I didn’t like this movie. Thought it was overhyped and that the main character came across as spoiled. My two teenage daughters felt the same way. I love Laurie Metcalf and am glad I saw it because of her excellent (as always) performance, but I am also glad I got to see it for free (as a voter for the SAG Awards). My overall reaction was “meh” and I thought Ladybird herself needed a giant dose of reality – she had no idea how privileged she actually was. And I’m sorry, in this day and age, there is NO WAY she would get into Barnard after bad grades and a suspension.
I am going to go see it. H will be gone skiing all week so GF night and movie sounds in order!
After what I’ve read about LB, especially today, I have no interest in seeing the movie at all. It is not something I can relate to at all, even tho I’ve been through the applications process and college visits.
I know movies are movies but am horrified to read the family refinanced their home so the kid could go to OOS private U when the dad was unemployed. We know a woman who spent her entire divorce settlement sending her younger S to a OOS private U and is now 60 years old, living paycheck to paycheck in a modest rental, running a food truck with her special needs older S. Her life is very difficult and likely to remain tough, as running a food truck and being a single mom of special needs young adult is hard work! I am sure there are others who have made similar expensive decisions with long-term effects on everyone involved.
Personally, I’d consider the college process a tertiary theme in the movie. I wouldn’t even consider it secondary. It’s about a young woman in a transitional period of her life and her dealings with different people - family, guys, friends - and learning about her relationships with them and about herself and growing. It’s a coming of age story. She’s not perfect and she has some moments that could be construed as selfish. She’s a teen after all. And human like the rest of us. If she was portrayed as some perfect teen, it would be really unrealistic. Teens aren’t perfect, right?
If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t make the false assumption it is all about the college application process.
I loved the movie. I thought the college admissions angle was the least interesting (and maybe least important) element of the plot. Like @doschicos, I really enjoyed the relationships between LB and her friends and her parents. I especially loved how no one in the movie was perfect; they were all flawed, imperfect humans, especially lady bird herself.
The characters rang true-- human, flawed, funny, and families that fight, and love, each other.
No, the dream school was never identified, but the movie was autobiographical and Gerwig is a Barnard alum … so I’ve assumed Barnard all along -precisely because NYU would have never been affordable. Barnard meets full need but does count home equity in the mix – so it would be natural for the parents to tap into that equity as part of the process of meeting their share of the costs. Even though the dad had lost his job, the mom was employed (though I can see the source of the mom’s resentment of the dad for making a major financial decision without her input).
Also the movie character graduated in 2012, when the upper range for full COA at a private college was still shy of $30K.
As a middle-income California parent with a daughter who was deadset on NYC, I identified strongly with the movie, as did my daughter. I fully supported my daughter’s east coast aspirations - but money was a big concern and I insisted that my DD apply to the UC’s-- and if the finances hadn’t been there, then that’s where she would have ended up.
Barnard gave my DD generous financial aid, well beyond what other schools offered, but it was still a stretch that meant spending $10K or more per year beyond what attendance at UCSC or UCSB would have cost us. And yes, I borrowed (PLUS loans, I wouldn’t have met income quailifications for a HELOC) - and I was glad to do so.
I am surprised that there are people on this thread who are so privileged that they somehow think that a refinance to pay for an elite college is out of the norm. Or who would think attending SF State (essentially a commuter school, and definitely not in an urban neighborhood despite the San Francisco zip code) was in any way comparable to attending either Barnard or NYU. The mom in the movie had a very hard time letting go, but she made it clear that at heart, she wanted her daughter to be the best that she could be – and part of her frustration throughout seemed to be with a sense that her daughter did not maximize opportunities in high school.
I’m also a UC Davis grad and my son graduated from a CSU – so I’m keenly aware of what the various options would have been. Certainly I can see the validity of a parents choosing not to pay – but not the disdainful attitude toward those of us who are willing to sacrifice to help our kids reach their goals.
The full annual COA in 2002 would have been in the range of ~$28,000 – so even financing full COA over 4 years would have been in the range of $120K, not $300K. And as noted, if you are going to think about finances, it was much more likely Barnard than NYU … and yes, it’s a movie, but I have a pretty good idea exactly what a financial aid award from a full-need school would have looked like in those days. (My son started college in 2001).
Actually, the movie was set in 2002/2003, so the COA for a school like Barnard was even less. Average tuition and fees for a private school in that time period was actually about $14,300 (National Center for Education Statistics). Granted that wouldn’t have included room and board and travel, etc. but it wasn’t today’s dollars. I think the conversation about taking on debt for college and whether it’s “worth” it, has evolved in the ensuing 15 or so years. And I agree with the posters who said that the college application process was a secondary or tertiary theme in the movie. This movie, to me, was predominantly a portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship during a pivotal time in Lady Bird’s life. I saw it with my D and we both really loved it.
“Or who would think attending SF State (essentially a commuter school, and definitely not in an urban neighborhood despite the San Francisco zip code) was in any way comparable to attending either Barnard or NYU.”
Putting affordable, in-state safeties on a list is a bad idea if they don’t compare to the expensive dream schools? I’ve been doing it wrong for 18 years…
But she had applied to UC Davis and presumably other UC campuses – which the family clearly considered to be affordable – using Sac State as a safety might have made sense… but not SF State. There urban center CSU’s generally are commuter schools and tend to be overenrolled, and favor local students for admission.
IIRC she actually got into UC Davis but refused to go there because of the cows. So she was planning to go to SF(?)/Sac State instead (not really clear, but the implication was that she would stay at home).
Apparently the scenes at the end were filmed at NYU even though Gerwig went to Barnard.
It’s been a couple of months now since I saw the movie, but my impression was that she had been accepted to UCD and was resigned to attending there, until she received the notice that she was off the waitlist. But if she had chosen to stay and live at home home and attend a CSU, then it would have to have been Sac State.
I don’t remember being able to identify any of the NY locations – but NYU doesn’t really have a campus and the high school scenes were filmed at a school in Pasadena … so it wouldn’t mean much to me one way or another unless there was a promininent NYU-associated landmark. Obviously there were no scenes of Barnard or Columbia either. From the opening sequence it seemed she wanted an LAC-like environment (“I want to go where culture is, like New York. Or at least Connecticutt or New Hampshire, where writers live in the woods.”)
Apparently Gerwig herself wanted to go to NYU for musical theater - so it would have been Tisch - but ended up at Barnard instead. Reportedly Greta Gerwig quoted her mom (also a nurse) as saying, " “This was another of my mum’s great moments, where she said, ‘I’m not spending $40,000 a year for you to learn how to tap dance.’” Presumably, with financial aid, Barnard was more affordable. (Source of quote: “This was another of my mum’s great moments, where she said, ‘I’m not spending $40,000 a year for you to learn how to tap dance.’” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/13/greta-gerwig-frances-ha
Did anyone else catch when either Lady Bird or the GC referred to Yale as a LAC?
I don’t remember that reference, but the quote I can find from the movie was:
So “Yale, but not Yale” could lead a g.c. to suggest a LAC. (I just don’t recall specific dialogue from the movie).
Haven’t seen the movie… don’t know the family’s finances… but I think in general it’s good to send a child to a university/college in a very different part of the country.
Going from Sacramento to NYC – or, as in my daughter’s case, from Denver to Boston – offers extraordinary opportunities for personal and social growth. In my eyes, it was worth the extra $10K per year, especially since much of her “commuting home” airfare money came in the form mileage.
The church she went to, toward the end of the movie, was Trinity Church, which is downtown not that far away from NYU.
The thing I noticed immediately was that the location shots would lead one to believe NYU, but the acceptance packet was blue rather than purple, which would reflect Barnard. And given Greta Gerwig’s personal story, I suspect it was a little bit of both. But really, It’s a movie about adolescent/parent relationships, not college admissions. And if that was, in fact, Trinity Church, its actually further downtown on Wall Street and Broadway and quite a distance from Washington Square Park and the heart of NYU.
Her only in-state option was too close to home and a “cow school.” She wanted to be in a metropolitan environment. So an affordable school in the big city, where her mom wouldn’t be breathing down her neck, should have been an option on the list. Even if a student in this situation ends up going to Davis, they often feel better about it when they have choices and don’t feel so shoehorned into it. It gives them a sense of control.
That’s how I would have put it to the family, anyway.
One big reason I am relieved I did NOT see the movie with D2 is the part where “Dad apparently loves daughter enough to work some financial magic & make the dream school happen!”
That is still, somewhat, a sore subject in our household (we did not make the financial magic happen).
^well, to be fair, total COA at the time was 28K… so “financial magic” was a LOT easier to make happen than nowadays.