<p>There are other professional services that are also going offshore. Radiology comes to mind-- a medical doctor with a good internet connection can read an Xray from anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>That might work if you are choosing between different ENGR majors or different Business majors or different Science majors. But I don’t know how you can do this AND graduate “on time” if you are trying to decide between a couple of very different fields.</p>
<p>GLOBALTRAVELER–just be careful with the line of thought that you will pay for a state school but not a private school or you may end up paying more. Our kids have all but one acceptance in the door for next year. Of those schools, 3 are state schools, all 3 cost more than most of their private schools after merit aid. Between the 2 they applied to 19 schools. Two private schools DD applied to are the most expensive, then the 3 state schools, then the other 11 private schools cost less then those 5. This is just based on merit awards so far. We don’t expect any financial aid. I would set a dollar figure, not some arbitrary “state school tuition” because you might just get burned on that :D.</p>
<p>My parents are doing something a little different. I have x amount of money to spend on college, so if I go somewhere I get a full ride, I can use that money towards grad school or summer programs. However, this also limits the colleges I can apply to. No ivies for me. However, I like this system better than my parents just agreeing to pay undergrad. Now I have some money for grad school and study abroad and summer programs.</p>
<p>Goodautumn - the most important thing is your parents communicated with you early about financial aspects so you could best target schools. I wouldn’t rule out the ivys until you make sure that your parents salary doesn’t allow for aid. Several offer aid to families making up to $160k (give or take I don’t know the exact number). Point being depending on your parents income and what your fund allows per year an ivy may be financially possible…now getting in, that the other issue. ;)</p>
<p>If my daughter can enough merit aid (public or private school) to the point that it will not cost me much (well, I should say “us” because of my wife), then my daughter can choose to major in Antartic History with a minor in Urban Studies for all I care.</p>
<p>goodautumn–that is what we did with our kids as well–you have X amount of OUR money to spend, you can figure out the rest :D. So far it’s worked out just fine. When you say things like “we will pay for 1/2” or we will pay for “state schools” 1/2 of $60,000 is still a lot of money and our state flagship is coming in at about $28,000, so far our kids’ net for their top schools is coming in around $9000 after merit:D.</p>
<p>If that is the case, then the risk of needing an extra semester is increased, and parents and students need to consider that possibility in their planning. If the very different fields happen to be chemical engineering, music, and architecture, then it can be rather difficult to make progress in all of them in freshman year.</p>
<p>However, in practice, many majors do not have long prerequisite sequences or heavy course requirements, so it is possible to construct a freshman schedule that makes progress in two or more very different majors such that the student can choose any of them and still graduate on time. For example, suppose a student is considering physics, sociology, and history. Here is a possible freshman schedule:</p>
<p>Fall semester:
English composition 1
Calculus 1
History course
Introduction to Sociology</p>
<p>Spring semester:
English composition 2
Calculus 2
Physics 1
History or Sociology course, or Statistics for Sociology</p>
<p>Of course, if the student has usable AP credit in English or math, the scheduling task becomes even easier.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that many (most?) of the more marketable majors, suitable for students wishing to enter the job market immediately upon graduation, seem to involve large numbers of credits and prerequisites. </p>
<p>Not only is it difficult to fit all of these into freshmen and sophomore years if a student is deciding among two or more of these, but if the majors have no overlap in prerequisites, students often run into schedule conflicts, or end up taking several heavy duty classes together. Such students might benefit from planning to take classes over a few summers if and when possible (these would generally be classes such as calc, an intensive language class, or an intro science class; many classes are offered only during the school year), OR planning for an extra semester or year, especially if they enter with few or no viable AP’s.</p>
<p>Here is also where an truly undecided student might actually need to be wary of committing to a school that makes it difficult or impossible to take classes after finishing the eighth semester (University of Virginia comes to mind.) It seems to me in most situations it is easier to take an extra semester to complete courses for graduation than to do post-bac work elsewhere.</p>
<p>Given the lack of predictability in recent job markets and graduate and professional school admissions, I really think it is a good idea to budget for extra academic work, whether this means an extra semester or two to finish a demanding major, a graduate or professional degree, or other forms of post-bac study.</p>
<p>Policies against “perpetual students” are probably more common at public universities, to prevent students from “hogging” the subsidized opportunity (in-state tuition discount) to study there.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science blocks registration if the student past both 8 semesters (4 for junior transfers) and 130 credit units (120 normally needed for graduation) (and other divisions have similar or stricter policies). San Jose State allows “high unit seniors” to register only for the specific courses needed to fulfill their remaining major requirements.</p>
<p>Of course, at private universities, the cost of a 9th semester can be quite high – especially if scholarships and financial aid are limited to 8 semesters.</p>
<p>That extra “specialty” class just might help an employer decide between two good job candidates.</p>
<p>Scheduling can be difficult. S had a lab this year that is only offered 3-6 pm one day a week. He needed other classes that overlapped so had to wait until next semester for those. It’s not the first time that happened.</p>
<p>My freshman son called last week to say that he was thinking that he should change his major because he would not be able to graduate in four years. He is an engineering major who dropped calculus his senior year (another story). I knew when he chose engineering he would not graduate in four years because of the math, the course load, and the fact that his schedule is heavier because of ROTC courses. His school’s scheduling is also a bit different because it changed from quarters to semesters this year.</p>
<p>We did tell him that if he managed to keep his GPA up and keep his scholarship, we would give him his college savings account upon graduation. I do not know how an extra year might impact the $$$ payout, but we will pay for the extra year or semester so that he can get an engineering degree.</p>
<p>I agree. I would be very wary of going to a university that made it difficult if you needed to extend your education for 1 or 2 semesters. Things happen - and there is really no way of foretelling what may or may not happen to your child.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but one thing I noticed is that public colleges tend to provide financial aid that exceeds 8 semesters whereas many private colleges do not. Thus, such privates are basically telling those with need-based aid to ‘get out in 4’; otherwise, you are on your own dime.</p>
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<p>Exactly. And such majors tend to be STEM (and specialized programs like music). Lit/hume/social science majors can complete several major courses simultaneously, after fulfilling the first year prereqs.</p>
<p>*how y’all use my age to disregard my knowledge and view that a woman who says she would tell her daughter that law school at a non-top-6 school is worthless and that she should forget her dream if she doesn’t go to one of those top-6 is not a good mother. *</p>
<p>Haven’t read the whole thread - however i know quite a few attorneys & some that never practiced. Plus I have 10,000+ posts!
The USA is not lacking for law school grads.
From my perspective a parent giving their child that advice is doing them a bigger favor ( although I would expand the list to 17), than sitting back, and watching money, time and effort going down a road that likely is a dead end.
It’s true our children have to learn much for themselves, but you might as well buy a racehorse, as attend a lower ranked law school.</p>
<p>One of my kids wrote me a nice email about how hard he was working, how he wanted to keep his GPA up, how his social activities would result in more opportunity post college, blah blah blah. The upshot was he wanted to decrease his course load and go to school an extra semester.</p>
<p>I told him ‘of course you can…just come home, take the extra semester at State U (just down the road)…on your dime’.</p>
<p>He found the time to fit in the courses he needed to graduate on time. My kids know…4 years. That is it.</p>
<p>We didn’t “plan” for extra terms or years, but we were well aware that the costs were not bottom line costs. The fact of the matter is that any number of things can happen to increase costs, and so no one should be putting themselves in the financial corner with their college choices. On paper, theoretically, and according to every calculator, we should be able to pay for most any college. We know that is not the case, given our sitaution, and also because we know “Stuff Happens”. So we left somewhat of a margin for this. Our margin is the Stafford loan amounts If our kids don’t use them, we do, since they have a lower interest rate than the Parent loans, but we will repay them for our kids. But if something comes up, they use, them and we take out the PLUS to make up our gap. In the end, we have enough of a margin to cover an extra term for a private school, a year for public. Beyond that, it would be a problem. </p>
<p>So by simply not using up all of the Stafford money, a student can borrow up to $7500 for an extra year, or one term, if he goes second semester. My friend’s son did this. He worked all summer and fall term. living at home that Fifth year, and finished up in the second term of that year, borrowing the $7500 and using his savings. His parents kicked in the difference, borrowing a bit as well. No one was happy about it, but it did get done with a minimal amount of financial disruption. If they had picked a school where every dime was needed, there would have been some problems.</p>
<p>Little late to this thread, but we have planned for 4 years for each kid (S is in college now and D is a sophomore in HS).</p>
<p>Because our S is going to the state flagship he has avoided taking out loans, but if he needs to take additional courses to catch up (which is a possibility with his somewhat disastrous semester last spring) he will have to either float a loan for that or make money in the summer to pay for it. He does have plans on grad school (Biology major) but he will have to figure out how to pay for that on his own.</p>
<p>There will be some additional money from each of our parents’ estates that will be available for grad school (both me and the spouse lost our parents over the past 4 years) but it will only make a small dent.</p>
<p>In all honesty we could try to pay for more semesters but both kiddos need to learn that the Bank of Mom and Dad has a limit…and we’d rather make sure our retirement accounts are funded so in a few decades we aren’t having to go to our kids to help us out.</p>
<p>If this means a PhD program, that should be funded and not require additional expenses or loans. Professional school (medical, dental, etc.) is a different story, and typically involves large amounts of student loans.</p>
<p>He should be aware that getting a good biology job (even at the PhD level) is fiercely competitive.</p>
<p>For our other kids, we pretty much stayed the course as planned financially, but my one in college now is doing so while he and we are undergoing a number of financial storms. Extra courses needed during the summer or after the four years is just another such storm. It’s nice to say, that the limit is four years and that is it, but sometimes it is costlier to all to stick to that when more time and money is needed. My friend did have to break into pension and other monies to pay for fifth year for her son, and for her and him it was well worth it because he did land on his feet after that and get the whole college thing over with and is in a good paying career. I know some kids who just never went back after that break and never really got back on a directed path. Maybe the same would have occurred had that fifth or sixth been subsidized–there are those who just run the money and time out–but I think I would like to give it “the old college try” for the one year at least with a careful #2 eye on what is being done then.</p>
