Posted on 04/25/2008 6:31:00 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’m content with not having attended college. I’d probably be kicked out for my Conservative activism, and beating up guys that take advantage of drunk women anyway.
For law or business it might be worth going to the prestige school, because in those fields it’s who you know that counts.
For example, it was worth billions to Steve Ballmer to have been Bill Gates roommate at Harvard.
I’m not familiar with “Dave” but we encouraged our son to fast track it through college, and now grad school. He hasn’t paid a dime in tuition. Dual credit took care of his AA so he graduated high school and got his AA at the same time, state merit scholarship paid for the remaining of his BA credits, and grad school tuition is paid for by a Graduate Assistantship (which you can secure if you score high enough on the GMAT.) The undergrad degree was from a state U, the grad school is a private U. He’ll be 21 when he’s finished with his Master’s. Education can be achieved without going deeply into debt, and our advice was to get it and press through till you finish.
Life has a way of throwing up roadblocks, and it becomes much harder to go back and earn your degree or further your education once you have family responsibilities. Sure you may choose a profession where you don’t need one, but what if later on you find you do need a degree or a higher degree to “go” where you want to in your career. Been there done that, and we were glad to find that there were opportunities to be had which allowed one to pursue an education and not be saddled with debt when they finished.
Honestly, the kid should look into other opportunities, like a slightly less prestigious college, or if his family earns less than 100k per year, Stanford would be tuition-free for him. There’s also things like scholarships or the military - ROTC programs carry some of the best education benefits I’ve ever seen - and internship experience is really valuable as well.
But the vast majority of people who graduate from college won't start out with a six figure income, especially if they are not doctors. Saddling them with a six figure debt from the git-go is just asking for trouble. This kid should be so lucky that his parents would be willing to spend up to $50K for his education to begin with.
Finances aside, if your kid wants to attend an ‘elite’ college the application would be greatly strengthened with such as the ‘Founding President - Multiracial Atheist Transgendered Alien Marxist Parolee Immigrant Society’ (dba MATAMPIS).
I was just talking to my husband about this today and said the exact same thing. Employers don’t care what college you attended.
Now I have to explain that to my 17 year old who wants to go to Northwestern for 40K a year versus our state university for 14K.
My dad made it dead simple for me... I had to go to whatever school he chose to pay for. If I wanted something else, I would have to pay for it myself. However, he also made me understand that student loans were not a "free ride" like so many students seem to think they are.
Sounds a lot like Super High Intensity Training.
Oh yeah. That conversation is on the horizon, to be sure.
Good for you. I went college at night with a fulltime day job, so I missed all the frivolity. In the end, it was my enlisted service, not my degree, that really help me succeed.
Yep, we’re gonna bust our butts for scholarships & aid.
We’ll see where we end up. Her SATs placed her in the top 50,000 out of 1.5 million tested...so I figure she has a shot at some assistance. Plus, she’s hurling the softball at around 60 mph for her varsity team, which is currently 8th in the state.
Come on, scholarhips.
I did... Although I did take out loans to pay for graduate school, I owed a lot less than many of my peers and paid off my debt a lot sooner than most. Even when I paid down the debt it was a very minor expense most of the time and not really terribly stressful at all.
My dad is no longer with us, as his own life was cut short, but I try to thank him every day for doing everything he could to teach me so much.
For law I think undergraduate school is surprisingly unimportant, but law school prestige is critical for many jobs (and there’s a huge salary difference between the good law jobs, the mediocre law jobs, and the bad law jobs—though at bad schools students are lucky to get any jobs). The best bet for this may well be to get a cheap undergraduate degree, provided the education is decent, and then go to a good law school if possible given grades and test scores (and if it’s not possible, probably avoid law school at all).
At some schools, it's not just the education, it's the networking that is a goal. It doesn't matter where you go for many of the jobs out there today, but it is very difficult to penetrate certain circles of society unless you have the right connections. I can't see where transferring to a "pedigree" school would pay off just for the education unless there was a chance to build relationships with the other students.
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