Let me clarify that this is my personal experience and in fact it might be something many families are going through all over the country, but I DID NOT go though this with Hunter and Jordan when we lived in Colorado, so for me it feels like a uniquely Eastern experience. My sister, Elizabeth, lives in Kansas. One day I was talking to her on the phone waxing on about finding the right school for Cameron and worrying about whether she would get in and if she did how we would afford the hefty, average annual cost of approx. $65,000. She stopped me mid rant and told me that I had obviously drunk the East Coast College Kool-Aid and that I needed a reality check. She assured me that Cam would get into any college she applied to, but that going to a an ivy league school or one with a similar price tag offered no certainty of future career success or personal happiness. I tried to explain that at her particular high school in New York City applying to private liberal arts schools was the norm and expected of someone like Cameron with excellent grades and academic drive.
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| Checking out Harvard |
We started "touring" colleges last April on Cameron's spring break. We looked at Bowdion College and Colby College in Maine, University of Boston, and Trinity College in Connecticut. All four schools were amazing with beautiful historic campuses that resembled Hogwarts and curriculum's that would make any academically drive student's mouth water. Cameron was ready to sign up to any and all of them, although Colby stuck out as the winner with it's majestic presence on Mayflower Hill. New to the college tour circuit we were eager hear all of the college admissions officers talk about their school's special features and winning student bodies. Financial aid was sort of put on the back end of the tour when a few parents dared to ask the admissions person about financial aid packages, but for the most part we were all starry eyed and figured the gory details of affording the school would come later. Why shouldn't a parent encourage their child to aim for the best education they could possibly obtain?
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| Feeling at home at Dickinson |
The problem with finding "it" at a selective, private, liberal arts college is that you don't just sign up and get in. Cameron is in a very competitive position with her grades and activity resume, but sometimes you just don't fit the slots they have open or sometimes the $$$$$ (or lack there of) gets in the way. Statistics tell us that a person with a bachelor's degree makes $1,000,000 over their lifetime more than a person without a degree, so with that in mind a student loan debt of $100,000 is only 10% of that additional earnings, but trying to pay off a $100,000 loan over ten years in your twenties and early thirties can be crippling, and I don't think a lot of college bound kids have the maturity to understand what that really looks like. So are those magical liberal arts colleges really just for the rich?
As we have compiled Cameron's list of schools that she will apply to she has kept Colby, Dickinson, and Bowdoin on the top. She added other's that she said she would go to "if she had to", but there really were no "safety school" (defined as academically sure things that we could afford with manageable student loans). Last Friday night before she was scheduled for the SAT on Saturday morning she said that her college advisor had told her that she needed to go to the College Board website and put down the names of the colleges that she wants her test results sent to. This was it! We had to have a solid and final list of schools. She put down her top 3. I said, "and...?" She looked at me defiantly. I named three others that she had said that she agreed to. She shrugged and added them. Then I said, "So what about SUNY (State University of New York) schools?" She was non responsive. I named two state schools that offered her major, both had smaller student bodies giving the campus a more personal feel, are located in small college towns, and that according to the cost calculator are affordable with do-able student loans. She sniped, "Why do you even know about these schools?" I wanted to strangle her, and quipped back, "Why DON'T you?" Silence. I named the schools again and she typed the names into her profile. Ugh...Ok, so now we had the list heavy on reach schools, but with enough safety schools that I felt vindicated.
Last night was Beacon High School's Senior Parent Night. There were eight speakers covering a variety of subjects. Jeff and I split up between the speakers to divide and conquer. For the most part I didn't learn anything new, but, as I told Cameron, at least I feel confident that I'm gathering as much information as possible to help her succeed in this maze of information. After almost two hours of listening to the same old rhetoric one speaker said something that I had heard over and over again on our tours, but that never rang true to me. He said that the average student leaves a small liberal arts school on the East Coast with a student loan debt of $30,000. I AM the middle class, so I had to question that number. Every cost calculator I had used put our family contribution at approximately $30,000 per year, which is a very different number than $30,000 for all four years combined. I raised my hand and posed my question. He stumbled for a moment and then explained, "Well, yes, the $30,000 of student loan debt would be part of the financial package that the school offers your child. The remaining amount would be the parent's portion to be paid from their wages, Parent Plus loans, outside scholarships, and private loans." So there it was, the truth at last. Telling students that they can leave college with only $30,000 in loans after attending a private liberal arts college or an Ivy League school is an untruth. That money does not just materialize. Someone has to come up with that gap money. Of course, many people have the funds to do that, but many more do not.
As I said at the beginning of my blog, I don't know what our results will be. We don't know what schools Cam will get into. We don't know if the ones that she does get into will try to woo her with enough money to make it affordable, or if we will end up at a state school. No matter what, I am certain that Cameron WILL go to college and she WILL be very successful, because she is smart and determined, but this experience has certainly left me feeling jaded. A student that has straight A's and a volunteer resume that would make Mother Theresa proud should not have to worry about "getting in" and certainly not have to worry about whether or not all their hard work is for naught if they can't afford to go to the schools that they do reach for.
Needless to say I will keep you posted. Hard talks and ringing of hands are sure to lie ahead.
