kodokan

So much to learn when you move to a new educational system! I expect we'll pick it up over the next 4 years.

Sally Redux

It seems to come together in the end!

jackattack

It was 2 years ago. Modeled on Stanford. Undergraduate only.

I agree, it seemed ludicrously high. We didn't do anything different after the conversation so she didnt get any commission but it did plant a worrisome seed in my head to make sure we started some kind of savings for college.

Edit: I've just gone back and found the document and the total estimate was $990k but this covered THREE kids at Stanford over 12 years!!! Clearly as a mother of newborn twins, I missed rather a large detail. Annual tuition inflation was estimated at 2%. Base cost started at $58k and cost in 2037 (when the twins would graduate) estimated at $95k.

notonuksoil

The student guides who showed us around the colleges we visited recently gave us some great advise. They told my daughter to go in as "undecided" for her major.

The reason being was freshman got first option on the class placements if they were "undecided" at some colleges. They told her to try and fill her schedule with all the requirements that she needs for her major (that she does actually know what she wants to do) and that way she may be able to graduate early.

This wasn't the way all the colleges worked but was the case for at least 5 of the colleges we looked at. One girl who showed us around was graduating after 3 years by doing this, she also took a couple of extra classes over the summer between her sophomore and junior year.

Its a huge learning curve for us as parents as well as our kids trying to work out the most cost effective way of getting a good degree without going bankrupt or working till we are 80!

Michael

I'm not sure what they are trying to indicate.

Depending on the major, a child may be accepted into a college easier as "undecided" than as defining a major but the students that define their major, get first choice at the requisites for that major. Therefore if a child declares "undecided" but wants to be in the sciences, there may not be any space available in those classes and he/she may have to settle for an arts degree.

Students aren't very good at guides since they see things differently and may think that the important thing is to get accepted but then the real world strikes later.

notonuksoil

This wasn't the case at some of the colleges we looked at. The "undecideds" got the first choice.

Each establishment seems to have different ways of doing things and assigning classes so its a case of finding the best fit at a price we can afford.

Michael

I don't understand why that would be the case. When someone defines a major, they compete for space in classes and the administrators allow only so many students for that major since that is their available resources. Allowing the undecided to have first choice would upset schedules dramatically and not allow the school to graduate students that declared their major on schedule.

This is why UC Berkeley has a very low acceptance rate for certain majors since the demand for that major is so high.

notonuksoil

I've no idea why it worked that way either. We asked one person in the admissions office and his response was, they wanted to give the undecideds a bigger spectrum of classes earlier to try and help those students make an informed decision on their major.

Who knows?

As I said it wasn't the case in all we looked at but in at least 5 of the colleges out of the 15 or so we have now visited on the east coast.

Michael

Were they the big schools? If they are some of the lessor known schools, they may do it that way to try to fill the classes but if students have already decided on a specific major and the numbers exceed the resources for that major, then either there will be large classes or they won't allow some students to graduate on schedule. I don't see any other solution to the problem and having large classes may not be possible if labs are required (limited resources in the labs).

mmhendrie

that makes more sense *phew*. Looking at their website, their current annual tuition is around $43k for undergrad - scholarshare's calculator has that coming to around $400k for a 4yr tuition in 2037. The numbers are all pretty frightening I find - at the end of the day, none of us know what tuition will be in 15yrs, or whether our kids will even go to college. I think the key is, if you can put some money aside now, and build it into your monthly budget to keep putting some aside in a decent low-cost 529, that's not a bad plan.

notonuksoil

No, all small schools. She is only looking at schools with small classes between 20-30 students per class and with a total undergraduate body of less than 5000 students. All the colleges we looked at fitted this criteria and all had professors teaching classes no TA's

Michael

I took some community college evening programming classes in the 1980s and 1990s and they registered about 50 students for a classroom that could only hold about 25. Chairs were moved into the classroom and students were standing along the back wall but within a couple of weeks, it was down to a manageable 30 as students withdrew. By the end of the course, there were only 15 students remaining.

The only prerequisite for the class was "Basic" programming but someone that can program in "Basic" may not be able to program in the more complex languages.

In this case, I suspect the administrators knew that the class would be too complex for many students and suspected that many would withdraw and over registered for that reason.

In fact, one of the assignments was to write a program that solved quadratic equations. I hadn't studied or used quadratic equations for over 30 years so I had to go to the library to get a book to determine how they worked.

robin1234

And this begins to answer a question asked earlier in the thread, why are some colleges $65,000 a year and some $15,000 a year? The really expensive ones may include the prestigious (Harvard etc.) but are mostly smaller, maybe less well known institutions, liberal arts colleges that may only have 2,000 or 5,000 students, and no graduate programs. If they have a high faculty to student ratio, they'll be more expensive. Obviously, if no graduate programs, all teachers are faculty rather than TAs. Many liberal arts colleges have really excellent small departments with world class faculty. For instance the college I used to work at has a very prestigious physics department, with no more than 25 students, total, majoring in physics. Of the physics faculty, all are excellent teachers and several are world class in specialized fields, highly published etc. Any student who majors in physics has an opportunity to collaborate in research with one of these excellent scholars, and the results may end up being published in a prestigious journal. As you'd expect, many end up in good graduate programs if that is what they want. Economics, geology and biosciences are bigger depts but also with many really high powered and dedicated faculty.

That is probably the major reason people pay the big bucks to go to a small liberal arts college. I think the big research universities (Stanford, Harvard etc) are often more problematic for undergraduates because some students get lost in the shuffle and may never get to know professors.

kodokan

So think of them more as small exclusive private boarding schools for 18-22 year olds - academic finishing schools, if you like - where they'll get excellent teaching, lots of personal attention, a tight-knit social community, etc? That makes sense, and I can see how that would need to cost a lot more per head.

I suppose we'll treat in-state as a baseline, then just have to keep squirrelling money away as best we can, and see what the kids want to do in 4/ 8 years, and what acceptance/ financial offers they get at the time. A generous scholarship offer that puts a private college within $5k of in-state is a realistic stretch; paying rack rate isn't!

notonuksoil

This is exactly how we are looking at it.

We have visited a few of the smaller NY state colleges and she likes maybe one or two that we looked at. Shes not interested in the bigger ones even though she has friends at Binghamton who have told her its a great school and they too were looking for a small school feel.