Congrats to your daughter! I went to a state school myself. Started out as a crappy student who preferred to work vs. study, and had a few bad years when I started out. Switched to working full time, going to school part time, and graduated (debt free) at 25. First post-graduation job didn't pay well, but I found a much better paying gig within a year.
Your daughter sounds like she is much more focused when I was at her age.
pinchvalve wrote: Great advice everyone, a million thanks. The plot thickened last night as she was accepted into Case Western Reserve University with a scholarship and a grant. That puts it into the middle, a bit of student debt, but very manageable.
Great! Case Western would be my choice of the 3 for BioChem. She might also check out Washington & Jefferson which had a very good program when I was there in the 60's.
One thing to note about private schools like CMU and Case: when the tuition goes up, your partial scholarship usually doesn't. I had $10k debt from FR/SO year at CWRU, but piled up about $50k total by the end.
Thanks again for all of the sage advice. After much working of the numbers, she has officially accepted the offer from CMU. In the end, it was her dream school and one that motivated her to kick ass all through high school and on the SATs and ACTs. I thought the tuition was a misprint the first time I saw it, but after need-based adjustments, grants, scholarships, and the money that her mother and I have been saving and are willing to donate, she will graduate with about $30K in student loans. That's still not chicken feed, but better than a lot of the horror stories that I hear. That may even go down if she lives off campus in later years or Dad stops playing with cars. I can also stop downtown and see her whenever I want, because who doesn't want their Dad hanging out on campus with them?
Congratulations! Definitely look into the off-campus options once she's no longer a freshman. I can put DD#2 into a shared apartment for 12 full months, give her a reasonable monthly utility and grocery stipend, and save $2500 overall versus 2 semesters in dorms and meal plan (much of which gets wasted, anyway) without even considering the cost of the summer months I'd still need to cover.
Dorms usually require a meal plan.
I could have eaten out at $10 a meal (or more) for every meal that I had at my dining hall with the meal plan. I could have eaten at Chipotle every day--and gotten the guacamole--for less than I spent in the dining hall.
Awesome! Glad CMU was able to work with you on the financial side of things, that's really a pretty manageable amount of debt - car payment, not mortgage size 
. Live cheaply for a few years afterwards and she can pay that off pretty quickly.
I'll 2nd what Duke and mtn said. Living on campus is frankly a ripoff. I think I saved a minimum of about $2000/yr (vs cheapest on campus housing) when I moved off campus sophomore year. And yes, I think my meal plan worked out to about $10-11 per meal. Ridiculous considering I could eat for about $60/week when I dropped the meal plan.
That is, of course, assuming she has the option to do so. It seems more schools are requiring 2nd year students, or even juniors and seniors, to live on campus. It was a big issue where I went, as my freshman class was the last that was allowed to live off campus sophomore year. The funny part was that they didn't actually have the housing capacity to meet the demand after this change, but minor details...
Pittsburg State University graduate here. What? Haven't heard of it? It's in Kansas! Get her into CMU or orient the planning to get her into the better known school for her degree. Getting a degree from a good school without much name recognition is not all that awesome. I seriously suggest that the debt would be worth it, especially debt after scholarship assistance. My situation is somewhat biased, though, as my degrees are not true engineering degrees. And the jobs I've been locked out of because of that would not be the same as if I had gone to Univ. of Pittsburgh and gotten degrees that don't have the word "tech" in the title.
EDIT: This is what I get for replying to a thread without reading all replies first. Congrats to your kid, I think she made the right call.
Congrats on CMU, so glad you guys made it happen! I just read the thread, and was going to add my $.02, which is that its important to think about some of the subjective factors in addition to the debt issue.
I went to a very selective university on a generous scholarship...but was miserable. While I eventually found my place and made great, life-long friends, I just didn't fit in with the majority of my classmates. That makes for a very long four years. Tunnel vision on the ranking+financial package, versus a full ride at a good state school where I would likely have been pretty happy. I didn't think hard enough about what was the right fit, but glad your daughter did!
stuart in mn wrote: Go to Pitt. I don't think there's much if any advantage to going to the other school just because of its name.
Done in two. Unless you're going to Harvard, Yale, or MIT where the networks are worth the coin you spend name recognition means nothing but student debt will haunt you forever. There have been studies done to this effect as well.
Been there done that spent six years working as a DOD contractor to pay off student loans because the debt would have been crippling had I taken the 20 year approach.
The choice has been made....so the advice I offer is applicable to either. One of the most overlooked things about the college experience is the networking opportunities. Alums look after recent grads....and more often than not, your fellow students parents are often linked to prime employers. Study hard in school, but be social. Make friends, be a good person and network. Go to the faculty/alumni mixers. Go to any events that Alums are likely to attend. Know the school, know the common experience.
The first job after college has very little to do with your education. Your experience in field will be next to nothing. There will be many people in that boat. Your link to alumi and parents gets you noticed, so you can shine. So while you tell you kid to hit the books hard, make sure you tell her to enjoy herself. It's important to get out of the library once in a while.
Awesome. $30k is not much for a top shelf degree. She'll do well.
When I was hiring people, where they were from and what school they went to didn't matter to me a bit. Same thing with what fraternity/sorority they belonged to - actually, I generally weeded those people out. I looked for people I thought would work, were pleasant to be around, were smart enough to figure out the job quickly and not be obvious about coasting when time allowed, who wouldn't leave, and could some day defeat me in battle and assume my position in the business.
It would be a coincidence if we graduated from the same college. I just didn't care. I had more college debt than necessary because I followed my girlfriend (now wife) to WVU. She only went there because the basketball recruiter offered her a full scholarship and free ACL surgery to play ball. I would have been happy studying on the beach and attending some community college in southern NC.
I broke my back for 8 years to be debt free. Personally I'd sacrifice whatever perceived prestige there is in going to a "better" school in order to save myself from being financially crippled for a decade or two (whatever it takes to pay for college nowadays). Then again, I didn't choose that route, so...
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
I tend to agree with you, but the child has been wanting to go to CMU. She set a goal and reached it. If she she got no financial support from CMU, it would be an easy choice. What will be more important, is to begin networking while in school. Do not just be a good student.
CMU is the right choice. As stupid as it sounds, the school name makes a heck of a difference.
Edit: reason is, if you meet a hiring manager like apis, you get hired based on merit. If you meet a hiring manager who is a trust fund baby who went to CMU, you ALSO get hired.
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
You know who that junk does matter to? HR departments. Last company I worked for was only actively recruiting at maybe 20 schools in the country even though a LOT of good schools and good grads were getting ignored. Everyone else was directed to apply on the black hole HR web screening page of worthlessness. Real people are smarter, like you, but not HR vultures.
pres589 wrote: In reply to Apis Mellifera: You know who that junk does matter to? HR departments. Last company I worked for was only actively recruiting at maybe 20 schools in the country even though a LOT of good schools and good grads were getting ignored. Everyone else was directed to apply on the black hole HR web screening page of worthlessness. Real people are smarter, like you, but not HR vultures.
Yup. School is a filter for HR, like it or not.
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
If it takes 8 years to pay off $30k in debt you're not trying very hard that's for sure! $30k isn't "financially crippling" any more than buying a new Honda Accord. But the Accord won't earn you money no matter how you list it on your C.V.
I owed more than 30 Grand, way more. And jobs weren't exactly easy to come by when I graduated... unlike today.
The guy asked for advice. I gave it. Advice I didn't follow myself, but would have if I'd had the sense to listen. I'm not in HR, nor have I ever been. I just happened to be able hire the people I wanted to work with and who could produce. More power to you if you see a difference among similar, middle tier schools. I don't.
IMO going to ANY private school that's not an Ivy League school, MIT, Stanford etc isn't worth the money. Unless its costing the same amount as going to a state school of course.
If it's the usual cost differential, absolutely go public. Try and keep your debt load as low as possible, particularly as grad school is expensive and you tend to go where you get in at that point.
I graduated from a small, liberal arts private college, than went to a private dental school. The dental school could've cared less where I graduated from college from and my patients don't give two craps where I went to dental school. I got a good education at both places but I would've gotten the same at public schools too.
I was lucky to get out of college debt free but came out of dental school with 6 figure debt. If I'd gone to a public college, I would've come out of dental school with little to no debt.
That would've been a life changer for me.
At this point the private schools just aren't worth it.
You'll need to log in to post.
