If price were no object, the roads would be full of Bentleys instead of Toyotas. Duh.
I don’t get how they can pay for him to apply to zounds of colleges, but complain about the colleges wanting to pay for him to attend.
Seems like a waste somewhere along the line. Did he honestly think that he would get merit aid from Ivies? 'Cuz no.
“complain about the colleges wanting to pay for him to attend.”
@rhandco ; Where’s that part? I couldn’t find the part where he was complaining.
Thankfully I also didn’t see anything about his choice being dependent upon “pretty girls.”
Maybe his reason was as he said - a full ride and acceptance into the Fellows program in Honors.
"The article basically says that it is a case of full ride at Alabama versus financially stretching it at the other schools (especially after an older sibling graduates from college). Being a pre-med makes it even more compelling to take the full ride and save whatever money there is for medical school.
BusinessInsider wrote:
Nelson and his family were faced with a choice — stretch their budget and potentially take on debt for a brand-name school, or save their money for a graduate degree down the line."
=
“my parents make too much money to get aid from Ivies, and they don’t want to shell out what the Ivies think they can pay”
Seems like a complaint to me. Seems like throwing it in the Ivies’ face, saying “I didn’t get enough aid, and you don’t have an honors program as good as UA’s”.
BTW, it is NOT true that no Ivies have Honors programs. My spouse was in the honors program at Penn.
I am not sure why so many cling to the bigoted, anachronistic assumption that women at lesser schools are more attractive than women at Ivies and other top schools. A lot of men appreciate strong intelligent women.
The only surprising thing about this story is that he bothered to apply to all 8 ivies. I suppose he just wanted to see what would happen. I personally know 3 kids who are taking the full tuition at Temple rather than pay 65k at Penn and one kid who’s choosing Temple over Columbia for both money and proximity to home. And I also know lots of other kids taking huge merit over prestige and debt. Lots of doughnut hole people who end up being very surprised by the lack of financial aid.
rhandco: If you’re talking about the Benjamin Franklin Scholars at Penn, there aren’t the same perks as some of these public university honors programs and there isn’t (or isn’t supposed to be) merit money.
My knowledge of the BFS program is it is mainly a designation to add to your resume (at least it was just that 25 years ago). There are seminars that BFS students take. After intro classes, there are plenty of seminars and small classes at Penn.
albert69 – if you have nothing useful to post, don’t post. What they did was ridiculous.They needed to run the net price calculators for the Ivys and if they didn’t like the result, then don’t apply to any of them.
I just ran the Yale NPC for a $200k salary (it took about 5 minutes) and it came out to $37k a year bill. My understanding is at UBA, the kid will pay around $12k (room and board, misc expenses, travel, etc). So the difference the first year is $25k. I then dropped down to 1 kid in school (which took about 30 seconds), and the Financial aid dropped to $10k, so a $45k a year difference. So is an Ivy league education worth $160k more than somewhere like UBA? If it is, then apply. If it isn’t, which is obviously wasn’t, then start targeting merit schools. I guess I am pretty surprised the kid didn’t get good merit from Vandy, and I would have gone there over UBA.
But whatever – use the NPCs! It costs $70 or so per Ivy app, so $560. And it would take an hour or two to run all 8 NPCs, though if you didn’t like Yale, Harvard, and Princeton results, you could stop there because the others aren’t better. $560 savings in an hour – that is as good as Geico 
There are lots of schools better than UBA that would have given a full ride if they had done their homework.
^^^What is UBA, @Daddio3? And why are you assuming they didn’t run the net price calculators? They’re not infallible you know. And perhaps they didn’t factor in their other kid. This kid made a choice based on relative value. For his family. How his that ridiculous?
And why are you insulting albert69?
My guess is that the parents would have paid if he picked HYPS or whatever, and that a year ago the kid did think he would want to go to an Ivy, but as decision time came nearer he decided he liked UA best for the price.
Methinks that this lad didn’t believe it was necessary to consult Brent Musburger about the attractiveness of female students at the U of Alabama.
The reason some are expressing puzzlement is not that he chose a lower-ranked school for a better price, but that he did not have better lower-ranked schools to choose from which also have excellent honors programs with great perks.
Ughh. The pro- Bama sentiment on CC is puke worthy. Luckily this kid is pre-med. If this was an kid that’s into history or language or science, this would’ve been something to be sad about, not celebrate.
He did get into Vandy, WashU and JHU. However, the merit scholarships there are going mostly to the top 2-5% of who they consider are the best they admitted. That would mean as close to 2400 or a 36 score.
Exactly, @scholarme. What is so complicated about that? Plenty of people “complain” about all sorts of things and still suck it up and pay. So what if they spent $560 (or whatever) on application fees? They weighed all their options and it APPEARS they decided that the Fellows Program and a full ride was a better value than any Ivy or other elite school at the price they would be expected to pay. I’m sure if money were no object, he would have chosen an Ivy or Stanford and will likely wonder what his life would have been like at those other schools, but I really don’t get why people are casting aspersions on this kid and his parents for their approach or decision.
@CaliCash? What exactly would there be to be sad about? And who said he isn’t majoring in history or language or science? He’s premed. He can major in anything he wants as long as he completes his requirements.
Puke worthy? Nice. I guess all those Bama folks who offered you advice when you were interested in the school were puke worthy too.
Good for this kid. Glad he’s making a choice on something other than US News rankings.
However, the language of “Bama wins” bugs me. It’s not a contest. It’s a decision about 4 years of your life.
But I’ve never understood the obsession with bama here. To each their own though.
CaliCash, if you had any first hand knowledge of the school, you would understand the pro-Bama sentiment.
@Chardo Lol, 90% of people say that about the school they go to.
@LucietheLakie It was for pure financial reasons though and no they weren’t puke worthy. They were helpful, but still. If he was into the humanities, it would be sad because the education he would receive at one of the elite schools he got into would be far better. BUT he is gonna go to med school, so it makes sense to save.