, but rat…so, her high grade of 67% will most likely still be a C. The school GPA average is somewhere around 3.3. She, and her engineering BF are working their tails off to maintain their GPA. Compare this to the elites. </p>
<p>And, they are heavily recruited by the Big Accounting, and Big Engineering. Now, that said, the more liberal arts areas are less will known and therefore have less recruiting. </p>
<p>S has maintained a 4.0 UW GPA throughout his entire college prep HS career, with no elite aspirations. I can guarantee you he worked at least as hard as those we know who will be attending said instahhtuuschuns.</p>
<p>So, on AVERAGE, it depends on geography and degree and the position (and associated life style) you are pursuring. An Art History major from Princeton will have better opportunities back east than would a similar graduate from most other institutions. Not sure if they’d get preference over someone from Pomona or a top UC out here on the west coast. </p>
<p>As indicated above, it’s going to vary case-by-case. We have two Ds and a S. All-in-all, I’d had liked for each of them to be in as select company as possible for the inspiration of outstanding peers as well as the pace and scope of learning. The two Ds both went to Harvard - great experiences. S, also with very strong credentials, is in the Honors program at the U. of Georgia. Why? He’s passionate about being a marching band snare drummer, and major marching bands go with major football programs. Also, a family inheritance at the end of D2’s college career put us just beyond financial aid eligibility. S had the option of spending a quarter-million $ on college (the significant college savings in his own name + the balance covered by his mom and me) or graduating with most of his own college funds still available to him. He made the choice and in his freshman year has had a fabulous college experience. I wouldn’t have foreseen this outcome, but it appears to be the right one for him.</p>
<p>The first point is an example of why the Payscale rankings are not that useful – they contextual information about students’ majors is absent in the school-by-school rankings. Even in engineering-heavy schools, the distribution of different engineering majors and the varying percentage of students of other majors makes the school-by-school comparison almost useless. If they would offer school-by-school comparisons holding major constant (e.g. compare schools for mechanical engineering majors only), then they would be a lot more useful (but then the results may be politically unpalatable to some schools and employers).</p>
<p>On the second point, the retention and graduation rates tend to be a function of admissions selectivity. A strong student motivated to study engineering will likely graduate in engineering at any engineering school; a weak student (who needs remedial courses or cannot pass a full course load each semester) may not graduate at all, or have to switch into a “gut” major to graduate after five or six years (but is unlikely to even be admitted to a more selective school).</p>
<p>Heres my $.02 as a random sample of 1.
Prestigious is a relative term. If you assume that Princeton falls into that category then our experience with D may be relevant. If not, you can stop reading now and save yourself much aggravation.</p>
<p>In our case, D had narrowed her decision down to P + 2 in-state Flagships (yet another relative term). In our case, the initial FA offer from P was not justifiable (IMO) when compared to in-state cost, but we let D attend Ps admitted students days while we made an appointment with the FA office. We essentially started the conversation with the FA office as D has been accepted at these colleges also and we cannot justify the cost difference. Literally the first words out of the FA reps mouth were, Well, it is my job to figure out how to get your daughter to attend here. We came armed with data that was specific to our situation and left with a promise that they would consider our discussion and get back to us within a couple of days. They did come back with a new FA offer that was much more reasonable to us, so P stayed on the list. It would have been dropped otherwise. We were able to reduce the premium part and let D concentrate more on the fit (relative term #3) part in making her final decision (which went down to the wire or what will forever be known in our house as the 6 hour lets rehash everything the night before we have to make a decision discussion ;)). FWIW, we have had some follow up business with the FA office, again very specific to our situation, and I can say they have always been extremely fair and it has always been a positive experience from my perspective.</p>
<p>Hunt nailed it in #69. Its all about marginal utility. D would have been happy with and done well with any of the options, but I will say that she absolutely loves her school (perhaps too much, but that is a discussion for another day ;)). Anxiousmom also makes a good point in #60. Again, I am a sample of 1, but our experience has not been one of incessantly hypercompetitive and have a prestige mentality. Ds experience has been one of a hypersupportive network of friends who will help each other with even the smallest tasks, like going to the post office for her last week so she could keep working on a paper. The couple of friends that I have met seem like what I would expect at any university hard working kids focused on whatever the next deadline is (as she puts it, there is no day and night, just X hours until the next thing is due.). I have seen her planner for a given week and I can tell you that there was no entry for Think about prestige tucked in between the 1000 pages of reading, papers, projects, etc. It would have been quickly replaced with Get some sleep. Yeah, they all hate the grade deflation, but dont sit around worrying about it.</p>
<p>Oh, and finalchild, a Smart Car would be a serious upgrade from my 1996 pickup truck. ;)</p>
Yeah, they all hate the grade deflation, but dont sit around worrying about it.</p>