[DeltAlum]

As usual, JAM hit a lot of very important points. The competition is tough.

Our mutual funds got hammered in the market -- pretty much like everyone else.

The other thing I might mention is that, while a large percentage of students at any given school often are on scholarship, the grants seem to be getting smaller. Our number one daughter got two scholarships when she was instate -- one talent and one academic. Together, they amounted to $1000 per year. She got about $6000 per year when she went out of state -- which paid for about half of the tuition and no room and board or other expenses. And that was at a state supported university.

A word about our son's experience. As a National Merit Finalist (at that point),VP of the student body, etc., he was recruited by all of the "big time" schools. What was interesting is that the "highly selective" schools like the Ivys, Northwestern, Stanford, etc. don't give any "merit" scholarships -- they are all need based. So, if your family is middle to upper-middle income, forget scholarships from the schools. Figure on loans and private scholarships -- which, of course, the school deducts from your guaranteed loan amounts. It's a real "Catch 22." I think that penalizes the kids from middle income families who are great high school performers. But that's another story.

He did not even apply to Oklahoma -- but, as it turns out, they heavily recruit National Merit kids. They have more, per capita, than any other college in the country. The give them excellent grants, tuition waivers, etc. -- and they set up special honors programs for them, have a special office for them, a special dorm, select floors in other dorms, special scheduling (before even the grad students), a summer exchange program with Oxford, chances for international study at OU tuition rates, etc. It appears to be a really outstanding program.

(As an aside, he got so much mail from colleges, we started throwing away everything from schools he hadn't applied to unopened. That almost happened to the letter from Oklahoma, but, for some unknown reason, Mrs. DeltAlum decided to open the envelope with the scholarship letter. It nearly went into the "circular file" unread. The moral, I suppose, is to at least look at all of the mail you get.)

Our son's first choice initially was Yale, then became Northwestern. He was accepted everywhere he applied. But when you consider the long term effects on the student and family (loans, etc.), a very fine university like Oklahoma sounds pretty damn good.

Plus, they almost guaranteed us a National Football Championship sometime in the next two to three years. Not that it counts, of course...

Bottom line here is that when you ballance $150-200K in loans at a highly selective school against a full ride at an excellent state school (by the way, we don't live in Oklahoma), unless the family is wealthy, it's really hard to justify the former -- no matter what the name of the college is. (One of our son's best friends, another of the National Merit Scholars from his graduating class, decided to go to Harvard -- which is great -- but her parents can afford it without scholarships or loans. More power to her.)

While it would be wonderful to have a degree from Harvard, you have to consider the long-term effect on the family. We would have done what was necessary to get our son into whatever school he wanted to attend -- fortunately for us (and him also, I believe), he was able to see past the glitz (at least in his chosen major) and understand what would work best in his case over the long haul.

If that includes junior/community college and an instate school, so be it.