Where your Child wants to Attend College

[Jodi1980]

Do you let them choose or do you?

 

[Tinks]

We are planning to let our boys choose for themselves. They are small now so we have already been brainwashing them toward our alma mater, (which is a very good school!)

 

[jamsmom]

I think it depends in several things such as if scholarships are involved, reputation of school, who is paying, ........hopefully it can be a mutual decision

 

[disneyjunkie]

Originally posted by Tinks
We are planning to let our boys choose for themselves. They are small now so we have already been brainwashing them toward our alma mater, (which is a very good school!)

I've been doing the same with DS.

My son will be 12 in October. Up until this year he has said he'd love to go to St. Augustine's College in Raleigh. His dad, my sister, my cousin, many friends and I all went there. DS and I lived near the campus for 9 years.

Since moving to NY he's had a change of heart. Now he's talking about Howard and Morehouse.

When the times comes, I'll step back and let him pick the school he wants to attend.

 

[honeywolf7]

It depends....If they got a full scholarship somewhere for instance, I would certainly expect them to take that scholarship or to pay for school themselves. If they wanted to go to an expensive private school over a state school and didn't get a good financial aid offer from the private school, I'd expect them to work for the difference themselves or to go to the state school.

 

[Meriweather]

Mine chose for themselves.

 

[nativetxn]

We let Travis choose and he chose Stephen F. Austin State University because of their undergraduate theatre program.

Worked out nicely, he was 1300 miles away from mom and dad but 50 miles from aunts and uncles and 200 miles away from grandparents.

He didn't have a chance to get homesick

 

[CEDmom]

I was very fortunate that my parents allowed my brothers and I to attend whatever college (as long as it was accredited) we wanted and could get into on their nickel. DH's parents paid his way but they pushed him to live at home which he did. We both hope to allow our DD to choose where she wants to go and to pay for it. We have 1 child and we both work so that will hopefully make things a lot easier.

 

[floridaminnie]

DD is set up on the Florida prepaid program, so right now as long as it's a public Florida school I'm already. But that's 14 years down the road.

 

[Evil Princess]

I am aware that I am VERY lucky. My parents have been saving for college since I was born, and we are financially secure. The agreement has always been that I got to choose where I wanted to go, and they would pay for it. (One of the only things they WILL pay for since I've started high school )

I realize how lucky I am that I won't be paying back loans until I'm in my 30s.

They were very open minded when it came to me choosing a school this year. They let me apply to wherever I wanted, however, I got into my first choice and that was that. It's only 5 hours away, so It's not like I was moving across the country or anything.

Considering they're paying, they could have easily been like "go here or pay yourself", but they didn't. My dad DID however say that "when I offered to pay for college, I didn't expect you'd pick a 40,000 dollar school!!"

Luckilly I got a scholarship and some grants paying for close to half the cost each year.

 

[wdwfam]

We did to a certain point - we wanted him to to stay in-state, because of automatic scholarships. Of course, he decided on the most expensive in the state. The problem with the big name schools is that many don't offer merit scholarships. After months of checking around, we found that the university he chose, Washington University in St. Louis offers some nice scholarships in engineering. He has over half his school paid for, even though it is a $40,000/year school. We're only paying his room and board and misc. On the other hand, our DD will probably stay here and go to Mizzou. Her passion is music. We found that schools were not offering as good of scholarships as they have in past years. The economy, I'm sure is a lot of it. If you don't let your child have some of the say, then chances are they won't like school as much or even stay in school. Of course, it depends on who is paying.

 

[CyranoJones]

We also saved for DD's college education from day one and jokingly told her that the only restriction was that her choice of college had to be somewhere nice to visit. That happened to be 1900 miles away. She ended up getting a scholarship anyway, so all we're paying is room and board. And for summer session...she doesn't want to come home, LOL!

 

[fklhou]

My son is in the process of looking at colleges. We intend to work with him on the choice. I am hoping to go looking with him this summer at a couple of schools. He and I have already looked at the University of Texas and the UT Plan II program and Trinity University. His college counselor has given my son a list of ten or so additional schools to look at and it will be interesting to see which one he likes.