<p>If I had a dollar for every kid I know who claimed to be pre-med and didn’t go to med school, and had a dollar for every parent on CC who claimed their kid was going to get a PhD “in something”, I wouldn’t need to read CC during coffee breaks at work.</p>
<p>I’d be retired and reading CC from the porch of my house in Key West.</p>
<p>In my experience, the best way to help a talented student whose parents either don’t have the time or the financial resources to help with college, is to introduce them to as many real grownups as you can in real life, who come from all walks of life and who have had a diverse set of experiences.</p>
<p>Find someone who did ROTC and now designs subway systems for cities and airports. Find someone who went to Community College and then culinary school and develops menus for a large hotel chain. Find someone who graduated from the Naval Academy and now works for the World Bank financing bridges and ports in Africa. Find someone who graduated from a second tier state college and is Commissioner of Education in your state, or manages the vaccine program nationally for the CDC.</p>
<p>Your cousin’s biggest challenge is going to be either low expectations from the people around her, or an inability to link the big world she cold play in with the year after HS graduation.</p>
<p>Pizza is right of course- your cousin doesn’t need to cure cancer, but she also needs to see that there are people with really interesting jobs who come out of all sorts of colleges.</p>
<p>That’s more helpful than planning for a mythical doctorate.</p>
<p>blossom brings up a good point. There are social skills inherent in navigating the world that disadvantaged students may not have. Teaching them how to interact, how to be pleasantly assertive, how to network, etc. may be the most valuable thing you can teach them.</p>
<p>*Teaching them how to interact, how to be pleasantly assertive, how to network, etc. may be the most valuable thing you can teach them. *</p>
<p>Add, teaching them how to have perspective about their own accomplishments and goals, that it’s not all about how you triumphed in that little hs context. If you’re one of those 30,000 vals, that doesn’t make you “val of vals.” Sorry, but maybe you end up 29,985 or something. Perspective goes with some humility.</p>
<p>All those pre-med apps: so many say, in essence, “I want to solve the world’s problems.” Or high school kids who want PhDs, but haven’t yet started a college track in a field or subfield, tested themselves outside that little…high school world.</p>
<p>I have never thought about the parents who already had student loan debt of their own and are having to face their child’s student loan debt as well…</p>
<p>^ Hard to believe Charlene is still in college debt at 51, works in the credit counseling field- and STILL let her kids get saddled. Snarky, but I have to say, her education didn’t yield some common sense. Or planning skills.</p>
<p>$136,000 / 4 is $34,000, which is on the high side of student loan debt. That is only a little less than the average indebtedness of NYU graduates at $35,104.</p>
<p>I was in Washington, DC over the weekend and saw a great performance of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” at Fords’ Theater on 10th Street. Wonderful cast. Excellent production. In this version, three street-vendor debtors also play the three spirits…nice touch. There is nothing like seeing it in “real life”. However, I couldn’t help but wonder why Bob Cratchit didn’t take out a loan to pay for Tiny Tim’s medical care. After all, it was a matter of great importance and he worked for a loan company. Perhaps because the terms of the loan would have been unmanageable. Scrooge could have helped the Cratchit’s by allowing a longer repayment period, maybe 30 years. If he had offered a 30-year term to all of his debtors, he could have avoided a lot of the unpleasantness.</p>
<p>My favorite part is when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning with a more generous heart. What is your favorite part?</p>
<p>It’s not really my favorite part, but apropos of this thread, my favorite line would be Scrooge’s when he raised Bob Cratchit’s “salary to such a figure that his eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.” [Not sure if this is in Dickens’ writing, or only in the Ronald Colman radio version]</p>
<p>It would presumably make all of this discussion moot if someone would raise the salary of collegehelp’s cousins’ family correspondingly.</p>
<p>The phenomenon of students attending a college that is “beneath” their academic ability seems to be known as “undermatching” in the literature. Here is an article that discusses how common the problem is, indicates that there is little evidence about the long-term effects of “undermatching”, and recommends that more rigorous research be done on the long term effects. Subjective opinions obviously differ on this and it would be helpful to have some good data.</p>
<p>The great thing about many colleges, is that you get out if it what you put into it.</p>
<p>An academic career is very competitive, all the best profs are not just at NYU & Princeton.
Some profs may have taken the job because of their SO’s career or because they love the area. Some may want to spent more time teaching than on prestigious research which nets the university publicity along with grants.</p>
<p>This idea that your directional state U degree will automatically be worth less to you in experience & job offers, is a fallacy dreamed up by those whose livelihoods depend on being paid for their advice on how to be admitted to colleges that they can’t afford.
My daughter attends a directional state U & we couldn’t be happier with her education & opportunities. Easily as many opportunities as her sister who attended a top liberal arts college, that was more than twice as expensive.</p>
<p>It is fallacious to claim that a kid cannot have an exceptional experience coming out of a directional state U. It is equally fallacious to claim that the ACADEMIC experience at Southern CT State is equal to that at Yale.</p>
<p>Yale has archives, libraries, rare book holdings so instead of students using secondary and tertiary sources for a history class, they are often using primary sources. Check the course catalog and compare the number and depth and breadth of classes in history. Check the number of interdisciplinary offerings- kid wants to go deep on European history with a focus on comparative political theory? American History with an overlay of 20th century economics? History of the Cold War? How many kids majored in History last year and Southern CT State? How many history majors at Yale ended up doing fellowships, study abroad, or interned at museums/historical societies/think tanks doing primary research vs. that at Directional?</p>
<p>These days, it is probably easier to get a copy (possibly digital) of an old rare book.</p>
<p>The differences in course offerings and faculty interests are a valid reason to consider one school over another. However, it is not necessarily true that an elite school is better in these respects in all subjects – a student needs to consider the subjects that s/he is interested in for this comparison.</p>
<p>Which directional state university costs only $5,860 (one tenth of Yale’s cost of attendance) total? Even if commuting from the parents’ house, remember to include food and utilities at the parents’ house and transportation costs, which probably consume most of that budget before tuition, fees, and books.</p>