But where you go to law school matters a great deal. There prestige is everything.
I am very sorry your child had such a disappointing experience. What you wrote about the lack of professors teaching the classes and poor general support is not at all what my children experienced, nor what Yale is known for. My kids were taught almost universally by full professors, many of them renowned scholars. One of my kids even took advantage of the opportunity to enroll in classes at the Business school and had Timothy Geithner (ex-Treasury Secretary) teach his class on the Financial Crisis. They were surrounded by supportive College Head, Deans, professors and peersâŠitâs one of the elements that makes the Yale experience so extraordinary. Regarding the costâŠthatâs another discussion. But the quality of the education, people, opportunities, and overall experience has been beyond our expectationsâŠremarkable.
OP- at what point did your kid ask to have another adviser assigned? Did your kid go to any of the events run by the Deans, in the individual colleges, by the advisers? How many times per semester did your kid take advantage of office hours?
I ask because I cannot think of a single young Yale grad I know who doesnât cite the close personal relationships with Deans/professors/etc as a major plus. None of them come from money but Iâd describe all of them as proactive âraise your handâ types.
You canât change your kids- but you CAN encourage them-- especially in Law School- to take the initiative on all the important relationships that are made there. You donât graduate from law school and âfall inâ to a federal clerkship. Recommendations from professors are hugely important. You donât get to be a 3L and end up randomly working in a clinic in an area of interest-- you tell the professor(s) who supervises the clinic that youâre interested and hope to be invited to join. You can make law review on the basis of your gradesâ but every other journal is going to be staffed by the students who take the initiative and seek out the opportunity.
Law school is expensive, but if your kidâs MO has been to wait for a professor to take an interest, or for an adviser to magically âpresentâ terrific opportunities, it will be an exercise in frustration. Being laid back does not work in law school.
And working for a couple of years to save up money for grad school- thatâs still OK, and may make for a stronger LS application anyway.
Best wishes to you and your family that the COVID financial hit is less than you fear once the dust settlesâŠ
My kid will be okay. The implications that she wasnât assertive are not accurate. The truth is we are not helicopter parents and I didnât really understand what was happening to her until recently. She is a tremendous student and has a very prestigious opportunity. She hasnât taken the LSAT but I have no doubt she will do well on that. Law school is the future for her but I know she will never be money driven so we need to really have time to think about the best course. I think we are just realizing how few students there are at Yale that have lived middle class lives. We can argue about whether $200K is middle class but what I can tell you is that she lived a middle class life. Public school, few vacations, only trips abroad were school trips, small house, old cars, parents stressed out about money. At Yale she found herself caught between being worried about classmates with desperate situations in which Yale often feels harsh and classmates that spent their weekends jetting around the world. There is not a strong middle class at Yale. With the financial aid policies they way they are, I want to warn parents in my situation.
It sounds like you have 2 other kids in college as well. How do their experiences compare with Yale?
I donât understand the point of this post. You are bitter because Yale was expensive? You knew it was expensive. You knew how much it would cost. Itâs not Yaleâs problem that you live in an expensive area. You knew that tuition would go up. It is not Yaleâs fault that your child wants to attend law school. This post is based on one personâs experience, and you arenât the student, who is happy, by your account. Really, what do you hope to achieve here? I have no connection with Yale, btw.
ETA: This post could be titled âThink twice about sending your child to an expensive private university.â Agree that a student who gets into Yale likely had (or should have had) other more affordable options.
I get the sense that OP knew it was going to be expensive. He expected a premium product----and Yale didnât live up to his expectations. I think heâs just giving his opinion to inform others who are evaluating a full pay (but hard to afford option) and the return on investment. One personâs experience and one data point for others.
Donut hole families are not well represented at top privates. Who qualifies as a donut hole family varies by school, but those just outside the financial aid limits may struggle. As OP noted, there are many at both extremes.
DS graduated from Yale in 2014 and our experience (both parents and student) could not be more different than OPâs. He wouldnât even do a study abroad because he said he didnât want to take any time away from being at Yale. We were full pay thanks to a higher than average salary but we live in a high cost area of the country and I wonât lie - we definitely had to tighten our belts a lot during those four years. We told DS from the start that if he chose Yale over our state flagship (a âpublic Ivyâ) that he was on his own for law school - we said that we didnât have a secret pot of money hidden somewhere. He studied like crazy for his LSAT and had a score good enough to not only get into many T-14 schools, but ended up going to one in the top 10 that came with a merit scholarship of over $100,000 (I had no idea that there was so much merit aid available for law school before this). He graduated last year and does have some loans, but they are manageable; he has a well-paying job, and is on track to pay them off within the next two years. Iâm sorry that OP regrets their childâs choice, but in my experience this is not at all a typical one.
1 Like
I think this post is a good reminder that the Ivies arenât always the best fit for every student.
Frankly I think itâs refreshing to read right now in the midst of all the angsty ivy rejection posts, and those asking which school to choose between engineering powerhouses and Ivies.
Thank you OP for sharing your experience. Iâm sorry for your D. Her experience is just as valid as those saying Yale was great for their kid.
I donât understand why so many posters feel the need to defend Yale. They donât need your help.
Every students experience is valid. This story is a cautionary tale, a harbinger that itâs not all wine and roses at an Ivy+ school. Take it for what itâs worth. Obviously there are others whoâve had better experiences.
Yes, people tend to fetishize the Ivy League. Experiences can vary dramatically from kid to kid, major to major, etc. There are tremendous opportunities, no doubt, at Yale, but that is true of all schools. In the end, 90%+ of any college experience is going to be driven by the kid and random factors.
I say this as someone with two Ivy degrees.
Im sorry but this is absolutely contrary to my daughters experience. She not only had plenty of help from her deans and head but they are also writing letters of recommendation for her grad programs. The only academic complaint that she had was that many kids came in with an understanding that they were just retaking classes they took their senior year so they could ace the grades their first year there. She tested out of certain classes and wished she knew that trick at the beginning of the year. Her adviser is STILL advising her and she has graduated last spring. The dining hall has lots of options and no it is not gourmet every day but a lot of that is because they are trying to cover all bases from vegan to high protein. We are middle class in CT and our tuition was definitely income based. I am unsure why you seem to be so negative and I am not sure what you expected but I do not believe that your experience represents all experiences.
For a school as large as Yale, you are bound to have a few lecturers. But I donât remember my son ever complaining about this. The only time he kinda complained is a professor who was quite green with a dry teaching style.
This is contrary to the experience of the several current and former Yale kids and parents I know. That doesnât mean it isnât accurate for your kid but I do wonder what your child would say about the overall experience.
As far as the aid, itâs really pretty good compared to most. I know families in that income range in hcol areas that were very happy with the aid. They saved as much as they could and were glad to have it when the bill came. I can see how current events can make us all rethink some past decisions though. And youâre right that people should put serious thought into how much they should spend and what the payoff is. In any case, sorry for the regrets and wishing your child best of luck in the future.
Thank you @yale2020parent. I very much appreciate the heads up and overall reminder that just by attending an Ivy one is not guaranteed a idyllic experience. I definitely think there is a âbuyer bewareâ message here, but I also think a ânot so greatâ experience is more common than one would think at many highly ranked schools. A friend of mine just told me that her freshman son left campus the moment he could after Cornell closed for the Coronavirus. She said, âLetâs just say, he doesnât love it there.â
^^^I would take this advice with a grain of salt. This poster has a thread basically slamming students at Top 20 colleges, not just Yale. smh.
âI didnât know we wouldnât even have graduation. I didnât know my families income would collapse.â
And now COVID-19 is Yaleâs fault?
âMy kid has options after graduation but they were almost all her doing and it was exhausting.â
They were âalmostâ all her doing??? Whose doing should they have been? Arenât most job searches exhausting? There is a requisite amount of independence and resourcefulness that is required to secure post-graduation options. It sounds like your student possesses these qualities, since you report there are options. I wonder if it is YOU, and not the student, who wanted more hand-holding. Opportunities are not presented on a silver platter anywhere.
Our experience was that Yale hosted recruiters who recruit only at highly selective universities. This resulted in opportunities that were uniquely available to Yale students (as they would have been available to students at similarly selective universities ).
Yale offers extremely generous need-based financial aid (my son attended), likely among the most generous available at any institution. So in that sense, if you were going to be eligible for financial aid anywhere, it would be here. If you were not eligible, it is not Yaleâs fault that you decided to send your student there anyway (and pass on merit scholarships elsewhere).
After reading OPâs posts, I think that a more appropriate title for this thread might be:
âThink twice about paying nearly full price for Yale if it will result in financial stress for oneâs family.â
P.S. I appreciate this thread, but am a bit confused about OPâs complaints. Hopefully OPâs daughter will score high enough on the LSAT to earn a merit scholarship to law school and that some credit for the high LSAT score will be attributed to her undergraduate education at Yale.
4 years ago, we faced a similar situation. We live in California - make what many would consider good money being self-employed, but donât have much left over after expense. We were offered very little from Yale, Stanford and Harvard in financial aid. We talked about it a lot, and we were very upfront with him about how this would impact our finances. In the end, our son chose another school (not an Ivy, but top 10) with a merit scholarship covering about 1/2 the cost annually. Iâm so happy he made that choice. Heâll start Yale as a PhD student in the fall with no debt - and we have enough breathing room to pay for college for two other kids.
1 Like