Both of my sons are in college now.

• College search - For those of you who have had experience - - NYMT
  • Both of my sons are in college now. - alumni mom
    • Thanks for the tips - sm - NYMT
    • Try community college first sm - BZMT
    • Great advice - thanks for sharing! - annabanana

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I don't get to post very often, but I am kind of at a loss as to what to do.  We are having a real problem here.

My son has always been a very good kid.  He has always made good grades. He has never gotten into much trouble.  Well, he got almost a full-paid scholarship to college.  We always told him that if he got a scholarship, we would get him a car.  Well, he got the scholarship and carefully researched what kind of car he wanted.  We went out and got him a car. 

Subsequently, he became involved with a girl.  I don't have a problem with his girlfriend.  She's very sweet and I do like her.  The problem is this.  I got the first phone bill after he left and he was texting her day and night.  So, we asked him to cut back.  We pay the phone bill.  We make the rules.  We have unlimited messages but 15,000 messages in one month just seems crazy when he is complaining about being exhausted.  We worked it out.  At 10 seconds a message it would be 40 hours worth of texting...

He comes home for the weekend and we take him to dinner.  Fifteen dollar dinner and he is falling asleep at the dinner table.  He proceeds to tell us how miserable he is at school.  We explain to him how sorry we are, but he is stuck there at the very least for this year as he is already enrolled etc.  We also made it clear that he needed to at least try to make it work. 

So, he continues to text day and night even though he promised he would cut down.   He was texting during classes, which just seems wrong to me.  It is disrespectful to the professors and unfair to the students sitting around him.  We threatened to take his phone away.  He finally stopped doing that but now I have my suspicions he is cutting class to talk on AIM to his girlfriend, and he had to drop the only difficult class he had or he was going to fail it and lose his scholarship.  He is lying to us about stuff.  He is being deceitful about stuff.  I am just at my wits end. 

This is a nice girl from a nice family.  We know her parents.  We like her.  We like her parents.  But I feel like she is trying to control his life from 2 hours away and it is working.  It is almost like he is chosing to be miserable to accommodate her.  I talked to her mother last week and one day she called home 15 times.  My husband feels like we shouldn't talk to her parents about this. 

We know that we can't make dating her an issue because that will just make him want to date her all the more.  I am at a loss as to what if anything to do about it.  My husband says that if he is chosing to be miserable then he can be miserable and that college is what you make of it.  I am 95% sure he wants to change schools and go where his girlfriend is going.  Well, that is the most expensive school in the state and he will be giving up a free ride to do that plus he now has an almost new car that we would have to deal with because he would not get to keep that and go to the expensive school.  No way, no how.  I have serious reservations about him going to a school with a party-school reputation when he has a free education at a very good school.  I also do not want to pay $18,000 a year so that he can be with his girlfriend no matter how much I like her. 

Any words of wisdom?

My first daughter was lucky with the scholarships and has just graduated from a private college in state with a degree in Nursing (BSN).   She went to this $34,000 a year  college for $13,000 a year but still has $60,000 of student loans to pay back but she makes $3,000 a month and has no other expenses.  My other daughter chose to go out of state and Massachusetts only  helps in state students.  She goes to Umass at Amherst and there is so many scholarships if you live in MA.  Anyway she is also on student loans.  I told my girls this is the only way you can go to high priced colleges if this is what you want.  They have 10 years to pay for them once they graduate.  Most of their friends are doing the same way.  We also applied the FASA 4 years in a row and it helped with the first child but even when I had both in college it did not help my second child.  She still has to pay the going rate for out of state.  I even called up Umass and said another college  in MA is giving her $10,000 scholarship off the tuition and they said well tell her to go there. I really think it depends on the college.  GOOD LUCK

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)."

The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly under-prepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.

While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families. Dr. Nemko says that worst of all is that few of these former college students, having spent thousands of dollars, wind up in a job that required a college education. It's not uncommon to find them driving a taxi, working at a restaurant or department store, performing some other job that they could have had as a high school graduate or dropout.

What about students who are prepared for college? First, only 40 percent of each year's 2 million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all. Often, having a college degree does not mean much. According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.

Colleges are in business. Students are a cost. Research is a profit center. When colleges boast about having this professor who has won a science award or that professor who has won the Nobel Prize, very often an undergraduate student will never be taught by that professor. It is a "bait and switch" tactic and very often your youngster will take classes not taught by a professor but taught in large classes by a graduate student. Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped that, "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure."

Parents and taxpayers cough up billions upon billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not. Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done by any other business. There is little or no oversight of the nation's over 4,000 colleges and universities that enroll over 17 million students. There are some colleges, such as Grove City College and Hillsdale College, that do a fine job of undergraduate education. Useful information about what colleges are doing what can be found in the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "Choosing the Right College" (http://isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html).

the tuition.  Parents have a responsibility to their children to see to it that they are educated in a manner that prepares them for a career, not flipping burgers.  I know that that wasn't always the norm and that college was a privilege, but now it is a necessity.  You can't make it in the world without some kind of degree and not helping your children with their education is selfish. 

That's not to say that the child shouldn't bear some responsibility in this.  He/she can certainly get a part-time job to help with books, living expenses, etc.  I see nothing wrong with the child taking out the standard student loan either, but dumping them out the door at 18 with nothing more than a high school education is not being a responsible parent.  Perhaps that's the problem today.  So many parents don't have time or are too selfish worrying about themselves to make sure their children are set.  It's not about money, it's about responsibility. 

Judging by your responses, I'd say your husband's divorce was quite bitter and perhaps the animosity you feel should be directed toward his ex-wife and not the children.  They obviously had no control over that money that was given to their mother.  While my children aren't ready for college yet, one thing I have learned already is that you never stop being a parent.

I have an 18 and 21 year old (both girls) that go to college.  Both of them have boyfriends out of State.  So they come to visit and these boys sleep in another room because my daughters know I would not care to have them sleep in the same beds in my home. I told them I am not running a hotel.   I always tell them there is  a diference between a college dorm and our home.  What happens at college I don't see.  Last night I asked the 18 year old when you go to your boyfriend's house who is 20where do you sleep.  (I never met the parents.  She said the stepmom said she would not have a problem sharing the same bed in her home but knows that her stepson does not share one in our home so she wants to respect our wishes. I know when my daugther went off to college she was never sexually active and had morals.   This woman is 38 and I am 52.  There is also a 10 year old boy that lives in that same house.  My daugter told me they are more like hippies compared to us.  Am I being a prude or does anyone feel the same way I do.

My daughter has been accepted to U of Tampa, a private college.  She will be a transfer student from a community college. However, she is also entertaining going to U of South FL (St. Pete campus). 

Financially it's the same because with UT she is getting grants/scholarships for most of the tuition.  At USF, she will be covered 75% by Bright Futures.  We will have to take out loans for housing for either.

We are having extreme anxiety over this.  Both campuses are very nice, but her personality is more condusive to the St. Pete (state college) atmosphere.  It's on the bay and looks to be much more laid back than UT which is in the middle of downtown Tampa.  

There are so many factors and if I enumerated them here, well, ya'll would get very bored.  But her major concern is learning and her second concern is being happy in her environment.  We are not big city folk, but I have no doubt wherever she goes, she will succeed.  I just want her to have the best experience possible.  In my heart I think USF is best, but she thinks resume-wise, a private college would look better.  Also, she is having a problem with turning down the grants/scholarships ($15,000) from UT and opting  for a state school. 

Let me also briefly say that her program of study is very strong at both schools and she has links with a professor at one of the schools who is advising her, but nonbiased (so he's helpful, but not enough to say GO HERE! lol)

I'm just wondering if private is all it's cracked up to be?  I don't know... She's going to have to make this decision on her own, but if any of ya'll have any input regarding either school or the area or college experience with state vs private, I would really appreciate a word or two!

One more thing... she's a huge baseball fan... Rays fan... St. Pete campus is 2 miles from the stadium...  Not that that's a big consideration, but a comfort zone is a good thing?

And... I would move there with her IN A HEARTBEAT (either place), but my son is about to enter an AS program (radiology) at the community college here and that track cannot be interrupted... just wanted to give all pertinent info for best input by ya'll.

In your opinion, is it more fruitful to go on an open house when all the departments are out there with handouts and such, or on individual or small group appointments with maybe a little more one-on-one?

I'm overwhelmed already, and we've only been to two colleges!

pay their own way.  College for my kids is the least of my worries.  I am just trying to keep food on the table and the bills paid that keep going up and up. 

No, I don't believe golden parachutes are a must for these companies, but I would have to question their bookkeeping skills for sure. 

The hospital I came from that outsourced my job overseas just laid off 30 people last week.  It's everywhere. 

Job hunting?  Well let's just say if you can find one that pays more, then go for it, but there's always that learning curve.

Thank God I work from home and find no need to purchase new attire for the season.  We haven't had a true, true vacation in years, and yes we also live in a lower income neighborhood.  Our salary is $80,000.00 a year combined, and we still live paycheck to paycheck basically with 2 kids to clothe and feed. 

Christmas?  I'll think about that after I've recouped the money of purchasing a calculator for $125.00 for my 8th grade (a must according to the teacher).  So, not all is me, me, me, now, now, now... 

Am I blessed?  Yes, I am.  We both have jobs and an income and healthcare.  Vacation and college?????  Privileges as far as I'm concerned, not necessities.  If my kid wants a college education, he'd better get a job and go part-time!  He'll have a place to live (right here).