Gr8One, I think you should simply accept that not all families approach decision-making the same way yours does.
I see no problem with a parent having input about which schools make the initial list. Looking back, neither of my Ds suggested applying to a school I wouldn’t have been okay with, so I wasn’t put to the task of using a veto. But if they had suggested something I believed strongly was not in their best interest, yeah, I would have. There is no reason why the parents and student cannot find some common ground in a country with thousands of colleges.
When my son and I were making a list of possibilities, we listed the choices in ascending order of EFC, with Yale being the least expensive with respect to EFC. His hard work and good luck earned admittance at Yale.
However, we had to draw a line through the list. Schools above the line were affordable, those below the line were not. There was never any discussion on choosing an unaffordable school. I did not prohibit discussion, we were both in agreement that if our finances could not cover the school, we could not consider it.
Gr8one. Please explain why you are being so argumentative here? Every post is a challenge of what someone else has written.
The responses ended up being more an interpretation of what I meant by the term “veto power” Actually you see a lot of commonality in the responses.
What we actually are doing with the second son is giving him a budget based on what we paid for his older brother’s undergraduate degree, plus an increase for inflation. If he wants to go somewhere that costs more, he will need to take out loans for the difference. We will pay the interest on them until he graduates. If he can come up with scholarships that bring the undergrad cost in under budget, we split the savings 50/50 so he gets cash in his pocket, with the caveat that we have final say so that he does not sandbag us and go to Podunk U just to pocket the cash (which we are confident he wouldn’t do anyway but just to keep that thought from popping up in his clever little mind).
Since we are also helping his older brother with grad school, we agree to help son #2 to the same extent above and beyond the above mentioned undergrad budget, once he graduates from undergrad. This equal help can be in the form of helping him with grad school. or paying off the above mentioned student loans for undergrad.
Great! Other families do it differently. I have twins, but I didn’t base their budgets off one another - for example, if one had chosen state school at $25K and the other a private u at $60K, I would not have offered state school kid $35K to “make it equal.” Other people might, and they want their outlay to be as equal as possible. That’s good for them. There is no one right way to do this kind of thing.
When you have twins in college at the same time, whatever works!
@Gr8One The studies actually tend to show the opposite: that Ivies recognize talent, intelligence, work ethic, focus, etc., but do not supply them to students who do not already possess those qualities. That is, the best predictor of success has been found to be not whether you attended an Ivy, but whether you were offered admission to an Ivy, regardless of where you actually attended.
(Please note that I am NOT saying that being denied admission to Ivies predicts failure in life, it does NOT. It is simply that the Ivies are very good at identifying students who are very likely to excel in their careers. An Ivy admission offer is like a Likely Letter for life.)
FCCDAD, interesting information.
Would be nice if there was valid study showing statistically sound ROI for different fields and schools. Payscale salary sample size is too small and has too many apples to oranges salary comparisons. All the school ranking sites are just too subjective to carry much weight. To your point though, any study would also be skewed by the skills, intelligence, work ethic and drive of the students attending each school.
As somebody who is almost finished with the second set of full-pay bills for a kid at a highly selective school, let me say that ROI was not a significant factor in my willingness to pay the cost. I think there are intangible benefits that don’t matter to everyone, and I think it was an experience that was valuable for itself as well. Some people make decisions differently, and that’s fine with me.
But as I always also like to ask: who is more “successful,” the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or the senior partner in the top law firm in Wisconsin?
We didn’t approach it as a “veto power” but more as collaborative decision-making. She gave me some parameters about majors, size of school, etc. and I told her what the financial parameters were. Then we researched schools that fit those parameters.
Agree there is more to college than ROI. But as an analytical type, considering how costs have increased since I attended school, it would be nice to have something measurable to look at amidst all the unmeasurables when comparing schools.
Time for a nice expensive vacation when those last bills are paid, Hunt.
Understood KAMmom. We are doing the same. there are different ways to interpret "veto power’.
“But as I always also like to ask: who is more “successful,” the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or the senior partner in the top law firm in Wisconsin?”
Is that a trick question? Were they classmates?
I think the answer to that question is the same as the answer to many of the questions here, which is “it depends what you mean by success”.
And who is more successful- the Attorney General of the United States, or a partner at an obscure personal injury firm who out-earns the AG by a factor of five in a BAD year?
My point is that financial ROI will mislead you unless you can somehow also quantify job satisfaction, as well as other measures of success. Indeed, there are some colleges that encourage graduates to go into public service work–this probably negatively affects the financial ROI, but is that a bug or a feature of that college?
Financial ROI may be a bigger factor for non wealthy families when students choose college and major.
Hunt, ROI would be a useful tool as a starting point to compare schools for the same major for those who know what field they want to go into. It would help measure how well the college in that major is thought of by hiring companies or how well it helps them in placement (by way of starting salary and progressive earnings) so you can compare schools on that basis.
It depends on how you define success. Either one could be a dream job or a pressure cooker grind. It depends on the person and the goals.
I ran into trouble talking about careers and ROI with my kids-I quickly discovered that leading with how much money they could make in particular careers led to quality of life versus paycheck angst and caused them to question what was the right direction for them. Then we had angst about following a dream (YouTube star!) vs pursuing what you’re good at.
We seemed to have settled on a happy medium for now (I agreed to shut up about ROI, they agreed to concentrate on getting better at what they’re already good at).
As for vetoing schools, my husband has asked them not to look on the west coast for undergraduate-it’s too far for us to get there quickly if there’s a problem, and we have no family out there. I don’t know if I’d call it a “veto”, since the strict definition of the word is to negate something that has already happened, but I think the request is a logical consideration given who we are as a family.