HartleyHare

Or, of course, they could also decide to become a stay at home parent for 10+ years and never return to full time work. The 30 year clock will still be ticking down.

robin1234

Both mine also got federal subsidised Stafford Loans. Then both worked for a year or two for Americorps, which, in addition to lengthening the period off subsidised interest, paid off a certain amount of the loan. I think $6000 per year worked, maybe higher now..

lizzyq

Coming in this year on O-1/O-3 visas with the boys aged 16 & 14 we will be pushing it to get the green cards before the eldest starts university They will not be able to work to fund themselves (through no fault of their own) until we have GCs in hand, so the costs will fall on us at least to start with. Looks like one option will be for me to try to land a job at the local university as soon as GCs are in hand as employees (and their children & spouses) get a 75% tuition discount!

Michael

No but I worked with a guy who attended Stanford university and I asked him why he didn't attend UC Berkley instead since both are ranked in the top 10 schools in the US but Berkley is about 1/4th the cost. He said both of his parents were college professors and consider the school very important and wanted him to go to Stanford. That doesn't make any sense since Berkeley is ranked higher in engineering than Stanford and is probably easier to get a job in the Silicon Valley but I guess his parents wanted the status symbol of Stanford.

HartleyHare

Thanks. I've found it very informative reading about all the different options regarding both financing and opinions regarding who picks up the tab. I'm not sure if it was in this thread, but I saw Canada mentioned as a less expensive option too. It's certainly given me some food for thought.

NatashaB

A green card isn't necessarily how residency is defined. What do the college rules on in state/out of state/ international students say? If it's only a matter of a few months then maybe one option is to have him take CLEP/DSST tests to gain college credits (or maybe something like straighterline, if the college he plans on going to accepts it). Those are just a flat test fee and shouldn't be impacted by your non-resident status.

robin1234

My son applied to several schools in Canada. He really wanted to go to Queens, but was not offered a place. Their fees are similar to state school in the US, i.e. more moderate. I think most Canadian schools have a quite low quota for US students though, meaning even if academically qualified, a student may not get a place in a Canadian university.

kodokan

I'm assuming that if my son wants to do a very college/ education/ name brand dependent career, he'll also need to do graduate school. So far, the most bang for buck model appears to be:

- pick up as many almost-free credits through high school as possible, which also boosts his GPA/ class ranking;
- which should hopefully get him into our in-state uni honors college, where he can get an experience comparable to a small private college - small classes, individual lecturer relationships, effortless choice of course through first-pick registration, research opportunities, internship offers to beat off with a stick; but all for less than $1k a year tuition with the scholarship it'd attract; he won a place on a week's residential summer program there this year, where the college cherry-picks the smart kids for the future, so this is an achievable goal;
- then go to a brand name college for graduate studies, hopefully with some sort of bung (haven't looked into how this works at all yet) but if not, at least it's only 1-2 years!

He could do all that mostly within the $80-100k instate we have mentally set aside, and just have perhaps $10-20k to pitch in via loans or a part-time job (perhaps using that free time/ light undergrad schedule he gets as a result of already having a bunch of credits from high school).

See? Got it all planned how he can get a topnotch education at a bargain rate. Now watch the little wretch go to high school and bomb out!

lizzyq

They may count as in-state when it comes to it, but even so on the O-3 visa there is no EAD allowed, so no self-funding through a part time job. We will, of course, look into as many ways as possible to minimise the costs involved, including college credits while at HS if an option.

Michael

I thought I had it figured out for my son since initially he started at UC Santa Cruz and I expected he'd get his bachelors and masters degree there but during the third year I found out he was majoring in philosophy. I tried to talk him into getting a degree in something useful but he insisted that he had to get the philosophy degree first since if he got a useful degree, he'd probably not go back to college to get his philosophy degree. After he got that degree, he decided he wanted to go to the University of Minnesota since they had a very good architectural program but that meant out of state tuition but he agreed to work for a year in Minnesota before he would start school again to get in state tuition. Since few of subjects for the philosophy degree pertained to his architectural degree, he pretty much had to complete 4 years again to get his bachelors degree. Then he got his masters degree and finally found a good paying job.

Prerequisites for philosophy such as bonehead math and no physics requirements don't relate to an architectural degree.

kodokan

Yeah, 'cos that'd be the end of the world, wouldn't it

I'm not insisting that my kids study to become doctors and lawyers - I, after all, did what many consider a fluffy degree in Communications. But it'll be made clear to them that this is a one-shot deal: one undergraduate degree at our expense, to launch them into adulthood.

I don't think this is unreasonable at all. One of the things I like about the US system is the broad-based flexibility; that someone can be majoring in physics, but take a class in Ancient Greek or History of Fine Art; that a Business major can also indulge their passion in an obscure computer game coding language or Egyptology. It's not like the UK, where if you're doing Engineering, that's it - just courses on maths and materials and physics and so on. I can see there why someone might feel in deep conflict between what they 'should' be doing, and some stuff that they 'want' to do. Here, there seems to be scope for both.

I'd imagine, anyway, that Philosophy is better as a later-in-life degree, when you have more perspective and balance to bring to the class. I'm planning on doing some college classes for fun in a year or two, when my youngest doesn't need a school taxi and childcare, and will probably do quite a lot of 'what's the meaning of life?' stuff around philosophy, religion, cultural mores, take Spanish, some linguistics, etc etc, none of which is commercially useful but deeply interests me.

I'm a big fan of the early retirement movement that's all over the blogosphere, and shall certainly be exposing my kids to the life model of getting a cash cow degree in X, earning a whacking salary for 10-15 years whilst still continuing to live a modest lifestyle - deluxe student, if you like - then jacking it all in and indulging their true passions for the rest of their life. We came late to the party on this, being already in our 40s, but are planning to be done and dusted with work once our youngest is 18 and hubby is early 50s. So in our case, indulging the kids in more than one degree because 'I just want to find myself, explore options, travel, have long late night discussions with interesting people', would directly mean we couldn't do the same thing; they would be stealing years from us, swapping our frivolity for theirs.

Four funded years for them is perfectly fair, I think - after all, we could otherwise pay for no college, and hubby could retire before he hits 50; his final few years will be solely for the college fund. And I definitely believe that 4-year residential college is a much better life experience for them than effectively a further two years of high school at community college, living at home still, even though that is a great back-up option to exist and would be much cheaper.

But after that, we're paying for our own gap years and indulgent studies!

Michael

I suspect he got that from his mother. She got her GED after coming to the US and then when the kids were attending K-12, she got accepted at UC Davis and majored in foreign languages. Then when she got her degree, there wasn't much demand and decided to get teaching credentials but hated teaching so she became a real estate agent.

scrubbedexpat091

Depends what state your comparing Canada to, if comparing California for example, its cheaper to go college there starting the community college route then it is in Canada, tuition is not low here overall, gonna run you 20-25k for a general 4 year degree, more for a specialized degree.


If I ever have a kid, they will be on their own for any education beyond 12th grade, I have nothing for retirement as its a priority over anything else. Luckily we have no kids so its not a concern. My sisters kids are all on their own for school, but only 1 of her's is college material, the other 2 have developmental disabilities and may never leave home.

ottotheboar

The Service Academies are very competitive to get into but also free. The least well known is Kings Point where upon graduation the cadet can commission into any branch of the service.
The Coast Guard Academy does not require congressional nomination where the others do.

jackattack

We met with a financial advisor a few years back who did some projections for us. Our daughter was roughly 4 or 5 at the time and I seem to remember that the advisor estimated that by the time that she gets to college age, the estimated cost of (private) college for her would be around $1 million!!!

We then promptly went on to have twin boys so I'm having heart failure just thinking about how much we might need save in order to help them start out in the working world without a financial noose around their necks.

I graduated from the UK without any debt (was free to attend in the early '90s plus my parents paid small stipend for my living/beer). Hubby went to a US military academy so no fees and living stipend.

I set up 529 accounts for all three kids shortly after they were born and pay in monthly but they're on track to fall far short of $1m even with decent returns.