This topic is very close to my heart as a parent of a student currently attending as a Freshman in an Ivy paying full price. She turned down UCLA with Regents Scholarship, UC Berkeley and USC with Presidential Scholarship (1/2 tuition).
It was a hard decision for us, considering the cost differences. For the record, I am not in the camp of “Ivy or bust”. Heck, me and my wife have BS degrees from a third world country and we are doing just fine. Fine enough that the Ivies considered our income high enough that we don’t need any kind of Financial aid. But we also can’t deny that having an Ivy education has a “special” pedigree.
To be clear, we are sending her to an Ivy knowing that it won’t affect our retirement contributions and with very minimal student loan. We asked her to have some loan to make sure that she’s also vested on her education. It is/wasn’t easy, believe me, but we were saving since she was born so it’s not like the whole 60K per year is coming from our current income.
I didn’t read the whole thread but just want to clear out some incorrect assumptions that I noticed.
1. Somebody mentioned that the cost of attendance (COA) for a UC is about 14K and 60K for an Ivy. 14K, is just the tuition for a UC. Total COA for UC is about 35K. So approximately, the total COA difference for four years between UC and the Ivies is about 110K to 120K, depending on the school. That 120K is probably the difference of the cost of living in Scrrips Ranch vice living in Escondido. Or maybe by not driving a Range Rover/Porsche but just having a Honda Civic or a Kia. Maybe not going to Europe for vacation but instead just driving to Arizona or Las Vegas. Or maybe not paying for an expensive extra curricular (i.e. soccer, baseball, etc.). Or maybe a combination of these things and other. But who am I to judge? And I don’t. Different people put values on different things.
2. Somebody mentioned scholarships. The Ivies don’t give merit/academic scholarship or athletic scholarship. They give “grants” and “scholarships” based on needs (income/assets). There are colleges that are just below the Ivies that gives out academic scholarship (USC is one, which my daughter got). But those are very competitive, probably more competitive than getting to an Ivy. There are outside scholarships, but getting close to 60K for an outside scholarship is close to impossible, specially for an upper middle class.
