I'm going to stop worrying about my kid's college education

[cantdrv55]

There's too much hype and importance placed on getting into a really good school. I've bought into it but no more. The media makes it sound as if they don't get into the Harvards and Stanfords, the kids are headed for mediocrity. I'm a product of a private college that has nowhere near the cache and academic excellence of the Ivy League's but I am doing just fine, thank you very much.

My son is a 3.0 student but he's well rounded. Athletic, has volunteered tons of hours, Junior Statesman of America member, AP classes, smart but not a brainiac. His teachers say he should be a 4.0 but he is very social. The kid is balanced and has tons of potential. He is headed for state college because even with those attributes, he won't be accepted into a U of CA school let alone a Princeton.

That's fine by me. Isn't it how a person applies himself after college that matters? Isn't it how a person develops and nurtures personal and business relationships that matters? My niece got a full ride to Stanford. She graduated two years ago with a double major in Econ and Art. Do you know what she is doing right now? Substitute Art teacher at her high school and still living at home. No motivation to move out. What a waste of a great talent.

[on-ramp]

Imagine saving in a 529K plan for 18 years, then sending your kid to a top college and having them gunned down like in this massacre?
there's nothing wrong with going to a less expensive state college, then transferring to a better school the last 2 years, applying for school loans along the way. I agree with your post.. besides, who cares what the media says anymore.

[legion]

For some, an Ivy League education helps cement connections that one probably already had beforehand. ("Your boy is at Harvard, have him give me a call for an internship...")

For the rest of us, it's just a more expensive means to the same end. My sister-in-law went to U of I, my wife and I to Illinois State. My sister-in-law paid double the tuition for 5 years (my wife and I graduated in 4 years). She graduated with a massive heap of debt (she got a student loan to pay for an overpriced student apartment with a hot tub). She majored in psychology (it was fun--she says) and now works as a temp for a few bucks over minimum wage. She's not dumb, but she sure lacks the ability to see the big picture some times.

[JavaBrewer]

Our close friends have a son who's very very sharp. He's graduating from H.S. with something like a 4.5 GPA and has offers from many colleges but not many of the *prime* ones. Though he is athletic (surfing and snowboarding) he was not involved in other school related activities (sports, clubs, volunteer, etc...). Apparently there are loads of 4.0+ kids to choose from and colleges are getting picky.

I think you're on the right track with your son. Keep up the activities, sports, AP, and if he can do better with the GPA then encourage a bump there as well. There is no doubt that graduation from the name college opens doors but it's the on the job performance that wins out. I earned my degree from a state school and now after 12 have folks on my team that hold higher degrees from the *prime* colleges. Sounds like your son is going to do just fine.

[RallyJon]

The world is littered with do-nothing Ivy League grads. If a kid lacks motivation, sending them to a top school wont magically transform them. However, if a kid is a motivated achiever, its naive to think that honors from an Ivy or Stanford wont open doors. Heck, there are companies that wont even recruit at other schools.

More than worrying about saving money, Id worry about giving your kid the motivation and work ethic. Tuition has a way of taking care of itself when other circumstances are favorable. In 16 years (my time horizon) the best schools will likely not need to charge tuition at all.

[Rick Lee]

I was only once ever asked by an employer where I went to college and it was several months after I had started the job. Turns out my manager had also gone to Pitt and just wanted to know if I knew some of her friends.

I went to a prep school that was created as a feeder school for Princeton. In my dad's day, if you went to that school, you just had to call up Princeton and tell them to hold a space for you.

I think Ivy League schools are overhyped. People think Bush is an idiot and he went to Yale and Harvard. Cheney failed out of Yale TWICE. Of all the rich and successful people I know, only one went to Harvard and he did it on a basketball scholarship.

A co-worker is about to start grad school at Columbia School of Journalism. It's running her $38k per year. I just can't see the value in that, since it won't earn her a dime more as a reporter than she makes now as a commissioned salesperson. Sort of reminds me of Jon Corzine or Michael Bloomberg paying tens of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $150k a year.

[David]

I think the college only affects the first job, after that it really doesn't matter. I received my Engineering degree from UofH which is known as Cougar High around here, i.e. it's not very well thought of. Now 9 years out of engineering school, I'm probably better paid than engineers here from much better schools and I'm regularly offered jobs by other shops in town. The important thing is what you do after you graduate.

[cantdrv55]

Another thing; a co-worker has two kids in college. One is at Johns Hopkins and the other at NYU. That's $80k/yr in tuition, room and board!

[legion]

David, another issue is rampant grade inflation.

A lot of high schools have "honors" or "weighted" programs that aren't very challenging. Parents can usually also argue up the food chain in schools until someone gives in and gives their kid an "A". Also, a lot of high school classes are less challenging than they were in the past.

What it means is that most colleges aren't particularly impressed by high school GPAs anymore.

[tc-sacto]

Well,
I've got a ways to go before my 4 yr. old goes to college. I do want him to go, but some of my most wealthy clients never went to college.

They are tradesmen:
commercial painters, tile and stone work, Gen. Contractor. etc.

Heck, I went to a JC for the first two years and I'm doing alright. Help save my parents a ton of dough.

[Moses]

Originally posted by cantdrv55
My son is a 3.0 student but he's well rounded.... His teachers say he should be a 4.0 but he is very social.

You've described a perfect formula for success.

The real movers and shakers in the world have one thing in common. Personality. People who are bright and can build relationships have unlimited potential. It doesn't much matter where he goes to school.

[Flatbutt1]

YMMV but in my experience( big Pharma) if you want to be on top you need ALL the credentials. There are exceptions of course, but all of the top guns here have PhDs from name schools. And th truly elite are MD PhDs.

So it depends upon your amibitions. I never aspired to be on top so my 4 year degree from state hasserved me well. But after 30 years I'm like the Gunnery Sergeant all the officers cometo in a pinch.

[MichiganMat]

Get a divorce, get hurt at work, and send him to an out-of-state Big10 school. He'll have so many scholarships and grants coming in it'll make your head spin.

Or maybe he'll major in a really odd-ball program at the State school. Those programs are usually aggressively looking for, and willing to pay for, students to join them.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Have you looked at overseas colleges at all?

College admission has gotten so ridiculously competitive I wonder if it's even worth it for a lot of kids now. Too many people having too many kids and the colleges ain't getting any bigger - capacities are becoming asymptotic. You can only have so many people in so large a space.

College today certainly doesn't seem what it was like when I was there (which I didn't think was all that long ago, but I guess it is!) You pay tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars just to sit in a lecture hall with 500+ other kids with a professor who often doesn't care and is just meeting his contractual teaching obligation as a condition of his research grant. Or worse, some non-English speaking T.A. is teaching the course and is only doing it as part of their tuition assistanceship conditions.

Don't mean to be a downer here, but it seems it has become a total racket. Don't blame you for taking a "screw it" position at all - I'd probably do the same thing. One of my good friends (who graduated from Tulane) was looking into what would be necessary to give his kid a competitive chance of getting into a Tulane-or-better school (ivy or nearly so) without being from a multi-millionaire household or a politically-connected one. What he told me was staggering. Apparently now, it not only matters which high school your kid goes to (preference given to very expensive private schools, naturally), it not only matters what elementary school, not even which kindergarten - now it even gets down to what PRESCHOOL your kid goes to. Yes, it actually matters whether or not your kid goes to a hoity-toity preschool in order to get a better chance of getting accepted to the "selective" kindergarten, which matters because they need that pedigree to get into the correct private elementary school and so on up the ladder. It's ridiculous. As you can imagine (and as he was explaining to me) each level of this "ladder" is quite expensive and it gets progressively more so the higher one goes. All to have a "chance" of ivy-league admission in 20-odd years.

For ONE YEAR of preschool (the "selective" type that would have gotten his son off on the "correct path" to ivy league admittance) it would have cost him $16,000. That's preschool. The prices of elementary and secondary education go up from there - per year.

As I see it, virtually all of these problems are the result of overcrowding and schools preying upon the whole "I-want-what's-best-for-my-baby" panic reflex of parents. (It's worth noting that this is part of an even larger multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on preying on parental insecurity). I feel for you guys with kids. I really do. I don't know how you deal with crap like this. I think I'd want to seriously kill someone if I had everyone looking at me to constantly take advantage of in that way. . .

Anyway (back on topic) I'd perhaps give an honest look at schooling overseas. Most of the "best" universities are still here in the U.S., but it's a trend that I see changing as overcrowding becomes more of a problem and schools feel the need to dole out "McDegrees" by the thousands to kids who can't speak correctly, can't write in complete sentences, can't communicate professionally, have no work ethic and little in the way of critical thinking ability. The "university" experience (at least IMHO) should be considerably more than a glorified trade school where a kid will get out with a "punched ticket" that qualifies him or her to work in front of a CRT screen for 10 hours a day and $30,000 a year. It is (or should be) more than that. And those universities are the smaller, rarer ones - not necessarily the big ones with the wealthy benefactors and huge endowments.

Best of luck to you.

[jyl]

This is an interesting thread, thanks for starting it. My kids are much younger than yours but this is something I will have to wrestle with eventually.

My two cents - more like random thoughts and I don't know what conclusion they lead to:

1. For some jobs, a top university pedigree is required. Fair or not, that's life. So if your kids wants to work on Sandhill Road in private equity, he better have Harvard or Stanford or similar on his CV, or be something quite unusual. But that is probably <1% (just a WAG) of all jobs in this country.

2. For other jobs, a graduate degree is required. In these cases, the focus is more on the graduate degree than on the under graduate degree. So better to be a Local U. undergrad and then a Top U. grad, than vice versa.

3. I speculate - not sure, really - that getting into a graduate program might be a little more rational than getting into an undergrad program.

4. International schools are an interesting option. I am not sure how people react to an international college versus Local U., but I'm guessing it could open more doors simply by being unusual and interesting. Need to look into this. I'm assuming it is a good international school not some flakey party school.

So, my daughter wants to go to Harvard. Gulp! Well, she's only 10 y/o so I have some time to either change her mind or help make it happen. I'm hoping the former, since I'm not personally a fan of the Ivy league mystique (Univ of Calif all the way, here). At some point I will probably sit down w/ her and explain there's is a certain amount of help I can give her and she needs to think about whether to blow it all on undergrad at some Ivy or some on a good undergrad school and some on a really good graduate school. But who knows, I might not have any money so the choice might be moot.

[Rick Lee]

I'm not saying the world needs ditch diggers too, but let's face it - college is not for everyone. It didn't do much for my career, though my prep school, which cost more than my college, has certainly shaped me and it even helped me land my first job. I am sure I would have done at least as well without a college degree.

I knew kids in prep school, who at age 14, had getting into Dartmouth or Duke or wherever as their top priority in life. I mean nothing else mattered. They took the Princeton Review course many times, took practice SAT's at least once or twice a year and only did whatever they thought would look good on a college app. The goofiest kid in my class ended up at the Naval Academy and is now flying Harriers. He's crashed one too! And one of the smartest kids in my class ended up selling Elvis commemorative plates and making good money at it.

I can't believe a kid in his pre-teens or even younger is already cut out for this or that college. And one of the best things about this country is that we have sooooo many colleges and universities to fit just abut every kind of kid.

[Hetmann]

I believe an Ivy league education without the proper creds to back it up (old money, connections, etc.) is a waste of money. A sheepskin is your ticket to a career path, but what you do once you are there is much more important. That said, we are looking at colleges for my daughter right now. Price tags range from "that's not too bad" to staggering. I want her to make this choice and do the best she can with it and the opportunities that follow. Time will tell.

[sammyg2]

Ivy league vs. a regular university is like asking if you would rather run a good company or work for a good company.

When my kids get old enough they will go to a very good university. It may not be in boston, but it will be in the top 10 in the nation.
The money is already set aside for it.

[M.D. Holloway]

Our Boy is going to the Air Force Academy and our Girl is Going to Notre Dame - no discussion. Thats is the way it is gonna be.

Actually, I would be very happy if our son learned to be a auto/diesel mechanic and our lil girl lived at home taking care of us the rest of her life! There is a small hope for him to do that be she is most likely gonna split when she gets a taste of the open road...

[Moses]

My kids will explore life in their own way, just like I did. They are bright and do well in school. I don't really care where they go to college, but I insist that they go. I will gladly pay for their education.

If we fine tune the journey too much for our kids, they could miss out on a lot of living.