<p>
</p>
<p>Hunt, written by the OP:
</p>
<p>Emphasis is mine.</p>
<p>Oy. Apparently all the desirable members of the opposite gender attend the Ivies. Guess I should see about Erinsmom’s replacement. :D</p>
<p>It boggles my mind that someone has reached " mature" adulthood, yet has not evolved their values past " it costs more, so it * must be better*.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Isn’t that the whole point of goods or services chosen for their status or prestige value (although the same goods or services may have other value as well)?</p>
<p>Since I don’t think mini has posted on this thread or know if he is reading, I’ll go ahead and mention: Thorstein Veblen. Maybe someone already did somewhere upthread. I’m losing track.</p>
<p>There were 1.3 million PLUS loans awarded to parents last year ($20 billion). Some of them may have been taken out by parents to help their child attend the more selective option. Just a guess.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4 - re: post #76 …you are more open-minded than I am. I certainly wouldn’t want my kid hanging out with druggies and drunks. I wouldn’t even want them to hang out with students who waste a lot of their time doing whatever. I’d want my kid in a more studious environment. I guess that’s just me. But thanks for re-posting that quote…because it is so true.</p>
<p>So many of you apply the yerm “prestige” in a dismissive fashion. There are real differences in quality among the more selective schools.</p>
<p>druggies and drunks and time wasters exist at every college and at every income level. </p>
<p>how many will I x-post with? :)</p>
<p>ETA: using those descriptors as a reason to avoid the “mediocre” colleges means you are measuring quality differently than I am. IF you said you were interested in an environment where students were more engaged in their studies… I’m still not sure highly competitive schools win out overall. Some more engaged students and some less engaged. Lots of students who played the game right to get there.</p>
<p>To be blunt, basically what I am understanding in what you are writing is upper income equals better character. Wrong. Smarter doesn’t equal better character either. Lots of things I’m not clear about, usually less and less the more I consider a question, but that I know for sure.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The prestige colleges that you apparently prefer mostly have characteristics associated with more drinking and binge drinking:</p>
<ul>
<li>Not historically black schools.</li>
<li>Not women’s schools.</li>
<li>Presence of fraternities and sororities, or similar organizations (final clubs, eating clubs, etc.).</li>
<li>Athletics (Ivy League is NCAA Division I).</li>
<li>Four year schools (versus two year schools).</li>
<li>Students mainly resident (versus commuter).</li>
<li>Location in the northeast (for Ivy League).</li>
</ul>
<p>[Binge</a> drinking, dangers of alcohol at College Drinking](<a href=“http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/SupportingResearch/Journal/presley.aspx]Binge”>http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/SupportingResearch/Journal/presley.aspx)</p>
<p>So, to reduce the risk of your kid associating with too many drunks, send him/her to a two year community college that s/he commutes to, then have him/her transfer to a four year school that s/he can commute to if possible (a historically black school if possible, women’s school is female), with no fraternities and sororities (or as minimal as possible) with low emphasis on athletics.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Since there are about 18 million undergraduate students, that means that only about 7% of the undergraduate students have parents taking PLUS loans for them in any given year (assuming that they are all being taken on behalf of undergraduate students, as opposed to some for those in post-graduate professional school).</p>
<p>Your speculation as to why the parents are taking the PLUS loans is just speculation.</p>
<p>A friend of my kids got a BA from one of the HYP and a PhD from another. He was a druggie, occasionally a small time dealer, but not much of a time waster. He’s a sweet person. I like him.</p>
<p>Merely anecdotal.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Lol. </p>
<p>You’re just ■■■■■■■■ us at this point, right?</p>
<p>^Really, romani, the naivete is alarming. He’ll send his kids off to rub with the better classes and be blindsided. Have I got anecodtes–</p>
<p>If this sort of quasi-trolling comes out of an elite, our own points are proven.</p>
<p>Wonder what “elite” school he went to?</p>
<p>ucbalumnus- actually the total percentage of parents who take out loans for education is 9%. Nine % of college costs are met by parent loan and 27% is met by parent income and savings. Thirty % of college costs is met by grants and scholarships, 11% by student income and savings, 5% from relatives and friends, 18% by student borrowing. This is from the publication “How America Pays For College”.</p>
<p>Yes, I know drinking and drugs are also problems at the more selective schools but the problems are fewer. Earlier, I pointed out that the proportion of infractions for alcohol and drug offenses is much lower at the Ivies.</p>
<p>Some of the differences in infractions relates to how a school chooses to handle alcohol offenses and reporting.</p>
<p>What still matters is the individual family situation. That 7 or 9% is not necessarily the lobsterman, the guy earning 80k without much safety net, the even poorer families, nor necessarily based on sending kids to an elite.</p>
<p>You’re still quoting broad averages. It doesn’t matter if, across the board, finaid leaves an average $x family contribution; what matters is what’s on the table for your kid, what your family can reasonably manage, all things considered. </p>
<p>And, you’re advocating a sort of lemmings mentality- some % would choose Harvard over another school, some families do take loans, some schools do offer generous support, so that’s some special reason to do the same. Doesn’t prove what the best choices are, how a family “should” act. </p>
<p>But, you don’t see it. It seems you just go looking for the next glove to thrown down. </p>
<p>Don’t confuse the attention to this thread with the validity of your message. Nor that we are sitting here waiting for you to enlighten us. Nearly all of us (or is it all of us?) are arguing against your points and “proofs.”</p>
<p>Right, sevmom. If mini showed up, he could talk about Williams.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, it’s NOT TRUE. It’s just NOT TRUE.</p>
<p>I went to a state school. D1 went to a state school. D2 is at a state school, lived in the Honors dorm and doesn’t hang out with any drug addicts or drunks. I didn’t know any drug addicts or hang out with drunks. D1 graduated Phi Beta Kappa and hung out with kids of the same bent. No drug addicts. No drunks. And it wasn’t hard to avoid hanging out with drug addicts and drunks. Or “undesirables.”</p>
<p>Okay, I guess I am now convinced this guy is totally ■■■■■■■■. Romani’s right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You are basically saying that parents really do not borrow that much – only about half as much as students do, and less than what students earn from their own work. 9% of four years of the most expensive college is about $22,000, far short of the $80,000 you suggest borrowing (and a lot of colleges that parents borrow for are less expensive).</p>
<p>Tim Cook, the CEO of apple, graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Industrial Engineering. His father was a shipyard worker. These facts indicates several things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Graduating from a good but not elite public university does not limit a person’s ability to be successful.</p></li>
<li><p>It is impossible to predict how successful someone will become based on where they obtained their undergraduate degree or what their parents did for a living.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In post #1 and post #709 it was implied that parents who do not send their children to elite universities are being selfish. In light of the above I believe these comments are inappropriate.</p>
<p>Some of the colleges our son is looking at are $50K/year+ so that measly $80K figure quoted by the OP would not even cover the first two years. Not certain why ANYONE (who is sane) would take out a 30 year loan for a college education (1st tier or not) because, let’s face it, having a degree from a “top tier” school isn’t going to offset those additional cost in the majority of cases. </p>
<p>As a point of reference, my income is in the top 5% of the country and guess what… YEP, I dropped out of college some 90 hours into it because I was not able to afford it (back then as I was paying for it 100% by myself) so contrary to the (false) hype, attending a premiere college is not REALLY a requirement for earnings. It’s the person’s abilities/intellect that REALLY matter. </p>
<p>I say send your kids to a college you can afford that they like and that you can pay for with absolutely NO LOANS. We have been saving for our sons since he was 7 years old and he can go to (almost) ANY college he would like to attend. If he wants to attend the $50K+/year college, he will need to find whatever scholarships he can to offset the costs. He’s already been accepted to a $40K/year college and that college is offering $9K/year in scholarship money simply because of the state it is in and the state we are in (all the way across the continental USA) but the reality is that we can afford to send him there if he wants to go with NO LOANS and ZERO impact to our current lifestyle and ZERO impact to our retirement savings models simply because… we started planning EARLY.</p>