I disagree. My D had 7 full ride offers last year. I don’t think a single student turned down the scholarship to be full pay. Some accepted more prestigious offers with partial scholarships or generous financial aid. The full rides have a high yield for a reason.
We knew from the start S didn’t want to attend large state flagship. For him, too big, wanted to experience life outside of FL away from HS friends, and several other factors. We could afford full pay elsewhere (although he got full tuition scholarship, honors, etc in state). We felt it was important to teach him about value and finances so we gave him a choice of three options requiring him to contribute to the full pay. So forget about what we are paying. He could have gone to a good school without debt, with no requirement to pay for anything (so no job while in school), etc. He chose (for good reasons which he explained to us and we completely support) the full pay school which requires him to pay 10k per yr. That means an unsubsidized loan (I’m paying the interest in real time so it doesn’t get out of hand) which will leave him in debt around 25k. It also means working as much as he can over the summer and some during the semester to come up with the balance. He had a few thousand in savings (emphasize HAD) to contribute for his first yr.
Some might think this is harsh because we could easily pay the additional 10k but we want him to understand the choices and their impact. Otherwise, of course he would want his top choice. Interestingly, had solid reasons for the decision. He stands by them and is ecstatic with his choice. He’s already seeing the benefits in terms of peer network, opportunities, etc. A side benefit is he has become quite aware of the cost of things in general. Is learning how to budget his spending money. When it runs out, he’ll need to replace it via work.
Fit…that is the question. We are considering this problem on many levels. I have a hard time believing my 17 year old has any sense about life and “fit” at a particular school. I believe he does have a sense of “prestige and rank” and that the desire for that causes a belief in the sense of fit - he believes that the more prestigious is more of a fit.
I believe that rank can have some play in opportunity and future perception, so I am willing to entertain the thought - although we would have to really batten down the hatches and we have two kids behind him. So choosing to pay more is a tough decision for us. I also believe that he could be happy and “fit” in many places.
So we proceeded such that we have tiers of schools to consider. We applied pretty wide to have choices at various price points. One super reach that would be around $50k and has the rank to maybe justify it. 2-3 where we took a shot on merit and I don’t think what resulted is worth the price. 3-4 in the $35k range, 2 in the 15-25 range and 3 in the <$10k range. Ultimately, I didn’t want him to have only one choice when deciding the financials. And, quite frankly, he’s going to have to come up with more than “it’s a feeling” to justify the additional expense.
People both succeed and fail regardless of school rank. There are silver spoon, ivy trained failures and state educated successes. So while there might be a slight edge getting in the door with a certain degree from a certain school, staying there requires performance, and that is highly dependent on personal character.
So here I sit, carefully perched upon my fence, waiting for the rest of the decisions to see which way I fall.
I agree with another poster upstream that there are probably very few “full-rides” vs. “full-pay” scenarios for a student to choose from. There are probably a lot more students who might get full tuition (or nearly full tuition) but not “full-ride” vs full (or almost full pay). My S was one of those who had to choose between full tuition offer and nearly full pay. He chose the more expensive option with my blessing. The difference was not insignificant but not the “full-ride” vs. “full-pay” scenario.
NJ has a program where if you graduate in the top 15% of your HS class and meet other benchmarks such as standardized test scores, you can attend community college for free. You earn your associates and can then transfer to a 4-year school, and are guaranteed an additional scholarship at several NJ public and private universities (though not full tuition). In our case, a well respected community college is about a mile from our house. Kids get into great 4-year schools with their Associates degrees from that school. My S qualifies so technically we are turning down a free associates degree to attend a 4-year university. I guess you could say that any student who qualifies for this program but chooses to attend a different school is doing what you’re suggesting.
Back in the day (meaning when DS#1 was applying) he was offered a full tuition plus stipend (might have been a full ride but I don’t recall) from UF as a NMF. He turned it down and went to Rice. He got the small Rice NMF scholarship and some outside scholarships and then some departmental scholarships but was for the mostpart a full pay.
There are a few schools I think we would have been willing to go full pay, though this turned out to not be an issue for us.
I do believe in ‘fit’ to a certain extent. That being said, if I can only afford a Honda, I probably shouldn’t buy the BMW (referring to another thread LOL).
Most of the time, though, this situation is a little more murky imho.
Yes D2, received full tuition to our state school, but we turned it down because I just didn’t think she would thrive there. The school is actually is a great school and would’ve been fine since she plans to attend grad school, but we chose full pay at a small college.
@ChattaChia Very nicely said. I also asked myself whether my young kid is not mistaking the prestige for the fit, which also made me question whether I am too jaded. I must say it’s not easy to get to know many schools thoroughly well enough to be sure about the fit.
Tennessee also has free community college for all HS graduates, I believe without any requirements other than a diploma - no gpa/test criteria. I wasn’t counting that in my analysis, but I guess that was a free 2 year option that we didn’t apply for, as we decided CC was not on the table for this child. He takes DE there now, and at least for him, it is easier than high school. So we felt the intellectual challenge would be missing.
My D was eligible to attend college where I work for free; she was also eligible to attend other colleges for free through the CIC exchange system of which my institution is a part. We turned down these opportunities because most of the schools would not have been a good academic fit for her or were not in regions of the country where she wanted to be. We also had kind of assumed that we’d pay for college since she was born and we were prepared to do it, as our parents had done for us. I wasn’t really willing to make her compromise on fit for the sake of keeping the money we had planned on spending anyway. She is also an only child, so resource distribution wasn’t an issue.
We ended up being full-pay at a private top-10 LAC.
“D1’s friend passed up Duke Robertson for Yale.”
“Kid turned down a full ride at USC to go to Harvard full pay. No regrets at all”
“Yes. D passed up full-tuition scholarships at USC, Vandy, WashU, Grinnell, and Kenyon, as well as max merit at other top 20 schools, in-state tuition at Cal and UCLA, etc. for full pay at Stanford.”
It would be illuminating (if folks are comfortable) to hear what the family income/529 status/rich grandparent status was on these decisions. Since the incremental number of dollars being spent is $200-300k (in after tax dollars fyi). That’s what a mid-range Lambo goes for these days.
I’d suspect that it is only 1%-ers (and often those with only one kid going to a pricey college) who are turning down that kind of money from a top 25 to go higher up in the top 25.
If you have one kid, $200k in the 529 and you’re making $500k annually, sure you’d pay up for Stanford and keep driving your M5 for a few more years. At $100k/$250k/two kids, I doubt it.
Asking posters to share personal financial information? You first!
But, that said- I’ll bite. Not a 1%er at all. Had a 529 with enough to cover IIRC maybe one year of DS#1s college; combined income nowhere near what you are purporting. As posted above, DS turned down full tuition and stipend (might have been full pay, cant recall) for essentially full pay (minus very small NMF award) at Rice. It can be done. Asking people their personal financial situation is… rude.
Re: #51 @atomom
There was no resentment on the part of later kids that the oldest got to go to a more expensive college but they had to take less expensive options after living more frugally to allow you to pay for college for the oldest?
I’m a low 1%-er. My kid (with some nudging from parents) took a full tuition schollie at a top 20 over full pay at some other top 20s. In that circumstance, we probably would have only full paid (like Bard did) for HYPS. But kid didn’t have one of those as an option.
We probably would have full paid at a top 20 rather than take a deal at a top 50-75.
This is a very first world dilemma.
“Asking people their personal financial situation is… rude.”
In most cases, sure. But blame the OP not me.
The OP’s question was full pay vs. free. So we’ve been talking about money the whole time.
When posters name the colleges that were chosen full pay, one can get a pretty good idea of their income/wealth levels as needed to be able to afford the price differential.
@northwesty OP did not ask to report family income to justify the decision. You can assume what you want about family wealth and why someone decided to invest $250,000 in education. We all free to make our choices and please don’t assume that people who go with full pay option update their Lamborghini every year or were born with silver spoon.
Agree with @Ballerina016 . Nowhere in the OP (quoted here) is there any question of a family’s income, savings, etc.
And whose to say how many loans these families might have taken in order to be “full pay”? Remember the commercial about the person who looked like they were living high on the hog, belonged to a country club, etc, but were in debt up to their eyeballs? You know what they say about making assumptions…
Exactly UCB.
For example, the family that turned down the Duke free ride for full pay at Yale. If you are full paying at Yale, you’ve got to be a 2%-er or higher, right?
At $200k annual family income (absent rich grandparents or other special circumstances), everyone is picking Duke. At $1 million annual family income, everyone will let the kid pick the school she likes. At $400k, who knows?
“I picked Yale no regrets!” without understanding the finances at play isn’t all that meaningful. Is that coming from a hedge funder? Or a donut holer who is maxing out their HELOC?