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Yeah I have news for the author. State schools don't have money and private schools do. If you/your family don't actually have enough money to pay for your co
by tsally 18y ago
Yeah I have news for the author. State schools don't have money and private schools do. If you/your family don't actually have enough money to pay for your college education, you'll get financial aid from the private school but you'll have to pay full tuition at a state school. The schools who he was throwing around (Brown, Stanford) all guarantee 100% need based financial aid. And if you are a genius like the author suggests, you're sure to get some merit based financial aid as well.
Personal anecdote: If I had decided to attend University of Chicago instead of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I would have paid $15k less per year. Urbana's tuition is ~$25k per year and Chicago's is $50k. Of course, since I wanted to study Computer Science the choice was obvious, but if money had been the issue I would have gone to Chicago. If money is a _serious_ concern, you _will_ get financial aid from a top private school.
If you do have enough money, the monetary aspects of your college choice become a question of value, not necessity. The author should have framed his article in that sense. There's good advice in this article, but none of it applies to people who are contained by money. Rather, it should have been written for the people who want to get the most of their money.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- kragen 18y agoYour math is a little beyond my level: If I had decided to attend University of Chicago instead of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I would have paid $15k less per year. Urbana's tuition is ~$25k per year and Chicago's is $50k. So you paid ~$25k per year, and if you had gone to UC you would have paid $50k per year? How is that $15k per year less?
- bd 18y agoProbably he meant he could get much higher financial aid at UC (thus illustrating that expensive private schools can be actually cheaper). For example: UC: $50K tuition - $40K aid => $10K total cost UIUC: $25K tuition - $0K aid => $25K total cost
- sethg 18y agoI don't think this is necessarily the case, because second-tier schools may have more money to spend on merit-based scholarships. When I was an undergrad (1986-1991), MIT and the Ivies had an agreement that they would only offer scholarships on the basis of financial need, because they didn't want to get into an "arms race" offering scholarships to poach one another's best applicants. This deal was the subject of an antitrust lawsuit and while I know MIT settled the suit, I don't know if the policy stands today. So if you're smart enough to get merit-based scholarships from a second-tier school, and if your definition of "financial need" is not as Spartan as the student financial aid office's definition, then you may still come out ahead by going to a second-tier school.
- latortuga 18y agoI actually got a ton of money from a state school while private schools universally denied me any aid. Being a white middle class male kind of hurts from that perspective.
- pavel_lishin 18y agoYes, we are a perennially screwed socio-economic subset in that regard.
- smokey_the_bear 18y agoI went to Iowa State University. The tuition was 1300 a semester when I started, and 1800 when I left. All national merit scholars get a full ride, including room and board. And the engineering college had plenty of scholarships for women. It was a great deal.