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<p>@lvvcsf
This is very true and often happens when a student starts at a school where large loans are needed from the get-go. By the time the student is a rising soph or junior, the well runs dry. Parents learn that they can’t borrow anymore or whatever. The kid ends up with a degree from a so-called lesser school, which makes paying back that debt an even larger bite in the tush.</p>
<p>(BTW…it’s “money spent there will be for naught.” 
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<p>@Youdon’tsay - In Chicago Public Schools charters seats are for city residents only. Ditto for the public Selective Enrollment high schools. A good number of students at these are residing in the suburbs. The CPS charters are not state-funded seats. </p>
<p>Oh, and lots of Gates funding goes to charters and the push for charters. Off topic. </p>
<p>I’m guessing it’s more likely that the article was being sloppy in referring to the neighborhood as a suburb than that the kid managed to bamboozle the school district into admitting him. </p>
<p>Even if this kid’s case is atypical, it’s still symptomatic of a real problem where we are telling kids to shoot for the moon in their college applications, without concurrently emphasizing the need to take a hard look at their finances. Here we have an article about how a kid whose family has a high income but (we assume) no savings and high expenses, thought that if he was admitted to School X, then he would be able to afford School X. The article makes it clear that this kid and his family were deceiving themselves and that he’s either going to have to transfer or go into massive debt. If I’m a kid in a similar situation reading this article, the message I take away is that I simply can’t afford a pricey private school. The vague hints in the article that there might have been other schools that would have given him more aid are just not clear enough to counter that primary message. </p>
<p>I have to think that the reason that the word just isn’t getting out about the options that kids like this have is because it’s all so complicated and depends on each kid’s desirability to a particular college. Colleges don’t want to advertise the fact that they’re willing to throw merit aid at kids whose stats (not to mention their other, more difficult to quantify characteristics) make them highly desirable to that college, because they want to pretend to everyone else that those students are choosing that college purely because they love it so much. And even here on CC where these motives aren’t present, we can’t say “oh, for a student with your stats, School X will probably cost about $20,000.” All we can say is that School X is known for giving merit aid and that their admitted student profile shows that this student would be in the top 25%, so maybe . . . hopefully . . . well, you’ll just have to apply and see. No wonder students and their families are feeling lost.</p>
<p>“In my area, you can go to a local charter without being in the local school district because the money that follows the child comes from the state, not the district.”</p>
<p>There’s pretty much zilch state funding for k-12 education in Illinois. Last I checked, we were 49th or 50th among the states in state responsibility for education funding (and thus in the top 5 for inequality of funding). I’m not re-checking this at the moment because i find it depressing.</p>
Time March 30, 2015 article by Frank Bruni “The Elite Squeeze - Top schools appear more exclusive than ever. Buit a high-quality education has never been easier to find”. 5 page article adapted from “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admission Mania” - Grand central Publishing 2015.
Article also referred to Daniel Golden’s “The Price of Admission” and estimated percentages of students who were probably given special consideration at admissions.
Oxymoron ‘the odds confronting a random candidate who’s only generically outstanding’.
Top 100 schools enroll 1.57 million students, while students enrolled in 4 year colleges is 10.6 million.
Last two paragraphs on ‘Real Values’.
This family screwed up, but I’m not as willing to blame as other people. They were getting atrocious advice. The parents didn’t go to college, and it sounds like the parents’ friends didn’t go to college either. They believed their son when he said it would all work out. Those of us who are savvy CC parents would never have believed it would all work out, because we know better, but the parents didn’t know any better. Their son was supposedly getting good advice about college from his school, but he turns out to have gotten terrible advice.
The parents look at the letter that says that with their $175K income and seven people to support (father, mother, two daughters, the son, and the two grandchildren) they can afford $42,300 a year. And they have no savings (the father’s income is only recently this high). They can’t afford that price, and it’s obvious they can’t afford it. It seems ridiculous. They’ve been hearing all along that their bright son is going to be able to go to a top school, and they look at the letter and think, “This isn’t really how it’s going to work. Everybody is telling us David is going to a top school. It will work out.” Their son tells them it’s all going to work out, and they believe him because they don’t know better.
This kid was the valedictorian at a charter school-- where was the advising? Where was the advice to apply to a financial safety? Where was the explanation of the financial realities of going to a top LAC? The parents are at fault for believing what people were telling them, but the people telling them wrong things are also at fault.
I do think that too many people are eager to lie to kids about college funding. Even here, when you go to the financial aid and scholarships thread there are so many posts where a prospective student’s questions are embedded with so much misinformation that most of the thread are based on unpacking these issues before any of the knowledgeable posters there can even start trying to address the question asked.
There’s more information out there, but there’s probably an equal amount of noise out there too; irrationally exuberant counselors telling kids that being a valedictorian guarantees a full ride in merit aid from an Ivy League school, people telling kids from low-income families that there are billions of unclaimed scholarships out there and all they have to do is get good grades and any college will be free for them.
Given all that, I’m not surprised that people make mistakes. My hope is that the work at CC as well as legislative initiatives like the Net Price Calculator will give families a fighting chance at making the right decision. The only issue that sometimes people sometimes choose not to notice red flags either.
No undergrad school on the planet is worth $175k in debt. These parents are idiots, period. Don’t blame it on poor advice.
“Is an Elite Education Worth $170,000 in Debt?”
-if it is worth it in your eye, go for it. There is no way under the sky that people here will have the same idea, everybody is in different situation and everybody have to decided fo thmeselves.
My own D., for example, did not have a question like that, she did not even think about money at all. She simply said, “I will do fine anywere” As a result of her wise decision, she is graduating from Med. School this year without a penny in debt. She did not experience any “inferiority” of UG education at in-state public and had great choices of Med. Schools after, including top 20s. Her experiences as UG student went well beyond our expectations. She was there on full tuition Merit award and she received even greater amount from one of the privates. however, she did not choose her UG based on ranking, prestige or any other factors based on others’ opinions. She checked them out very closely, she stayed overnights, talked to current students, even spent couple days with the sport team at the private college that offerred her the huge Merit award and the coach was very much after her. She made sure that her college fits her perfectly, not her friend, not anybody else. this was her most important criteria. .She stood up for herself under pressure of her GC to pursue an Elite college, she was his ticket becuase she was #1 in her private HS class. And as far as her personal goals, she is graduating from the Med. School that she wanted to attend way back in HS and she just matched to residency in specialty that she wanted to pursue way back in HS. She will work at her number one choice also. I say that her goals are accomplished.
However, my D’s story has nothing to do with another child. Everybody is different.
Only student and family can determine if Elite Education Worth $170,000 in Debt for THEM. I do not even know what Elite Education means, except for few names of such places.
Please move the needle off that broken record 
Miamidap. Thanks for sharing your story for the many new posters with HS kids that have come to college confidential for ideas on how navigate these waters.
Do you see any new posters in this thread? Not seeing them. Not one. Zippo. Nada. Sure, they could be lurking. But any poster who reads more than 3 posts has seen/heard this story. Over, and over and over. Regardless of whether its at all relevant to the thread topic.
And as was pointed out by another poster in another thread about this very same topic a day or 2 ago, Miami’s dau is graduating med school without debt because miami paid for her dau’s med school out of pocket. She is very fortunate to be able to afford to do that. Sure, minimal undergrad costs helps with that. But again, many are not as fortunate to be able to personally fund med school out of their pocket.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18280210/#Comment_18280210
I don’t understand these threads either. If your college debt gets you to where you can make a million per annum, then it’s nothing at all. If you expect to have a hard time making a median income, then going that much into debt for the prestige is a poor choice unless you simply don’t care about a lifetime of paying it off.
Big debt for med school is way different than big debt for undergrad. Med students have proven themselves as undergrads and have a “declared major” which is high paying.
Undergrad is is a “pig in a poke” as far as selection of major and job prospects are concerned.
Big debt for med/law school is selectively reasonable, IMO. With the way healthcare is going, it will take a long time to pay off that debt for many students. Some exceptional ones may be hired into a position that will pay of some of their debt, or be in a very lucrative field. And few will be oopening private practices these days so won’t have to worry about more loans to rent office space, buy equipment or hire staff.
And getting into a top law firm on a partner track is also increasingly difficult. A lot of debt can always pose challenges, but agree, its a particularly bad idea at the undergrad level. I talked to a law student last week who is currently already $150K in debt. Not a good way to start out one’s professional life.
@MiamiDAP, I don’t think I understand your point. Your daughter attended a private high school then had a full tuition merit scholarship for undergrad and you could apparently pay the rest, so she didn’t have to worry about money. If @jym626 is correct that you were able to pay for med school out-of-pocket, she had no money worries there either. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be able to pay for an in-state public without going into debt. Your daughter has no debt is because she did well enough in school to earn full tuition merit (which many students do) AND have parents who were able to pay the difference for undergrad AND still have enough left over to pay for med school (which most students don’t). The moral of your story, as I understand it, is that my children should’ve chosen wealthier parents.
austinmshauri,
According to this post from a month ago, UG was a full tuition scholarship (there would have been some out of pocket expenses if the scholarship was tuition only, since room, board and fees is currently around $11,500/yr give or take - would have been a but less 4-8 or so years ago when her dau attended) and med school was paid for by miami http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18132198/#Comment_18132198
It’s become almost like winning the lottery. The entire law firm model has changed in the last few years, and I can’t tell you how many young people I have personally worked with who graduated from very good undergrad schools with good GPAs, went to good law schools and did well before passing the NY Bar, then ended up working as temp attorneys for $15 per hour and the only perks being toilet paper. Imagine paying off $200k in debt on that money and still trying to eat. I don’t think anyone should take on that kind of debt, even for law school unless Dad is a partner in Bucks & History LLP in Moneybags, Massachusetts and there is guaranteed job. But especially not to take law school debt on top of big undergrad debt.