I’m the parent of a high school senior D with all the right stuff (top 1% grades and ACT, lots of EC’s) and she is struggling with narrowing down her list of where to apply. Wants to study either journalism or chem /bio for pre-med. Most interest is in UNC, Dartmouth, Duke, UCSD, but also considering UA-Birmingham and a few other smaller, out of state schools. Because in-state scholarship help will bring cost down to about 15K/ year. Out of state publics like UNC and UCSD offer little help with costs for out of state applicants, even top students, and will end up costing about $40-50K /yr. Dartmouth and Duke cost 60K / yr approx, but with large endowments are able to offer more merit scholarship help, bringing cost down to roughly same range as top tier public colleges.
For a student who will likely end up in journalism grad school or med school, is a brand-name private or top-tier public college for undergrad worth the extra $30-40K per year over, for example, UAB? I realize there are many ‘it depends’ factors, and there really is no right or wrong answer, but just looking for tips/ advice from other parents and students who are struggling with the same issue.
Most top pri ates do not offer merit scholarship but need based aid. That is the way they use the endowment as most admitted students have excellent stat anyway.
If your d plans on graduate school, you might consider applying to universities that award more merit aide or attend the in state flagship university. A good friend of ours was accepted to several top tier schools but received very little in terms of scholarship or financial aide. She opted to go to U Mass Amherst and is now in an highly selective Md/Phd program. Silver lining is that the Md/Phd program is fully funded. She’ll graduate without any loans!
I’ve gone over that in other threads, my personal opinion is no OOS public is worth the cost if your paying it. As said above, Ivies offer no merit, Duke does have merit scholarships but it will be extremely competitive. For journalism it does make a difference which school you attend as its a difficult field to break into. There are many universities that will offer very good merit scholarships to attract top students like your D, but they won’t be in the top 30-40 universities. As far as your question, is it worth it to attend an Ivy/Duke, yes, if money isn’t a problem. If it is, and you’ll need to pay for med school, then any good public/private university offering great merit aid would be a better way to go.
Some OOS publics may be worth the OOS tuition. Berkeley, UCLA, Virginia, North Carolina are, IMO, a better investment than dozens if not hundreds of privates that cost the same but don’t offer the same breath of opportunities or enjoy the kind of national/international renown.
But they’re the outliers, and may not be the right choice for a student torn between journalism and pre-med. There ARE better journalism options (Mizzou, Syracuse, Northwestern) – and she can do pre-med anywhere. (In fact, for a pre-med, it may be smarter to go to a smaller, less competitive school.)
Remember that UCSD is a California PUBLIC school, so your daughter cannot assume a private setting or environment. Do you really want to spend that kind of money on a public competitive school? ($55K per year!) Your dd’s classes will be very large. Chem and Bio are huge majors at the UC’s since everyone “wants to be a doctor”
are you (the OP) confusing merit with need-based financial aid? Very few “top tier” (including Dartmouth) privates give merit, and those that do (Duke) give it VERY sparingly to a tiny minority of applicants. Big merit comes from a bit farther down the prestige list.
Can you afford the higher cost schools? Will they jeopardize your financial stability/ability to save for retirement, etc?
Different families have different philosophies and different financial backgrounds. What is worth it for one family won’t be worth it for another. When some people say it is worth the cost, the cost doesn’t really detract from their overall quality of life. For others who say it is worth the cost, they are willing to sell their home, move into an apt, and radically alter their standard of living, forgo retirement, and eat Ramon noodles the rest of their lives.
We are a family where higher cost schools are not an option for our kids. We are not willing to endure the financial instability that would result from paying for those costs across all of our children. They have to attend schools with large merit scholarships or live at home and attend the local school. It has not negatively impacted our kids. They have attended great public universities and had fabulous opportunities.
Fwiw, in looking at our kids’ adult lives, I wouldn’t define any of their experiences as hardships or less than _____. They have accomplished exactly what they set out to do. Their UG schools didn’t hamper their educations or their career development. Our current college sr is applying to grad school right now. I do not believe his UG Bama degree is going to negatively impact his application. He has had great UG research experiences at Bama and 2 REUs. He was able to take grad level courses and has had great mentoring from his professors. He has a great physics GRE score, etc. His Bama experience has been excellent.
Zero regrets on our part as parents in not destroying our future financial stabilty by paying for an unaffordable UG education.
If you would not get much need based aids and have to rely on merit aid, public colleges would be the way to go. Nevertheless, one needs to be among the top 1-3% of admitted students to receive significant amount and very often the money goes to in state students mostly.
for pre-med, go to a school where you don’t have to pay full price so you can use some money for Medical school.
GPA is very very important for pre-med…so going against the smartest kids in the country may not be the best idea.
If you want to go pre-med then think about:
The cheapest reasonable college so you/your parents can use the money for med school
The college needs to prepare you for MCATs but still allow you to get a good GPA
Access to volunteering opportunities (e.g., near a hospital)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That is our philosophy as well - we have 5 kids, and are in our 50s and both got destroyed financially in our divorces (and we pay everything for all the kids - exes do not).
We had one go to W Texas A & M, another went to WVU (got in state tuition) - he has a great job in petroleum engineering, the next is at Missouri State - it is the most affordable education ever as she is a top student and they gave her lots of merit and I assure you her upper level accounting classes are plenty challenging, the next is at Tiffin University - playing lacrosse and majoring in cyber security and again got a very large merit scholarship in addition to athletics money, the last is my soon to be nursing student and same philosophy holding - she already knows people who graduated the program as East Stroudsburg with successful nursing careers today.
We are in no position to co-sign loans or take parent loans (well we could but we don’t think it wise at this point in our lives) so we said we will pay XX amount out of our pockets per year for each of you so find a school to make it work and so far they have. Nope - nobody goes to a big name prestigious school but honestly who cares? Everyone is enjoying the college experience and one by one they are finding their way to success.