My youngest child has just been accepted to college. It was both his first-choice school and one that my husband and I agreed was worth the price. With three kids, we treated college as a purchase no different from buying any other item or service, like a home or a car. We wanted to make sure that college was paid for but didn’t want to waste our money. Figuring out how to do that wasn’t easy. Here’s how we did it with Kid No. 1.
Determining a School’s Value
For our first child, who started college in 2007, we asked the question “Does every school costing ‘x’ have the same value?” Without naming specific institutions, we didn’t think that two nonprofit private institutions with the same price tag were necessarily of equal value. We didn’t even know how to define value; is it equity in the name, graduation rate, job opportunities, dropout rate? More importantly, should we give him carte blanche to apply wherever he wanted to?
After three kids, I think I have heard every reason under the sun for why schools do and don’t appeal to kids, including “The buildings are red brick and I like red brick,” “The school is on a hill and I don’t like hills,” “The buildings are old/new/tall/squat” and “The tour guide had red/purple/curly/short hair.”
Our oldest had a general idea of what he wanted to study in college, which made some of the discussions about where to apply a little easier. However, in the infinite wisdom of an 18-year-old, he decided that he didn’t want to apply to any of the public universities in our state, Pennsylvania, which is a big place—at least a six-hour drive from east to west.
Public School vs. Private
In the end, after much discussion, we all agreed that he could apply wherever he wanted, public or private, but that he had to include the two major public universities in our state. Then we gave him a list of 12 schools that we thought were worth the price tag. If he applied and was accepted to any of the schools on the list, we would pay in full. If he applied and was accepted to a school that was not on the list and wanted to go there, he would have to come up with a convincing presentation as to why he thought a degree from the school was just as valuable as the schools on our list.
As it turns out, he ended up attending one of our state’s public universities (from the list), from which he has graduated and is gainfully employed in New York City. I still wonder what that presentation might have looked like.
