Character of a growing girl (middle school question)

[beeswing]

I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?

<< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>

My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.

beeswing

[beeswing]

beeswing wrote:

>If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
>*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
>heck does one decide, anyway.

I hate to follow up myself, but I want to clarify something. I'm not suggesting
that my daughter wouldn't go to college if we somehow managed to send her to
private school. The issue is who would pay for college -- and how. Right now,
I'm committed to paying her college with the same limitations my dad gave me:
she'd have to stay in state and go to a state-run college. Anything more and
she'd have to make up the difference herself. But private school could blow a
hole in that theory....

beeswing

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, beeswing wrote:
> I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
> discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>
><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
> *OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
> heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
> makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>

I don't know about "character", but a public university education is a
far better educational investment than a private middle school. In 10
years no one is going to care much whether she went to a good or a
mediocre middle school, but going to a good university will affect her
choices for the rest of her life.

If I remember right, you are in Seattle, where going to private
schools is highly fashionable (over 1/3 of all students do), but there
are still decent public schools available. Far better to go to a
decent public school and have enough money to afford 4+ years of
university than to go to a ritzy middle school and then only be able
to afford an AA degree.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[Scott]

beeswing wrote:
> beeswing wrote:
>
>
>>If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
>>*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
>>heck does one decide, anyway.
>
>
> I hate to follow up myself, but I want to clarify something. I'm not suggesting
> that my daughter wouldn't go to college if we somehow managed to send her to
> private school. The issue is who would pay for college -- and how. Right now,
> I'm committed to paying her college with the same limitations my dad gave me:
> she'd have to stay in state and go to a state-run college. Anything more and
> she'd have to make up the difference herself. But private school could blow a
> hole in that theory....


....especially if the College decides you *shouldn't* have sent your
daugther to private school and therefore you should still have all
that tuition money in the bank ;)

There are no guarantees that the Private School will be any more or
less difficult to navigate vis-a-vis all those issues that can make
middle school a less-than-pleasant experience. Unless you interview
a lot of the girls there and determine that they are all blissfully
happy.

DD starts middle school next year, and it's not really something to
which I'm looking forward. At least the school has an okay reputation
as being large enough that it's not difficult for anyone to find a
group to be in. We aren't thinking of private school now. Maybe if
we discern that she is desperately unhappy next year, we'll discuss
it. It would surprise me if something like that happened.


Scott DD 10 and DS 7.7

[Banty]

In article >, beeswing says...
>
>I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
>discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>
><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
>*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
>heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
>makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>
>My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
>school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
>as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
>issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.
>
>beeswing
>

I had a terrible experience, too. I was pretty geeky, and, after sixth grade
when we moved from a place where we'd lived for five years, we moved nearly
twice a year such that I went to five junior high schools through four grades
(JH started in 6th in Texas, went through 9th in Colorao). So once I left my
hard-won social connections in sixth grade ('though some were retained through
seventh grade - long story), it was a pretty bleak experience.

For my son, on the other hand, it's been much different. He's been in one
neighborhood and one school district, and he's *much* more socially inclined
than I am, so he's fairly well connected.

I guess the upshot here is that your own experience in Junior High won't
necessarily translate to your daughter's experience. The biggest difference
to her character is her temprament; the next biggest is your relationship to
her, bringing up a close third is the overall environment.

Banty

[Robyn Kozierok]

In article >,
beeswing > wrote:
>I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
>discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>
><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
>*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
>heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
>makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>
>My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
>school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
>as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
>issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.

I think middle school (or junior high) is a tough time for a lot of
people. Maybe most people. But I think it could be a tough time even
in a good private school. You need to consider what it is about the
school you are looking at that you think will make it a better place
for your daughter. There are some benefits to single-sex education
for girls, which I think you're considering based on the other thread.
But I'm not convinced that the social scene would be better, and that
is typically what makes middle school so hard for so many kids. Unless
the school makes a special effort to explicitly address social issues,
I think you will have them whether the school is public or private,
all-girls or co-ed.

That said, if you think private school is the best place for her for
middle school, my philosophy is to worry about now now, and worry about
later later. If she needs the private school now, I'd spend the money
and figure out how you and she can finance her college education later.
There's usually a way. (My kids are in private school now, which covers
K-8, because it was the only place I could find that would meet their needs.
They don't have college savings accounts yet, for a variety of reasons.)

Good luck deciding!!

--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

[LFortier]

beeswing wrote:

> My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
> school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
> as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
> issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.
>
> beeswing
>


My oldest will be off to middle school next year, but 5th
grade has already been challenging. I'm not sure that
private school would make the social stuff any better -
around here private schools that aren't religious have a
heavy concentration of such well to do kids that I suspect
you might be trading in one set of issues for another.

I spent years saying how glad I was I didn't have to relive
the teen years until it finally dawned on me that a parent
relives them through children.

Lesley

[Bruce and Jeanne]

beeswing wrote:

> I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
> discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>
> << If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
> *OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
> heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
> makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>
> My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
> school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
> as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
> issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.
>
> beeswing
>

How is your daughter doing in her school now? I'm only asking because a
friend of mine went through this same thing two years ago. Her daughter
was excelling academically at public elementary school, but my friend
felt she wasn't getting the attention she needed and she didn't really
have any good friendships. So, for 5th grade, the parents sent her to a
very expensive small private school and the girl blossomed and at the
end of the year, thanked her parents for sending her. So, she's back at
the private school this year and her younger brother has joined her.
This pretty much eats up my friend's entire salary (who is not in a
low-paying job by any means).

That said, they also have the prepaid college tuition plan for our state
which guarantees that tuition is paid no matter how high it rises. So,
while the kids aren't set to go to Harvard, they are set for 4 years of
college.

Jeanne

[H Schinske]

>That said, if you think private school is the best place for her for
>middle school, my philosophy is to worry about now now, and worry about
>later later. If she needs the private school now, I'd spend the money
>and figure out how you and she can finance her college education later.

I think that is definitely true. If I hadn't gone to private school when I did,
I'd be a much less sane person today. That said, I was in a far worse situation
in public school than I see my kids in currently, so the sacrifice was more
worth it to my parents. Homeschooling was not a reasonable option then (or
didn't look like it), tuition was a trifle cheaper, etc. Plus, with six kids,
things like expensive family vacations just weren't going to happen anyway.
Might as well put every cent towards school.

--Helen

[Scott]

LFortier wrote:

>
> I spent years saying how glad I was I didn't have to relive the teen
> years until it finally dawned on me that a parent relives them through
> children.

Yes. But I think it's important to recognize that your
daughter or son may or may not react to things the same
way you did. So you may relive them, but you're reliving
something that is different from what your child is
living.

Scott DD 10 and DS 7.8

[Scott]

Bruce and Jeanne wrote:
> beeswing wrote:
>
>
>>I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
>>discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>>
>><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university education
>>*OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school level), how da
>>heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a windfall? What
>>makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>>
>>My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
>>school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
>>as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
>>issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.
>>
>>beeswing
>>
>
>
> How is your daughter doing in her school now? I'm only asking because a
> friend of mine went through this same thing two years ago. Her daughter
> was excelling academically at public elementary school, but my friend
> felt she wasn't getting the attention she needed and she didn't really
> have any good friendships. So, for 5th grade, the parents sent her to a
> very expensive small private school and the girl blossomed and at the
> end of the year, thanked her parents for sending her. So, she's back at
> the private school this year and her younger brother has joined her.
> This pretty much eats up my friend's entire salary (who is not in a
> low-paying job by any means).
>
> That said, they also have the prepaid college tuition plan for our state
> which guarantees that tuition is paid no matter how high it rises. So,
> while the kids aren't set to go to Harvard, they are set for 4 years of
> college.

I will point out that the child may have blossomed in 5th
grade at the public school, too.

DD and I were discussing 'The Road Not Taken' (Robt. Frost)
earlier this week, and this is what made me think of this.
You cannot tell what may or may not have happened had you
taken the other road that equally lay in leaves no step had
trodden black. It's great that you friend's daughter is
happy. I guess that's the bottom line.

Scott DD 10 and DS 7.8

[Beeswing]

"Kevin Karplus" > wrote in message
...
> In article >, beeswing
wrote:
> > I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really
like to
> > discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
> >
> ><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university
education
> > *OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school
level), how da
> > heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a
windfall? What
> > makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>
> I don't know about "character", but a public university education is a
> far better educational investment than a private middle school.

Here's why I asked the question I asked. Although the school we are
considering is much better academically than our public, urban middle
school, I really *am* concerned about "character" -- self-image,
self-confidence, personal integrity, and the ability to steer clear of
peer pressure (i.e., that my daughter be strong enough to own choices on
sex, drugs, and so forth). The school we're considering is much
different from the environment of our public middle school. It is an
all-girls school whose mission is to train "future world leaders" -- in
whatever way those future leaders might choose to run with it. Some of
the parents and a few of the girls spoke at the school's open house. The
parents were enthusiastic about how their daughters had grown and
changed; they also talked about how engaged the kids were in the school
and in education. The girls were poised, confident, well-spoken, and
very positive about the school.

I think of the middle school period as "formative years" -- in the best
and worst senses possible. I believe they can make or break who you turn
out to be, especially in the case of girls. College, which I also
consider essential, doesn't carry quite the same weight on a girl's
personality and esteem. The foundation for those, I believe, has largely
been formed before a girl reaches college age.

> If I remember right, you are in ..., where going to private
> schools is highly fashionable (over 1/3 of all students do), but there
> are still decent public schools available.

My daughter currently attends public school, where she is a gifted
class. I already know which junior high my daughter would be going to.
Even though it lays claim to the gifted program, it's basically in name
rather than in practice. Plus, it's very urban, with all the pluses and
minuses that entails -- and maybe I'm off base, but I perceive a lot of
minuses. With all its drawbacks, I consider the school the best the
district has to offer me. That's the scary part.

>Far better to go to a
> decent public school and have enough money to afford 4+ years of
> university than to go to a ritzy middle school and then only be able
> to afford an AA degree.

True. The issue wouldn't be that she *wouldn't* go to four years of
college, though, it's more that she might have a smaller range of
choices. And she might have to creatively finance part it herself. (An
academic scholarship would be nice, for example. Or maybe she'd have to
take a student loan for a portion of the tuition.) Either way, whether
or not her middle school is "ritzy" doesn't even weigh into the issue.

beeswing

[Penny Gaines]

beeswing wrote in >:

> I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really like to
> discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>
> << If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university
> education *OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school
> level), how da heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope
> of a windfall? What makes the biggest difference to the character of a
> growing girl? >>
>
> My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with
> "middle school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I
> remember those years as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all
> attributable to school-related issues. I'd like my daughter to have a
> better experience than I did.

I'm not quite sure which age is "middle school" - is it 6 -8 grades?
which makes it 11 - 14yo?

I think if I had the choice of a school that would really suit
my 11-14 yo, or (a not-good-match school and really good college),
I think I would choose the good-fit school.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

[Beeswing]

"LFortier" > wrote in message
...

> My oldest will be off to middle school next year, but 5th
> grade has already been challenging. I'm not sure that
> private school would make the social stuff any better -
> around here private schools that aren't religious have a
> heavy concentration of such well to do kids that I suspect
> you might be trading in one set of issues for another.

This school is intentionally diverse and gives a lot of financial aid to
low-income girls, so that at least would not be an issue. That's part of
the school's draw, for us.

> I spent years saying how glad I was I didn't have to relive
> the teen years until it finally dawned on me that a parent
> relives them through children.

I know.... And reliving elementary school has been hard enough!

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Banty" > wrote in message
...

> I guess the upshot here is that your own experience in Junior High
won't
> necessarily translate to your daughter's experience.

I don't expect it to; I'm sorry if I gave that impression. Even on the
most basic level, her school experience will be different: I grew up in
the suburbs and went to a moderately small junior high. The (public)
school she would otherwise attend is very urban and a lot bigger. What I
do know, though, is that the early teen years typically can be hard for
many of our kids, and it was certainly a hard time for me.

>The biggest difference
> to her character is her temprament; the next biggest is your
relationship to
> her, bringing up a close third is the overall environment.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

beeswing

[Robyn Kozierok]

In article >, Beeswing > wrote:
>"Kevin Karplus" > wrote in message
...
>> In article >, beeswing
>wrote:
>> > I posted this question in the financial aid thread, but I'd really
>like to
>> > discuss it further. Could anyone please give me some input on this?
>> >
>> ><< If one can (potentially, maybe) pay for instate, public university
>education
>> > *OR* private school (especially at the critical middle-school
>level), how da
>> > heck does one decide, anyway. Either? Both, with the hope of a
>windfall? What
>> > makes the biggest difference to the character of a growing girl? >>
>>
>> I don't know about "character", but a public university education is a
>> far better educational investment than a private middle school.
>
>Here's why I asked the question I asked. Although the school we are
>considering is much better academically than our public, urban middle
>school, I really *am* concerned about "character" -- self-image,
>self-confidence, personal integrity, and the ability to steer clear of
>peer pressure (i.e., that my daughter be strong enough to own choices on
>sex, drugs, and so forth).

I thought the question you asked was actually very telling, and I think
contains your answer. Middle school has, pretty much by definition, more
influence on "the character of a growing girl" than college. By college,
your girl will be mostly grown up.

So, the real question probably comes down to, will going to this
particular private middle school really have a much better influence on
your particular child's character than the public school she would
otherwise attend? And if so, does this difference justify making
college funding more challenging for her? Clearly, I can't answer
those questions for you.

>different from the environment of our public middle school. It is an
>all-girls school whose mission is to train "future world leaders" -- in
>whatever way those future leaders might choose to run with it. Some of
>the parents and a few of the girls spoke at the school's open house. The
>parents were enthusiastic about how their daughters had grown and
>changed; they also talked about how engaged the kids were in the school
>and in education. The girls were poised, confident, well-spoken, and
>very positive about the school.

fwiw, you could probably find "a few" poised, confident, well-spoken
girls in public school who are also very positive about their school.

>I think of the middle school period as "formative years" -- in the best
>and worst senses possible. I believe they can make or break who you turn
>out to be, especially in the case of girls.

Hmm, I guess I think most of the "formative" stuff happens at home. I
certainly know lots of good-charactered women who lived through nasty
junior high situations without being negatively impacted for life. That's
not to say that such a negative situation isn't worth avoiding -- if I
knew that spending $$$ on a private middle school would avoid the typical
pain of middle school for my child, I'd spend it. But it's hard to know
these things in advance ;-/

>consider essential, doesn't carry quite the same weight on a girl's
>personality and esteem. The foundation for those, I believe, has largely
>been formed before a girl reaches college age.

Right, which is why I think your question was worded to get the answer
you wanted (subconsciously, perhaps) to get....

Good luck figuring it all out!
--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

[Beeswing]

"Scott" > wrote in message
...
>
> ...especially if the College decides you *shouldn't* have sent your
> daugther to private school and therefore you should still have all
> that tuition money in the bank ;)

Perhaps unfortunately, that's irrelevant. I can't expect our family to
qualify for need-based financial aid for either private school or
college in any case. We're in that awkward "price point" where tuition
would take a huge bite and yet we don't qualify for assistance.

> There are no guarantees that the Private School will be any more or
> less difficult to navigate vis-a-vis all those issues that can make
> middle school a less-than-pleasant experience. Unless you interview
> a lot of the girls there and determine that they are all blissfully
> happy.

They had several of the parents speak and a few of the girls. Now, I
realize you're not going to have an unhappy parent or child speak at
your open house, but it was impressive how poised and happy the girls
came across and how pleased the parents were with their daughter's
self-confidence and level of engagement in school. I know it sounds odd,
but the students actually did seem "blissfully happy." And yes, I
realize that that's no guaranty that The Kid would be, if she went
there. But it is beguiling.

> DD starts middle school next year, and it's not really something to
> which I'm looking forward. At least the school has an okay reputation
> as being large enough that it's not difficult for anyone to find a
> group to be in. We aren't thinking of private school now. Maybe if
> we discern that she is desperately unhappy next year, we'll discuss
> it. It would surprise me if something like that happened.

Thanks for your input! I appreciate it. Best wishes with middle school.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Bruce and Jeanne" > wrote in message
...

> How is your daughter doing in her school now? I'm only asking because
a
> friend of mine went through this same thing two years ago. Her
daughter
> was excelling academically at public elementary school, but my friend
> felt she wasn't getting the attention she needed and she didn't really
> have any good friendships. So, for 5th grade, the parents sent her to
a
> very expensive small private school and the girl blossomed and at the
> end of the year, thanked her parents for sending her. So, she's back
at
> the private school this year and her younger brother has joined her.
> This pretty much eats up my friend's entire salary (who is not in a
> low-paying job by any means).

My daughter is doing well in school, though she isn't as challenged as
she probably "should" be. Middle school here is a different kettle of
fish, though. She's a third grader now; we're just investigating options
early.

> That said, they also have the prepaid college tuition plan for our
state
> which guarantees that tuition is paid no matter how high it rises.
So,
> while the kids aren't set to go to Harvard, they are set for 4 years
of
> college.

Wow, that's wonderful. That would be a mental lifesaver.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Robyn Kozierok" > wrote in message
...
>
> I think middle school (or junior high) is a tough time for a lot of
> people. Maybe most people. But I think it could be a tough time even
> in a good private school. You need to consider what it is about the
> school you are looking at that you think will make it a better place
> for your daughter. There are some benefits to single-sex education
> for girls, which I think you're considering based on the other thread.
> But I'm not convinced that the social scene would be better, and that
> is typically what makes middle school so hard for so many kids.
Unless
> the school makes a special effort to explicitly address social issues,
> I think you will have them whether the school is public or private,
> all-girls or co-ed.

The school does make a special effort. That's part of what I find
impressive. Whether that's enough to make a true difference...I don't
know.

> That said, if you think private school is the best place for her for
> middle school, my philosophy is to worry about now now, and worry
about
> later later. If she needs the private school now, I'd spend the money
> and figure out how you and she can finance her college education
later.
> There's usually a way. (My kids are in private school now, which
covers
> K-8, because it was the only place I could find that would meet their
needs.
> They don't have college savings accounts yet, for a variety of
reasons.)
>
> Good luck deciding!!

Thanks, Robin. Our financial status is likely to improve, but I wouldn't
want to make decisions based on a "likely." On the other hand... ACK!
It's hard to think about.

May I ask what you especially liked about the school you're sending your
kids to?

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Robyn Kozierok" > wrote in message
...
> So, the real question probably comes down to, will going to this
> particular private middle school really have a much better influence
on
> your particular child's character than the public school she would
> otherwise attend? And if so, does this difference justify making
> college funding more challenging for her? Clearly, I can't answer
> those questions for you.

I responded to part of your post but not this part -- and I should have.
You've pretty much boiled it down for me. Now I have to think on it.

Thanks.

beeswing

> fwiw, you could probably find "a few" poised, confident, well-spoken
> girls in public school who are also very positive about their school.

P.S. I do realize this. :)

[Beeswing]

"Robyn Kozierok" > wrote in message
...
>
> Right, which is why I think your question was worded to get the answer
> you wanted (subconsciously, perhaps) to get....

Could well be. :) Or maybe I just want someone to hold my hand and tell
me that even if we can't pay the tuition on the girls school, my
daughter will create her own personal integrity no matter where she
goes, and that a public middle school in the inner city doesn't have to
be such a scary place.

Hmm. Maybe I should just talk to myself a little longer...this inner
dialog stuff is interesting.

> Good luck figuring it all out!

Thanks so much, Robyn. I appreciate your perspective.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Penny Gaines" > wrote in message
...

> I'm not quite sure which age is "middle school" - is it 6 -8 grades?
> which makes it 11 - 14yo?

Middle school is usually 6th through 8th grade. The private school will
have a 5th grade class as well by next year. I'm not dissatisfied with
our public elementary school, so I don't know that I'd care if my kid
went to 5th grade there...though I'm sure there's an advantage to the
girls attending all four years of the program versus coming in "late."
On the other hand, the private school has a waiting list, and the girls
already attending would have priority for those 6th grade slots.

> I think if I had the choice of a school that would really suit
> my 11-14 yo, or (a not-good-match school and really good college),
> I think I would choose the good-fit school.

Thanks for responding! I'm glad for your input.

beeswing

[Robyn Kozierok]

In article >, Beeswing > wrote:
>
>May I ask what you especially liked about the school you're sending your
>kids to?
>


Well, I came to our current school out of desperation, because the
public school had let my son do a lot of subject acceleration in 3rd
grade, but wasn't prepared to let him continue it in 4th, mainly
because of logistical issues (which had frankly made the whole thing
rather difficult for all concerned even in 3rd).

I think our private school is completely different from the one(s) you are
considering, and is indeed a pretty "alternative" model for a school, but
I like talking about it, so I'll take your opening anyhow. :)

Bottom line, what I like is that they treat kids as individuals,
and never underestimate them or dumb down for them.

Our school is a tiny ungraded school that has 2 teachers and 30 kids in
K-8. It was recommended to me when Ryan was starting 1st grade, and I
visited it and really liked what they were doing, but decided against
it for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that at that
time it appeared that a multiage program in our public school would
meet his educational needs nearly as well, without some of the other
disadvantages, and it did for a couple of years. His retiring 3rd
grade teacher re-recommended it to me, and this time we were desperate
enough to overlook what we perceived to be the disadvantages, and
fortunate that they wanted to admit a couple of older students that
year (which they normally do not do) to fill a hole in their age
distribution.

What I like about it is that every child is treated as an individual.
A lot of time is spent on social issues at all levels, and the kids
are all incredibly good and caring toward one another. The group is
about 2/3 elementary and 1/3 middle school age, and they do break up
into those groups (with one teacher for each group) for much of the
day. Within the elementary group, they are further divided into
an older and a younger group for some activities. Math is done in
3 large groups, each of which is often split into subgroups, and in
all cases individual expectations are varied as appropriate. Reading
at the elementary level is completely individualized, with each child
reading books agreed upon by themselves and the teacher, and doing age-
and ability-appropriate activities relating to them. When they study
science, the material is presented on a relatively high level with the
understanding that younger children may not get everything, but still
get a lot out of it, and appreciate not being babied. Each child also
does an independent study on a topic of their choice that takes most
of the year. (They do this in school). The school doesn't believe in
(and thus doesn't assign) homework for elementary-aged students.
There are parent volunteers and college students helping in the classroom
almost all the time.

The tradeoffs are that it is very small, limiting social opportunities.
It doesn't have a traditional art, music or PE program (though all of
these are addressed to some extent in non-traditional ways). But there
is no band, choir, very few after-school activities, etc. We address
this to some extent via outside activities (instrumental music lessons,
soccer, tae kwon do, art camp, etc.) which also increases our kids'
social contacts. From what I've seen, the kids do make the transition
from the tiny, friendly atmosphere of this school to public or private
traditional high schools without much trouble (somewhat surprisingly, IMO).

Although my kids haven't started middle school yet, my 10yo will join
the middle school group next year. I am particularly impressed with
how well the middle school teacher handles the social issues that can
be so difficult at that age. This gets re-visited throughout the year.

This is our second year there. We are very pleased and expect all our
kids to attend through middle school. However, it is significant to
note that due to an unusual school choice/vouchering situation, we are
not currently paying to send our kids to this school! This arrangement
is not likely to last forever, however, and we're pretty committed to
sticking with this even when we have to pay for it. (Fortunately, the
offer a substantial sibling discount, and the school is not horribly
expensive, as private schools go, to begin with. Still, it will be a
big adjustment!)

--Robyn

[Beeswing]

"Kevin Karplus" > wrote in message
...

> I don't know about "character", but a public university education is a
> far better educational investment than a private middle school. In 10
> years no one is going to care much whether she went to a good or a
> mediocre middle school, but going to a good university will affect her
> choices for the rest of her life.
>
> If I remember right, you are in Seattle, where going to private
> schools is highly fashionable (over 1/3 of all students do), but there
> are still decent public schools available. Far better to go to a
> decent public school and have enough money to afford 4+ years of
> university than to go to a ritzy middle school and then only be able
> to afford an AA degree.

I have an afterthought, a question for you. If going to good private
school didn't stop you from getting your four-year degree at some place
decent, if not prestigious...would you feel any different? This school
is graduating *all* their students two years ahead. I wonder when the
critical education years are...besides the early elementary years?

Thanks.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"H Schinske" > wrote in message
...
> >That said, if you think private school is the best place for her for
> >middle school, my philosophy is to worry about now now, and worry
about
> >later later. If she needs the private school now, I'd spend the
money
> >and figure out how you and she can finance her college education
later.
>
> I think that is definitely true. If I hadn't gone to private school
when I did,
> I'd be a much less sane person today. That said, I was in a far worse
situation
> in public school than I see my kids in currently, so the sacrifice was
more
> worth it to my parents. Homeschooling was not a reasonable option then
(or
> didn't look like it), tuition was a trifle cheaper, etc. Plus, with
six kids,
> things like expensive family vacations just weren't going to happen
anyway.
> Might as well put every cent towards school.

Thanks, Helen. I'm thinking my kid might have a tougher time in public
middle school than I did, given the environment of the school in
question. But I have to admit that I don't really know as much; it's
just an impression I have. I had some misgivings at first about the
school she's in now (and I still do, for that matter) -- but all in all,
it's been a reasonably good fit for her, and there's some stuff I flat
out love about the school. So I could be wrong on the middle school,
too.

I do have a gut feeling that she'd love the private school, though. No
question there.

beeswing

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, Beeswing wrote:
> Here's why I asked the question I asked. Although the school we are
> considering is much better academically than our public, urban middle
> school, I really *am* concerned about "character" -- self-image,
> self-confidence, personal integrity, and the ability to steer clear of
> peer pressure (i.e., that my daughter be strong enough to own choices on
> sex, drugs, and so forth). The school we're considering is much
> different from the environment of our public middle school. It is an
> all-girls school whose mission is to train "future world leaders" -- in
> whatever way those future leaders might choose to run with it. Some of
> the parents and a few of the girls spoke at the school's open house. The
> parents were enthusiastic about how their daughters had grown and
> changed; they also talked about how engaged the kids were in the school
> and in education. The girls were poised, confident, well-spoken, and
> very positive about the school.
>
> I think of the middle school period as "formative years" -- in the best
> and worst senses possible. I believe they can make or break who you turn
> out to be, especially in the case of girls. College, which I also
> consider essential, doesn't carry quite the same weight on a girl's
> personality and esteem. The foundation for those, I believe, has largely
> been formed before a girl reaches college age.

This is a good argument for choosing middle-school very
carefully---particularly for girls (I believe that high school is a
more critical time for boys). I would want to look at the math and
science education offered at the all-girls school---one of the biggest
weaknesess of many schools these days is the way they turn girls away
from math and science at the middle and high-school level. Do the
girls at the school think science and math are cool? Do they do any
experiments or is it all "book learning?

Get permission to observe a day or two of classes. Watch how the
teachers interact with the kids---would this style work with your
child? Watch how the kids play on the playground---do they break up
into cliques? are there kids wandering around following one or two
leaders? Are the kids coming back in from playing happy and excited
or glum and irritable?

Talk to some of the parents (outside the open house). Find out what
they like and dislike about the school. Are these the important
issues for you and your daughter?

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[beeswing]

Kevin Karplus wrote:

>This is a good argument for choosing middle-school very
>carefully---particularly for girls (I believe that high school is a
>more critical time for boys). I would want to look at the math and
>science education offered at the all-girls school---one of the biggest
>weaknesess of many schools these days is the way they turn girls away
>from math and science at the middle and high-school level. Do the
>girls at the school think science and math are cool? Do they do any
>experiments or is it all "book learning?

Good idea, but I think it's an area of strength. This school actually focuses
on science and technology for girls, thinking that young women often get short
changed in this area. One of their projects right now is to build an airplane
-- a real one -- using math, physics, communication skills, and such to carry
it off. My one concern is that their *language arts* offerings may be weak, in
contrast, but that says more about my personal background and what I value and
enjoy than it does about my daughter. I'd love a chance to talk to more
students about how they feel about the school.

>Get permission to observe a day or two of classes. Watch how the
>teachers interact with the kids---would this style work with your
>child? Watch how the kids play on the playground---do they break up
>into cliques? are there kids wandering around following one or two
>leaders? Are the kids coming back in from playing happy and excited
>or glum and irritable?
>
>Talk to some of the parents (outside the open house). Find out what
>they like and dislike about the school. Are these the important
>issues for you and your daughter?

Thanks. These are all great ideas.

beeswing

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, Beeswing wrote:
> I have an afterthought, a question for you. If going to good private
> school didn't stop you from getting your four-year degree at some place
> decent, if not prestigious...would you feel any different? This school
> is graduating *all* their students two years ahead. I wonder when the
> critical education years are...besides the early elementary years?

It depends a lot what you mean by "prestigious" and "decent".

There is a very nice article in a recent issue of Academe by Renny
Christopher
http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/03ja/03jachri.htm
claiming that working-class kids are getting short-changed in their
university education because of lower quality education in the
California State (CSU) schools contrasted to the University of
California (UC) system (she has taught in both). I think that for most
people, the CSU system is considered "decent" and UC is "prestigious".

The UC school system is roughly at the same level as University of
Washington, Seattle---I'm not familiar enough with the Washington
colleges to know what the equivalents are of the CSU system.

If your standards are higher (that almost any research university is
"decent" and Stanford or UC Berkeley is prestigious), the question
becomes quite a different one.

The "name-brand" of the university that you end up at matters more
than where you start. I went to a mediocre university for my
undergraduate program (Michigan State), but got a good education,
since it had a small number of very good students who got a lot of
faculty attention, and I was lucky enough to be in that group. I
might have done slightly better at a more prestigious school, but not
by much. For grad school, I went to Stanford, and that did make a
difference in what I learned, how much I enjoyed it, and what jobs I
could later get. It was exciting to be in a place where a lot of the
other people were as bright as me, and somewhat daunting that some
were much brighter (I never was able to grasp all of Tarjan's proof of
the asymptotic complexity of the union-find algorithm, and I could not
have come up with it myself).

If your choices are between (private school+CSU) and (public
school+UC), I'd say that the UC choice is probably the better one.
If the choice is between (private school+UC) and (public
school+Stanford), the advantages of the private school might be more
important. Of course, things are not always so clearcut---the
difference in education at the middle-school and high-school level will
affect the child's desire and ability to achieve at college, so
private school may open up greater possibilities educationally, while
draining financial resources.

I hope not to have to face this problem with my son---we've been
saving for college for him since he was born, and hope to be able to
afford to send him to whatever schools or colleges best fit his needs
and abilities.

For elementary school so far we have stuck with public schools (taking
full advantage of a strong bilingual program to get him intensive
education in Spanish). When the bilingual program ends after 3rd
grade, we may move him to a private school for a few years, since the
GATE program is practically non-existent in the public schools here.
For middle school and high school, we will probably try to get him
into a local charter school that has very high academic standards.
Unfortunately, there is a lottery to get into the charter school (only
room for 50 students per year), so luck may affect our choices.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[Bruce and Jeanne]

Beeswing wrote:

>
> "Kevin Karplus" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> > I don't know about "character", but a public university education is a
> > far better educational investment than a private middle school. In 10
> > years no one is going to care much whether she went to a good or a
> > mediocre middle school, but going to a good university will affect her
> > choices for the rest of her life.
> >
> > If I remember right, you are in Seattle, where going to private
> > schools is highly fashionable (over 1/3 of all students do), but there
> > are still decent public schools available. Far better to go to a
> > decent public school and have enough money to afford 4+ years of
> > university than to go to a ritzy middle school and then only be able
> > to afford an AA degree.
>


I can't really speak to the effects of decent versus prestigious
undergraduate programs. I was lucky enough to get into my dad's
university (an Ivy League school) and get free tuition as a dependent.
But I did go through the same thought process for graduate school.
Should I spend the money and go to the number one school in my field or
should I go to a second-tier school where I know I would be taken care
of financially because I would be queen bee? I asked my father for
advice and he said basically even in the academic field, sure, the
prestigous school helps with your first and maybe second position but in
the end, it's what you do that determines your success.

FWIW, he went to a second or third tier school for his PhD and ended up
a professor at an Ivy League school, whereas my brother got his PhD at
an Ivy League school and ended up a professor at a second or third tier
school. Both are well-respected in their field.

> I have an afterthought, a question for you. If going to good private
> school didn't stop you from getting your four-year degree at some place
> decent, if not prestigious...would you feel any different? This school
> is graduating *all* their students two years ahead. I wonder when the
> critical education years are...besides the early elementary years?
>

I'm not sure I would use early graduation as an indicator of successful,
but I'm not a fan of pushing students through school as fast as
possible. While they may "get started" in life earlier, I think the
kids also tend to learn life is some sort of race. I remember when I
told my friends I was taking off a year between undergrad and grad
school to go to China, the response was "But you'll lose a year!" (?!)

For me, I'm looking at placing my daughter in the public elementary
school for grades 2-5 and then back in her small Montessori school for
the middle school years mainly because I like their curriculum and I
like the small school environment and the absolute absence of cliques.
But it's definitely YMMV.

Jeanne

[beeswing]

Jeanne wrote:

>I'm not sure I would use early graduation as an indicator of successful,
>but I'm not a fan of pushing students through school as fast as
>possible.

They don't graduate early, neccessarily (I don't know that they do or don't,
really, but that wasn't what we were being told). What I mean is that all of
this year's graduating class is working two or more years above "grade level."
The only caveat I see is that the kids are required to be at grade level or
above to get into the school, so I don't know if it's chicken or egg.

By the way, what did you decide to do for graduate school? Spend the extra
money for a number one school, or go to what you called a "second-tier school"?
Do you think the choice you made has made a difference, either positive or
negative?

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

beeswing

[beeswing]

Kevin Karplus wrote:
>
>It depends a lot what you mean by "prestigious" and "decent".
>
>There is a very nice article in a recent issue of Academe by Renny
>Christopher
> http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/03ja/03jachri.htm
>claiming that working-class kids are getting short-changed in their
>university education because of lower quality education in the
>California State (CSU) schools contrasted to the University of
>California (UC) system (she has taught in both). I think that for most
>people, the CSU system is considered "decent" and UC is "prestigious".
>
>The UC school system is roughly at the same level as University of
>Washington, Seattle---I'm not familiar enough with the Washington
>colleges to know what the equivalents are of the CSU system.

Thanks for the link and the information. I'd guess that UW and WSU are top-tier
schools, while WWU, EWU, and CWU are not. On the other hand, my sister went to
WWU and was happy with it...though when she went to grad school, she went to
UW. At that time, though, she was living and working locally.

>If your standards are higher (that almost any research university is
>"decent" and Stanford or UC Berkeley is prestigious), the question
>becomes quite a different one.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. No matter what, my daughter won't be going to
an Ivy League school unless she gets some sort of amazing scholarship. It does
occur to me, though, that if she went to UW and was willing to live at home,
the overall cost would be much less.

>I hope not to have to face this problem with my son---we've been
>saving for college for him since he was born, and hope to be able to
>afford to send him to whatever schools or colleges best fit his needs
>and abilities.

We've been saving for college, but not with the thought in mind of sending The
Kid to private school or anything other than an in-state public university.

>For elementary school so far we have stuck with public schools (taking
>full advantage of a strong bilingual program to get him intensive
>education in Spanish). When the bilingual program ends after 3rd
>grade, we may move him to a private school for a few years, since the
>GATE program is practically non-existent in the public schools here.
>For middle school and high school, we will probably try to get him
>into a local charter school that has very high academic standards.
>Unfortunately, there is a lottery to get into the charter school (only
>room for 50 students per year), so luck may affect our choices.

The charter school sounds great. I hope that works out for you.

Thanks for your well-thought-out response. You have me thinking...which is
always a good thing.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"Robyn Kozierok" > wrote in message
...

> I think our private school is completely different from the one(s) you
are
> considering, and is indeed a pretty "alternative" model for a school,
but
> I like talking about it, so I'll take your opening anyhow. :)

Thanks for letting me hear about your school. It sounds great.

beeswing

[Splanche]

2 situations I've heard of myself:

1) My SIL's niece, who ended up with low self-esteem issues when she was in a
big, fairly weathly suburban public school...she transferred to a small private
school (actually, in the same wealthy suburb, but with enrollment from other
towns) and she really came out of her shell.

2) My cousin's stepdaughter, who went to a Private Catholic Junior High, and
felt like she was taunted mercilessly about her weight, etc... She transferred
to a larg Public High School and developed a huge crowd of friends and was
incredibly happy.

So I guess you need to know both the school and the child. Some private schools
are very "nurturing," and some allow much more cliqueishness and abuse than a
public school would ever tolerate.
Some kids need to be a small fish in a big pond to reach their potential; some
need a small pond to feel safe enough to grow.

[Bruce and Jeanne]

beeswing wrote:

> Jeanne wrote:
>
> >I'm not sure I would use early graduation as an indicator of successful,
> >but I'm not a fan of pushing students through school as fast as
> >possible.
>
> They don't graduate early, neccessarily (I don't know that they do or don't,
> really, but that wasn't what we were being told). What I mean is that all of
> this year's graduating class is working two or more years above "grade level."
> The only caveat I see is that the kids are required to be at grade level or
> above to get into the school, so I don't know if it's chicken or egg.

Oh. I see. I'm beginning to think private schools have to say the kids
are two years above grade level - my daughter's school says the same
thing. Again, I'm not sure this is good.

In first grade, she's learning multiplication along with addition -
holding off subtraction until later. So yeah, in some ways, she's two
years ahead.

> By the way, what did you decide to do for graduate school? Spend the extra
> money for a number one school, or go to what you called a "second-tier school"?

Option Number 3. :)

The one of the top schools (for City Planning), UC Berkeley, was the one
I thought I would attend if I got in. One of my old professors would be
my adviser if I went there. Then, I got in. Unfortunately, they could
only guarantee one semester worth of aid and the cost of living was very
high.

I also got into U. of FL in Gainesville, definitely second-tier but I
would be queen. Lots of money, lots of resources and my old adviser
from a previous degree program was department chair. This was scary
because even though I would have lots of support, again, the program
wasn't a great fit.

Unexpectedly I heard that I was accepted into UNC-Chapel Hill with a one
year assistantship (which turned into essentially a fellowship) working
with a very well respected faculty member. Low cost of living, as well
as one of the top schools. So, I ended up at UNC.

Before I heard from UNC, I was strongly leaning toward Florida. I
wasn't thrilled with the program at Berkeley and I pretty much knew it
wasn't right for me.

> Do you think the choice you made has made a difference, either positive or
> negative?
>

Of course my choice made a difference. Suffice it to say, I'm happy
where I am now in my life so it's pretty moot whether the difference is
positive or negative. I never once said to myself (even when I knew I
wasn't going to finish), "gee, I wish I went to..." so I guess I made
the right choice.

I think you just need to make the decision you feel is best for your
child and you.

Jeanne

[LFortier]

Scott wrote:
> LFortier wrote:
>
>>
>> I spent years saying how glad I was I didn't have to relive the teen
>> years until it finally dawned on me that a parent relives them through
>> children.
>
>
> Yes. But I think it's important to recognize that your
> daughter or son may or may not react to things the same
> way you did. So you may relive them, but you're reliving
> something that is different from what your child is
> living.
>
> Scott DD 10 and DS 7.8
>

Oh, yes, and that's something I must constantly remind
myself with the older child. We're very alike
tempermentally in many ways, but I have to remind myself
that she's not a carbon copy.

Lesley

[Claire Petersky]

"Beeswing" > wrote in message
...

> Here's why I asked the question I asked. Although the school we are
> considering is much better academically than our public, urban middle
> school, I really *am* concerned about "character" -- self-image,
> self-confidence, personal integrity, and the ability to steer clear of
> peer pressure (i.e., that my daughter be strong enough to own choices on
> sex, drugs, and so forth). The school we're considering is much
> different from the environment of our public middle school. It is an
> all-girls school whose mission is to train "future world leaders" -- in
> whatever way those future leaders might choose to run with it. Some of
> the parents and a few of the girls spoke at the school's open house. The
> parents were enthusiastic about how their daughters had grown and
> changed; they also talked about how engaged the kids were in the school
> and in education. The girls were poised, confident, well-spoken, and
> very positive about the school.

Ah, Seattle Girls School? We were looking at it too. I have two friends with
daughters there. I too had a pretty wretched time in junior high, so I am
very concerned about my daughter's experience next year. She's a 5th Grader
in the Bellevue public school system, and we're exploring middle schools
options ourselves. There's lots of considerations -- she has some
neurological quirks that make it harder for her to adapt socially and would
make it more likely she will end up on the bottom of the middle school
social heap. She's a bright kid, and is complaining now about how dull her
current academic situation is at her existing elementary school, where she
is in a gifted pull-out program.

We spent some time at school conferences last week talking to our daughter's
classroom teacher and her teacher for her pull-out gifted program. Both of
them strongly encouraged our daughter to try to test into the district's
full-day gifted program. I can see the benefits of being in this program --
if you are among other "smart" kids, you are less likely to be tortured (as
I was) for doing well in the classroom. Social markers like having just the
right clothes are probably less important. The school that hosts the
full-day program also is the magnet school for the district for drama,
another one of my daughter's interests, and she could participate in the
general school's drama program as an elective. So we are going to cross our
fingers on this, and hope she tests in to the full-day gifted program.

Our district also has an international school, in which kids go through the
international baccalaureate program as it is set up in Europe. This program
is very popular, and you get in by lottery. We could also see if my daughter
could get into this program as well.

When we looked at private schools, well, here on the Eastside, there's only
one secular middle school -- Overlake -- and it costs over $17K a year. In
general, we're concerned about the costs of private school -- even SGS, one
of the cheaper ones, is at 9K and climbing every year. Further, if we go to
Seattle to try to find more options, nearly everyone in the household has
some concerns about the time sink of commuting in to the city for middle
school.

I guess we ended up feeling much more positive about our public school
options compared to private after looking into it in depth and talking with
the teachers -- much more so than before. Maybe that should be your next
step. Are you in the Seattle school system or outside of it?

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky

[H Schinske]

wrote:
>
>Ah, Seattle Girls School? We were looking at it too. I have two friends with
>daughters there.

I'd love to hear about their experiences by email, if you have time. (Heck,
maybe we should all get together sometime! Real life, what a concept.)

Helen

[Beeswing]

"Claire Petersky" > wrote in message
news:Orgvb.200127$275.745324@attbi_s53...

> I guess we ended up feeling much more positive about our public school
> options compared to private after looking into it in depth and talking
with
> the teachers -- much more so than before. Maybe that should be your
next
> step.

It sounds like we have similar concerns as far as how the middle school
goes, including the gifted issue. I tried to emailed you a nicer,
longer, more detailed response, but it bounced (hmm, no such thing as
"mouse-potato.com"?). I was wondering if it might bounce, but hoping it
wouldn't. If you can send me a working email address, I'd really like to
resend it.

The upshot of it is that I've checked into the public school choices
we're given, and they aren't the best. Maybe my daughter could go out of
the area (but within the district). I don't *think* she can, but I
haven't confirmed it. (Transportation would be a problem, though.) The
quality of her middle school choices also depend on whether she can test
into the upper tier gifted program.

Thanks so much for your response. You touched on a lot of the same
things I've been thinking about.

beeswing

[Beeswing]

"H Schinske" > wrote in message
...
> wrote:
> >
> >Ah, Seattle Girls School? We were looking at it too. I have two
friends with
> >daughters there.
>
> I'd love to hear about their experiences by email, if you have time.
(Heck,
> maybe we should all get together sometime! Real life, what a concept.)

I'd like to hear about their experiences as well.

I'd love to talk with you all IRL, too. I've met Claire briefly; and my
husband has met Helen briefly, but I haven't met Helen at all (: . It
would be great to be able to simply sit down and chat with both of you
together.

beeswing

[Claire Petersky]

"H Schinske" > wrote in message
...
> wrote:
> >
> >Ah, Seattle Girls School? We were looking at it too. I have two friends
with
> >daughters there.
>
> I'd love to hear about their experiences by email, if you have time.
(Heck,
> maybe we should all get together sometime! Real life, what a concept.)

I'm having a tea party on Saturday, you're welcome to come!


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky

[Claire Petersky]

"Beeswing" > wrote in message
...

> It sounds like we have similar concerns as far as how the middle school
> goes, including the gifted issue. I tried to emailed you a nicer,
> longer, more detailed response, but it bounced (hmm, no such thing as
> "mouse-potato.com"?). I was wondering if it might bounce, but hoping it
> wouldn't. If you can send me a working email address, I'd really like to
> resend it.

The instructions for contacting me is in the signature file below. I thought
I'd share, with the indulgence of the moderators, the following with regard
to the mouse-potato.com and mousepotato.com domains:

Ralph Sims, the founder of halcyon, my old beloved ISP, set up
mouse-potato.com and mousepotato.com as mail sink holes. These domains
resolve to 127.0.0.1, the universal "loopback" IP address which refers to
the local machine. For example, if I try to connect to mouse-potato.com, I
really just open a connection to the machine I'm typing on right now. If
beeswing tries to connect to mouse-potato.com, she merely connects to the
machine she's typing on. And so on, universally, across the entire Internet.

Thus: anyone who tries to send spam email to an address in the
mouse-potato.com domain not only fails to get their message to a real
person, the message *never leaves the machine they're using to send the
message*. Thus, the spam
not only fails to harass real people, but also fails to bog down servers,
routers, and connections across the entire Internet. Thus, mouse-potato
addresses are ideal for things like Usenet which are heavily mined by
spammers for "fresh" email addresses.

I turned to munging my email address just recently, using the mouse-potato
domain, after about 10 years of posting to Usenet with my real name and
address. It was the sven.gibe virus that drove me to that practice.

Anyone, though, can still reach me pretty easily. Just do the substitutions
as I recommend in my signature file.


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky

[Colleen Porter]

(beeswing) wrote in message >...
> My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with "middle
> school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember those years
> as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to school-related
> issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.

I think you have to wait and see what happens when the time is right.

I don't think there is any real split between public and private
school. The bigger difference is between schools, irregardless of
funding.

My local public middle school is wonderful--sixth graders have their
own hall, and eat only with sixth graders. During fifth grade, they
spend two days at the middle school, one to visit the school for a
tour and one to "shadow" with a specific sixth grader. So there is a
good transition.

In sixth grade, one of my older daughters was in a girls-only math
class. My current seventh grader's math class is co-ed, but has only
18 students.

At a private school, the kids might be snobbish and exclusionary.

Yes, middle school is a horrible time for lots of kids, including
mine. I've said before that if I could only spend five years at home
with a child fulltime, I would choose the first year of life, the
middle school years, and the senior year of high school.

But the schood isn't necessarily the only issue. If you have concerns
about self-esteem, then perhaps now is the time to start her in
activities outside school that will build competence and self-esteem.
Perhaps dance, or music, or karate, or girl scouts. My church has a
wonderful program for girls 12-18 which has made a big difference in
our girls' lives.

Colleen Kay Porter

[Cathy Kearns]

"Colleen Porter" > wrote in message
om...
> (beeswing) wrote in message
>...
> > My daughter is almost 9, and she's an only. My only experience with
"middle
> > school" is having gone to public junior high myself. And I remember
those years
> > as being fairly miserable, though it wasn't all attributable to
school-related
> > issues. I'd like my daughter to have a better experience than I did.
>
> I think you have to wait and see what happens when the time is right.
>
> I don't think there is any real split between public and private
> school. The bigger difference is between schools, irregardless of
> funding.

> Yes, middle school is a horrible time for lots of kids, including
> mine. I've said before that if I could only spend five years at home
> with a child fulltime, I would choose the first year of life, the
> middle school years, and the senior year of high school.
>
> But the schood isn't necessarily the only issue. If you have concerns
> about self-esteem, then perhaps now is the time to start her in
> activities outside school that will build competence and self-esteem.
> Perhaps dance, or music, or karate, or girl scouts. My church has a
> wonderful program for girls 12-18 which has made a big difference in
> our girls' lives.

My daughter is now a Freshman in high school. Yep, the junior
high years were somewhat tough. Groups of friends split, and
resplit, and resplit, leaving crushed souls strewn everywhere.
But it wasn't just public school. My daughter got more into
her dance friends, and lo and behold, the same thing was
happening at other public schools, private schools, all girl
private schools, and with even home schooled kids. I
talked to my fellow moms and found even those so called
popular girls were having the same self doubts and
travails. Yep, those are tough years. Luckily, her dance
school started competing. She got lots of props and
awards. And made lots of friend outside school.
As junior high in our district was only 7th and 8th
grades it flew by quickly. And in high school there is
room for every type of kid. Elementary school friends
that dropped her in junior high now walk to school with
her again. All their unique talents are cool again.

I would echo Colleen's comments, find something outside
school that will help build self confidence. My daughter
had dance, others had athletic endeavors. (Club teams, the
school teams just extended the petty bickering that started at
school. Not to mention getting cut in front of your class mates
was pretty brutal.) Horses were also a big hit amongst the
junior high girls. And if you can make it shorter versus
longer (two years instead of four) it helps. I only remember
one year of the junior high catty girls, and that was because
we were in elementary school through 8th grade where I
went to school.

[beeswing]

Colleen wrote:

>I think you have to wait and see what happens when the time is right.

The time is pretty much between now and a year from now. I don't think that
starting the thought process a year earlier is a bad idea.


>I don't think there is any real split between public and private
>school. The bigger difference is between schools, irregardless of
>funding.

I agree with you, in theory. My public middle school choice is basically akin
to an inner city school, with all the problems that can entail. The academics
or weakness of the school aren't the biggest issue, although they are a part of
it. If my daughter got into the highest gifted program, the academics *might*
outweigh the other issues. Might.

>At a private school, the kids might be snobbish and exclusionary.

They might be, in your basic private school -- but the private school I'm
looking at basically selects against that. Almost forty percent of the girls
are receiving up to 90 percent of the cost of tuition in financial aid.
Snobbishness won't be an issue -- unless there's reverse snobbism against the
kids whose parents pay there way. I have some concern about that, actually.

>But the school isn't necessarily the only issue. If you have concerns
>about self-esteem, then perhaps now is the time to start her in
>activities outside school that will build competence and self-esteem.
>Perhaps dance, or music, or karate, or girl scouts. My church has a
>wonderful program for girls 12-18 which has made a big difference in
>our girls' lives.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. My daughter is in Girl Scouts, and she sings
in her school choir. I've thought about introducing her to some other
activities, including yoga and drama. And you are right, these things do help.
Especially her school choir --- the woman who leads it is a true dynamo.

My daughter's self-esteem is at the moment is pretty good, though she suffers
from some perfectionistic issues. And it can be hard being a "gifted kid" in a
regular school environment. But she's not quite nine yet. Studies have
suggested that keeping girl's self-esteem shored up in middle school is a much
harder prospect. A large part of the vision of the private middle school (an
all-girls school) is to do just that. As parents to The Kid, we need to weigh a
lot of variables and decide where to send our daughter. We still have a year to
decide, and I've really appreciated hearing people's perspectives, yours
included.

Thanks for responding.

beeswing

[beeswing]

Cathy Kearns wrote:

>I would echo Colleen's comments, find something outside
>school that will help build self confidence.

Thanks, I agree with that, and we already do that. But The Kid *will* spend
much of her time in the school enviroment. The question I have to answer for
myself is what I want her to learn in general about the world and to learn
about herself -- and it may not match up with what she'd pick up in an
innercity middle school.

Academics are also an issue, obviously. My daughter is gifted; I want her to be
in a supportive environment for that. I'll have to wait a bit to see which
public school gifted program my daughter tests into. That in itself would make
quite a difference in her public school education and obviously, therefore,
would weigh heavily in our decision.

The middle school years can be hard, I recognize, no matter whether the school
is public or private. Girls, especially, tend to be catty, and private school
isn't likely to protect a girl from that. Still, there's some decisions we can
make as parents as to what environment we'd like our daughter to be educated
in, and these decision have the potential to make quite a difference to whom
our daughter grows up to be.

We're still studying the decision and will be for quite a while. Thanks for
your input and that of everybody who has commented on this thread. I appreciate
it.

beeswing

[beeswing]

I wrote:

>against the kids whose parents pay there way

pay their way, even..........

beeswing

[Rosalie B.]

(beeswing) wrote:

>Academics are also an issue, obviously. My daughter is gifted; I want her to be
>in a supportive environment for that. I'll have to wait a bit to see which
>public school gifted program my daughter tests into. That in itself would make
>quite a difference in her public school education and obviously, therefore,
>would weigh heavily in our decision.

I asked my sister yesterday if she was bored in school. She said yes
she was (we were talking about elementary school, and she skipped
first grade - we didn't have GATE then). I said I didn't remember
being bored, and she said "You daydreamed your way through."

I thought that was kind of amusing, because I didn't realize that she
knew that (I knew it).

grandma Rosalie

[Rosalie B.]

(beeswing) wrote:

>Kevin Karplus wrote:
<snip>
>
>>If your standards are higher (that almost any research university is
>>"decent" and Stanford or UC Berkeley is prestigious), the question
>>becomes quite a different one.
>
>Thanks for your thoughts on this. No matter what, my daughter won't be going to
>an Ivy League school unless she gets some sort of amazing scholarship. It does
>occur to me, though, that if she went to UW and was willing to live at home,
>the overall cost would be much less.
>
>>I hope not to have to face this problem with my son---we've been
>>saving for college for him since he was born, and hope to be able to
>>afford to send him to whatever schools or colleges best fit his needs
>>and abilities.
>
>We've been saving for college, but not with the thought in mind of sending The
>Kid to private school or anything other than an in-state public university.
<snip>

I'm sorry to be late responding to this, but I don't have newsgroup
access all the time when we are underway. I've read through most of
the thread. We are currently in St. Augustine.

ANyway - having taught middle school myself and dh has taught both
middle and hs, we don't feel that middle school education is that
important. I don't think the kids retain much of what they do at that
level, even kids that are smart and have good teachers. At least I
know my own kids did not and neither did I.

IMHO the teachers in the school are more important that the actual
school. You can have good teachers in a poor system and poor teachers
in a generally good system.

In my own case, middle school (or in my case junior high) wasn't so
bad but it was in the same building as I had gone to elementary. I
was more miserable in hs. But that was more because we moved between
8th and 9th grade for me, and my mom wouldn't let me dress like the
other kids (stuff like I could only wear pale pink lipstick which she
thought was suitable for young girls and everyone else was wearing
bright red). I never 'fit' in hs - and as a senior, I was known as my
sophomore sister's sister.

I also feel that in high school the real differences between a good
school (whether public or private) and one that's not so good - maybe
rural with less facilities like what my children had - was in the
social studies and language areas. All my kids went to small rural
high schools and they've all done well in the science/math areas in
college.

My dd#1 put her older children into private parochial school in 7th or
8th grade because she felt that her ds wasn't 'getting it' and since
he wasn't a discipline problem that he was falling through the cracks.
But in general, I would rather have my children in public school - and
her youngest son is in public elementary school.

My dad felt very strongly about that, so my sister and I always went
to public school even though we lived in Baltimore where everyone who
is anyone goes to private school. All the children of my mom and
dad's friends went to private school.

I also feel that it is more important to get a good 'fit' between the
student and the college than that it be a prestigious or expensive
one. My parents sent me to Oberlin (I lived in a coop to save money),
and my sister to Duke, and I think we were both very happy at our own
schools. I have not recommended to any of my children or
grandchildren that they go to Oberlin though, because I don't think it
would be a good 'fit' for them. My sister's ds did go to Duke.

I don't see the expense part of college as a viable part of the
equation. If they want to do it, they will find a way. I agree that
you deal with college expense when you get there. Actually, I think a
parent's saving for college was penalized at the time we did it. We
did not save for college for the kids - we saved for our retirement.

SIL#3's parents did not fund any of their children's college
education, and their two older boys graduated from VA Tech, admittedly
as in-state students. I think it is perfectly possible to find a
good school to go to without bankrupting the parents.

I do feel that going away from home is an essential part of the
growing up college experience, and also that a freshman shouldn't have
any, or at least very few jobs - so while the student might have to
get funding and work AFTER freshman year, the freshman year should be
relatively stress free.

FWIW, dd#1 started out at Western Maryland (small non-state liberal
arts school), got married, transferred to St. Mary's College of
Maryland (small liberal arts state school) and then to University of
Maryland College Park, and got her degree on her own (after her
marriage) without help from us and then got a masters also in math
from Hopkins. DD#2 went to the USAFA and graduated with an
engineering degree. DD#3 graduated from Virginia Tech (where she met
SIL#3) and graduated with a math degree. DS is working his way
through school now.

Our oldest grandson, now 23 dropped out of school in the first
semester, and now after living on his own for several years has gone
back to school. THe oldest granddaughter is at RPI on a partial
lacrosse scholarship, and is doing work-study as an engineering
student.

So a private school did not help our oldest grandson do better in
college any more than a public one helped our ds. (My dh also worked
for a year before he went to college - he probably would not have gone
to college at all if he hadn't gotten an appointment to the USNA as it
was not in his family's expectations.)



grandma Rosalie

[Scott]

Rosalie B. wrote:

> I don't see the expense part of college as a viable part of the
> equation. If they want to do it, they will find a way. I agree that
> you deal with college expense when you get there. Actually, I think a
> parent's saving for college was penalized at the time we did it. We
> did not save for college for the kids - we saved for our retirement.

We save a little for DD and DS's education -- I think it's
$25/month for each of them right now, or something like that,
vs. $100s for retirement.

DD and DS do have money market accounts started by their
uncle. I have always thought I'd use some of that money
to take them (or send them) to Europe for a month sometime
when they're in High School, which I think would be *very*
educational.

Scott DD 10 and DS 7
(replace mouse - potato dot com with netscape dot net to email me)

[David desJardins]

Beeswing writes:
> Perhaps unfortunately, that's irrelevant. I can't expect our family to
> qualify for need-based financial aid for either private school or
> college in any case. We're in that awkward "price point" where tuition
> would take a huge bite and yet we don't qualify for assistance.

I don't understand this at all. I wonder if you're underestimating, or
misunderstanding, how financial aid works. At expensive colleges,
basically, they put your assets and income into a formula to figure out
your expected family contribution. Then they make up the difference
between your expected contribution, and the tuition and expenses, with
financial aid.

You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
$40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
you're downplaying your resources pretty dramatically.) For everyone
else, it costs basically the same to go to a more expensive school than
a less expensive one, because the more expensive school makes up the
difference in the aid package. Maybe your child ends up with more
loans, but on the other hand, he or she will typically have a higher
income after attending the more prestigious school (regardless of
whether or not he/she actually learns more---this is just the way the
world works), so that's pretty much a wash.

It's also not too early to start thinking about playing the system. For
better or worse, the financial aid system is subject to a fair amount of
manipulation (e.g., decisions about one kind of saving, vs another, can
make a big difference---I don't think it's "dishonest" to take this into
account when planning your financial future). For that matter, if you
do choose to send your child to the private school, that will reduce
your savings when it's time for college, thus getting you more aid. So
it's not so clear that the private school costs very much over the long
term. The system really does penalize saving for college.

David desJardins

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
David desJardins > wrote:

*You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
*$40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then

I don't think that's true. At least, if things are similar for grad school
and undergrad, it can't be universally true.

The University of Pennsylvania said I personally didn't qualify for
financial aid as a 26 year old freshman veterinary student. I had no
assets in my own name except for a couple of thousand dollars in a
checking account and a crappy TV, computer, futon, that kind of thing.
They said that they had to look at my parents' assets also (I couldn't
really understand why but that's what they said. I had not lived with my
parents since I was 16 and they had not claimed me as a financial
dependent since I was 18). When they DID look at my parents' assets, they
said I didn't qualify for aid. Bear in mind my dad at that point had been
unemployed for about 7 years, and my grandma was helping my parents pay
their mortgage, so that didn't really make sense either. FWIW.

(I ended up working 40 hrs per week the first two years of vet school AND
taking out some loans on my own).

*you're downplaying your resources pretty dramatically.) For everyone
*else, it costs basically the same to go to a more expensive school than
*a less expensive one, because the more expensive school makes up the
*difference in the aid package.

Well, I went to the most expensive vet school and ended up hugely in debt.
I could definitely have paid less elsewhere, but, well - I got in at Penn.

h.

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[David desJardins]

Hillary Israeli writes:
>> You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
>> $40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
>
> I don't think that's true. At least, if things are similar for grad school
> and undergrad, it can't be universally true.

No, things aren't at all similar for graduate and undergraduate
education. Within the framework of graduate education, professional
schools (medical, law, veterinary, business) also are very different
from academic programs (sciences, humanities, etc.).

Undergraduate programs generally are run with need-based financial aid,
which works as I described (the family ability to pay is determined
based on financial aid forms; financial aid then makes up the difference
between what the family can pay and what the program costs). Some
universities also have a significant amount of "merit aid", which
further decreases costs for the very "best" students.

Graduate programs in academic schools generally expect students to be
supported with fellowships or teaching assistantships, which pay tuition
plus enough to live on (if one is frugal).

Graduate programs in professional schools generally expect students to
pay their own way, or borrow large sums.

David desJardins

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, David desJardins wrote:
> Beeswing writes:
>> Perhaps unfortunately, that's irrelevant. I can't expect our family to
>> qualify for need-based financial aid for either private school or
>> college in any case. We're in that awkward "price point" where tuition
>> would take a huge bite and yet we don't qualify for assistance.
>
> I don't understand this at all. I wonder if you're underestimating, or
> misunderstanding, how financial aid works. At expensive colleges,
> basically, they put your assets and income into a formula to figure out
> your expected family contribution. Then they make up the difference
> between your expected contribution, and the tuition and expenses, with
> financial aid.

Not universally true. The richer private colleges (Yale, Stanford,
....) try to put together financial aid packages that level the playing
field, but many of the public schools (which have gotten quite
expensive) have no almost no money for financial aid. So it may
actually end up being cheaper to go to a more expensive school!


> You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
> $40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
> you're downplaying your resources pretty dramatically.) For everyone
> else, it costs basically the same to go to a more expensive school than
> a less expensive one, because the more expensive school makes up the
> difference in the aid package.

The cost of the school varies enormously and the financial aid
available varies enormously, but not necessarily in a synchronized
way. You can end up with a bargain or hellishly expensive education
at almost any point in the "reputation" spectrum.

> Maybe your child ends up with more
> loans, but on the other hand, he or she will typically have a higher
> income after attending the more prestigious school (regardless of
> whether or not he/she actually learns more---this is just the way the
> world works), so that's pretty much a wash.

You only get a bigger income if you decide to go into one of the
money-making fields. If you decide to do something useful to
society (like being a public defender instead of an ambulance chaser,
or a teacher rather than stock broker), your salary does not increase
just because you went to a more prestigious school, though your chance
of getting the job you want does increase.


> It's also not too early to start thinking about playing the system. For
> better or worse, the financial aid system is subject to a fair amount of
> manipulation (e.g., decisions about one kind of saving, vs another, can
> make a big difference---I don't think it's "dishonest" to take this into
> account when planning your financial future). For that matter, if you
> do choose to send your child to the private school, that will reduce
> your savings when it's time for college, thus getting you more aid. So
> it's not so clear that the private school costs very much over the long
> term. The system really does penalize saving for college.

Unfortunately, the system doesn't only penalize saving for
college---it also penalizes living within one's means, saving for
retirement, owning one's own house, and in general any sort of fiscal
responsibility. That is inherent in any system that tries to set up
financial aid tied to "need". I much prefer the European model, where
support for college is tied to "merit" defined rather
loosely---basically, anyone who can get into college is given full
support.



--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[H Schinske]

wrote:

>Maybe your child ends up with more
>loans, but on the other hand, he or she will typically have a higher
>income after attending the more prestigious school (regardless of
>whether or not he/she actually learns more---this is just the way the
>world works), so that's pretty much a wash.

I don't think the world works that way for most of us. The choice of career
usually makes far more difference in the potential for high earnings than the
choice of college. Considered purely in terms of money, my expensive education
was probably a foolish investment. I'm not *entirely* certain that I've made
back a whole lot more than what my education cost (in constant dollars) yet!
But inflation makes that (very depressing) calculation difficult.

--Helen

[David desJardins]

Helen writes:
> I don't think the world works that way for most of us. The choice of
> career usually makes far more difference in the potential for high
> earnings than the choice of college.

It doesn't have to make very much difference, to pay for the marginal
cost of the loans. Suppose that the typical college graduate has a
career of 40 years making an average salary of $50,000 (in constant
dollars--- the salary will of course increase with inflation, but that's
discounted in the time value of money). So that's $2 million in
compensation over a lifetime (in present-value dollars at the time of
graduation). If a student graduates with $20,000 in extra loans, as a
result of attending the more expensive rather than the less expensive
institution, then that student would only have to make 1% more, over his
or her lifetime, to break even.

I don't think heavy student loans are a good thing, for various reasons,
and I don't encourage people to take them on lightly. But they do have
to be viewed in context.

David desJardins

[H Schinske]

wrote:

>If a student graduates with $20,000 in extra loans, as a
>result of attending the more expensive rather than the less expensive
>institution, then that student would only have to make 1% more, over his
>or her lifetime, to break even.

Yeah, but what happens is that 1% of the students make twice as much, and for
the rest of us it makes no difference! ;-)

In any case, am I naive to think that loans are not really "financial aid" in
the true sense of the word? I know you can get them at attractive rates
compared to borrowing money elsewhere, but really, almost anyone can borrow
money for college. To me, financial aid means somebody actually helps me PAY
THE BILL, permanently.

--Helen

[Rosalie B.]

x-no-archive:yes (Hillary Israeli) wrote:

>In >,
>David desJardins > wrote:
>
>*You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
>*$40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
>
>I don't think that's true. At least, if things are similar for grad school
>and undergrad, it can't be universally true.

My grandson, who dropped out of college at 18, has decided to go back
and is attending the same state school that he dropped out of. Now at
23 has been living on his own and supporting himself since age 19 -
his parents do not have to provide any of his support.

His mom, who got her undergraduate degree on her own after she got
married as a freshman, also got her graduate degree on her own
(supplemented by her work to a certain extent).


>
>The University of Pennsylvania said I personally didn't qualify for
>financial aid as a 26 year old freshman veterinary student. I had no
>assets in my own name except for a couple of thousand dollars in a
>checking account and a crappy TV, computer, futon, that kind of thing.
>They said that they had to look at my parents' assets also (I couldn't
>really understand why but that's what they said. I had not lived with my
>parents since I was 16 and they had not claimed me as a financial
>dependent since I was 18). When they DID look at my parents' assets, they
>said I didn't qualify for aid. Bear in mind my dad at that point had been
>unemployed for about 7 years, and my grandma was helping my parents pay
>their mortgage, so that didn't really make sense either. FWIW.

Not only are grad and undergrad not the same, but I suspect that vet
school is much more difficult to get aid for than ordinary grad.
school.
>
>(I ended up working 40 hrs per week the first two years of vet school AND
>taking out some loans on my own).
>
>*you're downplaying your resources pretty dramatically.) For everyone
>*else, it costs basically the same to go to a more expensive school than
>*a less expensive one, because the more expensive school makes up the
>*difference in the aid package.
>
>Well, I went to the most expensive vet school and ended up hugely in debt.
>I could definitely have paid less elsewhere, but, well - I got in at Penn.
>

grandma Rosalie

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
David desJardins > wrote:

*Hillary Israeli writes:
*>> You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
*>> $40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
*>
*> I don't think that's true. At least, if things are similar for grad school
*> and undergrad, it can't be universally true.
*
*Graduate programs in professional schools generally expect students to
*pay their own way, or borrow large sums.

That wasn't my impression. My strong impression based on the comment from
the financial aid office to my mother, made on the telephone with me
standing in the office, that "you need to sell your house, is all," is
that graduate programs in professional schools, or at least at Penn,
expect the parents to ante up to pay the bills. My working was not
"permitted" by the school (if they'd known, they would have been very
upset about it).

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Bruce and Jeanne]

Kevin Karplus wrote:

> In article >, David desJardins wrote:
> > Beeswing writes:
> >> Perhaps unfortunately, that's irrelevant. I can't expect our family to
> >> qualify for need-based financial aid for either private school or
> >> college in any case. We're in that awkward "price point" where tuition
> >> would take a huge bite and yet we don't qualify for assistance.
> >
> > I don't understand this at all. I wonder if you're underestimating, or
> > misunderstanding, how financial aid works. At expensive colleges,
> > basically, they put your assets and income into a formula to figure out
> > your expected family contribution. Then they make up the difference
> > between your expected contribution, and the tuition and expenses, with
> > financial aid.
>
> Not universally true. The richer private colleges (Yale, Stanford,
> ....) try to put together financial aid packages that level the playing
> field, but many of the public schools (which have gotten quite
> expensive) have no almost no money for financial aid. So it may
> actually end up being cheaper to go to a more expensive school!
>
>
Didn't the Ivies have to stop this practice because it broke the
anti-trust law?

But I agree it's often less expensive to attend private colleges instead
of public because they can put together bigger aid packages.


Jeanne

[Banty]

In article >, Hillary Israeli says...
>
>In >,
>David desJardins > wrote:
>
>*Hillary Israeli writes:
>*>> You can't "not qualify" unless you really do have the resources to pay
>*>> $40k per year, for several years. (And if you can afford that, then
>*>
>*> I don't think that's true. At least, if things are similar for grad school
>*> and undergrad, it can't be universally true.
>*
>*Graduate programs in professional schools generally expect students to
>*pay their own way, or borrow large sums.
>
>That wasn't my impression. My strong impression based on the comment from
>the financial aid office to my mother, made on the telephone with me
>standing in the office, that "you need to sell your house, is all," is
>that graduate programs in professional schools, or at least at Penn,
>expect the parents to ante up to pay the bills. My working was not
>"permitted" by the school (if they'd known, they would have been very
>upset about it).

My experience is very much along the lines of David's description. Graduate
students in the engineering/sciences and some in the humanities finance through
assitantships from their department or a related department, professional
students (law, medicine, business, veterinary) generally self-finance through
loans against expected high earning power.

I did apply for financial aid as something of a back-up for my first year at the
institution where I obtained my doctorate, and in that process I was treated as
something of a beggar (more than when I applied as an undergraduate). Because
that's not the usual path for financing graduate school. I would put forth that
the response your mother got was exactly because you and she, apparently, were
trying to go the student aid route.

Banty

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, Bruce and Jeanne wrote:
> Kevin Karplus wrote:
>> The richer private colleges (Yale, Stanford,
>> ....) try to put together financial aid packages that level the playing
>> field, but many of the public schools (which have gotten quite
>> expensive) have no almost no money for financial aid. So it may
>> actually end up being cheaper to go to a more expensive school!
>>
> Didn't the Ivies have to stop this practice because it broke the
> anti-trust law?

What practice? They certainly have not stopped trying to put together
financial aid packages. There were some early-decision admission
practices that several schools agreed to drop because they were
anti-competitive, but I haven't heard anything about changes in
financial aid due to anti-trust law.

Hmm---googling "antitrust financial aid" brings up
http://www.nber.org/digest/nov00/w7754.html

What was stopped in 1991 was the colleges getting together to determine
students' financial need. The federal Court of Appeals found that the
colleges were NOT violating anti-trust law, but they did not resume
the practice anyway. The article I gave the URL for above summarizes
a study on the consequences of stopping the joint decisions about need.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1994/jan05/33561.html
discusses the legal decisions in a bit more detail and describes the
system that the Justice Department agreed to let replace the older
"overlap" system.

http://www.gop.gov/committeecentral/docs/bills/107/1/bill.asp?bill=hr768
discusses more recent legislative action to continue to allow colleges
to cooperate without violating antitrust law.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[[email protected]]

In article >,
says...

> > It's also not too early to start thinking about playing the system. For
> > better or worse, the financial aid system is subject to a fair amount of
> > manipulation (e.g., decisions about one kind of saving, vs another, can
> > make a big difference---I don't think it's "dishonest" to take this into
> > account when planning your financial future). For that matter, if you
> > do choose to send your child to the private school, that will reduce
> > your savings when it's time for college, thus getting you more aid. So
> > it's not so clear that the private school costs very much over the long
> > term. The system really does penalize saving for college.
>
> Unfortunately, the system doesn't only penalize saving for
> college---it also penalizes living within one's means, saving for
> retirement, owning one's own house, and in general any sort of fiscal
> responsibility. That is inherent in any system that tries to set up
> financial aid tied to "need".

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that if everything else (income, household
size, # of children in college, etc.) is equal, but my family has
$1,000,000 in investments and your family has no investments or savings,
you're going to get more need-based aid than I am. No, in that a
family's income still has a *way* bigger impact on how much need-based
aid they receive than does the total value of their assets -- so in the
situation above, I might end up having to pay more out of my own pocket
than you will, but OTOH, you're probably going to have a way harder time
coming up with the amount you *are* expected to pay than I will (because
all you'll have to draw on will be your current income, and financial
aid formulae tend to assume you need *way* less of that income to live
on than most people actually use). By the College Board's formula
(which most of the private colleges that have their own institutional
money to give out use), a family's typically expected to put, at most,
6% of their assets towards college costs each year. (The "at most" is
because not all assets get hit at this level, and some don't get hit at
all. For example, the College Board's form specifically tells you *not*
to list assets you've saved in 401(k), IRAs, or other retirement
accounts at all under your assets -- and many of the most selective,
richest schools (e.g., Princeton, Yale, Harvard) either aren't looking
at home equity as an asset at all any more *or* aren't looking at it for
middle-income families/ aren't looking at all of it.) Again, many
people do end up spending more than 6% of their assets per year on
college -- but this is mostly because they don't really have as much
discretionary income left over as the colleges expect. (In other words,
if they didn't have the assets to spend, they or their kids would end up
needing to borrow that much more, or go to school somewhere cheaper.)

> I much prefer the European model, where
> support for college is tied to "merit" defined rather
> loosely---basically, anyone who can get into college is given full
> support.

Once upon a time, this was what the U.S. public university and community
college system, together with Federal Pell Grants and Stafford Loans,
was supposed to do -- make college affordable (i.e., either free or at a
cost low enough that you could cover it with a small loan and/or part-
time job) for anyone who could get in. Unfortunately, the increase in
college costs coupled with the decline in federal & state support for
higher ed makes this less and less realistic.

-HB, higher ed geek.

[David desJardins]

Hillary Israeli writes:
>> Graduate programs in professional schools generally expect students to
>> pay their own way, or borrow large sums.
>
> That wasn't my impression. My strong impression based on the comment from
> the financial aid office to my mother, made on the telephone with me
> standing in the office, that "you need to sell your house, is all," is
> that graduate programs in professional schools, or at least at Penn,
> expect the parents to ante up to pay the bills.

That seems just the same as what I said. Of course, most of the people
who are "paying their own way" through professional schools are doing so
with money from their parents, since most people can't earn this much
money by the age at which most people generally attend professional
schools. That's one reason why there are more lawyers, doctors, etc.,
from wealthy families. But it also happens (particularly in law
schools) that people may work for some time in a different career, and
then go to law school after they have accumulated some money to pay for
it.

> My working was not "permitted" by the school (if they'd known, they
> would have been very upset about it).

Well, I'm not surprised by that!

David desJardins

[Penny Gaines]

Kevin Karplus wrote in >:

> Unfortunately, the system doesn't only penalize saving for
> college---it also penalizes living within one's means, saving for
> retirement, owning one's own house, and in general any sort of fiscal
> responsibility. That is inherent in any system that tries to set up
> financial aid tied to "need". I much prefer the European model, where
> support for college is tied to "merit" defined rather
> loosely---basically, anyone who can get into college is given full
> support.

The UK system is moving away from this model. When I went to University,
tuition was free to UK students, and I got a living expenses grant, based on
my parent's income - they were expected to contribute to my living expenses
too (although had I lived away from home for long enough, it would not have
been relivant).

Then they got rid of the grants, and brought in loans for living expenses:
the loans have a very low interest rate, and you don't need to pay them back
until your income reaches a certain level.

Then they brought in tuition fees, which are a bit more then £1000 UKP per
year, regardless of what institution you go to.

Now they are discussing allowing the Universities to set their own fees,
and changing when/how they get paid back.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Banty > wrote:

*I did apply for financial aid as something of a back-up for my first year at the
*institution where I obtained my doctorate, and in that process I was treated as
*something of a beggar (more than when I applied as an undergraduate). Because
*that's not the usual path for financing graduate school. I would put forth that
*the response your mother got was exactly because you and she, apparently, were
*trying to go the student aid route.

You say that as if we did something unusual or wrong. I suppose I haven't
explained things at all well.

I had no experience with financial aid before graduate school. My
undergrad was cheap as dirt and we had no problems paying for it. When I
went to the orientation sessions at Penn, one of the meetings was with the
financial aid officer, who handed out packets and said "fill these out to
see if you qualify." I did. I was then called into the office to get
informed that we didn't qualify, and the previously mentioned telephone
call occurred.

Maybe it's just a Penn problem. I heard similar stories from a number of
my now-colleagues.

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Rosalie B.]

(Hillary Israeli) wrote:

>In >,
>Banty > wrote:
>
>*I did apply for financial aid as something of a back-up for my first year at the
>*institution where I obtained my doctorate, and in that process I was treated as
>*something of a beggar (more than when I applied as an undergraduate). Because
>*that's not the usual path for financing graduate school. I would put forth that
>*the response your mother got was exactly because you and she, apparently, were
>*trying to go the student aid route.
>
>You say that as if we did something unusual or wrong. I suppose I haven't
>explained things at all well.
>
>I had no experience with financial aid before graduate school. My
>undergrad was cheap as dirt and we had no problems paying for it. When I
>went to the orientation sessions at Penn, one of the meetings was with the
>financial aid officer, who handed out packets and said "fill these out to
>see if you qualify." I did. I was then called into the office to get
>informed that we didn't qualify, and the previously mentioned telephone
>call occurred.
>
>Maybe it's just a Penn problem. I heard similar stories from a number of
>my now-colleagues.

I think that's it, or else it is a vet school problem. Vet schools
are or have been more difficult to get into than medical school or law
school.

When my dd#1 thought that she might want to be a vet (this was after
the "All Things Bright and Beautiful" series of books), we tried to
figure out how she could do it. She had three options because
Maryland did not have their own vet school or an agreement with
another state for Maryland residents to attend the other state's vet
school at that time.

a) Go to a private (non-state) school such as Cornell (or I supposed
Penn although I didn't consider that)

b) Go and live in a state such as Colorado where there was a vet
school and establish residence there as an independent student. (I do
own some undeveloped land in Colorado and have relatives out there)

c) Go off-shore someplace like Grenada and go to vet school there.

We couldn't afford a, and she didn't like Colorado and didn't want to
go that far away to go to school (neither did dd#3, and dd#2 who did
go to school in Colorado didn't like it there which I just don't
understand). So she gave up on the idea, and became a math major.

In any case, because the out-of-state students were not admitted to
the state university vet schools, there was quite stringent processing
to determine if the student was truly independent or was just trying
to slip in under the radar and displace one of the in-state students.
It was much more rigorous than most graduate program qualification
inspection would have been.
..


grandma Rosalie

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Rosalie B. > wrote:

*
*a) Go to a private (non-state) school such as Cornell (or I supposed
*Penn although I didn't consider that)

I guess that's what I did, although I was a PA state resident at the time
- Penn was still extremely expensive, >$20K/yr. I couldn't afford it
either!!!

*We couldn't afford a, and she didn't like Colorado and didn't want to
*go that far away to go to school (neither did dd#3, and dd#2 who did
*go to school in Colorado didn't like it there which I just don't
*understand). So she gave up on the idea, and became a math major.

Incredible. Not something I feel I could have done.

*In any case, because the out-of-state students were not admitted to
*the state university vet schools, there was quite stringent processing
*to determine if the student was truly independent or was just trying

Well, out of state students have always been and still are admitted to the
in-state schools - they just are admitted at a lower rate than in-state
students are.

-h.
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Rosalie B.]

(Hillary Israeli) wrote:

>In >,
>Rosalie B. > wrote:
>
>
>*In any case, because the out-of-state students were not admitted to
>*the state university vet schools, there was quite stringent processing
>*to determine if the student was truly independent or was just trying
>
>Well, out of state students have always been and still are admitted to the
>in-state schools - they just are admitted at a lower rate than in-state
>students are.
>
NO they aren't - or at least they weren't at that time admitted to vet
schools. This was in the late 70s. Out of state students were
***NOT*** admitted to state VET schools.

Since then, Maryland has formed an agreement with Virginia to allow
Maryland students to attend the VA state vet school, but at the time
it was not allowed.

Colorado state vet schools admitted certain other state's students
(western states like Wyoming for instance), but not someone from
Maryland.

In other cases of course out of state students are admitted and pay a
larger tuition. DD#3 went to Virginia Tech and paid out of state
tuition when she went there. She's actually the only child that we
paid any extensive tuition for.

DD#1 started out at Western Maryland (which in spite of the name is a
private college not related to the Maryland State system) and then got
married and went to St. Mary's College of Maryland (which in spite of
the name IS a state school) and finished up at the University of
Maryland College Park, and then went on and got her masters at Johns
Hopkins (also a private school). We didn't pay her tuition after she
got married. DD#2 went to the Air Force Academy, and DS is still in
and out of school.

grandma Rosalie

[Banty]

In article >, Hillary Israeli says...
>
>In >,
>Banty > wrote:
>
>*I did apply for financial aid as something of a back-up for my first year at
>the
>*institution where I obtained my doctorate, and in that process I was treated as
>*something of a beggar (more than when I applied as an undergraduate). Because
>*that's not the usual path for financing graduate school. I would put forth that
>*the response your mother got was exactly because you and she, apparently, were
>*trying to go the student aid route.
>
>You say that as if we did something unusual or wrong. I suppose I haven't
>explained things at all well.

It's not so much that it's 'wrong' as it's not required for many more students
practically the way it is for undergraduate school. Because of the presence of
the option to borrow against professional earnings in the fairly near future.
After all, as you said the financial aid person who handed out the packets did
so just in case someone qualified. She wasn't exactly saying "here's your
opporunity". There's nothing 'wrong' in checking that out, but the stringent
requirements really should not have been a surprise. When I considered medical
school in the early '80s, the answer came down to the same pretty much (I was
independant by then, but had no assets) - the expectation was that I borrow
against my future earnings as a physician. Else I be sponsored by the military
or other government program in exchange for a period of service where they
choose. The vet students I knew at CSU had mostly taken out a lot of loans,
except for a few foreigns with national sponsorships.

>
>I had no experience with financial aid before graduate school. My
>undergrad was cheap as dirt and we had no problems paying for it.

Then perhaps you don't have the context - financial aid for undergraduate
students is also fairly strigent for most students.

>When I
>went to the orientation sessions at Penn, one of the meetings was with the
>financial aid officer, who handed out packets and said "fill these out to
>see if you qualify." I did. I was then called into the office to get
>informed that we didn't qualify, and the previously mentioned telephone
>call occurred.
>
>Maybe it's just a Penn problem. I heard similar stories from a number of
>my now-colleagues.

Maybe so. But then the comparison would be what aid was available to other vet
students nationwide.

Banty

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Rosalie B. > wrote:

*>Well, out of state students have always been and still are admitted to the
*>in-state schools - they just are admitted at a lower rate than in-state
*>students are.
*>
*NO they aren't - or at least they weren't at that time admitted to vet
*schools. This was in the late 70s. Out of state students were
****NOT*** admitted to state VET schools.

Well, yes they were, is all I can say. I don't mean to be obnoxious about
it, but I can think of three colleagues off the top of my head - Dr F, who
went to Penn, but was actually from Michigan (and I know the U of PA is a
private university, but the vet school is state-funded, heavily
state-funded); Dr R, who went to UC Davis as a non-CA-resident, and was
actually from Illinois; and Dr M, who went to Cornell as a
non-NY-resident, and was actually from Maryland. These people are all in
the 45-50 yr age range.

Actually I know someone from Colorado State, too. I'll email him and see
what he has to say about it :)

-h.

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Banty > wrote:

*It's not so much that it's 'wrong' as it's not required for many more students
*practically the way it is for undergraduate school. Because of the presence of
*the option to borrow against professional earnings in the fairly near future.
*After all, as you said the financial aid person who handed out the packets did
*so just in case someone qualified. She wasn't exactly saying "here's your
*opporunity". There's nothing 'wrong' in checking that out, but the stringent
*requirements really should not have been a surprise. When I considered medical
*school in the early '80s, the answer came down to the same pretty much (I was
*independant by then, but had no assets) - the expectation was that I borrow
*against my future earnings as a physician. Else I be sponsored by the military

Well, but medical students were eligible for the HEALS loans; veterinary
students not. At least, at the time I was in school that was the case!

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Banty]

In article >, Rosalie B. says...
>

>>
>>Maybe it's just a Penn problem. I heard similar stories from a number of
>>my now-colleagues.
>
>I think that's it, or else it is a vet school problem. Vet schools
>are or have been more difficult to get into than medical school or law
>school.
>
>When my dd#1 thought that she might want to be a vet (this was after
>the "All Things Bright and Beautiful" series of books), we tried to
>figure out how she could do it. She had three options because
>Maryland did not have their own vet school or an agreement with
>another state for Maryland residents to attend the other state's vet
>school at that time.
>
>a) Go to a private (non-state) school such as Cornell (or I supposed
>Penn although I didn't consider that)
>
>b) Go and live in a state such as Colorado where there was a vet
>school and establish residence there as an independent student. (I do
>own some undeveloped land in Colorado and have relatives out there)
>
>c) Go off-shore someplace like Grenada and go to vet school there.
>
>We couldn't afford a, and she didn't like Colorado and didn't want to
>go that far away to go to school (neither did dd#3, and dd#2 who did
>go to school in Colorado didn't like it there which I just don't
>understand). So she gave up on the idea, and became a math major.

Gosh - she didn't want to go to my undergraduate alma mater, Colorado State
University. I can't possibly understand that, either ;-)
I did get to know many vet students there as my best friend was in animal
rescue, but that was back in the '70s. Even then, as I recall admittance was
largely students from western states, and many concentrated in large-animal work
for return to ranching communities.

>
>In any case, because the out-of-state students were not admitted to
>the state university vet schools, there was quite stringent processing
>to determine if the student was truly independent or was just trying
>to slip in under the radar and displace one of the in-state students.
>It was much more rigorous than most graduate program qualification
>inspection would have been.

This is a matter of admittance, not financial aid once one is admitted.

Banty

[Rosalie B.]

(Hillary Israeli) wrote:

>In >,
>Rosalie B. > wrote:
>
>*>Well, out of state students have always been and still are admitted to the
>*>in-state schools - they just are admitted at a lower rate than in-state
>*>students are.
>*>
>*NO they aren't - or at least they weren't at that time admitted to vet
>*schools. This was in the late 70s. Out of state students were
>****NOT*** admitted to state VET schools.
>
>Well, yes they were, is all I can say. I don't mean to be obnoxious about
>it, but I can think of three colleagues off the top of my head - Dr F, who
>went to Penn, but was actually from Michigan (and I know the U of PA is a
>private university, but the vet school is state-funded, heavily
>state-funded); Dr R, who went to UC Davis as a non-CA-resident, and was
>actually from Illinois; and Dr M, who went to Cornell as a
>non-NY-resident, and was actually from Maryland.

Cornell which is a private (not state) school WOULD have been a
possibility for her if she could have gotten in (i.e. if she had the
grades) and if we could have paid the tuition.

I'm not completely sure about Penn. We ruled out Cornell on the basis
of cost so maybe we ruled out Penn the same way because we could have
fairly easily established residence in Pennsylvania. My dad actually
taught for a year at Penn (1949-1950) as a visiting professor of
Anatomy (medical school). At that point I think my dh was still in
the Navy, and we maintained PA as our voting residence and all our
cars were licensed there although he retired before she would have
been applying.

She could not have gone (at that point) to the vet school in Virginia
at the state university (I'm not sure, but I think it was at Virginia
Tech), or to the vet school in Colorado without establishing residence
in Colorado or some contiguous state.

I should probably have said that state vet schools only admitted out
of state students from certain (usually contiguous) states. So
someone from Wyoming could be admitted in Colorado. Usually the
states with agreements to admit another state's vet students got some
type of consideration from the residence state - I don't know if it
was financial, but there was some agreement involved. Without it, a
student would not be considered for admission.

I don't think we considered California because she just didn't want to
go that distance and I had no contacts in that state whereas I did in
Colorado.

>These people are all in
>the 45-50 yr age range

She's now 42.
>
>Actually I know someone from Colorado State, too. I'll email him and see
>what he has to say about it :)

I would be surprised if he said that an out of state student from
Maryland would have been admitted. This caused quite a lot of
heartburn in the family trying to figure out how she could possibly
achieve her goal.

grandma Rosalie

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, Rosalie B. wrote:
> Cornell which is a private (not state) school WOULD have been a
> possibility for her if she could have gotten in (i.e. if she had the
> grades) and if we could have paid the tuition.

Half right. Cornell is both a state school and a private school, with
each department belonging to one or the other. The vet school is part
of the state school, if I remember right. (I taught at Cornell for 4
years, but in electrical engineering and computer science, which are
both part of the private school.)

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, David desJardins wrote:
> Hillary Israeli writes:
>> My working was not "permitted" by the school (if they'd known, they
>> would have been very upset about it).
>
> Well, I'm not surprised by that!

I am. Engineering schools generally admit a few more grad students than
they have money to support (sometimes a lot more). The expectation is
that the "extra" students will work part time to cover their costs, or
will take out large loans that they will pay back when they get their
Master's degrees. (In engineering, the Master's degree is the one that
gets the highest pay---a PhD generally has a lower lifetime income.)

Being a grad student is a full-time job, so a student attempting to do
that and hold down a full-time job usually fails. When that starts to
happen, the student is usually advised to drop to part-time status on
one or the other.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Kevin Karplus > wrote:

*In article >, David desJardins wrote:
*> Hillary Israeli writes:
*>> My working was not "permitted" by the school (if they'd known, they
*>> would have been very upset about it).
*>
*> Well, I'm not surprised by that!
*
*I am. Engineering schools generally admit a few more grad students than
*they have money to support (sometimes a lot more). The expectation is
*that the "extra" students will work part time to cover their costs, or

I wasn't surprised. My dad did the same thing in MBA school at Wharton
(aka Penn) years before, also breaking the rules, and he'd warned me about
it :)

*Being a grad student is a full-time job, so a student attempting to do
*that and hold down a full-time job usually fails. When that starts to
*happen, the student is usually advised to drop to part-time status on
*one or the other.

Except you're not allowed to be a part-time vet student, and you have to
pay your rent somehow :)

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Kevin Karplus > wrote:

*In article >, Rosalie B. wrote:
*> Cornell which is a private (not state) school WOULD have been a
*> possibility for her if she could have gotten in (i.e. if she had the
*> grades) and if we could have paid the tuition.
*
*Half right. Cornell is both a state school and a private school, with
*each department belonging to one or the other. The vet school is part
*of the state school, if I remember right. (I taught at Cornell for 4
*years, but in electrical engineering and computer science, which are
*both part of the private school.)

Yeah, I know Cornell SVM is one of the land-grant schools...

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[lizzard woman]

"Rosalie B." > wrote in message
...

> She's now 42.

Your daughter is one year younger than me and so my investigation of vet
schools might be contemporary to hers. At that time, Cornell published
their admission stats in re where people came from. Virtually all were NY
state residents, one was a non NY state resident, and I believe there were
one or two foreign students that particular year, IIRC.

--
sharon, momma to savannah and willow (11/11/94)

[Rosalie B.]

x-no-archive:yes



lizzard woman > wrote:

>
>"Rosalie B." > wrote in message
...
>
>> She's now 42.
>
>Your daughter is one year younger than me and so my investigation of vet
>schools might be contemporary to hers. At that time, Cornell published
>their admission stats in re where people came from. Virtually all were NY
>state residents, one was a non NY state resident, and I believe there were
>one or two foreign students that particular year, IIRC.

Yes but we were doing this when she was 15 or 16 well in advance of
her actually going to college, let alone vet school. And of course
she'd have had to pay out of state tuition which was a pretty hefty
chunk.

It wasn't too long after that when Maryland formed an agreement with
VA for vet students from MD to go to VT. Maybe 7-8 years later. But
by that time, this dd had gotten married, switched her degree to math,
had 2 kids etc.

One of the daughters of our friends was unable to get into a regular
US vet school because her grades weren't the best, so she went to
Grenada to get her degree. She's a bit older than my kids.



grandma Rosalie

[Hillary Israeli]

In <TVYHb.855888$pl3.602302@pd7tw3no>,
lizzard woman > wrote:

*
*"Rosalie B." > wrote in message
.. .
*
*> She's now 42.
*
*Your daughter is one year younger than me and so my investigation of vet
*schools might be contemporary to hers. At that time, Cornell published
*their admission stats in re where people came from. Virtually all were NY
*state residents, one was a non NY state resident, and I believe there were
*one or two foreign students that particular year, IIRC.

Hey, I never said it was easy to get in as an out of state resident.
That's always been very difficult. :)

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[Donna Metler]

"H Schinske" > wrote in message
...
> wrote:
>
> >If a student graduates with $20,000 in extra loans, as a
> >result of attending the more expensive rather than the less expensive
> >institution, then that student would only have to make 1% more, over his
> >or her lifetime, to break even.
>
> Yeah, but what happens is that 1% of the students make twice as much, and
for
> the rest of us it makes no difference! ;-)
>
> In any case, am I naive to think that loans are not really "financial aid"
in
> the true sense of the word? I know you can get them at attractive rates
> compared to borrowing money elsewhere, but really, almost anyone can
borrow
> money for college. To me, financial aid means somebody actually helps me
PAY
> THE BILL, permanently.

It also depends on repayment. In education, I know that there are programs
in most states which will either pay your way through grad school directly
(if your undergrad record is good enough) or will repay loans given if you
teach in high need fields. In my case, I got a substantial grant from the
state of TX to get a degree in Mathematics Education (and also,
incidentally, got my certificate in music ed while I was there) because it
was a high need field, then the state of TN paid off my loans since I work
in an inner city school (which was where the jobs were anyway). In my case,
they lost the bet on the first one-not only did I move out of state, but I
was hired as a music teacher, but the second paid off, since I'm still in
inner city schools, and have stayed despite at least 2-3 job offers a year
(most of which, admittedly, would require moving and are not at all
attractive).

According to my brother, it used to be fairly common for law offices to pay
off loans for their new hires, especially if you came from the same law
school they did (the good old boy network). However, since it's currently an
employers market for new lawyers, even ones from fairly prestigious schools
are having trouble finding jobs at all, with or without repayment.


>
> --Helen
>

[Donna Metler]

"Banty" > wrote in message
...
> In article >, Hillary Israeli
says...
> >
> >In >,
> >Banty > wrote:
> >
> >*I did apply for financial aid as something of a back-up for my first
year at
> >the
> >*institution where I obtained my doctorate, and in that process I was
treated as
> >*something of a beggar (more than when I applied as an undergraduate).
Because
> >*that's not the usual path for financing graduate school. I would put
forth that
> >*the response your mother got was exactly because you and she,
apparently, were
> >*trying to go the student aid route.
> >
> >You say that as if we did something unusual or wrong. I suppose I haven't
> >explained things at all well.
>
> It's not so much that it's 'wrong' as it's not required for many more
students
> practically the way it is for undergraduate school. Because of the
presence of
> the option to borrow against professional earnings in the fairly near
future.
> After all, as you said the financial aid person who handed out the packets
did
> so just in case someone qualified. She wasn't exactly saying "here's your
> opporunity". There's nothing 'wrong' in checking that out, but the
stringent
> requirements really should not have been a surprise. When I considered
medical
> school in the early '80s, the answer came down to the same pretty much (I
was
> independant by then, but had no assets) - the expectation was that I
borrow
> against my future earnings as a physician. Else I be sponsored by the
military
> or other government program in exchange for a period of service where they
> choose. The vet students I knew at CSU had mostly taken out a lot of
loans,
> except for a few foreigns with national sponsorships.

Law school is apparently the same way. My brother just finished his law
program last Spring, almost 100K in debt (and still has no job, sigh...) He
had been independent and actually working for several years, and while he
had more than enough $$ for college without loans (mostly merit-based, plus
some extra aid available to dependents of VA state employees at state
schools), he was on his own for law school. In comparison, when I went to
grad school in education, while they weren't exactly throwing $$ at me, I
was able to get a pretty nice grant from the state of TX, plus a TA/RA ship
in the Human Sciences department, and was able to get by with almost no
loans (and those were repaid by the govt at 20% a year, for the first 5
years I taught since I chose to teach in title I schools-and still do, as a
matter of fact).

My husband had an RA ship his first year of grad school, and took out some
small loans, then got a fellowship from NSF which paid the bills the rest of
the way through.

[XOR]

"Donna Metler" > wrote in message >...

>
> Law school is apparently the same way. My brother just finished his law
> program last Spring, almost 100K in debt (and still has no job, sigh...) He
> had been independent and actually working for several years, and while he
> had more than enough $$ for college without loans (mostly merit-based, plus
> some extra aid available to dependents of VA state employees at state
> schools), he was on his own for law school. In comparison, when I went to
> grad school in education, while they weren't exactly throwing $$ at me, I
> was able to get a pretty nice grant from the state of TX, plus a TA/RA ship
> in the Human Sciences department, and was able to get by with almost no
> loans (and those were repaid by the govt at 20% a year, for the first 5
> years I taught since I chose to teach in title I schools-and still do, as a
> matter of fact).
>
> My husband had an RA ship his first year of grad school, and took out some
> small loans, then got a fellowship from NSF which paid the bills the rest of
> the way through.


This was my experience as well. Ivy league professional school, aid
was based on everyone - your spouse, yourself, your parents. The
average age in the class was 30+, so obviously most people were
financially independent of their parents. Didn't matter. A classmate
of mine was in her mid 40s, married, etc. Even she had to include her
parents' financial info! (In addition to that of her spouse). Pretty
much every one took out loans.

The doctoral students (PhD not MD) in the same department were funded
off of grants/TAships/RAships, etc. This is the case for all doctoral
programs I've looked at including the one I utilised. This is in the
basic sciences, it's a little bit different in the liberal
arts/humanities.