Who turned down free college for full pay? And why?

Parents Forum
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@GreatKid

“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!)”

Much respect and congratulation to your family. To be clear, for my wife and kid, when our kid got into Stanford REA, that was that. She thought our kid was given once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a top 3 college in the world and why not go there if you can afford it. My attitude was NOT fear based since losing $300K will not significantly affect my life; it was based on the pragmatism and knowing how hard it is for a recent college graduate to save $300K even with a good job, so my concern had to do with an issue of whether I am really helping my kid by spending the money on an expensive college which would ultimately go to him. Therefore, I wanted to make sure my kid understood the choices he had, i.e., whether to invest the money in stock or real estate investment in his name to give him a more financial stability in his later life or to use it for his Stanford education. But it’s great your kid will be getting a full scholarship for a graduate degree at Harvard, so I congratulate you again.

Also, our family really had no realistic expectation that he would get into Stanford, let alone REA because he was nowhere near a valedictorian (he was a NMF though). I am being absolutely honest when I say we had no expectation that our kid would be attending one of HYPSM; in fact, when we heard some kid who got accepted to one of those, we assumed our kid was removed from this possibility. Although our kid did not had to deal with an illness like your kid, he also went through a very difficult time of learning English and adapting back to U.S. culture when we returned to US when he was a 5th grader. He had to take an English level test from our school district to make sure his English was at a sufficient level to be admitted to his grade. From age of 1 to 10, we were living abroad due to my work, and he grew up speaking another language in which he became fluent and actually better than normal native speakers of his age, so his English was not good at all, and he had to improve his English reading and writing skills every year.

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We unfortunately do not qualify for financial aid. Both kids attended/will attend SLACs with full knowledge that this is their inheritance.

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@Deaston Not a bad inheritance.

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For families that truly can afford full pay, the decision full pay vs free ride isn’t a simple one and there are likely more choices than those two, an entire continuum in between. COA at privates inside the top-50 are remarkably similar with merit being quite competitive at the schools offering some. The question may not be full-pay Stanford vs free tuition USC, but instead, imagine 70k Emory or BC (no merit/too competitive), vs 60k Tulane (a little merit) vs 40 RPI (merit) vs 25-30k in-state flagship (puny merit/low price, but not a UCLA/Mich) vs free Kentucky/Bama (big merit). The choice of major matters, but then what to do with an undecided student, or a business major vs math vs English, a different calculation than engineering.

225

@evergreen5: My personal inclination for a kid who is truly undecided is that low cost=low risk and save the money/bullet for later.

As I have said before, I can’t think of an end-goal that is closed off forever to a kid in this country who goes to a state flagship-level college, does well, and takes advantage of opportunities (and your hypothetical kid should be able to get good honors college options as well).

226

“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.”

Excellent point. This actually brings up the research (superb, nobel-prize winning) that whatever any person decides, they will think it’s the best decision and rationalize away any contrary facts. People overestimate what they have (education at an elite) and underestimate what others have (education somewhere else). And the most interesting part is that it’s done unconsciously so we don’t even know we’re doing it. Every single “no regret” post is this bias in action.

And the most recent nobel prize winner in economics, Richard Thaler (Chicago) got the nobel based on his work with other nobel laureates on this bias called the endowment effect - placing more value than is deserved on what you own (elite education).

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Fewer people who regret their decisions probably post.

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In addition, what kids get from the scholarship schools are more than just scholarship. They got more chance for research, internship, better advisors, better recognition from professors and therefore better LOR, in some cases better dorms, just to name a few. Those kinds of things can’t be put into monetary values.

Personally, I’d like to know how many kids attending top schools who are forced to change their majors because of competition, etc? The small fish, big fish/David and Goliath effect. :wink:

While making her decision, D also talked about how she doesn’t want to be reverse discriminated. “People would expect me to be simply brilliant because I am MIT graduate. With that kind of expectation, it is easier for me to fall below that!”

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It is easy to change majors at LACs.

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It is easy to change majors at LACs.

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Oh brother…

could just as easily be interpreted as:

“People overestimate what they have (education somewhere else) and underestimate what others have (education at an elite).”

Just depends which side of the equation one is on - whether it is written by someone that was admitted/not admitted, could afford/couldn’t afford whichever school.

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@theloniusmonk
“This actually brings up the research (superb, nobel-prize winning) that whatever any person decides, they will think it’s the best decision and rationalize away any contrary facts. People overestimate what they have (education at an elite) and underestimate what others have (education somewhere else). And the most interesting part is that it’s done unconsciously so we don’t even know we’re doing it. Every single “no regret” post is this bias in action.”

This is also true for the people who took the less expensive option. I have heard many parents say that it is “stupid” to pay more to go out of state or to a private school.

However, I suspect that most parents make a good decision for their student. At the beginning, they aren’t rationalizing. They are just trying to make a good decision. Later, they rationalize because there is no benefit to admitting they got it wrong, so they declare victory!

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“Excellent point. This actually brings up the research (superb, nobel-prize winning) that whatever any person decides, they will think it’s the best decision and rationalize away any contrary facts.”

Yup. Robert Frost was just rationalizing. He clearly should have taken the road more traveled by…

234

You don’t get to run double-blind controlled experiments with life.

Two kids who were friends of my kids turned down Penn to get a less expensive education at a public university’s honors program. Both were top 2-3% students at a respected, competitive public academic magnet high school; both were engaged, ambitious, and charismatic leader-types from highly educated families

Neither would have been full pay at Penn, although one would have been pretty close. That one got a very competitive full-tuition merit scholarship at Pitt. There were a number of factors at play in his decision. His parents were in the middle of a tough divorce, and their finances were really shot. He had a twin sister who was having a bunch of academic and emotional problems; she wasn’t going to be getting a significant merit scholarship anywhere, and no one thought she would do well at a large public university. He wanted to be a doctor, and Pitt offered research opportunities on a par with Penn’s. Anyway, a decade later, he’s an MD/PhD student at UCSF. It’s hard to see how he could have done better if he had gone to Penn, at least from a career standpoint.

Similar thing with the other student. She had a decent financial aid offer from Penn, and it was very strong in her field of interest, but she chose to go to McGill because the combination of lower prices (even at their Gouge the Yanks level), favorable exchange rate, and a small merit scholarship meant that McGill would cost about $15,000/year less. She wound up with a Penn PhD, and on Penn faculty. Again, it’s hard to see how she could have done better academically. She also thoroughly enjoyed McGill and Montreal, so she didn’t give up much in the fun department, either.

Of course, neither kid dropped down all that far in category, given their interests. It would be tough to argue that either lost anything of significance by choosing a cheaper option than an Ivy League college. (Their classmates with similar ambitions who went to Harvard wound up going into management consulting and private equity, although the consultant got her biology PhD along the way.)

I think I mentioned upthread a CC poster from some years back who turned down maximum aid packages at HYS to take a named full-ride scholarship at Michigan. I looked him up. He transferred to Stanford after one year at Michigan. He has had a series of progressively more responsible-sounding jobs at tech firms you read about in the paper all the time.

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So we start with the idea that kids, school options/goals and family finances are different. And then layer on, even if you can find an anonymously posted situation which appears to line up with yours, the poster may just be rationalizing their decision worked out/was the “best” (no matter which decision they made related to this topic) in which case there is no real helpful info being provided (and indeed harmful info maybe being provided). Or it may be the case that there is no rationalizing which would mean (assuming all of the other myriad of factors that go into such a decision line up with yours) you have gained useful info. Though you won’t know whether the poster is rationalizing. You could ask I suppose but the poster likely will not admit if they are and may not even know if they are. Not sure how much more helpful anyone can be on the subject.

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@blossom - you and I are on the same page. Going to a school topping out at $70,000 per year, even with some financial aid, can be pricey and more than an in state school. But, again, it is the choice of the parent ultimately in what they are willing to spend their money on. I am, of course, talking about those of us in the middle - too much money for full financial aid most places and yet not rich enough to write that check in one fell swoop. My D got some financial aid from Yale, but it was still a sizable amount of money we had to pay. Broke it up into 10 payments via the payment plan. Yes, the payments were more than twice my mortgage, but our choice. That’s why when my friends were buying way more house than they needed, we decided to stay in ours, which while not flashy, is more than enough. We moved into it new in 1997, the year my D was 1. Not being a wise ass or anything, but I always tell folk that I am not paying her tuition with welfare money, her dad and I work for it. Him with a job after retirement from a 35 year federal civil service career, when he could have been sitting at home. We put off repairs to our home, have runny toilets, worn carpets, an old refrigerator and older model cars. Yet, when she graduates this May, she will be debt free and so will we. We paid our last payment in February and now we feel rich. I am already looking at contractors to remodel my kitchen, floors and landscape my yard. I know we’ve been blessed. Both of us had good government jobs, no periods of unemployment or sickness when we didn’t have sick leave, etc. etc. But like @blossom said, we made choices. I stayed in jobs I did not like so much, but paid well. Stayed off four months when she was born then went back to the rat race so I stayed on track professionally. People have different priorities, desires and wants. I’ve learned in my 57 years to not judge and appreciate the same consideration from others.

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It’s not possible for a student to leave Yale with $200,000 worth of debt. Actually, loans are not a part of the financial aid package at all, which is a change from when I was there 78-82. They are trying to even the playing field between those students who have means and those that don’t. Also, they have also begun to require summer earnings on a sliding scale based on financial aid. What they were finding was that students of means were able to do unpaid internships and fellowships during the summer because their parents were absorbing the $3,000 they were supposed to raise over the summer, while those on full financial aid were going home for the summer and working out of necessity. BUT, before the comments start, I do understand we are talking about schools that few kids get into and that have obscene endowments. Just want to clarify the record since there are so many misconceptions about certain schools. As a 30+ year recruiter for Yale, I am always happy to sit down with kids and their parents and talk about reasonable expectations for financing their child’s education - which includes a reality check - it is, indeed, a sacrifice for most of us.

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@Tperry1982 Great post. It’s easy to judge without having walked in that person’s shoes. I have been poor and rich so I see and respect all kinds of decisions borne of necessity and love.

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@northwesty “Yup. Robert Frost was just rationalizing. He clearly should have taken the road more traveled by…”

Most people don’t really read the poem and understand what it means.

In the poem, Frost says he chose the road, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear”
But then in the next line he admits, “Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same”
So he is saying that when he is there at the crossroads, he thinks in one line that the one path is less traveled, but in the next line, he realizes that there isn’t actually a discernable difference in the paths.

Then he says,

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:”

So, even though he realizes that the paths are the same, he thinks that in the distant future, he is going to have a different story to tell.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

He thinks about how he will look back on this moment, from the distant future. He thinks that in hindsight, he will claim that decision that he made randomly between two paths "that are “worn…about the same” will be remembered differently, and credited or blamed for having made all the difference for his outcome in life.

Frost’s point is what we are discussing here. In reality, he doesn’t know what the other path would have led to, but he knows it the decision will be impactful and will get the credit or blame.

Also, notice that the poem is not named “The Road Less Travelled” as many people think. It is called, “The Road Not Taken.” Frost is giving an important clue here for those who are not convinced of the meaning. If his point was that you should always take “The Road Less Travelled by” he would have named it that.

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Sorry if I missed this - has anyone paid full price for Tulane? My son wants to study in their architecture program and received no aid. Feels like a great fit for him and we could afford it with some budgeting but just have not heard about many at TU actually paying full coa.