USC Class of 2026 — Regular Decision

[CADREAMIN]

This is an excellent post on criteria to consider when evaluating a school:

Parents Who Paid Up For Your Child’s Dream School - Did You End Up Regretting It?

OP, I agree with you that this is a really hard decision. It’s a lot of money! We felt that our D could have gotten an excellent education at our state flagship and that they would have promoted her and given her opportunities. But I think she would have been part of a smaller cohort (honors college), and that she would have been given special treatment. For us, we liked the idea of her being treated like ALL of her classmates. And we liked the idea of her being challenged no matter what classes she took. And we liked how all of her classmates were super motivated and involved, and how different everyone was from each other. We thought she would have more personal growth at the more expensive school. Now that we are at the end of Senior year, I can say that we have had some years where we thought spending all that money was worth it, and other years when we thought we made a mistake. The years we questioned ourselves were the year and a half of Covid lockdowns, when all th…