Editor’s note: This column was written by a St. Louis parent who wishes to remain anonymous.
All kids are smart in their own way, but children who are high academic achievers require parents to make some unique and difficult decisions, as I recently discovered while navigating the college selection process with one of my children. When you have such a child, you start thinking about the possibility of elite colleges: Can they get in? How hard should they try to get in? Is it even worth it?
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Ivy League schools, as well as a handful of other universities, are referred to as the T20, which stands for Top 20 ranked colleges. As a state university graduate, I was unfamiliar with this world. In the pursuit of any Ivy League degree for our child, my family learned a great deal, and much of it came as a surprise.
The first thing I learned is that there are way more high academic achievers than there are spots available at elite colleges. In my daughter’s public high school class, there are many students with perfect or near-perfect standardized test scores and grades, along with tons of AP credit. The only thing distinguishing them is their extracurricular activities.
Selective private schools have an even higher percentage of near-perfect applicants—just in the St. Louis area. Some prestigious private high schools on the East Coast charge more than $60,000 per year, for instance, with parents hoping the schools will help get their children into elite colleges. Some Ivy League universities’ classes only have around 1,500 students or less. For instance, Princeton’s freshman class had 1,345 students last year. Columbia University’s had 1,569. So the chance of any high-achieving student getting into an Ivy League school is statistically remote.
What it takes to get into such elite schools seems to have changed dramatically in the past 40 years. It used to be that high test scores and grades were probably enough. Now students need those things and a “hook,” something unique that makes them stand out among the other applicants.
Of course, many families with high-achieving students can save a lot of money by going to schools that are not in the T20. For example, if your child was a National Merit finalist (study for that PSAT, kids!), they can go to a number of colleges and not pay any tuition. Or they can choose to go to a state university, such as the University of Alabama, for up to five years and not pay tuition or room and board.
In our case, my child applied to 10 schools and was accepted at many of them, including Alabama, Georgia, the University of Southern California, and Columbia University. To say that there was a price discrepancy would be an understatement. It was a great honor for her to be accepted to Columbia (which had approximately 60,000 applicants), but financial aspects came into play after acceptance.
Many of the Ivy League schools, including Columbia, are quite generous and allow families making as much as $150,000 to attend tuition-free. This did not apply to our family, however, and Columbia submitted an attendance cost estimate of approximately $360,000 for four years. USC offered to cover half of her tuition as a National Merit student, which still came to $200,000 for four years.
The University of Georgia invited her to visit Athens and interview for its Foundation Fellowship. Most schools (non-Ivies) have such “golden ticket” scholarships, in which the top 20 or 30 students in each class interview for the chance to receive free tuition and room and board. While our child was not selected, she was offered a significant scholarship.
Ultimately, our family was left with a hard economic decision: Was USC worth $200,000 more than Alabama? Was Columbia worth $250,000 more than Georgia? Tough call—one of many that some parents must face with high-achieving students.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Construction is underway at universities across the area. Webster University is remodeling the west wing of its School of Communications to create enhanced spaces for media production and studio facilities. “There will be nothing else like it in our entire region,” says the school’s dean, Eric Rothenbuhler. At Lindenwood University, the fitness center is being refurbished as the university transitions to NCAA Division I. Maryville University is redeveloping Woods Mill Center, with plans for a residence hall, plus rooms for educational use, athletics, and esports. Washington University’s School of Medicine is adding six floors atop the Lipstein BJC Institute of Health. And at Saint Louis University, the state-of-the-art O’Loughlin Family Champions Center is slated for completion next fall.
