We had the same deal with S and D. Through a masters degree. Stanford and Johns Hopkins - go figure.
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My spouse went to boarding school and his parents made him pay a portion, definitely didnât have maturity at 14 for that decision.
Same rule applied for college, would have to pay back a portion with no interest. They wanted him to have âskin in the gameâ. The funniest part was senior year he was given a credit card due to an unpredictable car in case of emergency. My mother-in-law gave him a 4 page itemized bill at graduation from all of our study snack runs to the gas station. We laugh about it now and I applaud her long game to let him dig that hole.
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Thatâs still an open negotiation. My parents gave me the same deal we offered S24 (back when it was way cheaper of course) but only through undergrad. I was on my own for graduate or professional school. My wife is not so inclined to draw a hard line, and I do think it is a bit arbitrary, but I guess I would want more assurance it actually made sense.
As in, Iâm a big believer in college, but I know from experience a lot of people graduated from college, had no idea what to do, sort of defaulted into more education, and in some cases that was an expensive mistake. I donât think you have to know what to do, but I think at that pointâtry working for a bit.
Anyway, weâll see when that time comes.
That is awesome.
WAAAAY ahead of you.
Weâre a big experiences over things family, though, so most of our treating of ourselves has involved experiences. And sometimes they are expensive, but often not, and weâre not really thinking we need more in the budget at the moment.
So again joking aside, S24 has absorbed the idea that money spent on experiences is the right priority, and I donât think he is wrong to believe if a better college experience would cost more money, it could well be worth it.
It is the bit about what a better college experience means that I want him to take seriously, and truthfully I trust him to do something that makes sense in the end.
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Yep sounds similar, we are first half at chaa creek then ambergris caye. Hopefully the plane WiFi will be strong enough for the portals!
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We stayed at Chaa Creek last year, we had Wifi!
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Great!
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The RD admitted student visit period could get interesting for us as well. S24 applied ED2, so we have some hope that he will be done in February. But if that doesnât work out, and should he be lucky to have other RD admissions, the field is wide open. He has never had particularly strong preferences among the colleges he visited. He also visited many of them over the summer, so a repeat visit with students on campus seems like a good idea.
I have not actually checked the calendar to see when any admitted student days may take place - it has felt like tempting fate. But maybe itâs time to take a look.
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One thing thatâs helped S24 a bit with this is a spreadsheet we made. He can put in actual numbers and see where he stands if he chooses a private, in-state or full-ride merit offer.
He wants medical school as of now and weâve agreed that whatever he doesnât use for college can go towards that. Heâs into financials and spreadsheets so this works for him and makes it a little more real.
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You never how itâll play outâŠ
My nephew chose GeorgiaTech over Cornell (for Mechanical Engineering) because of several factors, one of which was cost.
$55K/yr for GT vs $90K Cornell. (GT is just lower cost, even w/ out aid/merit)
He said heâll use the âsavings of $35K/yrâ for his MS.
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@NiceUnparticularMan - what about a MA degree or living expenses during a PhD program?
No paying for grad school here unless he doesnât run through his 529 money. I think spending $350k on his education is more than enough. We would probably âhelp outâ for grad school, but wouldnât pay the full freight like we are doing for college. Thank god neither kid is interested in medicine or law . . .
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SoâŠweâve been saying this to our kid, and yet the merit offers have still been meaningful. Ultimately, if he gets into his top or second choice, which do not award merit, he will go with our full support and blessing. But getting merit awards has broadened his thinking and made the possibility of attending the third or fourth choice school much more appealing. That, to me, is what this is all about: getting to a result that we all feel good about.
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My parents were both professors and had a very strong belief that no one schould pay for a PhD. In their view, if you werenât able to get a full assistanceship it was a sign that you wouldnât be able to get a professorial spot after school. To their horror, my sister actually took out some loans to get her PhD. I was on my own for law school, but my parents took pity on me and helped pay my rent for 2 of the years. But that was back in the day when law school tuition was low enough that it could be covered by the combo of subsidized and unsubsidized federal student loans. I canât imagine how much law school or medical school would cost now.
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Ambergris Caye? Google Casa Rana
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That seems like a great example of something that can get really real. Like, Georgia Tech is awesome for Mechanical Engineering. Are you REALLY going to pay more for Cornell?
I of course have no idea if my S24 will get that good of a choice, but I can see there being something like that in the end.
Thatâs a great idea to discuss! The general grad school conversation has been complicated, but until you mentioned it, I had not really thought about grad school room and board being qualified. It is definitely going on the talking points memo.
Law school is never truly off the tableâmwahahahaha! (thatâs a sinister laugh for people who donât know)
And although I was sort of talking about it in a frivolous way, I donât really think that at all. Like, sure, sometimes maybe a school just wants some good numbers, but I actually think in many cases there is at least some serious thought on their end about how they have seen kids like that thrive before, becoming important members of their college community. And that is no small thing, to have the college think that is a strong possibility for you. Not binding, but definitely worth reflecting on.
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@NiceUnparticularMan - as @Midwestmom2022 said, for a PhD program, itâs typical that you would get a teaching assistantship or research assistantship which would pay for health insurance, tuition, and depending on your cost of living area, rent/food etc. I was fortunate to go to grad school in a low COL area, so my 12k a year stipend - I think it went up to 18k by the end of grad school! - was enough to cover all my expenses. However, I have students who go to grad school in major cities, and oneâs stipend would definitely not stretch that far - if you have the means, it would be great to have a cushion. And for a terminal MA degree, like a MSW, itâs very rare to get that funded by the school.
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Just had an interesting convo with C24 about this. We have a spreadsheet where we keep admissions decisions and track the COA for each of their schools, and C and I were inputting info from their most recent admissions decision. They saw the costs at a few non-merit schools to which theyâve applied (and for which they wonât receive decisions until March), and were a little shocked. We talked about how, if they get lucky enough to get into any of those schools, theyâll have to decide whether the extra cost is worth it over one of the perfectly good schools that have offered them significant discounts. Itâll be very interesting to see what C does with that info.
Itâs kind of nice that all of the schools C has heard from so far give merit awards, and hefty ones at that. They have until March, basically, to imagine themselves at those schools and get used to the idea of going somewhere less expensive (even if they end up getting into the more expensive schools later on). To their credit, C doesnât seem to care about where schools stand in the rankings, as long as they have good programs in their intended major.
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This is so far outside of my experience, I had to highlight it. The idea of applying to a school without knowing the COA is blowing my mind a bit. Iâm trying to imagine researching schools and never clicking into the tuition/fees/COA sections?
Very different from our experience. Thatâs one of the powers of CC - hearing from other families and learning about how they experience/go through this process.
Even after running a collegeâs NPC, you never really know what the bottom line is.
Every college that my kids apply to, I tell them that itâs not until we get the final package (or if they went ED, after the Financial Aid pre-read) do WE make the final decision of where to spend that chunk of money.
With Northeastern, it was not written anywhere how much NEU offered for Recognition Award. So we were pretty surprised when they offered DS2022 $31K/yr, which made NEU a bit more affordable. All the merit that our friendsâ kids got from NEU were $10K-$15K/yr, which would remove NEU off our list.
The merit for 2-3 other colleges wasnât as generous as what the NPC or charts showed, so they were removed from his list.
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In fairness, my husband and I knew the costs quite well; we just made the decision (which I acknowledge we are fortunate to be able to do) not to make it a focus of C24âs college search. In general, this kid has a good head on their shoulders, and was focusing on what we thought were good measures of whether schools were a good fit for them. Their list includes schools at a range of costs and they arenât so in love with any one school that we needed to make money central to the process. Cost may end up being a consideration once they have final decisions to make, but itâs not a deciding factor right now.
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