The best way to go to college on someone else’s money is scholarships. Dump time into ACT/SAT prep and it will pay huge dividends. I had a high enough ACT score I could go anywhere in-state here for basically free, and am spending quite a bit of time this summer helping my younger sister prepare for the ACT next fall.
Ugh. The cure is worse than the disease.
Harvard does something similar. I’d check into that first. And Chicago has always been pretty liberal with their money too, IME.
It’s a bit late to be applying to Duke and Harvard if she just graduated.
You don’t think you can get a good education at Duke? You realize that is an extreme minority opinion, right? Or are you just a sports snob?
Why? I’m pretty sure either school admits students who are more than a year out of high school.
Yesyesyesyesyes me too plus a million. In other words, I agree with this post.
I meant for this year. To a lot of 18 year old kids, taking a year off before college is a Fate Worse Than Death. Plus, we don’t actually know if she’d get in. The OP suggests she’s a straight-A student, but that won’t get you into Harvard (or Duke) with an 1100 SAT.
Don’t assume that a state school will leave her with less out-of-pocket expenses just because tuition is lower. Private schools have their own endowment money, and can do whatever they want with it. Got me a full tuition scholarship to NYU; I did have to take out some loans, too, for room and board, but the out-of-pocket cost to me and my family was the same as it would have been at an in-state public university.
Well, I can cook.
I graduated from high school in the very early 1980s.
So far as I can tell, the major scholarship I won still exists, and provides roughly the same percentage of coverage.
So while I allow the possibility that you raise, it would not be my default assumption.
The OP says “A student,” which may not be “straight A student,” and does not mention any SAT or ACT scores, or indeed her score on the PSAT, which was how I got to be a National Merit Finalist, which got me a one-time cash scholarship plus a four-year deal from my college.
I also saved by AP testing out of a bunch of freshman classes: a 4 on the AP American History exam (taken as a HS sophomore) and 5’s on physics B, calculus BC, chemistry, Spanish, and English comp and literature, together probably saved me close to a year’s tuition.
I pit parents who expect me to pay for their kids’ tuition. OP, how about you teach your daughter to pull herself up by her bootstraps, join the service, and go to college for free. Or work nights to pay for her school. Or she could postpone college for a few years while she saves up for it (apparently something you failed to do). There are tons of ways around this problem and you’re whining that none of them are easy.
Your entitled tears taste delicious to this conservative.
I don’t know about the general case, but in the specific case of my alma mater (Penn State)…
For the earliest historical data they provide, in 1991, it was $2,106 per semester.
When I started in 1997, it was $2,816 per semester for in-state students. That’s not a terrible rate of increase–around 5% per year since 1991.
When I graduated in 2003, it was already $4,207 per semester. That’s closer to a 7% increase per year since 1997.
For someone entering school now, it’s $7,206 per semester. Around 8% per year since 2003.
Not only are costs rising faster than inflation, but they’re accelerating. Especially for the kids who DON’T get scholarships.
I myself was lucky in that I walked off with about 40% of ALL locally offered competitive scholarships from my high school, plus a massive (that is, covered more than 50% of costs) academic scholarship. Those scholarship awards that enabled me to get a free ride now would cover less than half of tuition.
The higher education landscape is changing a lot. And not in the direction of “more access to education”.
I have a solid quarter million is student loans. Worth it.
Why? I, and all the other American taxpayers, paid for yours.
Finding finacial aid has been one of the most frustrating things I have ever had to do. Of the scholarships she did get, they have all kinds of rules attached to them. She has to attend a 4 year institution; if she goes to a community college she will lose that funding. Another stipulates that she has to initiate her college education the academic year immediately following her HS graduation, or lose that funding. While in HS she took a bunch of AP classes and took community college classes in the evening and during the summer. She is ready to enter a university as a mere 8 credits shy of being a junior.
As for saving money…its a beautiful theory. My husband works full time for the USGovernment. We have barely been able to make ends meet. When I applied for WIC when my second child was born, we were a mere $8.00 over the yearly income limit. Same for Head Start. Everything we tried to save had to be thrown at crisis management.
Of course we could take out student loans, but the forcast for the next big financial bubble to burst is college student loans. Will it be worth it to start a life $40,000 in debt? In this economy?
We heard that Sonoma State plans on not admitting a freshman class for the 2012-2013 school year. Other universities in Ca. are making similar choices. California had a CalGrant program that was supposed cover a third of her expenses, an all that funding up and disappeared. Nobody in her AP classes who applied got money.
Oh, I don’t remember her ACT or SAT scores, but she was in the top 25 percentile.
She really really was looking forward to studying biomedical engineering. Oh well, Denny’s needs another good waitress.
She can do both. You guys are going to have to get creative. Maybe a combo of loans and a job? Part time school and work can be done easily.
“This economy” won’t exist in four years. Granted, the new one might be worse, but if she doesn’t want to be a waitress and she’s as smart as you say she is, then yes, that debt will be worth it.
I went to an expensive private school… but EVERYBODY had merit scholarships. Nobody paid the full ticket price. Has she applied to lots of places, including little private schools? (I went to Agnes Scott, which is a tiny women’s college.)
Sure, but what if she’s not tiny?