A college degree from Princeton costs nearly $43,000 a year!

[Tycho]

I just read a short blurb in the paper about Princeton not raising tuition this year from its $30,000 a year base-cost.

Add about $12,000 or so more for housing and the meal plan, and geeze.

It's just a theory, but my own college education which might've cost at most $10,000 a year (I'm guessing) was just as valuable an experience and preparation for success in life as I would have gotten by overpaying $35,000 a year.

I think tuition at San Diego State was about $1,000 a semester, or $2,000 a year. My accomodations in a hotel-style dormatory (rooms having private bathrooms, cable television, etc. and the building having a private pool, gym, cafeteria - meal plan being separate) were about $2,500 a semester.

And I'm not sure about the meal plan from which I had "all you can eat."

Thus my entire education, might have cost the price of ONE year at Princeton - though I took longer to complete my bachelor's degree than 4 years. However, college is what you make of it and I enjoyed less stress being not as hurried to finish school before bankruptcy, and moving out of dorm life and into a full large apartment (from which having the extra rooms allowed me to build my SW dioramas). I was also able to afford the time to get valuable internships that paved the way towards me setting up my own political consulting business upon graduation from college, as well as my eventual run for public office several years following my graduation.

I wouldn't trade that for overspending $35,000 a year and living somewhere I wouldn't want to live (East Coast, or even NorCal at Stanford).

My parents started saving for a college fun for me before I was even born. They wanted to make sure I could have the opportunity to go to a school like Princeton if I could get accepted. I was pushed towards that as a matter of fact. I was an honors student in "gifted programs" for kids who tested with very high IQs (which is what helped me go insanse, btw) but I rebelled to "punish my parents" as they could not emotionally nurture me - my mother was smothering and my father was a military officer / spartan disciplinarian.

But what a waste Princeton or another school like that would have been! I graduated with a lot of money left over because I didn't spend it and I still have non-taxable assets for law school or my Master's or Doctorate Degree should I want to get it.

But you know, I can't help but wonder if these private colleges really take the best and brightest - or is it those who can spend enough money to go there. Having also worked in the financial services business, I can't stress enough how if you have kids, saving $100-200 a month for them in a tax-free vehicle with compounding interest won't totally do them the greatest justice a parent can do for their child. I was an only kid - so having a small family helps, but if you compound growth at 12% on $200 a month (tax free) for 18 years (until a kid reaches college age) you'd have $133,312 for them for college, law school, medical school, whatever - and that's just using stock market averages and not counting on good years (like if you own some of Haliburton, oil, and energy companies in your portfolio - not that you wouldn't be....eh - Rancor Pit area, but you know what I was going to say).

Still, even if you accumulate about $150,000 for your only-child's education, you can see how Princeton might be a waste. So they are a 4.0 honors student? Send them to a state school and they'll never need loans for medical school or whatever. Where you get your highest degree from is what people say counts the most (well besides experience). But I can't believe Princeton is a $43,000 value experience!

[El Chuxter]

For those of you planning to go to college, consider this:

I spent about twice what Tycho did (not taking scholarships into account) on my four-year education. I went to a school that was constantly in news magazines' Top 10 Small Liberal Arts Colleges.

When I moved to California, though, I found that no one had heard of it. Several times, I was asked (quite seriously) if it was a real college.

In other words, unless you can say you got a free ride at Harvard, it really doesn't matter where you go.

[Tycho]

Would you say your education was worth it (at the school you went to) Chux?

Would you have fared better somewhere else?

Why did you decide to attend the school you did select?

[El Chuxter]

Long story short, it was mainly because it was located in the city I'd lived in for about six years, and my parents were moving to another state. So I sorta did the opposite of most people: I sent my parents off so I could "go away" to college. :)

From a personal standpoint, I would not trade my education for any other. I greatly prefer the smaller class size at such a school, and think it would be pointless to study English literature and composition at a school where the classes are "auditorium-style."

That said, if all you have in mind is how a degree will look on your resume, a more recognizable school may be a better option.

[Tycho]

I had to take several English literature courses for my humanities requirements of general education. I actually had a professor who previously taught at Yale, but came out to San Diego State for his health in his close-to-retirement years (read: good weather). There were perhaps only 30 or so students in my class - not a lecture hall full of them. I remember we covered Kafka as one of the authors, because the professor likened teaching at a state school to the slow death of an insect trapped in a shallow drop of water as something close to an imagery of one of Kafka's works.

Dr. Gellens (spelling) liked me I think (he was interesting - he looked like either a bug or George Burns and he never took off his dark sunglasses) and we had some interesting conversations, but I could see him disappointed in me whenever (in class or the cafeteria we both frequented) I ran off distracted by some girl I wanted to make a pass at.

In college I planned a schedule to involve myself with different women every hour, on the hour, for about 5 hours every day. I can spill the beans now - though I wouldn't have then. Dr. Gellens and several other professors of mine seemed aware of it and sort of studied me at my game. One professor who was kind of like a dad to me, encouraged me actually. Several thought it was really juvenile - I could tell - but they excused what took away from me demonstrating my intellect, as a condition of my young age. I haven't really grown up still.

But that's another reason why I wanted to stay in college as an undergrad for so long. I was learning valuable lessons about life and love outside of the classroom!

A large state school is good for that, as it takes a lot longer to get a bad reputation. :twisted:

[bigbarada]

A lot of it depends on the field you are going into.

I majored in Graphic Design and we were told by guys in the industry that all you really need to get a good job is talent and an associate's degree. Talent is the most important and the degree is just to prove that you can finish what you start.

Unless we wanted to become a professor, we were told that any education above an associate's degree in the art field was just a waste of money.

So, my college education cost me about $3,000 and pretty much all of that was covered by the GI Bill.

[Tycho]

So do you feel like your college education is complete, BigBarada?

Are you employed using your degree and skill? What do you do? Do you like it?

Will your military benefits last indefinitely? Such as if you want to get an advanced degree or change fields? Will they fund you?

From the face of it, the GI bill sounds like an excellent opportunity. Do you think so?

You're in Illinois now instead of New Mexico, right? Was that part of a career move for you?

How did you feel about the school you attended? Did you do all of your education post-military, or was some concurrent?

[LusiferSam]

Being a grad student I have bit of a different take on this. First off nobody cares where you did your under grad work if your in grad school. The only thing that matters from your under grad work is if you learn the basics of your field. Second, if you have a graduate degree nobody in your field is going to ask you where went. Instead you'll be asked who you studied under. Why? Because that's much more interesting and important than where you went.

[Darth Jax]

i went to a small liberal arts school that i would never have been able to afford if not for the attractive financial aid package i was offered. this occurred after a year at community college were i actually was given a refund because my financial aid package was greater than the cost of school.

while i have a grad degree i do find that i have people interested in where i went for both undergrad and grad work. since i went to a small school, nobody has ever heard of it, but it doesn't stop them from asking. and when i tell them i did my grad work in st. louis everyone assumes (incorrectly) that i was at washington or SLU.

unless you attend Harvard or Yale and to a lesser degree Princeton or MIT, nobody will really care where you earned your degree, only that you've got it.

[Tycho]

And why do they care if you attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and I think we should put Stanford into that category?

Because you spent $35,000 more per year or $140,000 more than everyone else either because you were wealthy or you got some form of financial aid to do so?

Again, if it's undergrad work, who cares? It might improve your chances to get into a great grad school. Might.

Next, as to the comment about "who did you study under?" Well, if you are in the research field, and your instructor is curing cancer or inventing nuclear fusion, you can compete with your other students to become their assistant. You probably won't get paid for it, nor the attention on the lecture circuit because "you were the guy behind the guy standing in the corner" - an actually very exclusive position however. So a company or a private funder might be very interested in you after graduation - true.

I suppose it really depends on your field and interests. If you're really into English literature, Harvard is not going to have better copies of Shakespeare than NC State. They might have the resources with their student fees to hire the guy that wrote the most famous book reviews on Shakespeare, but I don't think that is the same thing as hiring the guy in research that cures cancer.

Now I was interested in politics and government. We're back to leading authors as instructors, perhaps those teaching who have been hired out as famous campaign consultants, and research involving statistics having to do with economics and exit poll quantifiers. Generally, if you are smart, you can think of ways to test the statistical significance of the religious right vote, and so forth, but if you have a $140,000 degree school publishing the results, it sounds more impressive than Wyoming State University says, "this and that."

Still, if you don't think for yourself, and think out of the box, with the guidance of teachers that challenge you, all you do is become a sponge able to regurgitate what someone who teaches $140,000 educations says (which may or may not be worth the price of admission to hear).

So what if you go to Wyoming U. and can think for yourself and invent a safe way to engage nuclear fusion? Then shouldn't the guys from Yale have enough money to fly in to Cheyanne and listen to you lecture about it?

And if you're really capable of engineering a habitable environment on the moon with your ideas, shouldn't Wyoming U. have funds to send you to MIT to attend certain key lectures if it will nurture your ideas? Then it doesn't matter if you did your General Ed at MIT or not.

I was just really put off by the pricetag on Princeton, and compared several Ivy League grads from Yale that we all know as Bush and Kerry, and don't feel these guys are any smarter than I am.

[LusiferSam]

And why do they care if you attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and I think we should put Stanford into that category?

I think there is a misconception that if you pay more, you get a better education. And these five school are some of the most costly around. Also there is a prestige these these school have managed to create for themselves. Whether that prestige is true or false I don't know or care, but the general public has bought into it.



Again, if it's undergrad work, who cares? It might improve your chances to get into a great grad school. Might.

To get into grad school you have to have a GPA of 3.0 or higher, some letters of recommendation, and an acceptable score on the GRE. After that each school is a little different. So I don't really see how where you did your undergrad work matters there.


Next, as to the comment about "who did you study under?" Well, if you are in the research field, and your instructor is curing cancer or inventing nuclear fusion, you can compete with your other students to become their assistant. You probably won't get paid for it, nor the attention on the lecture circuit because "you were the guy behind the guy standing in the corner" - an actually very exclusive position however. So a company or a private funder might be very interested in you after graduation - true.

Now I said speaking from my experience as some one who is in hard science. Liberal arts might be different. Unless your adviser is a minor player in they field, most people each others work. It's true that you did have to compete with other students for researcher's assistant jobs. But you only compete with students in your research group, not the whole department. And you do get paid for the work. Other there would be no competition. If your not a RA your a TA and every grad student I who would rather be a RA. Most of the work is done by the underlies (grad students, undergrad, post docs, and low level faculty). The professor is the guy who stands in the corner and watches over things. I'm joking of course, but the underlies do do a lot of the heavy work. So if somebody in my field asks me whom I'm working with (i.e. studying under), they know where I'm going to school (most of the time), the type of working I'm doing, the type of work I've done, and a bit about my background all before asking other question.