Re #199
However, D2 is probably aware of the offer you made to D1. If she achieves similarly but you decline to make a similar offer to her, you will need good diplomatic skills to avoid unfairness resentment that was the topic of a recent thread.
@2018dad Also a SoCal dad here. I also told my kid it’s ok to apply to Stanford, thinking there was no way he would get in because he was just in top 5% of his HS (around 20th out of 520 kids but still a NMF). I never even knew he wanted to apply to Stanford until his Senior year. On the day of REA decision, I was thinking of how to make him feel better by taking him to dinner or movie after he finds out he got denied. He told me he was just hoping for a deferral.
@2018dad I guess fit, major, location, small school vs big school, etc. didn’t matter as long as she (as a middle schooler) was Val and got accepted to the Ivies/Stanford. I guess we know that “prestige” was the #1 most important factor above all else lol
My son turned down a close-to-full tuition merit scholarship – based on a special test administered by the university (though he was also NMS) – in order to attend a full-pay college that he preferred. (actually, a small (!!!) $750 national merit award). We had the money, and the college he attended (UChicago) was a perfect fit for him. So we put no pressure on him to take the “free ride” at the big U.
My D got accepted ED at Cornell. Probably would have paid half of the cost or even less at our flagship state school.
Cornell offers her a major (and minor) that is one of the best in the nation. She loves to be in a campus with intellectual peers from all over the country and the world. It is a great fit.
We have hired an independent finacial advisor (fee-based) when we got married 20+ years ago. She oversees our retirement plan, investment plan, her 529 plan, etc. We have one child, two income and live within our means.
We told her to do her best and we would take care of her college expenses. She did her best and we kept our promise. It is easier for us to be able to do this because we have planned it since before she was born.
^^Sounds familiar…
Perhaps it was doable also because you had only one child. Multiply the price of private schools/Cornell by two or three and then it becomes way less possible for almost everyone but the very top of the socioeconomic ladder. I’ve been struck by how many people posing here have said they have a single child.
In my neck of the woods, also in So Cal, I have seen about half a dozen cases where the kid had/has a choice between USC full ride and HYPSM. Invariably, the family chooses HYPSM over full ride. It could all be coincidence, but it sort of makes sense to me. By definition only families with income over $260k would be facing such a choice. So the question is among families of 2%er if a Stanford slot is up for auction how much would a winning bid look like? Based on anecdotal information I have the bid could be north of $10m. It is certainly much greater than $1m. And in that context $200k would seem like a bargain.
“Perhaps it was doable also because you had only one child.”
I have two. When we were reviewing some of the college options with oldest son, I joked that of course he could go to his first choice, full pay school - we’d just use both of the college funds (his and his brother’s) and younger brother could be a plumber. Younger son is 5 years younger, so still a little gullible. After the dust on the college selection settled and it was decided older son would be going to his first choice, full pay school, younger son looked very sad and started to protest, “but I don’t want to be a plumber!” 
Guess it’s not nice to joke about certain things.
I would gladly convince my kid to sell his spot for $10 mill and go to Honors College where he should major in real estate and stock investment to manage his 9 million usd portfolio after giving his dad one million commission for having been a good dad. Lol But it would ultimately be up to my kid though.
“Perhaps it was doable also because you had only one child.”
Obviously full pay for one kid costs half of what two kid full pay costs (actually less than half since the price increases each year). And one third of what three kid full pay costs.
When dealing with several kids, the full pay call is toughest when the oldest is the one contemplating the fancy school full pay option.
You’ve got no prior college parent experience to draw on. You’re very unlikely to have full 529s for each kid. Costs will be higher for the later kids. You may not have much visibility on the schools that kid 2 or 3 will attend. And if you full pay for #1 you’re setting a precedent for #2 and #3. And it is even more daunting if the spacing of your kids means you will be paying for two kids at the same time.
Friend of mine (low 1%er) is sending his fourth (and last) full pay kid off to school this fall. Basically $1 million (in after tax dollars) spread out over about a dozen years. Nauseating.
I am not sure which way my S2 will go. His older brother turned down a 1/2 ride from 2 universities to attend Northwestern (Medill) solely because as a journalism student, Medill was the best for him. He worked every summer in HS, was an RA his sophomore year (free room and board) and works this year for a professor and tutor because he knows that he has a fixed income for college and everything else will be on him. He will also graduate early to save money. We are very lucky that we were able to save for college but with 3 kids and with zero financial aid, we are quite clear about how much we will contribute to their education.
My twins who are HS seniors are very actively comparing merit scholarships. One will not go anywhere where he did not get merit money as he is going to choose a smaller LAC that is less competitive, but the other has been offered a substantial scholarship from an excellent school (not an Ivy or a Williams but very good) and has already said that he is not sure if he gets into MIT/Princeton, whether or not he will forego going to the scholarship school for them. It is easier to turn down his flagship state school as it is not the small community he wants where he will be able to work with faculty etc, but the decision to borrow from us for any overage vs. having cash for grad school etc. is one he is mulling over as I write. He is just not sure that it is worth 120k (essentially his scholarship) to go to an Ivy/MIT over an otherwise excellent LAC that has a great program for him. He knows that the Ivies/MIT have more of a brand name, but I am thankful he is looking beyond that for fit.
In our 2 kid family, only one kid had scholarship stats, no choice but to pay for the other. Not a 60-80K school, but full pay nevertheless.
You can guess from my moniker that we’ve lived in a variety of different places. Saved most of the money we have in 529s while living in Arizona. Had a brand new house requiring zero repairs that we purchased for half the price of the very modest house we sold in Boston. Annual property taxes were what I pay in one month Northeast. Now we are back in the Northeast and are earning double what we were in Arizona. Pay a $5,000 AMT penalty each year on federal taxes. Last year I paid $13,000 to replace my 29 year old roof. Would have loved to put that money in 529. And I suspect that if we had stayed in Arizona, my daughter would be at UChicago debt free.
@ucbalumnus The answer to your question in #194 is yes. That’s exactly what we’ve done. Even with kids who have had expensive ECs over the years (ballet, tennis, travel soccer), we’ve lived on just a little over half of our income. Not to say all of the savings is for college. The goal is also to retire earlier than our parents did.
A lot of people said no regrets, but the fact is that you never know how your lives or your kids lives would have turned out had you picked the other choice. Would you or your kids be in the same spot in life, ahead or behind? That is what the life is about, even if there is a simmer of regret, there is not a time machine to turn back time!
D picked the opposite. She decided that the prestige and rank doesn’t worth $200k in her mind. She is able to pursue more academic options where she is (CS with premed), which she wouldn’t able to do (or at least without a lot of stress) in the other two schools.
@RelocatedYankee , I don’t think our AMT situation would be better in 2018 either.
Why? If a family has a million dollars to spend what do you consider an appropriate way to spend it? Let it set in the bank and don’t spend it at all? Expensive cars? Lavish vacations? Jewelry? Designer clothing? A kitchen remodel?
This is a subject that was near and dear to our family as it is with so many families.
We had saved some ($75,000) we owned a two family home that generated about $12,000 a year in after expense income. We had the SUNY option taken care of.
We are a two income family with only one child, we are fortunate that we make good livings, but there were and are elements of potential instability with our incomes. This is a snap shot of some of the elements of the financial piece.
With our daughter it was an evolution in regard to becoming aware of her academic ability and where she may be accepted at. It wasn’t until tenth grade that we had a sense that she could be at or near the top of her class and as a result have the possibility of being admitted to elite schools. In addition to this our daughter suffered with an eating disorder. Nothing else matters when your child isn’t well and she went through so much as we also did as a family. So there was an emotional component having to do with her coming out of the other side of a terrible illness and being able to attend the most selective schools possible.
I am summarizing like many of the posters here have, as all of our stories are more complex and have more twists and turns. Our daughter initially was going to attend Middlebury College with us being full pay. She had turned down a $40,000 a year scholarship at a very good Liberal Arts college. Prior to her interest in Middlebury I was not familiar with it. When she accepted their offer to attend there I was conflicted with the thought of us paying a $160,000 more for her undergraduate education than we had to and foregoing the scholarship opportunity at a fine school.
The circumstances were similar in our family as they seemingly are in websensations family. My wife is an optimist, always having the build it and they will come mentality. Financially my mentality is much more fear based.
When our daughter came off the waitlist at Harvard all of this was a moot point, Middlebury bumper stickers were being scraped off the bumpers of my wife and daughters cars and she would be headed to Harvard. She graduates in May and then she will be getting a Graduate degree from Harvard at close to a full scholarship (high fives all around!)
Our daughter worked so hard and came through this brutal illness, we would have sold our home to have given her this opportunity. Having said this I get how incredibly fortunate we are and it disturbs me to no end how obscenely expensive higher education is in our country and how it favors an extremely small portion of our population.
As parents I would like to think we all do the best we can for our children. For those of us who have been blessed with good fortune (no matter how hard the road was to get there) I believe we owe it to society and to our communities to give back in every way that we can.
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@socaldad2002
LOL! Yeah, we are a prestige whore and willing to spend quarter a million of hard earned after tax money just to get it.
Kidding aside. Of course, prestige was one of the many factors that were considered. But location (D2 wants to attend school outside of SoCal), size (want a school bigger than her humongous SoCal HS, 700+ per class but smaller than a UC), fit (more diverse than a UC, study abroad culture) and her intended major (she was undecided but considering few majors, so the ability to change major/college easily is a must) were considered more than you can imagine.