<p>Well, what does he think?</p>
<p>To the OP,
I do believe you (and your son) have to be prepared for the intense competition for the Ivy. Similar to you, we don’t have any hooks, my older son was luckily admitted to Yale and Columbia, but we would have to pay full price. He ended up getting a full scholarship (tuition) in a mid-west LAC school which was also his 1st choice. He is enjoying his 3rd yr there. If those 2 were his first choice, then I would have been confronted with the same question on worthiness of the full price tag. </p>
<p>With my youngest boy, he didn’t apply for any Ivy, but his mind was set at MIT when he was 12. Similar to his brother, his academic stat is stellar, his EC includes many strong science and math competitions and clubs. He was EA deferred and waitlisted by MIT, we are still waiting. This year, I heard the competition was extremely tough; he was also put in waitlists for his first 4 choices. He received merit scholarship (1/2 tuition) from couple mid-west schools and nothing from the state flagship which he will likely attend if all the waitlists fail.</p>
<p>Now if MIT does come through, we will be confronted with the same question as yours.
If he was admitted on 3/14 (Pi day), we were all prepared to pay MIT’s full tuition. However, after visiting all his other choices these last 3 weeks, I believe he will thrive anywhere, in fact, he said he liked all the schools he visited. The mid-west school was particular attentive… He ended up picking the state flagship because of the ranking and resources. So if the MIT waitlist does come through, we will have a tough decision to make.</p>
<p>Falmamom,
Has your s considered applying for some of the bigf national scholarships (eg Toyota, coca cola, GE-Reagan scholarship, etc. He sounds like a very strong candidate, and perhaps if he were to be awarded an outside scholarship, he would be able to select any school he is fortunate to be admitted to, and the financial impact woudl be less of a concern. Just a thought. Good luck! These are not easy decisions.</p>
<p>Musing a bit more, here’s a thought. I think it is essentially impossible to answer this question. The value of an education at a well-known school is a constantly shifting quantity over time. I think about Gatsby. When Gatsby was written, “Harvard man” simply mean rich and from the NE. Now it means something different. So, a survey of Harvard men who graduated in 20s would tell you nothing about Harvard grads of today. And, the Harvard of merely 30 years ago was a different place as well, so even a survey of grads from the 70s or so is of uncertain value at best.
I’ll also note that Harvard itself is not clear on the subject:
[Measuring</a> the Value of a Harvard Degree | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/5/1/measuring-the-value-of-a-harvard/]Measuring”>Measuring the Value of a Harvard Degree | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson)
And Princeton tends toward the negative:
[Is</a> the Ivy League a waste of money? - 1 - College costs - MSN Money](<a href=“MSN”>MSN)</p>
<p>jym626 - thanks for the info. He’s definitely looking into the different scholarships available and is compiling a list of ones he will most likely apply to.
Thanks much!</p>
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<p>The advanced placement policy at Princeton is designed to give recognition to college-level work prior to matriculation and to allow you to pursue your studies at a level appropriate to your preparation. If you have been granted sufficient advanced placement units in the appropriate number of subject areas (see AP Credit Reference Table), you may be eligible for advanced standing, which will permit you to graduate in either three years or with three and one-half years of study.</p>
<p>[AP</a> Credit Overview - Advanced Placement and Advanced Standing](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/pub/ap/]AP”>http://www.princeton.edu/pub/ap/)</p>
<p>nemom - thanks for the reference to the two articles; very interesting!</p>
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<p>But there are different kinds of value. One is the rather prosaic what-is-it-worth-in-the-marketplace. The other is the value of an experience. To me, asking whether it’s “worth it” to send your child to X school is rather like asking whether it’s “worth it” to take a trip to Europe. It’s an experience; it can’t be measured in dollars / cents.</p>
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<p>But Wall Street Journal thinks differently</p>
<p>[Top</a> 20: Colleges That Offer Best Return on Investment - Real Time Economics - WSJ](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/30/top-20-colleges-that-offer-best-return-on-investment/]Top”>http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/30/top-20-colleges-that-offer-best-return-on-investment/)</p>
<p>Well - the WSJ analysis does not control for student quality, nor does it deal with the cost of loans. An education at Princeton is currently $198,700, but if $50,000 of that in in a ten year loan, the real cost is higher.
Then, it also matters which figure you use. Using simple ROI, 33 schools beat Princeton. Using ROI, including an offset for financial aid, Princeton does well - number 4. But that assumes the aid is all grants, without loans.
The study excludes individuals who did not get higher degrees, is based on voluntary data. It also factors in graduation rates which will yield a higher result for schools with high retention rates.
All in all, it’s interesting but not compelling.</p>
<p>POIH - please stop posting personal information about your daughter. It’s incredibly embarrassing, both for you and for her, especially since she is very easily identifiable by anyone who reads your posts. I don’t want to make any personal attacks, but based on your posts, it sounds as if your daughter isn’t quite reaching her full potential at MIT, which is funny since you seem to criticize anyone who doesn’t follow your views. It’s sad that I don’t even have to go to the same school as her to know all this either.</p>
<p>warbrain: It’s easy to hide behind a fake id and make a personal attack. I don’t have a habit of attacking any one personally and stick to refuting people posts. I only look at their posts for consistency and not to decipher anyone identity.
Still I standby my posts.</p>
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<p>I don’t understand why you feel compelled to quote the policy to me, since I’m a Princeton parent, which is why I know there is no double-major allowed, let alone a “triple-major,” as your earlier post asserted.</p>
<p>P.S. “Three and one-half years” = the “one semester less” that I mentioned in my post. (Do you think this is a contradiction?)
My daughter was offered advanced standing, with graduation one semester early as an option, due to double-digit AP’s. That advanced standing is offered after actual enrollment, not before.</p>
<p>P.P.S. She turned down the advanced standing option.</p>
<p>epiphany: I quoted the policy to point out that my statement regarding advance standing at Princeton allowing students to graduate in 3 years didn’t require a factual correction.</p>
<p>Where one goes to school matters. Kate won’t marry William if she went to another school. A wedding is a wedding, but why so many people watched the one on Friday is telling.</p>
<p>I bought Andrew Ferguson’s Crazy U book and I also bought his line that people go to a fancier restaurant to eat the menu. Even conservatives find the menu attractive. Or others are attracted to the menu someone holds. </p>
<p>We are humans or social animals as David Brooks uses it to title his book.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, but I think the fundamental question is not debt vs. no debt, but how much. Borrowing a total of $50K to end up in a very lucrative situation IS worth it in my opinion. Borrowing 100K might be. Borrowing $200K probably isn’t. I think it’s really worth doing the real math. </p>
<p>Another point I want to make is distance. You son wants to be no more than 4 hours away, but 4 hours can get you pretty far if 3 of them are on an airplane. It takes my D 4 hours door to door and she’s 1000 miles away! Many of her friends go to school where the driving distance (or bus ride) well exceeds that, but some how they “feel” closer to home. </p>
<p>I think the Penn State Schreyer Honors College is a great idea, it’s very exclusive. </p>
<p>Finally, a really reasonable way to get to wall street is to go to a top public school or a private on scholarship for undergraduate, and then go on to a PhD program in econ or finance at a top school, perhaps even an Ivy. Then you get the wall street recruiting, but in a PhD program, you also get most of it paid for. This definitely takes longer, and he’d have to really excel in college, but it does have the megabucks payoff in the end. Rochester has great econ, but offers good merit scholarships. </p>
<p>If you are only $10K/yr short for the Ivy, then I’d borrow it. If you are $35K/yr short, I think I’d go plan B. </p>
<p>Another good option is McGill or Toronto. They are very inexpensive and the top schools in Canada. Less than 4 hours by plane. </p>
<p>Just some food for thought.</p>
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That is patently false. But thats besides the point. I won’t go dig up the past posts attacking oldfort, me, emaheevul07 and others. Several of them have been edited or deleted, IIRC. But these attacks were, and perhaps some still are there there for all to see. </p>
<p>Back to point. OP- The big scholarships are great opportunities, and the smaller scholarships, either regional ones in your area, special interest ones that may fit with your s’s skills or interests, etc are worth pursuing as well. They may not be as big, and they may not be 4 year renewable (go for the renewables if you can) but they can help. My older s got a lot of small scholarships before his freshman year. They weren’t a lot of money-- maybe about $6K IIRC, but they certainly helped. He got a small about of merit money, and then got some additional merit money from his department during his remaining years. Going for the outside scholarships can be time consuming, but can be very lucrativie and offers great flexibility for the student, as they can be applied to any school.
Good luck! Your s sounds like a great kid!</p>
<p>“Based on your experience and knowledge, do you think that an Ivy League education - with all that comes with it, such as networking, career services, and the like - worth the debt/loans that are part of this ‘package deal’.”</p>
<p>Not all Ivies are the same. Not all kids are the same. It might be worth it for YOUR kid to take on some debt to study UG at Princeton, but not Cornell – might not be so for another kid. It also depends on what non-Ivy schools you are talking about. UVA is different than VCU for an Ivy-caliber kid, for example.</p>
<p>Ivy or not, every kid should have parental help in seeing the impact that school debt can have on getting started in life . . . marriage, house, car, etc.</p>
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<p>This would be mostly for research/quant jobs. People in the front office usually have bachelor or MBA, and UG school matters. Unless a specific job requires PhD credential, the degree itself is not very useful.</p>
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<p>It seems really disheartening to have to go through all that – a PhD program – just for the “megabucks payoff.” What is wrong with people? Why can’t really nice six-figure payoffs be enough – why are so many people obsessed with seven- or eight-figure megabucks? Do they really think they’ll be appreciably happier with that kind of money?</p>