a financial voyeur's dream come true: all the intimate details of how, where, and why I spend money

The Daugh­ter has now heard from 8 of the 12 col­leges to which she applied.  Another accep­tance and another schol­ar­ship offer arrived this past Sat­ur­day.  Her accep­tance rate is still at 100% but this par­tic­u­lar school isn’t in the run­ning: the approx­i­mate annual cost is $40,000 and the schol­ar­ship offer was $12,500.  That doesn’t bring her any­where near the $20,000 bud­get that we’ve given The Daughter.

There are cur­rently three schools on the “Seri­ous Con­tenders” list.  Two are pri­vate schools; the third an in-state pub­lic school [although she hasn’t offi­cially been accepted to this school yet].  One pri­vate school is on the West Coast; the other in the Mid-West.  All are within or close to the $20,000 annual budget.

The work of writ­ing the essay(s) and the chaos of coor­di­nat­ing all of the rec­om­men­da­tions and tran­scripts is done; the excite­ment of receiv­ing those first few accep­tance let­ters is over; the thrill and incred­i­ble sense of val­i­da­tion (for her) and pride (for me) of receiv­ing some very gen­er­ous schol­ar­ship offers will hope­fully linger a long time.  The stage that is just upon us is that of panic mixed with just a touch of fear:  now comes the process of actu­ally mak­ing the deci­sion as to which school to attend.

Nat­u­rally I don’t know exactly how The Daugh­ter feels right now but I can assure you that I’m feel­ing plenty myself.  First, I’m so incred­i­bly grate­ful for hav­ing fol­lowed my gut in encour­ag­ing her to apply to pri­vate col­leges and not just assum­ing that we could only afford in-state pub­lic schools.  She might very well end up at a state school but at least she has the option of choos­ing a pri­vate school.  With the offers she has received, the dif­fer­ence in cost could be as lit­tle as $4,000 per year (and maybe even less) — that’s cal­cu­lated on ini­tial schol­ar­ship offers, there are still com­pet­i­tive schol­ar­ships she might win or other nego­ti­a­tions to be made that could bring the dif­fer­ence in cost down to a neg­li­gi­ble amount.

Sec­ond, I’m feel­ing pretty over­whelmed with the com­plex­ity and mag­ni­tude of the deci­sion ahead of her.  On the one hand, not only is it her deci­sion to make but I’m uniquely unqual­i­fied to offer any assis­tance.  The Hus­band, as the money-maker and bill-payer and the one with pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence hav­ing already sent three chil­dren through col­lege, is the one who has set the bud­get.  If he’s set it, I know that the num­ber is both gen­er­ous and firm.  Plus he has the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing him­self attended col­lege full time and hav­ing grad­u­ated.  Sure, I’ve taken plenty of col­lege courses, even attend­ing full-time for a while, but not straight out of high school.  I didn’t do the whole appli­ca­tion process, didn’t attend straight out of high school, didn’t do the “dorm life” thing, and I never graduated.

So, what hap­pens next?  Now she vis­its cam­puses again.  Alone and for longer peri­ods of time while school is in ses­sion so she can get a bet­ter feel­ing for the kids, the cam­pus, the fac­ulty, the admin­is­tra­tion, the over­all expe­ri­ence.  A rep from the Mid-West school called a few days ago about their Com­pet­i­tive Schol­ar­ship week­end (as you might have noticed in last night’s Daily Dol­lar post­ing, I’ve just bought her plane ticket).  I can’t go with her because I have fam­ily in town that week­end but it’s good for her to go alone any­way — good prac­tice for her and a good impres­sion for the school.  Inde­pen­dence and ini­tia­tive are things that col­lege admin­is­tra­tors love to see in students.

The other evening The Daugh­ter came home from school and started gen­tly danc­ing around the sub­ject of vis­it­ing the West Coast col­lege again and I quickly put her at ease by say­ing that I thought it imper­a­tive that she visit all of the cam­puses of schools she is seri­ously con­sid­er­ing.  It’s a nec­es­sary expense and hope­fully cheap insur­ance against a very expen­sive mis­take of choos­ing a school that she ulti­mately hates.

The other thing she needs to do is delve a lit­tle deeper into the nitty gritty of what the schools actu­ally offer and what she wants.  For exam­ple, since the whole for­eign exchange thing didn’t pan out at her high school and a for­eign immer­sion semes­ter in col­lege is very impor­tant to her (she plans to minor or pos­si­bly dou­ble major in Span­ish), what does each school offer in the way of study abroad pro­grams?  She doesn’t want to run into what turns out to be more empty promises.  Also, addi­tional expenses will be a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion.  Will she be expected to pay extra tuition for study abroad?  How much of the coor­di­na­tion will they help her do?  How many stu­dents do they send abroad (in other words, is this some­thing they have a lot of expe­ri­ence with)?  How var­ied are the expe­ri­ences offered?  [That was the big issue at her high school; they send plenty of kids to Ger­many but she wanted to go to a Span­ish speak­ing coun­try and they sim­ply didn’t have the con­nec­tions in place to make it happen.]

Another thing to check out is the dou­ble major issue.  Some schools make dou­ble major­ing much “eas­ier” than oth­ers.  At some schools, dou­ble major­ing is a dif­fi­cult process that makes grad­u­a­tion in 4 years impossible.

Hon­estly, some­how the Mid-West school appeals more to me.  How­ever, the West Coast school seems to have very well estab­lished pro­grams both for stu­dents who want to pur­sue for­eign immer­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties and for those who wish to dou­ble major.  Can the Mid-West school mea­sure up?  But then the Mid-West school is offer­ing this oppor­tu­nity to com­pete for addi­tional schol­ar­ship funds and they’re pay­ing a chunk of her travel expenses and tak­ing care of accom­mo­da­tions.  Does the West Coast school offer any­thing sim­i­lar?  And will they help cover travel and assure me that she’ll be picked up and deliv­ered to the air­port and well taken care of in-between?  And don’t for­get about the in-state school.  The Daughter’s high school coun­selor seems con­vinced that some type of aca­d­e­mic schol­ar­ship will be forth­com­ing.  Will it be big enough to entice her?  We can’t for­get to com­pare the state school in cost com­par­isons — what are the chances of not being able to grad­u­ate in 4 years (this issue is becom­ing more and more preva­lent at state schools where stu­dents sim­ply can’t get into the classes they need to grad­u­ate) much less being able to dou­ble major in 4 years?  And how would tuition work dur­ing a study abroad semes­ter — that is if they even offer that option?  I cer­tainly don’t want to get sucked into a school that looks less expen­sive only to find lots of hid­den costs.

Just as with every other aspect of par­ent­ing and all of the stages through which The Daugh­ter has pro­gressed up to this point — the work is never done; there’s always a new worry just around the cor­ner; as soon as one ques­tion is answered another larger one pops up.  Oh, and she just keeps get­ting more and more expen­sive