Reach vs Match/safety

DadTwoGirls
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:29:30 +0000

It is very hard to answer this question without specific names of universities and specific dollar figures in terms of which each would cost. Based on the results that my daughters had with various universities, for us there was almost no correlation at all between the academic strength of the schools and the cost of schools. For example, some of the academically strongest schools also have a large endowment, so that for some students they don’t have to be super expensive. Also, some students have very strong in-state public schools, or like us live close enough to the US/Canada border to make schools on the other side of the border reasonable options to consider.

However, @ucbalumnus is entirely correct, “drowning in debt” is in general a very bad idea. Also, there are a lot of very good universities in the US, more outside the US, and most students shouldn’t have to take on a lot of debt to get a good education.

There is another issue, which is that attending the academically most demanding and stressful university that it is possible to get into is not always the best choice for each student.