@lifegarding. The struggle is real. We too told our DD pretty much the same thing, she could look where ever she wanted and we had X amount of money to contribute, we do not qualify for federal financial aid and DD’s stats are not in the stellar scholarship range, so there was little expectation for substantial funds from the direction. Initially DD only wanted to attend OOS, (we had very little hope she would be accepted at one of our state flagships). She applied to both flagships and one “safety” directional but really was concentrating on OOS flagships and a few privates. The in-state schools would cost about $25-$30k and the OOS between $35-$45k (with the exception of Fordham which is really astronomical costwise). It wasn’t until she had the acceptance to A&M in hand that I saw a real spark of recognition from DD that it would make very little sense to pay $45k per year to attend college, when she could pay $27k and get just about the same college experience and employment outcome. I will caveat that by saying that I think she would have chosen an OOS school over her in-state safety in a heartbeat. It took her awhile to come around but she did eventually figure it out on her own.
The only thing that concerns me about the value of “prestige” in the initial/post collegiate employment search. After you have a few years under your belt, IMO, it matters very little where you went to school and your experience weighs more. I harbor this concern because I know that my husband’s emp!oyer, a big multi-national company, actually has a list of “preferred” schools that they hire new hires from, if your school is not on that list, good luck even getting your foot in the door for an interview (oh and btw, they are uber focused on GPA for new hires). My husband is an engineer, he attended CWRU, a prestigious school for engineering, it is not on “the list”, he squeezed in because he had 10 years experience when he sought a job with the current employer. Internships mitigate some of that, but if you are in a career that doesn’t really have internship opportunities you have to balance with other things.
That “list” is still in use today, a few of the schools have changed, but it is substantially the same. Some of the schools on the “list” are state flagships (very few directionals) and lesser known privates, in fact I was scratching my head over some of the school that made the list and others that did not. I suspect that if his employer uses a “list”, other big companies do too. Also, I think it is important where the people that do the hiring attended school because like it or not, it plays a factor in who they are going to hire, even if it is subconsciously. I, of course, could still be living in the 1990’s when it comes to hiring practices. It is the only reason that I am on the fence about the importance of prestige.
So here are the things that I tell my kids to consider when selecting a school and trying to weigh the importance of prestige…
Geographically, where do you want to work when you graduate?
Where do prior graduates work or do internships?
Are you going to be able to maintain a good GPA?
What companies attend internship fairs and career fairs? (Although that may be less important in today’s world)
How technologically advanced/forward thinking is the school?
Are you likely to get all of the benefits of these things at another school on your list for less $$$?
@lifegarding we are exactly in line with your philosophy, our kids were basically given an amount we could pay for four years and encouraged to make wise decisions mainly because their field of study truly requires grad school. As an anecdote my D15 is in a small LAC that is middle of the road, but very good in her field. They awarded her well with merit which brought it in line and she’ll have money left to put toward grad school. We’ve been thrilled with her experience. She’s doing an honors thesis, has great relationships with her profs and has grown in her field beyond our expectations. But the real test comes next year when she applies for tippy top grad schools. Then our little experiment will be tested… If she can get into a strong program at CMU, Yale, Rice etc then it will have paid off. To say I’m nervous is an understatement. However she has two great back up plans so she’s realistic. Anyway, we hope we’ve guided our children well but time will tell. D18 is choosing similar path but not nearly as financially sound, still any debt will be small for her thanks to merit. I can see the argument for a prestigious school and it probably matters a bit more depending on major. @labegg very interesting about hiring, I know that for my industry which loosely ties into the oil and gas market TX A&M is huge for a lot of the big oil based corps so this is not surprising concerning engineering and is probably the case on Wall Street and financial sectors as well as law!
Good points about job prospects @labegg. I worked as an engineer for a large oil company for almost 10 years and was involved in recruiting almost from day one, and with a lot of recruiting/hiring responsibility in later years. For interns and new hires straight out of college, the company maintains a mostly stable list of colleges for active recruiting. Hiring comes almost exclusively from the active recruiting schools. If the company is hiring 250 interns and 100 new hires per year, I’d say probably 245 interns and 98 new hires come from “the list” and the rest from students who attend non-recruited schools and apply through the company’s HR website. Is it possible to get a job with this company from schools not on “the list”? Sure. But your chances are much better if you attend, for example, LSU than if you attend Harvey Mudd. Mudd is a fantastic school but is not on “the list”. After I left the company in 2007, my H continued to work for the same company until 2016 and he was also involved in recruiting and hiring. Up until 2016 at least, the hiring practices remained as I described so I would guess it’s about the same today.
But my experience is with a single big blue-chip oil company…I don’t know how any other company does things. I don’t even know how H’s current company (a small independent oil company) hires its interns and new college grads because he isn’t involved in recruiting those people. From my reading here and other websites, it appears that many companies have gone to Skype and phone interviews and are more open to applicants from all over. Individuals with hiring authority will likely still have preferences for certain colleges over others though, based on their experiences with employees from those schools. Hiring managers may think along the lines of “both of these candidates are great on paper and interviewed well, but employees from candidate A’s school have performed better at this company than employees from candidate B’s school so I prefer to hire candidate A”.
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to get my DD to finish her supplemental essays. We’re at 5/10 schools applied to and the clock is tick tick ticking. She’s worried if the supplements aren’t great (read: perfect) she won’t get in. Assurances to the contrary not helping. Oy.
I think the whole “prestige” thing is very interesting. D16 is at a state directional (OOS). I’m sure it doesn’t rank very high, but she got a full ride, sooooo. Whenever someone questions her choice, she says “its free” and that usually quiets them. She wants to be an OT so will need to go to grad school. She isn’t looking into any super high ranked grad schools, just will try to get into one close to our area. I don’t think her undergrad school choice will hurt her. She never really looked at any super prestigious schools even though she had the stats to get in. I think she is getting a quality education where she is and is happy so I guess that’s good. I think it probably depends a lot on the field you want to go into. If my kid wanted engineering I would push for a better known school for sure. I think if they are going to need to go to grad school then getting a quality undergrad at an acceptable price is the way to go even if its not a prestigious school.
Thanks so much everyone for the input on this topic!
Great questions, @labegg, for our kids to consider as they choose a university. It’s part of the reason I’d be fine with us paying full price for our in-state flagship if D18 gets accepted over what might be a full 4-year tuition scholarship at the in-state directional college where our S16 goes. D18 wants to focus on political science, and with 2 of her choices within 30 minutes of DC and Baltimore, those are much better options for intern potential than S16’s school, which is 3 hours away from each of the large cities. For S16, he is CIS and found an internship at his old summer job with no trouble since just about any company can use IT/IS support.
@Astro77 yes we are eagerly waiting on UMCP to release their priority decisions! It’s my alma mater (for 3 degrees) and D18’s top choice. The Washington Post just had a really interesting article on their admissions process (see the UMCP CC thread for a link to it). I think she’ll get in, but it’s certainly not a definite since they factor in so many aspects. Good luck to your D as well! H went to UMBC and loved it there, but D18 had an awful tour and since she’s not interested in a STEM track, felt it wasn’t a great match for her. So we wait for UMCP!
@kastat1 our S16’s in-state directional has been great for him - smaller class sizes allow for closer contact with professors, but the school is large enough for lots of course options and EC activities. I don’t think S16 will go the grad school route, so I’m hoping if he can intern enough each summer that even coming from a less prestigious university he can find full-time work. At the least, maybe full-time work initially with one of his internships since he’s built a connection with them?
@lifegarding, the wait for UM-CP is sooo hard! I saw that article and it stressed me out. Seems like it would be so easy to miss a great kid in the admissions process.
Good luck to your DD and all the others out there!
@odannyboySF - I feel your pain! S18 is still working on supplemental essays. We got 3 apps submitted today but he has 3 to go! One essay is close to being done and now he is questioning whether he went in the right direction for the prompt. This one is due 1/1 so we are down to the wire. The other two are due 1/15 and I just can’t wait for it to be over!!
My S wants go to into civil engineering and the advice I’ve received here and elsewhere is that all the schools are ‘pretty much the same’ and there’s no real point in paying more for prestige. CivEng firms tend to be smaller and hire more locally, so pick a place you’d like to live and go from there. With that said, his #1 choice is Cal Poly SLO, which is a pretty prestigious engineering school for the west coast. But he didn’t apply to any of the privates (Santa Clara, U of P, USCw) that offer civ. eng. because it didn’t make financial sense.
Now, if he doesn’t get into SLO, then we have a tough choice to make. So far he has acceptances in hand for Wash. St., Montana St., Colorado State, and Colorado S. of Mines (and Wyoming, but I think he’s eliminated them). Do we just decide based on the net cost or is there really a difference in the value of the degree between all of those?
He was invited to apply to a full-tuition scholarship at Colorado State, so if he get’s that of course he’s going there, but only 20 kids out of the School of Engineering freshman class get that, so the odds are low.
Y’all are such great moms just hope you know that… I wrote all of my supplements on my own, did my Fafsa alone, css profile, etc without any guidance from my parents… Just submitted my last applications to Bentley and Wake Forest and I just got into Umass Amherst (Isenberg School of Management, finance major). I’m doing just fine I guess. Also got into four other schools, waiting on my last 5. Now I just need the financial aid packages to roll in and continuing using the Scholly app to find & write scholarship essays (highly recommend only $3/month & it was on shark tank).
@jonmelillo Don’t worry, my kids did all their applications stuff on their own too. I did do the FAFSA/CSS, since it’s my financial information and I know more about it than they do, but that’s all I’ve done.
Brr! It’s cold today. Cold and drizzly here in South Georgia. They are actually forecasting SNOW for Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I don’t see it actually happening, but who knows?
@jonmelillo Congratulations!!! Thanks for the info on the Scholly app…will pass it along to my daughter. Honestly, my kid did all her own apps and didn’t want me proofing them (but let her older sister and her english teacher).However, I do help with FAFSA bc I have all the tax info. I think a lot of the kids of parents on here are independent, we just like to commisserate and worry together for our 2018 kids haha. But if you ever need to run anything by us, we’re a great group of listeners and willing to offer advice if asked. Good luck on all those scholarships!!!
Regarding the school prestige issue, for us it’s not just about the academic but the entire experience. Yes, like most we have a max amount we can pay and hope for some FA or merit to make it easier. S could go to UMass Lowell and get a good education and we’d save a ton, but it’s not the experience he wants. His top choices he’s not getting much $ from, but we can probably make it work. There’s a middle ground school that offered him big $. He’d have no loans and we’d be more comfortable too. I’ll be interested to see where we end up. Oh yea, and still supposed to be putting in 3 more apps.
D still grinding out those supp essays as we speak. She has ‘why —-‘ for three high reaches that she has not visited. Gulp, good luck with that. I don’t help at all. Occasionally I am asked to look it over for grammar.
I feel bad for her that her week off has been spent doing this. I feel I am a good mom because I have resisted every urge to say ‘if you had worked on this back in September…’. Seriously I will be so glad when this part is over.
Definitely not what I thought senior year would look like
As for prestige, I feel this has been debated endlessly, but my two cents:
Prestige = Network = Jobs/Opportunities
The more prestigious the school, the stronger the network (alumni and supporters) are likely to be, leading to jobs (and grad school) and opportunities you might not otherwise have. That’s why you pay for prestige: the network of connections.
Prestige may also vary by department within a school, too. One school’s engineering program may be stellar while its English Lit is mediocre. But some schools’ reputations are so high (e.g. Stanford) it smooths over those differences.
Some schools can also be prestigious in only a few fields. Take a school like Harvey Mudd. Outside of STEM, few have heard of it, but within those fields, it’s highly regarded.