DIII and Financial Aid - what's your experience?

[vicimus]

Check out how many administrators the schools have and what they are being paid.....

Exactly. I remember reading that SEVERAL UMD & UMBC administrators were making more than $300K/year and some more than $400K/year and that doesn't include all the perks. #TaxDollars

 

[_MIA_]

Exactly. I remember reading that SEVERAL UMD & UMBC administrators were making more than $300K/year and some more than $400K/year and that doesn't include all the perks. #TaxDollars

In academia you learn early that if you want to make real money you learn to the play the game..which is basically suck up to the person ahead of you in the pecking order so that when they move up the financial ladder you move up too. Unfortunately sucking up to people isn't one my stronger attributes which is one of the main reasons I still make less than 100K after being here for 15 years

 

[vicimus]

In academia you learn early that if you want to make real money you learn to the play the game..which is basically suck up to the person ahead of you in the pecking order so that when they move up the financial ladder you move up to. Unfortunately sucking up to people isn't one my stronger attributes whjch is one of the main reasons I still make less than 100K after being here for 15 years

Well, if it's any consolation, it's not just in academia. ;-)

That said, my solution for *not sucking up* but making the bucks was to become self-employed and work 70+ hours per week. YMMV ;-)

Once again, to each their own!

 

[Strike2]

Same. We asked for a discount and was told no. It was the same at the 3 NESCAC schools we turned down. Ivies were similar. The schools seem very focused on needs-based admission, merit hardly exists.

In our case 529 and grandparents will help, but $80k for one year is mind-blowing. With travel costs it could reach $90-100k.

I graduated from a highly selective private college 30 years ago and it was $12k all in.
$100k/year today is 16% CAGR vs $12k/year 30 years ago. Inflation over that period has been ~1% per year.

WTF?

I also graduated from a highly selective private university...a bit more than 30 years ago. It was ~$15K a year then, and there's no way I would have been able to go there without a pretty big scholarship. It's a nice looking piece of paper, but I'd have done just as well afterwards had I gone to a decent state school that admits most applicants.

You just don't have to spend that kind of money to get a good outcome. My wife went to a state university that cost much, much less than where I went...guess who ended up earning more? My kids go to schools that are well regarded for their field of study. Thanks to their very strong academic records, with university, athletic, and private scholarships, it's costing me very little. After interviewing with several companies that we've all heard of, my older DD accepted an internship offer for next summer that will pay her ~$70K in annualized salary and benefits.

If you're trying to buy the fancy car that enough people want for whatever reason, you won't find much of a deal. However, all cars end up in the same place eventually. The same is kind of true of kids and colleges. What kids study and how well they do is, to a large extent, more important than where. There are many good schools that cost less than half of that, even at full retail cost. Find 2-3 that fit AND want your kid, and work off that basis.

 

[_MIA_]

Well, if it's any consolation, it's not just in academia. ;-)

That said, my solution for *not sucking up* but making the bucks was to become self-employed and work 70+ hours per week. YMMV ;-)

Once again, to each their own!

I worked 90+ hours a week when I was going for tenure. Right now I value the freedom I have in academia to come and go as I please during the day for the most part. It is great for my kids and is a tradeoff for making less money.

 

[_MIA_]

I also graduated from a highly selective private university...a bit more than 30 years ago. It was ~$15K a year then, and there's no way I would have been able to go there without a pretty big scholarship. It's a nice looking piece of paper, but I'd have done just as well afterwards had I gone to a decent state school that admits most applicants.

I graduated from a private school over 20 years ago that was about 30K per year and ended up with about 20K in loans which I paid off shortly after I finished graduate school. Personally I doubt I would have gotten into the graduate school that I did if I hadn't gone there and I would have not likely gotten an academic position had I not gone to the quality of graduate school I did where the quality of my PhD advisor helped me get a good post-doc position. That said, academic positions are different than most other positions. I agree with you for the most part though, how well you do in school is the most important thing for most people.

 

[FP_Catcher_Dad]

I also graduated from a highly selective private university...a bit more than 30 years ago. It was ~$15K a year then, and there's no way I would have been able to go there without a pretty big scholarship. It's a nice looking piece of paper, but I'd have done just as well afterwards had I gone to a decent state school that admits most applicants.

You just don't have to spend that kind of money to get a good outcome. My wife went to a state university that cost much, much less than where I went...guess who ended up earning more? My kids go to schools that are well regarded for their field of study. Thanks to their very strong academic records, with university, athletic, and private scholarships, it's costing me very little. After interviewing with several companies that we've all heard of, my older DD accepted an internship offer for next summer that will pay her ~$70K in annualized salary and benefits.

If you're trying to buy the fancy car that enough people want for whatever reason, you won't find much of a deal. However, all cars end up in the same place eventually. The same is kind of true of kids and colleges. What kids study and how well they do is, to a large extent, more important than where. There are many good schools that cost less than half of that, even at full retail cost. Find 2-3 that fit AND want your kid, and work off that basis.

I studied at the University of Puerto Rico... got my mechanical engineering degree (it is a 5 year degree)... I cost my parents less than $5,000 to send me there ($15-25 per credit/hour). That was in 1986-1991. The University of Puerto Rico is not even ranked, or maybe it is, but if it was, very low ranked. Got my masters from the same school, paid for by my employer...

Today, I’m the head of engineering at a multi-national company, and I have hired and managed people, my age, who graduated from MIT and other “top” universities in the country.

We always told our DD that is really the student who makes the experience worthwhile, no matter where you go to school, not the other way around.

When I’m hiring people, the last thing I looked for is where they went to school... many other factors are more important.

My DD wants to be a doctor, and we tell her... “When I go to the doctor, I don’t ask where they went to school”....or...”if you didn’t graduate from an elite school, I’m going to see another doctor”...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Strike2]

Obviously, every school is different but many of the elite schools had already gone *test-optional* prior to COVID-19 and many of the *elite-elite* want to see a more *well-rounded* applicant; e.g. MIT usually gets $20K+ applicant per year and only accepts ~1,400 with an *average* SAT score of 1550 so obviously they are looking for MUCH more than the SAT/ACT score which is what the MIT interviewer told my DD when she interviewed her.

As far as enrollments being down this year, that has NOT been our experience; MIT early access/decision applications were actually up 63% (~15K+) and UGA got 20K+ early access/decision applications which were the 2 deferred decisions my DD received.

MIT and similar schools have enough of a name to be able to demand that level of test performance, and people will turn themselves inside-out to go there. Generally speaking, I'd rather open a vein than send my kid to a school in the Northeast, but MIT would probably have been an exception. There are thousands of schools, and many will not survive the next decade because of a significant decline in the number of HS graduates. This was predicted before Covid. Most of those that do survive will need to become more customer oriented and competitive. My personal experience says this is already happening.

 

[vicimus]

I also graduated from a highly selective private university...a bit more than 30 years ago. It was ~$15K a year then, and there's no way I would have been able to go there without a pretty big scholarship. It's a nice looking piece of paper, but I'd have done just as well afterwards had I gone to a decent state school that admits most applicants.

You just don't have to spend that kind of money to get a good outcome. My wife went to a state university that cost much, much less than where I went...guess who ended up earning more? My kids go to schools that are well regarded for their field of study. Thanks to their very strong academic records, with university, athletic, and private scholarships, it's costing me very little. After interviewing with several companies that we've all heard of, my older DD accepted an internship offer for next summer that will pay her ~$70K in annualized salary and benefits.

If you're trying to buy the fancy car that enough people want for whatever reason, you won't find much of a deal. However, all cars end up in the same place eventually. The same is kind of true of kids and colleges. What kids study and how well they do is, to a large extent, more important than where. There are many good schools that cost less than half of that, even at full retail cost. Find 2-3 that fit AND want your kid, and work off that basis.

Well said!

I'm a first-generation college graduate from either side of DD's family. When I started at Loyola College (now Loyola University of Maryland) in 1986 on a combination of *needs-based* and *partial* Presidential Scholarship (merit-based) tuition was $6,500 per year and I was a commuter who worked two jobs 20-30 hours per week; by the time I graduated in 1990, tuition was already $10,600. Now, tuition is ~$51K and room and board is another ~$15K! Even though they don't have a softball team (DI lacrosse, soccer, basketball, swimming only), DD applied and was accepted and offered a Presidential Scholarship and a legacy scholarship all totaling ~$30K.

Although I got a great *well-rounded* Jesuit computer science degree from Loyola, quite frankly DD would be going to UMD for ~$25K in-state tuition, + room and board esp. since UMD is ranked ~15 for top computer science schools in the country (world?); i.e. it's the better *debt-free* value for the same starting salary. ;-)

 

[_MIA_]

Generally speaking, I'd rather open a vein than send my kid to a school in the Northeast

Yeah well I would have said the same thing about living in Oklahoma but here I am..