<p>"You would send your child to U Maine Machias rather than JHU? This is weird. U Maine Machias had 442 apps in 2012 while JHU had 21,313 apps. I think this suggests a strong preference for JHU among the general public. "</p>
<p>Oh, the unsophistication of caring what the “general public” thinks. If I’m making $55K with an unstable job and my kid gets a full ride? That’s hard to turn down.</p>
<p>I think you are reading selectively. I don’t hear a lot of people saying they would never under any circumstances take out loans. I certainly don’t hear anyone saying that they don’t believe in sacrificing for one’s children. What I hear is people questioning how much of a sacrifice is necessary and/or responsible. </p>
<p>Under the not particularly realistic circumstances you described, yes, some people are saying that they would have to send their child to the lesser school. Your notion that the family in question could just tighten their belts for a few years assumes that they don’t have more children with college expenses ahead, don’t have elderly parents who may at some point rely on them for support, don’t rack up substantial medical expenses, etc. In the real world, things happen. The brakes on your car need to be replaced. Your roof springs a leak. Someone you love gets cancer, and the best doctor is out of network. You lose your job. Given that, someone with a sub 60K salary may not be able to spend the kind of money you are talking about without risking financial ruin.</p>
<p>College help must think our hypothetical Maine lobsterman is spending like mad on big screen TVs and first-class trips to Europe that he could trim.</p>
<p>PG, quite possibly the ONLY luxury that fisherman allows himself is the occasional lobster dinner.</p>
<p>I dunno, the cry in Maine for so many years was that lobstering families couldn’t afford lobster dinners. Remember the fuss about putting the logo on license plates?</p>
<p>OP isn’t reading (or digesting?) our answers. And his logic is still missing. What do I care about the number of apps to JHU- or even the admit rate? </p>
<p>Btw, friend sent both his kids to Orono, first one as Presidential. Brilliant gal, engineering, top drawer work now at great pay. Lovely kid. The family could have afforded a JHU with some loans to even out the costs over a longer period. But they had faith in their girl and made the wisest decisions per their family values. No one there complains.</p>
<p>We did take loans, big total; others here may have. In our particular family situation, it made sense. DH’s job was secure, some other expenses had been taken care of and the additional monthly funds were now at our disposal. SO different than presuming for another family, especially at the incomes we’re talking about.</p>
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<p>And doesn’t have more than one kid. Or elderly parents who need some help, or expensive health insurance due to his being self employed, or any other number of hardships which poke more holes in his theory.</p>
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<p>OK, that was funny.</p>
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<p>And this about sums it up.</p>
<p>I am taking loans for both my kids - still funding the 401K though. </p>
<p>I can’t take loans for retirement, so…</p>
<p>I find this thread fascinating. The parents who post are so hot to criticize the OP’s specific examples (which are poor, I agree) and to thump the table and announce that it isn’t necessary to attend a higher-rated school to succeed in life, while delicately avoiding the fact that graduating from a more academically prestigious college is actually an asset to most people. Again: “most.”<br>
I see a comment like this:
and I agree that that may be true as to any one student. But if I consider if that statement will hold true for the majority of, say, 500 such students, my opinion is that the statement is false. More of the Yale students will go on to attend Harvard Law than the UConn students, even if they started with equivalent talents. I believe that is true; it is not verifiable with currently available data to my knowledge.</p>
<p>The gravamen of the OP’s position is that our kids will benefit if we sacrifice some of our own financial security to get the money together to allow them to attend a more academically prestigious college than they could at a lower cost alternative. Details like private vs. flagship State U aside, I don’t think most of us would actually disagree with that position. As a specific example, I think the prospects for success (specifically including graduation) are significantly lessened for students who go off to a two year college for financial reasons when they have the opportunity to attend a four year college. Many will succeed, including the most self-directed, organized and motivated, but the failure rate is much higher. Again, this is all about averages and probabilities, not individual results. I think most of us here would opt to tighten our belts a bit to let our kids attend the four year school under those circumstances.</p>
<p>But we don’t like some (we suspect) snotty youngster lecturing to us about that decision. So an attitude of arch amusement, contempt and disdain rules the thread.</p>
<p>I think the OP’s essentially in the right, as to the general proposition. Individual scenarios aside, I think that many of the Boomers as a generation feel entitled to enjoy life and are willing to dismiss their childrens’ additional prospects as being “not my problem.” Obviously, again, this is a generality, and individual situations vary widely from that (probably more so here on CC than in the general population.)</p>
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<p>I don’t disagree. I also think that my DS is more likely to make it to adulthood if I have him driving a newer Volvo rather than a beater car. And organic produce is better than McDonalds. And so on. Most families have to make choices, even relatively well-to-do families. A child capable of benefitting from a top 10 school will do fine in a top 25 school.</p>
<p>Edited: capable of benefitting from and accepted at a top 10</p>
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<p>Maybe that’s true in the Northeast and other such hot spots. But I live in Texas, and my experience and observations regarding your statement and the OP’s assertions are proven to be patently false. I suspect this is also true in many other places in this big ole country of ours. I know a whole lot of successful people, both in terms of things not associated with professional life, but certainly as it relates to professional and financial success. MOST “successful” people I know did NOT go to these prestigious schools, yet have been able to be “successful” in just about every measure. So people like me who attended state schools and went on to do very well in life and are enjoying life with happy marriages, well educated and loving, happy kids, financial security and professional fulfillment, etc. read these threads about how it’s not “probable” to go to a non “elite” school and do well just laugh at the arrogance. Not to mention, we know firsthand how very wrong these assertions are. What you are insisting to be true just isn’t true in my experience. </p>
<p>There is NOTHING wrong with going to a “top school” and if people want to spend their money on that, or if they can qualify for FA or scholarships in order to make that happen, good on them, truly. But to insist that success in life is more likely if going to what amounts to just a tiny handful of schools relative to the number of institutions out there is just ridiculous. The OP and you are getting these responses because our real life experiences tell us it is NOT unusual to find happiness, success, and personal fulfillment in spite of the fact that a degree from a “top” school was not obtained. In fact, in many places, the opposite is true. The Harvard grads are just not found in abundance amongst the “successful” people in our universe.</p>
<p>Fwiw, my wife has been very successful in her career and makes a nice income. She believes that her school had a lot to do with her success, but it wasn’t where she got her MBA or BA degree that she thinks mattered; she is convinced that her Montessori pre-school was transformative.</p>
<p>D1 defended her Master’s thesis after just one year of grad school. She credits her elementary school and her all girls private school (middle school through 12th grade) for teaching her how to be academically successful. Her BS was obtained at a “prestigious” public, but she always references these prior experiences as the most powerful influences in her academic career.</p>
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<p>Exactly. The coastal bias comes through in both Kluge’s and collegehelp’s comments.</p>
<p>You make a good point, Ixnay and Nrdsb4 - positioning your child for a good future starts way before college. My parents did make some financial sacrifice for my K-12 education - they paid substantially higher property taxes to live in a town with a good school district. But you know what? While I went to a very good school, I also know people who went to ritzy private schools, and it is clear that they had a better education in a number of ways. They were writing substantial term papers in their humanities classes, rather than five page essays. They took multivariable calc and linear algebra. They took specialized elective courses like “Modern Poetry” and had many more opportunities for high level lab work. They had many teachers with PhDs in their subjects, and sometimes had opportunities to network with famous alums -I know someone who got to interview a former president as an 11th grader. And, of course, a higher percentage of these students get into elite schools and wind up becoming movers and shakers in the world.</p>
<p>These schools offer financial aid. My parents could probably have managed it, though not without significant hardship - did they sell me short by not offering me that opportunity? I really don’t think so and frankly, I suspect even if my parents had much more money, the idea of an elite private high school would have been so culturally alien to them that they wouldn’t have really thought of it. </p>
<p>My parents also never took me to Europe. Somehow, I did OK - and managed to live responsibly enough on a graduate stipend to take my own European trip last summer, in part because I have some sense of the value of money and the reality that not everyone can afford to do everything he or she would like to do, no matter how intrinsically worthy that desired thing may be. </p>
<p>By the way, part of the reason my parents couldn’t afford things like vacations to Rome is because my mother was a stay at home mom. I certainly don’t criticize anyone who made a different choice - if I have children, I’m not planning on doing it - but that is also a value-based decision, and one that may directly conflict with a family’s interest in sending their children to the best school possible. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily a wrong or selfish choice. </p>
<p>So, again, where do we draw the line? Does sending Junior to Exeter also fall under the category of things a good parent must do for his or her child, no matter the cost?</p>
<p>"I think that many of the Boomers as a generation feel entitled to enjoy life and are willing to dismiss their childrens’ additional prospects as being “not my problem.”</p>
<p>The above is from Kluge, post #630. I’m a late-model boomer (born 1958). Sure, most people want to enjoy life, and even parents should be “entitled” to the pursuit of happiness. But “dismiss…not my problem”? Where have you encountered “many” parents with this attitude? I don’t know any.</p>
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<p>The point was that many families who feel pinched on high incomes may not have big obvious targets (“large ticket items” that someone else mentioned) for cost cutbacks, such as country club memberships, new expensive car every three years, annual first class vacation, etc. but instead may be spending a little too much here, a little too much there, etc. over dozens of categories (particularly recurring ones that might “fly under the radar” because each instance is small*). This makes cost cutbacks a more difficult task to do for the family than if there were just a few big obvious targets to cut.</p>
<p>*e.g. a $5 morning coffee at the coffee shop instead of the free one in the workplace. Or regular use of bottled water instead of safe tap water.</p>
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<p>Where I disagree with you and the OP is that by the time the kid is a high school senior considering college, parents who are in the position of facing large parent loans for the college costs are far too late in trying to get their financial act together. The ones with disciplined spending and financial planning habits who can live enough below their means have likely already done so from before the kid was born, so they won’t need the parent loans.</p>
<p>In contrast, the overspenders who would be facing the large parent loans likely would have great difficulty cutting their spending back (particularly since it is often not just a few obvious big ticket items). They might not even qualify for the loans, if they have already taken lots of other loans to finance an overspending lifestyle. As an aside, overspenders probably are not saving for retirement either. Criticize them all you want, but that is not going to help the kid find any more money for college from the parents.</p>
<p>It also will NOT be helpful for the kid NOR the parents if they parents don’t have enough to support themselves as they age, whether because of their financial habits or because they borrowed too much and overextended themselves on putting kid(s) through college.</p>
<p>Where will the funds/resources come from to help the parents who have no resources when they are old and unable to work but still have crushing educational debt? Is the kid going to have some fabulous job to pay back the loan AND help support his parents who have made poor financial choices AND have an independent life for him/herself as well?</p>
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Well, maybe, but I think some of them would explain how they didn’t owe the kid a kidney.</p>