When does paying an extra $50,000 or $150,000 for one school over another make sense? For a smaller or larger size? For access to professors or guaranteed internships? For an alumni network that is quantifiably stronger than others? And in considering all these questions as parents, how do we reckon with the guilt, fear, aspiration and snobbery that inevitably invade our minds in the process? Once you have offers of admission and aid, you have to make a decision about value. Discounts are available, but the financial aid system that governs them works differently at different schools and can be wildly unpredictable. At many selective private colleges, students who began this past fall will pay $300,000. Sticker prices at flagship state universities can now top $125,000 for four years of tuition, room and board for state residents. In all my years of writing about money, I have come across no consumer decision that inspires more confusion and emotion than the question of what to pay for college.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |