As a few others have said - I would ignore the idea that they don’t make a lot of money. Nurses can do very very well. That said, I do agree with the idea of not overpaying for the degree because it largely doesn’t matter. Then you need to balance out fit and fallback against the potential cost. D26 is in a similar position looking at Elementary Ed degree to become a teacher. Expected cost is a big component of the analysis but it was also part of the analysis that drove what schools to apply to - mostly public’s with a handful of privates that are known to give big merit awards.
Our commitment to our kids is to do what we can to position them the best we can in the occupation of their choice. It’s not to “spend equally among them”. S23’s degree will cost substantially more than D26’s but that’s the nature of the programs they are looking at. We’ll see where things are in a few years but we may offer to pay for D26’s Graduate degree (which she’ll eventually need) that will balance it out some.
Now that the applying part is winding down, I’ve turned my nervous energy focus to the topic of “merit aid”. It seems there are three approaches that colleges take: 1) no merit aid for anyone; 2) merit aid for some (which is a broad category from a few particular candidates getting a little money to a wide swath getting money); 3) merit aid for everyone.
The one thing that annoyed me about Selingo’s framing if I remember it correctly is that he framed merit aid as “discounting.” Category 3 is certainly discounting, but I don’t know that I’d frame category 2 that way, at least not all of it. Of course, the framing shouldn’t matter. Money is money. But apparently I felt some kind of way about his framing.
I’m with you – merit aid for everybody is certainly discounting, but it IS annoying to think of it that way. Part of me thinks that the schools should just lower their rates for everyone and do away with the merit aid, but I gather from a pure marketing standpoint, consumers feel like they’ve gotten better value – or perhaps kudos for their student – if they get merit aid.
A bunch of schools that D26 looked at or applied to do this – Miami Ohio, RIT, Mercer, Case Western.
At RIT, everyone gets some level of merit, I’m pretty sure. If D26 gets in, she will get minimum $24K per year because she got an award last year that is given to juniors. That merit could go up to a max $30K, I think. On top of that, she can stack $2K per year for national merit, $1K per year because we found an alum to fill out a referral form for her, and possibly $1K per year for a performing arts scholarship (if she would get off her duff and apply, lol). So it’s a decent chunk of merit, but the price tag is still north of $50K per year.
College is freaking expensive. (We won’t get financial aid.)
Friend of D26’s just got into Case Western with $29K merit, which is great. But her parents are well cognizant of the fact that it’s still a $60K price tag.
Anyhow. D22 applied to a different set of schools that were in your second category, which offered a small handful of merit awards that were near-impossible to get. She didn’t ED anywhere because a) she hoped for one of these elusive merit awards, and b) she really wanted to keep her options open.
She did NOT get any merit, but the good news is she got into two of her top top choices RD, so she had the luxury of deciding between them.
In 2006, Americans owed about $521 billion in student loan debt.
As of March 2024, the total student debt balance is roughly $1.75 trillion.
College might not have been designed as career training but it’s become that now. I read somewhere that 20-25% of stanford students are majoring in CS . As a CS graduate 99% of people going into CS today are not doing it because programming is such a fun/joyful major but rather because they want a career and be able to pay off their debt.
They defer the really high stat kids and “encourage” them to apply ED2. But of course those who are chasing merit dont know how much they get because they’re getting deferred and not accepted with merit.
Their yield rate is ridiculously low. 16%? so I get the strategy of not accepting these kids unless they ED2. But who’s going to ED2 without the merit aid numbers?
I agree with what you say here, I was just pointing out that the sticker price that folks often reference for schools are not actually what they cost for most people. That is not to say that means they are affordable for most people, they are not. Nor, that the cost does not have major career choice consequences for many people, because they clearly do. In fact, taking your point a step further, now days I believe the majority of students at many of these most rejective schools (Ivys, Stanford, etc.) end up in three fields, tech, Investment banking and consulting. That is not great for society at all, but it is at least in part a function of cost (I think it is also partly a function of prestige seeking and peer/cultural influence re what folks do). Also, to be clear, I was not trying to say that folks should not consider cost or that cost does not have an influence on what folks do. I think it needs to be considered, but ROI, in my view is too narrow a lens. I think value is a better lens because much of what college provides is not about return on investment, so one misses key considerations if they focus on that. For example, when I buy a car, I consider price, but many of the features I think about do not get me anything that would be in an economic “return” bucket, but I value them because of how much better they make the experience. There are other features that hold little or no value for me. Lastly, if I were purely interested in ROI for education, the right approach for my kid would be go to the cheapest school possible and invest the rest. But, that is a very different life choice. But, in the end, I think you and I likely largely agree on this topic, but are talking about the issues on the margin. Sorry i led us down a rabbit hole.
So, I’ll take the arrows and say that I actually like the framing of merit aid, even type 2, as “discounting”. I think colleges have gone all out to become businesses with highly paid consultants focused on yielding students in order to play a ranking game. Calling merit aid a “presidential scholarship” or “dean’s scholarship” is just a form of marketing. And they’ll “discount” or “award merit” as a way of enticing our specific student. I do think they give students and families what they think it’ll take to yield the student.
The reason I like the framing of discounting is that it pushes students and families to resist the marketing.
I agree with your viewpoint and consider it discounting when 80% of kids from the school recieve merit aid but no harm no foul.
Their kids worked hard so good for them. Maybe it’ll give them a confidence boost heading into college. There’s no real downside even if I personally feel it’s a little gimmicky.
Fair points. And I agree that the naming is clearly marketing. I guess I do not think it is all marketing though when they are not giving money to all of the students (or even the vast majority of them). Perhaps the issue is that neither “merit” nor “discounting” actually accurately captures all of what is going on in my broad category 2. Where not everyone is getting “merit” money, there can be a host of reasons why some people get money and other do not. Or some get a ton of money and others get little. Some of those reasons - they want to attract a kid or kids with high GPAs and test scores more than other kids - would fit most people’s definition of merit. Some would meet some people’s definition of merit (we need more theater kids and want to get you for that), and some would not meet most or anyone’s definition of merit (we need more boys or just need more butts in seats so let’s throw money at everyone who hasn’t said yes yet). So, in thinking about it, I’d more accurately describe it as there is a mix of merit money, discounting, and genuinely trying to attract individuals who fit institutional priorities that contribute to who get non-need based grants at schools in my category 2. D26 has a few schools on her list where some students will get grants, even significant ones, but it is not most and I do not expect her to get anything from those schools and if she does, it will be minimal. And I expect most of the kids who get that $20-30k “merit” at those schools to be ones they are trying to attract in lieu of more rejective schools that I wouldn’t expect a kid with D26s profile to get into. That feels like merit to me.
This in particular is the type of situation that I don’t see how one views as “discounting.” Discounting for the small very most coveted group of students who all types of highly selective schools are trying to get? That seems like merit to me. D26 has a couple schools in her list in this category. We will be happy if she gets in. Expect no merit or discounts.
On the other end of the spectrum, Agnes Scott specifically told us that they give “merit” aid to everyone because just lowering tuition will make families less interested in the school. Their take was, we do it that way because that is what the people want. Otherwise, they will just see us as a “cheap” school. That is definitely discounting to me.
I think that’s totally fair, and I agree with your definition. Maybe it’s when the money is so unknown when applying that rubs me the wrong way. My view is that the opacity always serves the interest of the school and not the student. Some of the schools on D26s list were the “apply and see what you get” kind. Everyone or most got something, but it seemed difficult to try to figure out what you might get. That’s why I like “discounting” as a sort of pejorative. It’s a way to try to take back some power in what can feel like a car-buying transaction.
Yep— our family doesn’t view an undergraduate degree from an “ROI” perspective either (says the parent of a future Classical Civilizations major at Gonzaga— although she does think she’ll go to law school).
And, since you’ve mentioned this before, the math shows that the yearly CoA at UC Berkeley (to which D26 has applied and for which she has a single-digit chance of acceptance) would be $10k more than her CoA at Gonzaga, with the $32k merit award she received.
Does Gonzaga’s COA include waivable health insurance? UCs all include a line item for pricey health insurance in posted COA, but it can be waived if student is on parents’ insurance, bringing the cost down by about 4k-ish if memory serves. And if you’re not in an expensive dorm the COA can also be a lot cheaper than what is posted, in practice. (Dorms vary a lot in cost.)
Solidarity on the Classics major – my D22 considered minoring in it (thank you early Percy Jackson obsession, plus she’s a Latin nerd ), but she took so many electives that she ended up getting a whole second major, lol.
While we’re all stressing about spending a ton for college…is anyone planning a fun gift for graduation? A trip?
I just saw that there’s a revival of Avenue Q coming to the West End in March and running through the summer. OMG. One of my favorite shows – and we’ve got one graduating from high school and one graduating from college, and they would both LOVE it.
(What would it take to convince my husband that we need to pop over to London for a long weekend to see it? Probably a lot, LOL. We were just there in June.)
We didn’t do anything specific for S25 when he graduated earlier this year. He’s a total film kid, and he really wants to go to L.A.
Yeah, none of this is practical, and who even knows where people will be or what they’ll be doing next summer – but it’s fun to think about.
Wife and D26 are off to Asia for almost a month after graduation. That’s the big graduation gift for her! They’re supposed to be doing some planning over the break, so we’ll see how that goes!
That’s so fun! Ooh my kids have been clamoring to go to Japan. It’s so hard to travel with a family of five adult-sized humans, though – we need to take one kid at a time!
), but she took so many electives that she ended up getting a whole second major, lol.