When our kids were in high school the guidance counselor recommended one of them go to Rutgers in NJ - altho we lived in PA. She said his aptitude was for astronomy (which he was interested in, but so what?) and they had a good program at Rutgers. There was the usual blah, blah financial aid,blah blah... The gap between the financial aid and the tuition would have been insurmountable for us.
We had very low income at the time and my other son was already going to a Penn State satellite campus and living at home for the first two years before moving to the main campus to finish. So that is where my younger son went also. Both worked summers and at times during the school year.
Both kids (now in their late 40’s) got their BS’s and the younger one went on to become a PLS and PE, currently employed by the federal government in mapping. The other has his Ph. D in Engineering Mechanics and is a researcher at Penn State.
While they were eligibile at least one year for Pell Grants, the grants were not funded. They did get financial aid from PA.
They got out of school with minimal student loans. One with $5K and the other with $8K which they paid off.
I do think that responsible colleges and universities should do a much better job of educating parents and kids on costs. I think guidance counselors are probably worthless.
Very good point. Our son's guidance counselors pushed ivy league schools and expensive private schools during all their parent information sessions. They encouraged people to apply to unaffordable schools and told us that there was lots of scholarship and financial aid money out there. They were completely wrong. Our son is an excellent student, but there was very little offered anywhere because he was just a white boy with parents who had saved some money and still had an income. He is at Penn State, and we're paying for it all. His education is excellent, and we hope that if things go reasonably well, we can get him through his bachelor's without debt. His brother is two years behind him, and although he's going to apply to a more expensive private school, he expects he will probably stay in state and join his brother. PSU is hardly inexpensive, but it's far less than most of the private schools being pushed by our guidance department. When families take on too much debt, the guidance department doesn't feel the pain, but they sure look good when they can say that the school has sent kids to prestigious universities.