A friend’s daughter was just admitted to her first choice -Northeastern. My friend was joyous, but said that her daughter was initially upset. The daughter was admitted, but was told that she was enrolled in the Freshman Abroad semester. Some students are chosen to attend the school’s international program for their first semester. There is no box to check off during the admissions process that indicates whether they want to spend their first semester abroad or not. The school makes the determination of which students will study on campus and which ones must study overseas.
The students who are chosen for this program must attend their first semester abroad. If they decline, then their acceptance to the school is rescinded.
What’s up with that? What if the student’s family can’t afford to send their child abroad on top of the $40,000 tuition fee?
Apt. 11d 
That’s a theme in “Getting In” a novel about college admissions by Karen Stabiner, in which the main characters daughter gets a provisional acceptance (in her case, I can’t remember whether it was a study abroad or a deferred acceptance for the second semester). Colleges do it to manage yield. I class this as “unfair’ in the same sense as admissions with insufficient aid. I think schools should state that they do no meet full need, or what they mean by meeting full need, that they accept with deferred admissions or with semesters abroad and that students/families should know those possibilities when they apply.
It’s unfair in the sense that it’s part of the sales game (i.e. we have the car you want, but when you arrive, it’s the wrong color). At least they tell you before you sign the checks and arrive on campus
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Laura, did you look at Northeastern’s website before you posted about this? I just spent about three minutes on it and this program is clearly described in their admissions website, including why students might be accepted to this program and what it means, as well as relevant financial aid information. If that’s her first choice school, she should have known that was a possibility.
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This is awful, sounds like a purely profit-motivated scheme – they must pay the full tuition with no loans b/c it doesn’t count as being full time. “Because The N.U.in Program is a pre-matriculation program, only need-based Northeastern grants can be applied to the fall N.U.in semester. All other federal loans, grants, and work study funds can be applied to future semesters, beginning in the spring.” shame, shame Northeastern.
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They’re up front about it. It is for students who wouldn’t have otherwise been admitted, but whose tuition dollars are too good to pass up.
Really, she probably shouldn’t do it, but should go to a school that admitted her without strings.
Of course, I’m not all that impressed with Northeastern or it’s NYC cousin, NYU. They charge ivy prices without the ivy education or financial aid, and are really for kids who want to swan around Boston or New York for four years without working too hard. But if you can’t even swan because you have been packed off abroad, what’s the point?
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I agree that while this sucks for her, it’s not really unfair. It is basically a soft way of declining her, with the softness coming only because her family has the ability to pay. She should take this as a very clear sign not to attend this school and I hope her parents strongly advise her as such.
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I look at posts like this and just shake my head and laugh, the same way I did when I got the first of many of my daughter’s medical bills ($750,000.00). It’s like—-who do they think they’re getting this from? Because it ain’t me, babe. Forty-fucking-grand? That’s not possible.
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although a near million dollar medical bill is something to personally laugh at, I’d say it’s not quite comparable, since the million dollar medicine presumably paid for something in your daughter’s life. It’s hard to imagine how this 20K trip to Europe is going to result in a meaningful benefit.
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Irrelevant aside re medical bills. My then-17-year-old sister was in a very bad car accident in 1993 and needed lots of endovascular surgery to fix damage. In 1994 her doctor started calling her the million-dollar patient because her surgeries and hospitalizations had cost that much. (My dad’s insurance covered it all, fwiw. He was a teacher in the state of NY.)
I’m just laughing at the thought of her being called the million-dollar patient today. Back then, it was such a huge amount of money. Now, not so much.
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Here’s an article on it from 2012:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-24/colleges-ship-freshmen-to-paris-to-boost-tuition-coffers.html
I don’t care how “upfront” they are about it, it’s greedy and disgusting and treats students with contempt.
If institutions want to admit students for midyear, admit students for midyear. Let them work or study elsewhere or make their own plans. But requiring them to go abroad, pay tuition, and forego financial aid, so they can start classes in January? How many times can I type disgusting into one post?
I hope your friend’s daughter tells admissions shove it.
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See http://www.northeastern.edu/nuin/faqs/ for more information on the cutely named N.U.in program.
See this, too, from Boston Magazine: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
There was a similar story about NYU’s resurrection from a dying commuter campus to what it is today as part of the obituary in the NYTimes of the president who started NYU on its path (who died last week). NYU has built a real reputation in some fields (for example Neuroscience), and I wouldn’t tell someone not to go there, if they can afford to pay.
Northeastern is supposed to have a co-op program that attracts people, but it’s hard for me to tell if that’s similar value.
Unless a family has money to burn, other options should be considered (and mind you, some do). One could consider this 1/2 year abroad as the equivalent of the old junior year abroad, and have fun up front. Looking at their language on the N.U.in page, though, I’d wonder if this is basically paying for another year of collage, in which case, one might be able to put that 40K to better use in the form of a gap year, even if one had money to burn, and then reapply to schools
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Really people have to stop having dream schools when paying for the privilege. It’s kind of like applying to buy a Gucci bag. If you have the money to spend (or they’re willing to give you one for free, if they admit you to the class of the bag), it’s one thing. But, if you think you are winning something by being admitted, when what you’re winning is the opportunity to pay a lot of money, you need to reconsider.
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Northeastern’s efforts to scam the college ratings have been fairly well-known in the industry for years. This is wholly unsurprising to me, at least.
If your friend’s daughter really wants a Northeastern degree (why? – there are a half-dozen better schools in Boston), they’d be better off enrolling at a US-based institution for a year like the local community college or another (relatively) low-cost institution, where they would get financial aid if necessary, and reapplying as a transfer student for next academic year.
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Colleges are much more generous with financial aid for freshmen than transfers. See: https://www.tgslc.org/pdf/Transfer-Students-Financial-Aid.pdf.
Some financial advisors recommend that bachelor’s degree-seeking
students start at a community college and transfer to a university
in order to keep college costs down. Unfortunately, as described in
this paper, transfer students borrow as often and as much as native
students by the end of their undergraduate career. Additionally,
according to a 2009 National Center for Education Statistics study,
only about one third of community college students who intend to
transfer to a university actually end up doing so within three years.
Encouraging the community college path to a bachelor’s degree may
end up creating a significant barrier for some students, but without
the benefit of lower debt for those who transfer successfully.
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When I wrote “unfair,” I didn’t mean it was unfair to this particular girl. I meant that it was an unfair in general. It was pretty obvious to me, even without reading these articles that this was a way for NE to squeeze some money out of rich folks. I’m sure that this program wasn’t even offered to kids on scholarships. Borderline rich students get in. Qualified poor students don’t. It’s not just NE that does this. State colleges are accepting out of state students with less than stellar transcripts to boost their coffers.
There have always been tricks to getting into schools that are somewhat out of your reach. I know people who went into the nursing or agricultural programs at Ivy League schools just so they could get their foot in the door. The nursing programs had less strigent standards. And then once they were in the school, they got decent grades, and transferred into the liberal arts college. There have always been tricks.
Now there are rich people tricks.
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There have always been rich people tricks.
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I’m not sure why she wants Northeastern so badly. I’m actually really surprised at the colleges that I keep hearing that local students are choosing. For some reason, they are really into the University of Delaware. I’m sure that Delaware is an okay school, but Rutgers and the SUNYs are more local and have better rankings. What’s going on with Delaware? Do they have really good marketing or something?
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I’ve noticed totally arbitrary trends in college hype among students, especially among those at high SES schools. Somebody will hear something, and all of a sudden, like Vine shorts, the college will become the in school.
There’s also a trend towards wanting to go “away” for college, and to go somewhere where other students from your neck of the woods won’t be going. Sometimes, with large schools, this is mostly a foolish concern, because it’s unlikely you’ll run into the 100 students from your high school at Ohio State, accidentally.
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Wanting to go “away” for college isn’t a recent trend. Thirty years ago you couldn’t have paid me to go along with half my graduating class to my own state university. The high cost of tuition these days and limited financial aid make it tough to go out of state for many people, but for those who can manage it I am very sympathetic to anyone who has the desire to break out. I’m glad I moved away because it opened up the world to me and I think it was a great choice. When I look at the people from my h.s. who stayed behind and went to State U–ugh, glad I got out and kept going.
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I also went away, but would have been willing to go to my local state college without worries. And, the girls who did make that decision from my HS, for financial reasons, are, as examples, both now living in CA, far away from our home state; one is an MD/prof at Stanford the other an attorney with a non-profit. Both went away for professional schools, for which they believed they’d get value for their money.
So, I don’t think going away for UG is necessary to broaden horizons (though finding the opportunities in the big State U is, they are there).
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My friend’s sister (white Jewish Long Islander) went to SUNY Albany, lived in the international dorm, met a Swedish guy, married him and moved to Sweden. 🙂
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I realize students can find educational opportunities at their State U. When I talk about getting away and breaking out, I’m not talking about being a doctor or lawyer in another state, as in bj’s example. I think some young people have a sense that they need something completely different without even knowing what or why, and going away for college is the first necessary step. I’m just glad I realized at 18 that I needed to get far away. Without a doubt, there are some kids who know what they’re doing and could manage it at their State U. Anyway, sorry, this is not relevant to the topic of Laura’s post, just couldn’t resist. (But maybe if that student just tries this overseas gig, she’ll discover it’s a more broadening option than the typical freshman-year-in-the-dorm experience she thinks she wants)
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I’m with you. I was asking my daughter’s 11th grade friend (very smart, especially in math; goes to district competitions in bassoon) what colleges she was thinking of, and she said Northeastern. I thought surely she could do much better. She did say that wherever she goes, she wants there to be a decent band program (extracurricular) because she does love playing.
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I need to speak up for Northeastern. We visited it this summer. It wasn’t my son’s cup of tea, but I can well see why its ratings have shot up. The curriculum is well thought-out, the co-op system is well respected locally, and unlike many other programs, it’s an integral part of the student’s experience. It can be great, especially for the kid who knows what he or she wants to do in life.
The dorms were better than most of the dorms we’ve seen on our tours. That makes sense, because the dorms are generally newer than the other dorms, as Northeastern was a commuter school until very recently. Thus, the dorms were built since 2000. The university now has a campus, close to BU, the hospital centers, and cultural fixtures such as the MFA.
Did you see the news this week about a Northeastern lab which has discovered new antibiotics? http://www.wsj.com/articles/scientists-discover-new-antibiotic-a-potential-weapon-against-a-range-of-diseases-1420654892 If your child wants to work with that scientist, he’ll have to go to Northeastern.
I know two families whose children have done the NUin program. One of the kids was likely on financial aid. Both families were impressed by their children’s growth overseas.
A pet peeve of mine, since we started the whole college search thing, has been the current rage for overseas programs. Many of our tour guides at most colleges seem to have gone overseas just to go to a foreign country, without even basic language skills for the country in question. It’s frivolous, unless there’s a real reason to go, and the curriculum is well thought out. If you’re a language major, a semester abroad makes sense. Otherwise… For the Northeastern kids, they are taking part in instruction set up by Northeastern. Most colleges have required courses. It makes sense to take courses you must take anyway, rather than, for example, sign up a kid who doesn’t speak French for academic courses taught in French at a French university.
One reason to do the program abroad at the start of college is that the Northeastern schedule isn’t like other colleges’ schedules, due to the co-op program. The students must take part in co-ops to graduate, but that means their schedule doesn’t necessarily sync with programs run by other academic institutions.
I would caution against assuming that colleges are the same as they were 30 years ago. Some of the mid-field colleges have been aggressive in courting students with academic talent by way of merit aid. Some have drawn up rational turnaround plans.
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On the other hand, it’s foolish to go to an undergraduate school to work with one particular professor.
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The students I know of who do Study Abroad have classes in English, often taught by our own professors. And we have specialized academic programs that make sense to do in other countries. For example, we have a quirky major that has a subfield that is really big in Germany. If you become an expert in that subfield, you will probably end up in Germany training with some of the best in that field. It makes sense to expose the students in that major to that study abroad program.
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Yes, like NYU, which is actually a better university than it was when it almost went into bankruptcy, But, I would find the NE program less sleazy if they specifically asked people if they wanted to be considered for that program, rather than selectively assigning a subgroup of students they don’t want to accept.
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My understanding was that University of Delaware had really good merit aid. In families where kids aren’t eligible for financial aid, there are whole lists of these schools and they lead to some interesting choices. University of Alabama and University of South Carolina are among these ‘hot’ schools for us Southerners. Guaranteed tuition waivers with a certain SAT and GPA.
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I am not a big fan of choosing a school based on dorms or frat life or distance from home. I like colleges with good academics, with responsive and well compensated faculty, and are affordable. I like colleges that boast being for smart kids who got into Ivy leagues schools, but couldn’t afford them. I like colleges that are small enough for the students to have a good relationship with individual faculty, but not so small that there aren’t enough opportunities to take a diversity of classes. I like colleges that are aimed at the undergraduate students, not graduate students.
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I’ve found that relationships with faculty don’t have to be a function of the size of the school — though this can depend on the student. I don’t prioritize undergraduate education, because with graduate students come research opportunities (at least in the sciences) and I don’t prioritize classroom instruction, since I think much learning occurs outside the classroom. So, dorms, might matter to me, if they provide an environment for intellectual discussions (which mine did).
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I would not say these are students “they don’t want.” They want the students, but they can’t house them on campus. I gather from searching the web that Northeastern is growing; there are mentions of plans to build more dorms. As it is, 98% of students are housed on campus. Dartmouth requires students to spend a summer on campus, to stretch housing.
If they allowed kids to opt-in to the program, the party set would take it over. (See “Paying for the Party” for more details.)
Their Common Data Set is interesting: http://www.northeastern.edu/oir/pdfs/CDS%202013-14.pdf.
On the scale of things, Northeastern is doing many things better than the competition. I like that the university offers students the option of applying early action as well as early decision and regular action. That’s really unusual. They are very generous with aid. They even give international students aid, which is unusual.
The college application process is complex and not fair. I would not leap to conclude that students placed in the program are weaker. For one thing, many public schools do not offer good college guidance. Our local public school asks families to fill out sheets to guide guidance counselors in writing recommendations. That’s a huge bonus handed to parents who’ve informed themselves of the process. It’s a huge disadvantage for anyone who doesn’t have the energy or interest to micro-manage their children’s lives.
Colleges do far crueler things. In my opinion, it is unfair to waitlist so many students. It’s particularly unfair to defer students from the early round whom the college knows they won’t admit. Cut them free.
Advertising to thousands of students who will never be accepted is also cruel (see: Harvard.)
Admit/deny is cruel too. That’s the process of gapping, whereby the student is admitted, but the school doesn’t award enough aid for the student to attend.
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The people who control the university are tenured faculty and administrators. No surprise, the admissions process mostly serves their interests. They have ended up gatekeepers for some of the nicest things American society has to offer, not unusual that they can extract money, deference, and jumping through hoops from their supplicants.
I do think the wheels are coming off, as people notice kids who have graduated from nice schools with $80000 in debt working at home depot under store managers who went to high school with them and then started work immediately. Suze Orman is no longer prancing around stages saying “College debt is GOOD debt!”
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Yes, I things are changing, but as with the commentary on the Cutting Adrift article and the response to inequality among the privileged (to make sure they preserve/get the privilege), the changes create incentives for schools like Northeastern to make it into the first tier before parents start deciding that the second tier isn’t worth paying for.
There’s going to be a hollowing out of the second tier of colleges, and the economically savvy schools like NE and NYU are trying to expand their brand before the winnowing.
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“The people who control the university are administrators.”
I fixed that for you.
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Tenure faculty do not control universities–administrators do.
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I’m pretty certain that the N.E.in students are weaker on paper, though as with any student the relative weakness on the application doesn’t have to be correlated with actual weakness.
And, my concern is that people be able to opt out, not necessary in. Opting in/out would allow people to consider the option when they apply, rather than when they get the surprise “CONGRATULATIONS” with the caveats. Perusing the forums makes it clear that confusion is a prevalent response to the conditional admission. The “pre-matriculation” program raises a host of concerns (financial, emotional, etc.) that should be considered when applying, not after.
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Weaker on paper also probably allowed these deferred admission schools to massage their SAT/ACT/GPA stats since these “pre-matriculation” students probably don’t count towards their reported SAT scores.
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There are a lot of games played. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-07-12/news/bs-md-spring-admissions-colleges-20140712_1_towson-university-more-college-freshmen-fall-semester
Freshmen admitted in the spring semester at UM have average SAT scores and high school GPAs that, while relatively high, are lower than the fall class, according to UM data.
For example, those offered spring admission had combined math and reading SAT scores that averaged about 100 points lower than those enrolled in the fall.
I’ll probably shock you when I say I don’t regard a difference of 100 points to be significant, in this era of super-scoring, or at least not sufficient to require a later start date. Some of those kids have scores at or above the average. Thirty years ago a relative took spring admission to Cornell. He ended up doing very well. Some of the spring admits fill in the spots left by students who fail, are expelled, or have health breakdowns of some sort.
There are a lot of games played. One game, allegedly, is enrolling students the summer before the start of freshman year in remedial programs, then not counting them as freshmen, rather as “continuing students.” Another is not counting recruited athletes toward the school average. Or then there’s always outright lying, as some colleges have admitted.
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I’ll probably shock you when I say I don’t regard a difference of 100 points to be significant
Between two students it is completely insignificant. Within a body of several hundred students, such a difference is huge.
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If they allowed kids to opt-in to the program, the party set would take it over.
Good. Clear out the dorms for the serious people and send the bottomless wallet party animals into exile. It’s a win-win.
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Why do you think the party set would take over? Some kids go to college knowing exactly what they want to do and might be able to identify an overseas option that is aligned with their interests right away (like my oldest) and other kids have no clue and need to spend some time at the school figuring out what they want to do before they choose an overseas program (like my youngest.) And other kids probably shouldn’t go overseas at all, because they can’t afford it or it doesn’t contribute to their major or they’d rather stay on campus and take different classes.
Yes, colleges do a lot of cruel, unnecessary shit, but that doesn’t justify one more.
This particular trick demands that the student spend more money right off the bat (I’m guessing $10k, based on the 2012 article) for a program that may or may not contribute to their education.
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Read _Paying for the Party_. Now, Northeastern is probably less likely to draw students from affluent backgrounds who want to party than the large state university in PftP. Why? Well, the co-op program requires students work during college. Northeastern also has a comparatively low rate of student participation in Greek life, around 8 – 12%. Nevertheless, if one could opt-in and -out, students would self-sort. There would also be friends who would request to room together, etc.
No one is required to enroll in college at all. It’s optional. Many colleges offer or require students to accept enrollment in the spring semester, or in later years. In my opinion, it is more fair to offer students the opportunity to start taking courses in the fall of freshman year, and thus graduate with the entering cohort, than to require that student to be at least 6 months behind peers. There are of course summer courses, through which a student could catch up, but those cost money.
If the student doesn’t want to participate, then that student should decline admission, and move on to his/her other acceptances.
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“Now, Northeastern is probably less likely to draw students from affluent backgrounds who want to party than the large state university in PftP.”
I haven’t read PftP, so maybe my comments won’t be applicable. But I have found that regardless of affluent backgrounds, you still see a bunch of students partying at second tier universities. A lot of times it’s because they don’t really know what else to do. They assume college is going to be like high school, and high school was full of parties. It’s their default comfort mechanism, so if they do go to another country for study abroad, they will sometimes think something like “Oh, away from home, away from dry dorms, lower drinking age. Woohoo! Party time!”
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Dave S., it’s far more complex. The largest change has been the withdrawal of sufficient public support for state universities by many states. http://infoproc.blogspot.in/2015/01/zero-sum-college-costs-and-public.html
However, coupled with that has been the growth of colleges, both public and private, using merit aid to secure students with high scores and/or the financial capacity to pay tuition. If your child makes National Merit, there are many colleges and universities which offer generous scholarships, up to grants covering everything including summer activities and a laptop. If your child doesn’t make National Merit, but has scores on the SAT/ACT at the top of the charts, he or she is eligible for many generous scholarships.
This has the effect of draining other state systems of high-scoring middle class students. The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about Maine’s university system. http://www.wsj.com/articles/maines-state-colleges-lose-ground-1420581218
Nationally, enrollment in public, four-year colleges rose more than 23% from 2004 to 2014. In Maine’s public institutions, enrollment fell 13.5%. The pool of local students is shrinking as pulp mills shutter across Maine. The state’s population aged 15-24 will decline 19.5% between 2010 and 2020, according to the university system’s projections.
Meanwhile, community colleges, local private schools and far-flung institutions are beckoning. Sixty-two percent of Maine’s 2013 high-school graduates enrolled in college. A relatively high 28% of them left the state for their postsecondary classes.
Where are they going? Most likely to public universities out of state which offer more: more scholarship money, more academic offerings, and a more able student body.
One of those states is likely to be Alabama. In K-12, Maine scores above the national average on NAEP. Alabama scores below average. (all figures from NCES.gov, state profiles) Maine scores about as far _above_ the national average as Alabama scores _below_ the national average.
And yet, the University of Alabama, much larger than the University of Maine, has higher test scores.
SAT, CR & M, 25th percentile – 75th percentile: Alabama: 990 – 1260 , Maine: 970 – 1200
ACT, composite, 25th percentile – 75th percentile: Alabama: 22 – 30, Maine: 21- 26
As the University of Alabama is three times as large as the University of Maine, that means there are many more students on campus who scored really well on achievement tests.
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Yes, the state funding here is, adjusted for inflation, at an all time low but people still assume their taxes are paying for an undergraduate education and not that their taxes are paying for an undergraduate education at 1990 prices.
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After a while, it starts to look like a deliberate plan.
Step 1: Cut funding
Step 2: Await tuition increase required by Step 1
Step 3: Denounce university for increasing tuition. For bonus points, point out that the university has increased spending on research to imply that the university could spend that money on teaching if it wanted to (in reality, the research funding is separate and it would be an actual crime to redirect it).
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Don’t worry! There are international students to make up the difference. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/07/u-illinois-growth-number-chinese-students-has-been-dramatic
That’s not an idle fact. UIUC enrolls nearly 5,000 students from China, more than any other U.S. university. Nationally, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has risen fivefold since 2000 – driven by a big increase in the number of Chinese students going overseas for their undergraduate degrees – but even against that backdrop of growth the expansion of the Chinese student population at Illinois’s public flagship university has been remarkable: a university that enrolled just 37 undergraduates from the People’s Republic in 2000 enrolls 2,898 today. Nearly a tenth of this fall’s freshman class – 684 students – hail from China. There are more freshmen from China than there are, combined, from 48 of the 50 states, all save for Illinois and California.
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Similar plan with right wing parties in power.
Step 1: Cut funding.
Step 2: Lambaste public institutions for not being able to continue to provide “X’ with “now x/2 funding. Claim it’s because of fat and inefficiencies.
Step 3: Privatise.
Step 4: Realize that the reason that public institutions aren’t run at a profit is that they can’t be run at a profit (i.e. social good).
Step 5: Programs cut even more by privatized entities.
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There are so many so-called back doors into college that I’m not certain what the front door is. Legacy admits; underrepresented minority admits; slots for athletes and possibly musicians; geographic admits; development admits (that is, the ones that not already legacies); vocational programs (nursing, engineering) with separate admission standards. Is there even a front door through which a majority of students matriculate and, if yes, why is that entrance entitled to more prestige than the others? Twenty-five years out of college, I put less and less stock year year in the SAT+GPA formula that I once thought was so worthwhile.
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I wouldn’t call nursing and engineering “back doors.” Maybe they were once? However, I have the impression that the desired programs can have much higher admission standards than the rest of the college. A few friends are overjoyed their daughters have been accepted to respected nursing programs. The admit rates are much lower than the admit rates for the host universities.
I would love to know the admit rates for Carnegie Mellon’s computer science college, and Johns Hopkins’ biomedical engineering program. I haven’t been able to find them online, and they don’t break it out. I suspect they’re much more competitive (even) than the rest of the admissions process.
Duke’s engineering program, for example, has a slightly higher admissions rate than the college of arts & sciences, but the admitted class of engineers has higher test scores than the rest of the university: http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/DukeClass2017Profile.pdf.
Of course, for engineers, there are apparently many very good, accredited programs in this country, many at more affordable public universities, so the competition between colleges for good young engineering candidates may be fiercer.
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Personally, I would prefer that all colleges offer need-blind admissions and meet all demonstrated financial need with grants, not loans. But that’s easy for Yale alumni to say. If you’re not Yale, then there are only two choices: (i) admissions that are not need-blind, in which case this Northeastern program doesn’t seem particularly execrable compared to other programs, or (ii) cutbacks in labs, libraries, faculty salaries etc. as necessary to keep tuition down to where need-blind admissions is feasible. Laura is welcome to go to the next APSA convention and try to sell her academic friends on the second alternative, but I doubt she’ll get much applause.
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It’s not just Yale, there’ a much longer list, including some schools that might fall into the less than highest reputation category (like Bowdoin, Claremont-McKenna, Colby, Davidson (I’ve never heard of Davidson, and don’t know where it is), . . . ). To some extent, it’s a choice, whether meeting financial need is what you are going to invest your resources in. Those schools are all LACs, though, not R1’s whose profs receive NIH grants, and which have professional schools. It’s possible that without Harvard/Yale style endowments and alumni giving, an R1-style university, with NIH grant funded professors and professional schools has to significantly manage tuition and marketing in ways that draw wealthy students to fill most of their seats.
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Davidson is in North Carolina. 🙂
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Colby is not need-blind. Bowdoin is. It isn’t a question of LACs versus universities (most of the professional schools are money-makers), it’s a question of relative wealth (Bowdoin is much richer than Colby) and priorities.
More generally, if someone is going to criticize Northeastern or other institutions that are covertly or overtly need-aware, he or she needs to propose an alternative course of action. The moon under water doesn’t count as a proposal, and neither does increasing the endowment, eliminating wasteful spending, or the like. A school like Colby would have to make real cutbacks to remain need-blind, and the administration didn’t want to. I doubt that the faculty did either.
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Interesting, actually, because the differentiation of what “meet full need” means in different places. There are schools like Northeastern & NYU that admit students but then don’t meet need, there are schools that reject students with need, so that they can meet full need to the ones they admit (looking at the numbers of low income students, I think Colby falls into this category). There are schools like Harvard that admit students without regard to need and guarantee full need.
My problem with NE & NYU is not the morality, but the value. I think that most people would be better off at less expensive schools, and that the marketing and baiting and switching these schools do diminishes their brand and that they are offering little of significantly more value than the cheaper state schools (though it’s difficult to know how long that will remain true).
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Bj, on your list, it’s interesting that Bowdoin is test-optional, Claremont-McKenna fudged its SAT numbers, and Colby is “test-flexible.”
The admission requirements students face today tilt the playing field to the favor of wealthy families. So while some colleges are need-blind, many of the spots go to the children of the wealthy. To develop sports talent to a level which would make a difference in admissions, you need to invest a lot of money and time. Musical talent is cultivated through lessons and juried competitions.
Value and excellence lie in the eye of the beholder.
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Yes, value and excellence is in the eye of the beholder, if you’re paying for it. My kids will have the flexibility to pay 200K for any college they want, if they chose to (on the whole). And, indeed, though I will counsel if they find themselves attracted to some schools that I don’t think provide value, I’d probably still let them go, because, ti’s a luxury they can afford to pay for.
But, when we are talking about government aid and government subsidies and government policies (and, I put debts that can’t be discharged because they are treated in special ways as government policy), the eyes of the beholder belongs to all of us.
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40k? OMG. Again, I am so glad to be in Canada and remind people that even with foreign student tuition (which I myself paid in grad school), Canadian universities are cheaper than these extortionate rates!
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“My problem with NE & NYU is not the morality, but the value. I think that most people would be better off at less expensive schools…” Yes. Sometimes you can get some nice merit or income scholarships at those schools. Sometimes those grants will mean a cheaper overall tuition than a good public college. But sometimes not. It may be worth going into debt for a Harvard or a Yale, because of the benefits in networking and prestige. It’s not worth going into debt for a college that is a couple of steps down the ladder.
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You didn’t say whether your friend’s daughter would be going into debt in order to attend Northeastern. As I understand, most of your neighbors are wealthy. If the choice is between spending the money on Northeastern, versus sending the child to SUNY and leaving her an extra $100,000 when she is age 50, I think the parents would be well-advised to spend the money now. No one will know, when she applies for a job (or even when she applies to grad school), that the child was slightly below the average for Northeastern admits.
Going into debt for a school at the Northeastern level would be more questionable, I agree.
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Yes, except that the student should also think hard about whether Northeastern is actually better than her SUNY (or Rutgers) for whatever she is looking for. And, whether a gap year would be a better option. And whether she will at least survive (and potentially enjoy) if not thrive in the 1/2 year abroad at the age of 18.
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And in a side note, Steve and I paid off our last student loan this weekend. When we got married, we owed a combined 70K+. Don’t do that, people!
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Yay to paying off your student loans. But, will have to note that a combined 70K is not too bad. The real craziness these days is people with combined 200K+ of debts.
I think bad policy mistakes were made in the compromises that resulted in debt-fueled financing of higher education (which include easy access to debt and unscrupulous marketing by schools, but also the diminishing of lower cost options and the belief that getting people into higher education seats would confer the benefits of a college education).
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Congrats on doing that without benefit of an inheritance (which is how we did it). I don’t think we actually would have done it without the inheritance.
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