Would you do college differently for your kids? The hindsight thread

Parent Cafe
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I’ve learned SO much on CC even when it was in no way relevant for my own kids.

Being able to suggest colleges like Knox, Beloit, Lawrence… helping a kid who laments “I have no safety schools” … Having a nephew call to say I just got into Muhlenberg with a great aid package and I never would have applied there if you hadn’t suggested it ". For me, reading posts from people whose situations were completely different from mine has been really valuable.

Did I know that getting a BSN was not a great plan for someone hoping for med school? I did not. Did I know about audition conservatories vs. getting a BA in music from a non-audition program? I did not.

Posts that are neither helpful nor relevant? Just scroll onwards and ignore!

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I do want to say that I think regrets are a waste of time because they are a fact of life, and you choose the regrets you wish to have. No one knows how alternate scenarios would have worked out. One positive thing about my daughter’s choice of school is that it put her in a geographic area where she crossed paths with her future husband, and she’s now a married homeowner who’s expecting a baby in June. Had she gone somewhere else, this specific confluence of happy events would not have happened. She’s also only 280 miles away from us, in a region of the country I like and feel comfortable in, and I know every mile. We will move near her someday.

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Overall, I have no regrets. I definitely had a very bad parenting moment related to ds doing a practice SAT Subject Test in World History at home (at least it confirmed he should not take the one in that topic) that I regret.

Financially, we have no regrets even though we paid full freight for ds to attend Stanford. I will say it is easier to be able to offer, “full freight anywhere you can get in,” when there is only one child to fund. We had saved about $10k per year for 10 years in a 529 plan. That, of course grew. Dh timed some deferred income payments from his job to coincide with ds’s college years. My fil probably contributed $20k through some sort of bond instruments. We have almost always lived beneath our means - especially after ds was born.

Ds was high-achieving with high aspirations, college-wise. CC had given me much wisdom about NPCs and financial aid, and I knew we would not qualify for any need-based aid. The best thing I did was to tell dh that we needed to decide if we were willing to pay full-freight to the tune of $235k or so (at the time). Because if he wasn’t willing to do that we should not allow ds to apply to Stanford (or similar) at all. Had we had more than one child, that offer wouldn’t have been an option.

In the end, we decided on the, “pile approach.” I encourage this for everyone who is not willing to take on any debt as parents for college. The pile approach works regardless of the amount in the pile. “We have $1,000/ $10,000/$100,000/whatever amount to contribute to college.” We offered the entire pile to be used toward education. Anything leftover would have gone to ds be used, “reasonably” (car purchase, down payment on house, toward grad school). Ds had two full ride offers at Big Stare U’s and other partial merit scholarships at other private colleges. In the end he spent the entire pile on undergrad.

We did search for colleges based on an intended major which he changed his sophomore year. I think searching for schools with strengths in certain areas is fine, but interests do change, so I think choosing a college with a good fit AND a wide variety of offerings is wise.

Btw, if and when ds ever marries, we’ll give him a, “pile,” then, too. And tell him he and his bride can spend it however they see fit.

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The intended major idea is interesting. I thought my older son would be a biomedical engineering major, but he wound up with math, before he was accepted anywhere. I didn’t know if he would stay math, but anyone who knew him would say he was definitely a STEM kid, so him picking a STEM school (without many non-STEM majors) was totally fine.
My younger son thought he would do business, and we agreed he would only go to our state flagship IF he was accepted to the business school as a freshman (it’s very hard to get accepted later). BUT, our state flagship also has great programs in many majors, including journalism, which may have been his second choice. That’s where he went, and he did stick with business, but he would have had many options if he changed his mind. Some of the other schools he was accepted to, including one with a full-tuition scholarship, would have been not so great had he picked another major.

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Some of the things we looked for when college shopping was a school

that offered Italian (as she had taken Italian in HS) - she ended up not taking any language in college

that had a non-competitive choir (she was in the choir all through middle and high school) - she ended up not being in choir in college

that had an active school newspaper (she was on the school paper all through middle school and high school and editor in chief her senior year) - she ended up not joining the school paper in college

What ended up mattering was that the school had a great undecided program which helped pick her major, it was in a city (a city she still lives in almost 10 years later), and she fit in (found her tribe for the first time in her life - who are still her friends today).

She had gotten accepted to her dream school (much higher ranked) and turned it down, when she felt no connection to the other students at admitted students day. In hindsight, she made the best choice for her.

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I’m a huge fan of the seven sisters (5 now). I think in the short or long run they will be a great benefit. Just my 2 cents.

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I hope so! Her connections there gave her the opportunity to work for a top literary agent for a few months during the Covid pandemic, but then she was asked to move to NYC while being paid $20/hour, so she had to quit. The agent said “That’s too bad. You were someone that I thought had the potential to move up to become an agent”. :confused:

But she got a letter of recommendation from one of her professors that was so eloquent and that captured my daughter’s character and strengths so well that it made me cry. And my daughter had the highest improvement scores for her students in her department her first year of teaching. So she definitely received a great education and was able to forge great relationships with professors.

It’s just hard to see her work so hard while her sister, an engineer, gets compensated so much better (but might not have a job any day now bc she’s a Fed employee). I guess THAT proves you just never know how one’s choices will affect them.

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Financially, I don’t have any regrets. We have been very fortunate and feel lucky that we could comfortably afford any school the kids were interested in. With S22 I would have insisted on a gap year, however (I suggested it at the time and he rejected the idea) as he just wasn’t ready for college (not academically - he’s done very well in that way) and didn’t really know why he was there (and, frankly, still doesn’t). I think he would have been happier at a smaller school as well although he was adamantly against that at the time. With S24 I would have encouraged him to get a little more invested in his likely schools so he wouldn’t have been so disappointed when he was WL/rejected from his T20s (ended up at UVA) - he was an incredibly strong student with good, but not great, ECs and coming from where we live that just wasn’t enough. I tried to tell him that multiple times but I think he just didn’t really hear me.

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I’m not willing to classify this as a regret (which indicates wanting a different outcome), but in hindsight I realize I was too restrictive with where D20 was allowed to apply. We really didn’t have a good understanding of how few people pay sticker price, and limited her to options we knew we could 100% afford, rather than allowing for the possibility that merit and institutional aid could be a possibility. She landed at a school that was great for her and in the city she really wanted to be in and graduated debt-free, so as I said…no regrets, just…information I wish I’d had then that I definitely had and helped with the process by the time my D24 was applying.

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For my first, I did think that non-need based scholarship money would be more available than it was. He did end up with a 50% tuition scholarship at the school he attended, but his first choice school offered nothing. It turned out to be a good fit for him, but he ended up in a field quite different than his major at the time. No real regrets there.

My two that did not go in-state took the direct student loans. The one that stayed in-state did not. However, he is also the one that did not finish. I regret not pushing him more to go to a small, out-of-state school where he might have thrived more, but I think his mental health challenges would still have impacted him.

All three had to make decisions based on cost and did not attend their first choice schools, although they also were not required to attend the least expensive schools. I don’t really have regrets.

My regret is that our one kid was not able to properly express the difficulties he was having and should have left college sooner. He is getting back on track, but it is very hard to see your kid struggle.

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This is such an interesting thread. I think the thing I learned most from CC with my oldest is that “high school is also four years long so it needs to be thought of as a significant positive experience” which led to us encouraging my youngest to go to a different high school than his brothers did, which was a far better match for him.

DS1 got to go to his “dream school” (Princeton) but finances meant that even with the FA we got, he had to use his AP credits and graduate in three years. I think DS2 is still a bit upset that we “made” him choose MIT instead of Princeton because it was right at the start of the pandemic and we didn’t know if he’d need to be walking distance, plus DH’s job meant MIT was much cheaper for us. Things seemed so out of control in March-April of 2020.

That said, both DS1 and DS2 had amazing educations, are in good grad programs, and found life partners. I hope our country continues (somehow) to invest in education and research, because that directly affects both of them and their partners.

DS3 - I don’t know, I guess maybe I regret not “forcing” him to apply to MIT. He visited it and really didn’t feel he gelled with it the way his brothers did (DS1 is now a grad student there so it’s kind of heavy in the family). Anyway, he didn’t apply there and then he was deferred from his ED in December. BUT, he has some good options that we can afford.

I’m the oldest of four, and it’s definitely true that in families with multiple kids, no one has the same upbringing. I think generally parents have more energy for the olders and more money for the youngers, but not always.

Like others, I feel like CC does have more people with a lot more money than we have, but I know we are very fortunate compared to most. And it also makes me appreciate that my own teaching career meant my kids could attend my district K-12 for a nominal fee, and my DH’s career meant cheap-ish MIT.

I think I carry a lot of my Jewish heritage in my view that there’s nothing more valuable than education, because it’s the one thing that “they” can never take from you, and there is inherent value in learning for its own sake. We have definitely spent money on education in amounts that kind of astound me.

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Would be interesting to hear the opinions of our kids on this question - what would you do differently about your college experience.

But I’m not going to ask mine. :). Sometime maybe.

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Same.

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One would say that the college they picked was perfect for them and the other would wish that they made another choice.

But that’s who they are in all aspects of their lives.

They follow my husband and I. He never rethinks his choices and I over analyze all of mine!

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We’ve definitely talked about this. Until last year when he was moved to a special unit, our son counted the minutes until he could leave the Army behind and definitely wished he had done Georgia Tech ROTC with its four-year service commitment instead of the nine-year sentence from West Point. Army bureaucracy is crushing. He couldn’t wait to get out and move on with his life. For a long time, it’s all he could talk about; we feared for his mental health. Then, last month, the Army made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and it now looks like he’ll be staying in long enough to earn that pension. :woman_shrugging:

So, he has regretted the academy but, evidently, not the military. The hardest part for us has been resisting the urge to say, “We told you so.” Oh, and not having another Wolverine in the family.

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My only regret was visiting schools before acceptance and financial information on scholarships. I don’t see the point of visiting a school if you are not accepted or is financially out of reach. I would just plan on doing plenty of trip in Feb-Apr of senior year of HS.

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I am sometimes not certain my daughter should have attended her reach school. She absolutely loves it there so it probably is worth it, but I’m not sure she’s thriving academically as much as she could have somewhere else.

She has some learning issues and really did well in high school because she worked her tail off. At some point though this becomes harder to do and I think she will graduate with a pretty low GPA and without some of the accolades she received in high school. She is intimidated by the brains around her and I think doesn’t feel that she measures up.

That said, she does absolutely love the school and her friends and maybe that’s more important in the end.

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Yeah, I’m not asking mine either! I think sometimes it takes years to really have a good answer too.

I attended a competitive LAC and at the time I didn’t really like it. I wanted to be at a big university with my high school friends. It was a big culture shock from where I grew up and I had little in common with a lot of the other students. I felt that way for years. With time and space though, I realize how fortunate I was to have attended such a great school. I received an excellent education, learned a lot from those students I didn’t have anything in common with, and grew into an independent and educated person in a way I could not of had I stayed close to home.

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Your post really resonated with me, thanks for sharing.

My kids are younger (one in college, one in HS), and hearing about your experiences is valuable.

My valedictorian spouse’s parents are wealthy yet chose to contribute very little for college. My spouse took the cheapest deal offered, yet we are still paying the loans decades later. 18 year old goodie-two-shoes mostly do what they’re told, and that’s exactly what my spouse did, while also working like a dog every summer to pay college expenses. My spouse has some big regrets including being overworked in HS, the college application list, major choice, etc.

I funded all my education myself (jobs and plenty of loans).

We married young and had kids pretty young (no regrets at all for those choices). We’ve never made much money despite our science PhDs.

There simply has been no money for us to save. There was almost nowhere we could cut back. Vacations are 100% driving for days to see the in-laws who never visit us. I still buy most clothes at thrift stores. We’ve barely eked out appropriate retirement savings over the years. Our kids have always known that their college “fund” was limited to tuition benefits through our employers and/or our excellent state options.

We’re determined that our kids not be crippled by education debt like we’ve been. It actually wasn’t until our son started college that we started to feel a bit resentful of my in-laws for living their lavish lifestyle while allowing their supposed golden child to live in literal poverty for years. We’d always shrugged and thought “well it’s their money” (which it is). We didn’t see it as weird until we had a kid in college, and could never imagine doing that to our own child.

We feel a bit guilty for even having our son take out the federal loans. My spouse and I have privately talked about paying off his federal loans as part of financing when we downsize our home in a couple of years.

Yet, I’m also trying to be realistic about guarding against future resentment. To be honest, my child might make more money straight out of college than either of his parents do currently (which is great), but I might feel resentful if we’re simultaneously paying his loans that he’ll easily be able to pay off as an engineer. It will make a real difference for us and retirement, and probably won’t be a big deal for him. The decades we’ve lived on an incredibly tight budget and the fact that we had to be on government assistance during his early years cannot be erased. We will continue to live on a tight budget until we retire since the reduced expenses of our soon to be empty nest will simply allow us to catch up on very necessary retirement contributions.

Our kid is good with money, and works hard and definitely has skin in the game, but as a 19yo still hasn’t a great idea of real adult life.

For example, he’ll be living off campus next year. His apartment is at the top end of his housing budget (he has free tuition). That’s fine, and he’ll be earning his food money with his summer internship. Phew. But he said “oh I plan on taking the car to college next year so I can buy groceries etc” and we laughed and said “we’ll have to talk about that later”. We have one decent car. The other adult car is a $1000 crappy old truck. The kid car is a $1000 old clunker that his HS brother drives to work. Uhhhh, what car do you plan on taking, what will we drive at home, how will you deal with frequent breakdowns, and how will you pay for monthly parking? Even if he takes uber instead of the bus to the grocery store, it’s still way cheaper than a car. I’m sure he’ll be fine with it, but his assumption shows the typical teenager thought pattern.

Even my spouse’s siblings have very different lifestyles. They all have really high standards for their housing, cars, food, etc, that are more in line with my in-laws’ fancy lifestyle. We feel like the odd ones out, honestly. And we’re always the ones that visit them, and do a lot of other things that aren’t reciprocated. We’ve realized it’s a fine line to walk between spending time with and appreciating the family, while also making choices for ourselves that can sometimes feel “selfish”.

I think I’d really struggle if one of my kids had a lifestyle like that without really being aware of and appreciating what their parents went through.

Neither my spouse nor I are prone to resentment. But when it creeps in, it can be insidious and toxic. We’ve recently become much more aware of our own resentment triggers and prioritized making choices that minimize potential resentment.

Thanks again for your thought-provoking post. It gives me a lot to think about, including strategizing for our HS junior who isn’t planning on attending college.

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I would have my daughter apply to more private colleges instead of state schools.

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