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Over on the main brags page a discussion was started and I thought it would be good to move it away from the brags page.
Originally Posted by DrH
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
Two brags in one for May 1st (college choice deadline in the US)
DD was accepted to several universities including one out of state "DREAM SCHOOL" (think west coast ivy equivalent) and is choosing the solid, mid-tier, east coast state school that offered her a full out of state tuition merit scholarship. Super proud of her for earning a merit scholarship, even prouder of her for being mature enough to see that taking on over $200K in student loan debt would have a long term impact on her future choices.
So glad to have this forum where I can just say that she got a merit scholarship and got into DREAMY U without doing my "humble brag" routine.
Only hope she knows what she plans on doing in the future and is aware that even though her choice seems the most sensible that in some instances it actually isn't... but that all depends on what she plans on doing in the future. I recall a classmate in graduate school was interviewing for positions with a big management consulting firm and was told flat out that while her grades were great and her experience was good, that her undergrad was from Rutgers and that was the reason that they wouldn't be offering her a job... And that was even though she was coming out of a top 3 MBA program.
So remember that in some fields they are actually so shallow that they will look at where you went to school.
WARNING: Major Rant Ahead.
Well, yes. DD does think she knows what she wants to do and yes, she knows that not going to DREAMY U has impacts on future plans and yes, she knows that some people ( a lot of them maybe) in the field she wants to go into will judge her based on where she goes to school. However, this is undergrad.
I repeat: this is undergrad.
If DD were to attend undergrad at DREAMY U she would have to borrow 200K . I have a news flash: really they won't loan that much to young adults with no credit history who are under age. Really, her parents would have to borrow it and really, we won't. We won't take on that debt and we won't recommend that she do it either. Why?
First, there is no guarantee that we would qualify for loans the second year, or the third, or the fourth. Our debt to income ratio would get worse each year and we would never know whether we could qualify for all four years. This could mean that we would owe tons of money and she still would not have a degree from DREAMY U. Let's just not talk about how this would impact us--her parent's ability to borrow money to buy a house or a spot in a retirement community-- shall we?
Second: The payments on that debt would be over $2000 per month for ten years. Go look it up:
Third: All of her decisions about graduate school would have to allow for this. If she goes to professional school (medical or law), she could need to borrow another 200-300K. Just the principle debt, without interest, would then be 400-500K.
Fourth: This debt would impact her child bearing years. Women and their partners already have to juggle the competing needs of graduate school and early career with deciding when and if they want to have children. If DD is paying 2000-4000/month for her student loans, how will she pay for all the other living expenses for herself and any dependents?
DD may experience some bias in getting accepted into graduate programs, but we have to hope it would be rare to see HIRING bias based on non-ivy, non-Stanford, non-Berkeley undergraduate degree after she has her terminal degrees.
MBAs and other financial fields do seem to have significant biases in this regard. I'm sorry your friend experienced this and I hope they were able to find another position with a more open minded employer. Most people cannot attend the top 10-20 undergraduate schools and most fields do seem to be able to deal with this reality. Additionally, undergraduates from mid to upper level schools do get in to graduate programs and get good jobs.
Now note the almost complete lack of overlap between the lists.
My point is that what the best school would be is really field dependent.
Undergraduate debt is not a myth and it really can haunt people, DD's decision will allow her to graduate debt free from undergraduate and have a lot more freedom than many of her peers.
Still proud of DD. Still thinking she made a good, adult, well reasoned, decision.
Be proud of your DD. As a graduate of a Big 10 university who worked in small firms and later got my MBA from a top-tier (think top five) university, let me say it can work. I see it working for younger colleagues and the children of friends. So much has to do with one's experiences (academic, work, global, activities) and social skills. Not having the burden of debt opens up a whole world of possibilities. It likely will allow her to steer clear of more shallow employers and to take growth opportunities that others with debt will not take.
It likely will allow her to steer clear of more shallow employers
Consulting firms value degrees from the most prestigious schools. This may be in part due to shallowness or snobbery of the people working their who make hiring decisions. Another factor is that firms like McKinsey charge their clients a lot of money per consultant hour, even for consultants who just graduated and have no business experience. It may be easier for corporate clients to believe they are getting their money's worth when the 20-something consultants are from a "name" school. The shallowness of clients results in shallowness of consulting firm hiring practices.
I'd rather hire a 2400 SAT student from Rutgers than a 2100 SAT student from Princeton, but for some reason it is considered more gauche to ask about test scores than schools attended. The number of seats at the ten most prestigious schools is almost constant over time, whereas the U.S. population continues to grow, as does the population of foreign students that attend U.S. schools. Therefore the percentage of gifted students who are attending top 10 schools is declining, and employers should adapt to that.
As you know, our DD made a similar decision, cp-- forgoing the "Elite" school opportunities for the hometown option.
Still thinking she made a good, adult, well reasoned, decision.
I think so, too.
A free undergraduate education means that one is then free to actually explore (well, somewhat) and even to take some risks in terms of interests. Maybe you're free to follow your social justice leanings where they actually lead, rather than reassuring yourself that if you make enough to pay off your debt, you'll make good on all of that charitable inclination then.
Being a social worker or a teacher is NEVER going to come with the ability to pay off 200-300K in student debt. Not and live independently as an adult at the same time.
My own prediction is that employers are eventually going to get savvy to the reality, which is that the SMARTEST, and MOST MATURE students from middle class homes are opting out of crushing student debt-- it's not that they couldn't go to HYPS or other elite schools, but that they took a pragmatic look, took off the rose colored glasses, and decided NOT to do that.
Less pressure isn't an indicator that these students don't have the right stuff. In fact, maybe it's an indicator that they have MORE of it than those that buy what I like to think of as the hype of HYPS. (NO offense to alumni-- they are fine institutions, but there are many other fine institutions, too.)
It's not easy to swim upstream, however. Social pressure surrounding this circus is tremendous. We have felt a lot of it this past two years. NOBODY understood when DD simply opted "out" of continuing with her applications (about $1K worth) to those elite schools-- but there wasn't much point when she decided that following through wasn't something that was going to be kosher with her to begin with.
DD refused to even participate in the admissions frenzy, in other words. Oh, sure-- she was "in progress" initially at HMC, MIT, etc. But once she thought about it, she realized that by driving admission numbers, all of those places were intellectually being-- well-- they were part of the problem, and she wasn't going to help them with their strategy to look "exclusive" by even applying. Her odds of gaining admission were very good. But she knew that she wouldn't attend, and the entire industry-- as it is now, I mean-- disgusts her. She finds it morally offensive.
We talked to her about the choice she was making, but honestly-- this went against my daughter's core values, and we as parents could not-- and would not-- override that.
We're happy that she earned a scarce "full-ride" merit scholarship at her current institution, and hope that she can keep it. We're happy that she has found faculty and graduate students, and some junior/senior classmates to be interesting peers, and that she seems to be learning and growing as a person.
We're BEYOND pleased that she has lived at home this year, and not thousands of miles away, with the additional pressure of knowing how much we're spending or that her dad and I are having to live apart to make it possible.
Remember, our kids are all intelligent enough to realize what kind of hardship a 60K tuition bill is for most of the families on this board. That's an ENORMOUS amount of pressure to "be worth it."
My own prediction is that employers are eventually going to get savvy to the reality, which is that the SMARTEST, and MOST MATURE students from middle class homes are opting out of crushing student debt-- it's not that they couldn't go to HYPS or other elite schools, but that they took a pragmatic look, took off the rose colored glasses, and decided NOT to do that.
What employers are we talking about here?
Awesome employers want employees from awesome institutions. It's more about being awesome than anything else. Since there are only a certain number of awesome jobs available, this is not going to change.
Normal, non-awesome, employers who actually do things rather than simply shimmer with awesomeness and attract wealth generally want someone who can do the job.
It likely will allow her to steer clear of more shallow employers
Consulting firms value degrees from the most prestigious schools. This may be in part due to shallowness or snobbery of the people working their who make hiring decisions. Another factor is that firms like McKinsey charge their clients a lot of money per consultant hour, even for consultants who just graduated and have no business experience. It may be easier for corporate clients to believe they are getting their money's worth when the 20-something consultants are from a "name" school. The shallowness of clients results in shallowness of consulting firm hiring practices.
Yes, I am well aware of this -- having seen it at my grad school (which was visited by McKinsey, et al). I know (have just checked their site, to make sure memory wasn't fooling me) that they also recruit at some state schools that are considered a little more top-tier. However, I'm guessing (again, from memory of peer's experiences post-undergrad) that other firms, like Deloitte, hire from a broader range of schools. So a reasonable path for a very smart person who wanted to be a BCG/McKinsey/Bain consultant might be to go debt-free to a school that had good companies recruiting at it, have great experiences, get into a prestigious MBA program and then pursue those firms.
To sum it up, I've seen people get into those types of firms by paths other than attending a "prestige" undergraduate institution. I'm thinking of several right now.
My own prediction is that employers are eventually going to get savvy to the reality, which is that the SMARTEST, and MOST MATURE students from middle class homes are opting out of crushing student debt-- it's not that they couldn't go to HYPS or other elite schools, but that they took a pragmatic look, took off the rose colored glasses, and decided NOT to do that.
What employers are we talking about here?
Awesome employers want employees from awesome institutions. It's more about being awesome than anything else. Since there are only a certain number of awesome jobs available, this is not going to change.
Normal, non-awesome, employers who actually do things rather than simply shimmer with awesomeness and attract wealth generally want someone who can do the job.
Pretty sure that if you're awesome, being middle class doesn't really apply to you.
So I think that the awesome people don't need to think about this.
My own prediction is that employers are eventually going to get savvy to the reality, which is that the SMARTEST, and MOST MATURE students from middle class homes are opting out of crushing student debt-- it's not that they couldn't go to HYPS or other elite schools, but that they took a pragmatic look, took off the rose colored glasses, and decided NOT to do that.
What employers are we talking about here?
Awesome employers want employees from awesome institutions. It's more about being awesome than anything else. Since there are only a certain number of awesome jobs available, this is not going to change.
Normal, non-awesome, employers who actually do things rather than simply shimmer with awesomeness and attract wealth generally want someone who can do the job.
Pretty sure that if you're awesome, being middle class doesn't really apply to you.
So I think that the awesome people don't need to think about this.
Yes, but if you end up in the middle class, you are irrelevant to the smooth functioning of the global financial hypereconomy, and nobody wants to be irrelevant.
I think that the problem is that you can't be awesome without an awesome education, so you are faced with the choice of throwing yourself into the middle class, which guarantees total life failure, or taking on a massive amount of debt, which only carries an extremely high risk of total life failure.
It's kind of like being in a burning building. You either stay inside and definitely burn to death or jump out of the 10th floor window and only suffer a 95% chance of death.
[quote=JonLawI think that the problem is that you can't be awesome without an awesome education, so you are faced with the choice of throwing yourself into the middle class, which guarantees total life failure, or taking on a massive amount of debt, which only carries an extremely high risk of total life failure. [/quote]
Unless there is a third option... which doesn't involve so-called awesomeness at all.
