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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

My daughter is applying for colleges. When a college says that they only offer need-based aid, what it means is that we can't afford it. Yet I've encouraged her to apply to a few of those colleges anyway, based on the assumption that they don't only offer need based aid.

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Find a community college with a 2-2 combo program with a school with a good name. Buy your daughter a nice car.

She’ll get a better education, have a car at graduation and you will save a lot of money.

Or get her into Stanford, where she'll get a $170,000 starting salary after four years, and can buy a rather pretty new car every quarter.

Stanford undergrads do not make 170k base salary after graduation. Please read the article, it was talking about MBAs, specifically "12 percent of Stanford MBA graduates were hired by private equity firms, with a median starting salary of $177,500, the article said".

But she will rub shoulders with others who are well connected and/or are likelier to have higher warning power going forward. College is important because of the network you make, not the learning, which is why exclusivity is important (for top level schools like Stanford, easily worth the sticker price).

Oddly enough, I made no network in while college, but learned math, physics, programming, and electronics, among other things. I think what I learned has helped me in my career.

You vastly underestimate how far that money goes in the regions where these graduates are hired.

You mean overestimate?

What are some examples of those?

I can think of only one: UCLA is a popular transfer school for folks with 2 years of CC.

Look for “program to program transfer”.

Here’s an example from a community college near where I grew up.

http://www.hvcc.edu/career-transfer/transfer/articulation_by...

The value varies by major. A good friend of mine went from the engineering sciences major to SUNY Binghamton or Buffalo, where he got an engineering BS and a paid co-op. He ended up paying very little, had no debt, and had a network right out of school to get a job for his PE. Then He started his own engineering practice.

Some state universities have partnerships with other schools for masters programs too. My school had a 3-2 masters program where you’d end up with a state BS/BA and an MS in engineering or sciences from a another school, sometimes public sometimes private.

The nice thing about program transfers vs a normal transfer is that there are no surprises. All of your general education and in-major requirements are met. Anecdotally, it’s a better experience for some majors because the larger universities usually consider teaching a distraction, and you get better instructors and smaller classes for in-major stuff in the CC. Intro to CS in my state school was a hazing ritual designed to reduce a group of 600 students down to 300 for the spring. At the CC, it’s 30-40 kids.

Many state schools now accept transfer credit from "reputable" CCs in the same state.

All of the UC’s

UT Austin

Instead of need-based aid, try need-blind colleges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission

Need-blind policies only stop universities from not admitting you based on need but does not stop their need-based "formula" from being corrupt, as seen here.

That's... the same concept? Need-blind admission requires need-based aid. Stanford is on Wikipedia's list, by the way.

> Need-blind admission requires need-based aid.

What are you talking about here?

Need-blind admission would be "we'll make the decision of whether to admit you without considering whether you can afford to come". It's analogous to an iPhone offered for sale at $1000, even if you can't afford to pay $1000 for an iPhone.

Need-based aid means charging less money to people who, in your judgment, can't afford more. It's analogous to finding scruffy people on the street and giving them 70% off coupons for iPhones.

There is no logical dependence from one to the other. An Apple store does practice need-blind admission, and definitely does not practice the "required" need-based aid.

Not exactly the same concept. Need-based admission requires need-blind aid, but not the other way around: especially for foreign students, many good US colleges need-based aid if you get an offer, but are less likely to admit you.

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