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What is the return on investment after spending $168K on a 4 year liberal arts degree at Carlton College? Maybe you can be a museum worker, market researcher or possibly go into that (not so) lucrative journalist career?
I know they have a decent biology program which is a common path for pre-med, pre-dental, and pre-vet. But when you look at the histogram on who the UofMN accepts into those highly competitive programs, you will see that 65-70% come from the UofMN schools (Morris, Duluth, and the main UofMN campus). Think politics.
So if the Carlton student wants to become a Vet, Dentist, or Doc, they paid twice as much to put themselves in a competitive disadvantage. There still are several slots for the private schools to get into those programs (30%). Saying that, you would be a fool to go to the pre-Dental program at St. Cloud or Mankato because usually zero people are accepted from those undergrad programs.
What is the return on investment after spending $168K on a 4 year liberal arts degree at Carlton College? Maybe you can be a museum worker, market researcher or possibly go into that (not so) lucrative journalist career?
I know they have a decent biology program which is a common path for pre-med, pre-dental, and pre-vet. But when you look at the histogram on who the UofMN accepts into those highly competitive programs, you will see that 65-70% come from the UofMN schools (Morris, Duluth, and the main UofMN campus). Think politics.
So if the Carlton student wants to become a Vet, Dentist, or Doc, they paid twice as much to put themselves in a competitive disadvantage. There still are several slots for the private schools to get into those programs (30%). Saying that, you would be a fool to go to the pre-Dental program at St. Cloud or Mankato because usually zero people are accepted from those undergrad programs.
Private schools have large endowments and a lot more aid to offer then state schools so most kids are not paying full tuition and often pay less then what they would at a state school.
Northfield has a really odd vibe. A good friend of mine went to Olaf, and I went to a state school. When I'd go down to visit him, there was definitely a snotty aura among many of the students towards me. (oddly enough, another friend went to Mac, and that aura never existed). Fast forward a few years, and I married a girl from a nearby town. She and her parents never had much good to say about Northfield residents. Same thing - a really stuck up vibe. Fast forward another few years. I had a professional relationship with a guy who was a Northfield native. Seemed okay at first, but turned out to be a total phony jackass. Fast forward to this summer - I was involved in a local event in town, and some of the natives more or less treated us like garbage.
To say I don't think highly of Northfield is an understatement.
I never had any problems when I went to visited my cousin, despite spending my freshman year at a state school followed by these last few years at the University of Minnesota. I do wonder where you're getting the aura from, because the St. Olaf kids I know are all pretty nice people and they were from the moment I met them. I've experienced nothing but the same from people in town.
Private schools have large endowments and a lot more aid to offer then state schools so most kids are not paying full tuition and often pay less then what they would at a state school.
See Carleton College: Business Office: Endowment Fund . Carleton's endowments is currently at $650M. They gave away $42.4M in 2011 or $21,200 per student. That means the average tuition equals $21K (some more and some less). For needs based on average, it could be $6K less or $15K. That's a whole lot less than $42K a year.
At Mankato, it's about $8K for tuition and fees. see http://www.mnsu.edu/campushub/tuition_fees/rates/2011_2012/undergrad/onca (broken link)
At the UofMN, Add $4K or around $12K for tuition and fees (see Undergraduate tuition ). With an decent ACT of 27 and a fairly strong class rank, you will get at least $3K off per year dropping it to around $9K in tuition and fees. That's what we pay for our daughter before her other scholarship. For her, the final number is $6K a year for tuition and fees (she got a scholarship for taking honors curriculum). Room and board equals about $7K more.
So while I have heard that private colleges can be less that State schools, I am not observed any myself. I am still searching. I've known a lot of talented Kid's that have attended private MN colleges and they all talk about spending $15K+ a year at St. Olaf, St. Thomas plus room and board while bragging about the low price tag. Mysteriously, the parents keep on saying how it was basically the same price as State Colleges but I must have a different calculator.
It may be true that even with aid the cost of private colleges is slightly more than public ones. But I believe that you do get advantages at small schools that you don't at the big ones. There's something to be said for going to classes that are less than 20 people, vs. classes of hundreds. Professors are more accessible at small colleges, and are probably better teachers since they're not burned out from dealing with hundreds of students -- most of whom don't care that much about school -- on a daily basis. The disadvantages of course are the high tuition and lots of upper-middle class stuck up students, but I believe the benefits greatly outweigh these small drawbacks.
See Carleton College: Business Office: Endowment Fund . Carleton's endowments is currently at $650M. They gave away $42.4M in 2011 or $21,200 per student. That means the average tuition equals $21K (some more and some less). For needs based on average, it could be $6K less or $15K. That's a whole lot less than $42K a year.
At Mankato, it's about $8K for tuition and fees. see http://www.mnsu.edu/campushub/tuition_fees/rates/2011_2012/undergrad/onca (broken link)
At the UofMN, Add $4K or around $12K for tuition and fees (see Undergraduate tuition ). With an decent ACT of 27 and a fairly strong class rank, you will get at least $3K off per year dropping it to around $9K in tuition and fees. That's what we pay for our daughter before her other scholarship. For her, the final number is $6K a year for tuition and fees (she got a scholarship for taking honors curriculum). Room and board equals about $7K more.
So while I have heard that private colleges can be less that State schools, I am not observed any myself. I am still searching. I've known a lot of talented Kid's that have attended private MN colleges and they all talk about spending $15K+ a year at St. Olaf, St. Thomas plus room and board while bragging about the low price tag. Mysteriously, the parents keep on saying how it was basically the same price as State Colleges but I must have a different calculator.
I don't disagree with you that public schools are an excellent way to go - I attended NDSU for a year before transferring to the U my sophomore year. I definitely like the fairly low tuition compared to some private options.
That said, you can certainly get some good deals, depending on your financial situation. One cousin just graduated from St. Olaf and another is going through right now. My cousin who graduated had something like an $18,000 scholarship, plus other aid. He's graduating with about $30-35k worth of debt. My other cousin got sort of lucky...by the time she entered St. Olaf, her family was facing some financial problems and she is going essentially for free. Meanwhile, I'm wrapping up my degree, and despite the fact that my family has had some financial hardships, I will be close to $50k in debt, partially because I got very little financial assistance from the university except "emergency loans".
And, of course, many of the students at places like St. Olaf or Carleton are very high ranking students in their classes. They likely have other scholarships to help pay off whatever their school doesn't give to them.
I do dispute that you will get aid for having an ACT of 27 or higher and a good class rank. I got a 28 on my ACT, which is a pretty decent score and had an okay class rank (definitely top third, but my GPA was definitely decent...just had a competitive bunch of students with lots of high achievers). I received nothing from the U and to this day haven't had a single scholarship. Their only contribution was a small need-based "middle income" grant that they gave me for one year (their transfer student policy is a bit lacking). A friend of mine with a 28 ACT and a very competitive GPA and class rank hasn't received any huge scholarships from the U either (except one from the journalism department for this year, in part due to an excellent essay and being able to use family circumstances to win people over).
I still think public schools are a better deal, but I'm still graduating with $40-50k in debt (not including my potential plans for grad school) while my private school attending cousin will be near $0. Sometimes the math really does add up for them.
It may be true that even with aid the cost of private colleges is slightly more than public ones. But I believe that you do get advantages at small schools that you don't at the big ones. There's something to be said for going to classes that are less than 20 people, vs. classes of hundreds. Professors are more accessible at small colleges, and are probably better teachers since they're not burned out from dealing with hundreds of students -- most of whom don't care that much about school -- on a daily basis. The disadvantages of course are the high tuition and lots of upper-middle class stuck up students, but I believe the benefits greatly outweigh these small drawbacks.
I went to the UofMN a long time ago when it was even larger. It use to be the largest college in the world. You don't attend classes with "hundreds of students". Classes like Psychology 101 and other intro courses are very large but those classes are easy to get an A.
The class size was never a factor for me. If I had a question, I raised my hand and the teacher answered it. If I still didn't understand, I raised my hand again. If it still escaped me, I would ask a classmate that was smarter than me. For 60,000 other students at the UofMN, class size was not a big factor but I understand how it could be. Putting it another way, I don't think a class size of 25 would have helped me personally.
My biggest complaint was having foreign professors and foreign TA's that you could not understand. I hope that has gotten better over the past 30 years when I attended college because that was a real problem. Now they have sites like "rate my professor" so you can dodge some of the bad ones. See Carleton College - Minnesota . It seems that Carleton (like every college) has some low rated burnt out professors too.
But you missed a bunch of trade-offs. I could list several dozen degrees that are not offered at your college. I also wanted to attend some D1 sporting events on campus. I was an engineering major as well as a business major so I wanted a state-of-the-art research facility.
While Carleton is known by many across the nation as a top 6 liberal arts college, what is St. Olaf known for when you are applying for a job in Texas. Who has heard of St. Thomas in Florida? Have you ever heard of Flager or Deep Springs college that are highly rated in FL? If you are in HR and an application comes across your desk, "Deep Springs" may not impress you and maybe it should. My point is if you are going to drop some coin, go to Pepperdine, Standford, Rice, or Baylor. Now those private colleges open doors. Every person has heard of the UofMN in FL or Texas. That is because it is a name brand school. The UofMN has several highly rated departments that open doors all across the country.
I do dispute that you will get aid for having an ACT of 27 or higher and a good class rank. I got a 28 on my ACT, which is a pretty decent score and had an okay class rank (definitely top third, but my GPA was definitely decent...just had a competitive bunch of students with lots of high achievers). I received nothing from the U and to this day haven't had a single scholarship. Their only contribution was a small need-based "middle income" grant that they gave me for one year (their transfer student policy is a bit lacking). A friend of mine with a 28 ACT and a very competitive GPA and class rank hasn't received any huge scholarships from the U either (except one from the journalism department for this year, in part due to an excellent essay and being able to use family circumstances to win people over).
Thanks for the post.
If your FAFSA EFC or Expected Family Contribution is low you will get a signifacant amount of aid. It could be $18K a year in grants but your EFC must be under a $1000. But if you look at the FAFSA models, the slope is steep. Meaning even a $5000 EFC will result in a sharp drop off of real aid. So someone with an EFC of $1000 will get a lot of aid while someone with a $3000 EFC will get very little aid (it won't be $2000 difference). Once you are around $5500 EFC, you are going to get zero even when your tuition is $17K. Putting it another way the only people who get aid are people who are in dire straits. A family with an modest adjustable income of $30K will get zero unless they have more in college. You can plug in numbers into FAFSA Home - FAFSA on the Web-Federal Student Aid and continue to reduce them to see how it affects the EFC number. I concluded it will be rare for most people to get a nickel; even those close to the poverty line.
So yes, you can get college for "free" if you get financial aid and that includes Carlton College. But I don't know many people who are below the poverty line at private schools. Hence, the cost is a lot more than the UofMN.
Re: a higher ACT and good class rank. Let me put it to you this way, sometimes if you don't ask you don't get. I called admissions at the UofMN and got my daughters yearly scholarship raised to $3K a year (from $1K). Here ACT was 27 and her ranking was 30 out of 550. You have to put your sales hat on. Explaining what the competition will do is key and your phrasing will be an important part of your success (don't threaten). WHEN you call is also important. Putting it another way, I will bet the farm that I could have gotten you a $3K scholarship for 4 years ($12K total) if you applied at the UofMN initially. They only have so many scholarship dollars. So the initial package that was offered was $1K per year. Off course there were others who were offered more that will later attend another school. Those are the dollars that you want to chase. Your timing and approach are key. I taught this to my daughters best friend and he got hers bumped to $2K from $0. She had a 26 on her ACT and maybe a ranking of 100 out of 550. For them, that was a $8K phone call.
See Carleton College: Business Office: Endowment Fund . Carleton's endowments is currently at $650M. They gave away $42.4M in 2011 or $21,200 per student. That means the average tuition equals $21K (some more and some less). For needs based on average, it could be $6K less or $15K. That's a whole lot less than $42K a year.
At Mankato, it's about $8K for tuition and fees. see http://www.mnsu.edu/campushub/tuition_fees/rates/2011_2012/undergrad/onca (broken link)
At the UofMN, Add $4K or around $12K for tuition and fees (see Undergraduate tuition ). With an decent ACT of 27 and a fairly strong class rank, you will get at least $3K off per year dropping it to around $9K in tuition and fees. That's what we pay for our daughter before her other scholarship. For her, the final number is $6K a year for tuition and fees (she got a scholarship for taking honors curriculum). Room and board equals about $7K more.
So while I have heard that private colleges can be less that State schools, I am not observed any myself. I am still searching. I've known a lot of talented Kid's that have attended private MN colleges and they all talk about spending $15K+ a year at St. Olaf, St. Thomas plus room and board while bragging about the low price tag. Mysteriously, the parents keep on saying how it was basically the same price as State Colleges but I must have a different calculator.
Did your daughter apply to any private schools? In our case, our son got a scholarship for his ACT from a state school as well as one other scholarship, total for those was $3300, bringing his total costs down (tuition, room, board, fees) to $14,700. He was also offered loans up to $2500. At the private school he applied to, same ACT scholarship was $17,000, plus other grants from the school, etc. bringing his total costs down to $15,200 but loans were only $1000. Other friends' children have gotten pretty much full rides to private schools from various scholarships they have won, etc. Our other kids are looking into colleges now and based on their grades/ACT/SAT scores, they are looking at significant help from several private schools. One school DD is looking at will have about half of her overall costs paid for from academic scholarships and the other half from athletic scholarships. The only state school she could do that is at the U of M (athletic) but their academic money won't come close to touching the rest of the costs making it more expensive.
If your AGI is under $180,000/year, the Ivy League schools are the best bargain out there. If you make under $75,000 (or 60,000 at Harvard) you pay ZERO to go to an Ivy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised
Thanks for the post.
If your FAFSA EFC or Expected Family Contribution is low you will get a signifacant amount of aid. It could be $18K a year in grants but your EFC must be under a $1000. But if you look at the FAFSA models, the slope is steep. Meaning even a $5000 EFC will result in a sharp drop off of real aid. So someone with an EFC of $1000 will get a lot of aid while someone with a $3000 EFC will get very little aid (it won't be $2000 difference). Once you are around $5500 EFC, you are going to get zero even when your tuition is $17K. Putting it another way the only people who get aid are people who are in dire straits. A family with an modest adjustable income of $30K will get zero unless they have more in college. You can plug in numbers into FAFSA Home - FAFSA on the Web-Federal Student Aid and continue to reduce them to see how it affects the EFC number. I concluded it will be rare for most people to get a nickel; even those close to the poverty line.
So yes, you can get college for "free" if you get financial aid and that includes Carlton College. But I don't know many people who are below the poverty line at private schools. Hence, the cost is a lot more than the UofMN.
Re: a higher ACT and good class rank. Let me put it to you this way, sometimes if you don't ask you don't get. I called admissions at the UofMN and got my daughters yearly scholarship raised to $3K a year (from $1K). Here ACT was 27 and her ranking was 30 out of 550. You have to put your sales hat on. Explaining what the competition will do is key and your phrasing will be an important part of your success (don't threaten). WHEN you call is also important. Putting it another way, I will bet the farm that I could have gotten you a $3K scholarship for 4 years ($12K total) if you applied at the UofMN initially. They only have so many scholarship dollars. So the initial package that was offered was $1K per year. Off course there were others who were offered more that will later attend another school. Those are the dollars that you want to chase. Your timing and approach are key. I taught this to my daughters best friend and he got hers bumped to $2K from $0. She had a 26 on her ACT and maybe a ranking of 100 out of 550. For them, that was a $8K phone call.
For Financial Aid, Carleton guaranties to meet 100% of your demonstrated financial need, so, if your EFC is $3000, you pay $3000 to go to Carleton and that need is met in grants, not loans. There are many schools across the nation that do this. Ivy's convert any loan aid to grants as well (as do other schools) so students graduate with zero student loan debt as well.
The other thing to keep in mind is that if your EFC is $5000, it's $5000 at the U of M or at Carleton or at Macalaster or at St. Thomas...
Yes, you can "shop" for more aid, especially if you are a student they really want.
I do dispute that you will get aid for having an ACT of 27 or higher and a good class rank. I got a 28 on my ACT, which is a pretty decent score and had an okay class rank (definitely top third, but my GPA was definitely decent...just had a competitive bunch of students with lots of high achievers). I received nothing from the U and to this day haven't had a single scholarship. Their only contribution was a small need-based "middle income" grant that they gave me for one year (their transfer student policy is a bit lacking). A friend of mine with a 28 ACT and a very competitive GPA and class rank hasn't received any huge scholarships from the U either (except one from the journalism department for this year, in part due to an excellent essay and being able to use family circumstances to win people over).
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If your GPA was a 3.7 or above with that ACT, a school like St. John's would have given you $19,000, renwable annually if you maintain a 2.0--in other words, pretty easy to keep all through college (on purpose). St. Olaf is $16,000, Hamline that is up to $20,000,.... these loans alone bring the cost of these schools down to about what the U of M costs.
Your story from the U of M is pretty much what we have heard from friends and their kids that applied to the U. Some chose to go there, others chose less expensive options for them at private schools.
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You don't attend classes with "hundreds of students". Classes like Psychology 101 and other intro courses are very large but those classes are easy to get an A. 
