The allure of the "highly selective" college

This summer, my daughter Chloe will spend two weeks at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, studying biomedical engineering.

A few years ago, my oldest daughter Elissa spent three weeks at that same prestigious university studying journalism.

Both experiences were part of what they call "pre-college" programs, designed to expose high school students to campus life at an Ivy League university.

Elissa, I think, learned quite a bit during her time at Brown, as I'm sure Chloe will, too.

Here's what I learned:

(1) Ivy League colleges are very expensive for full-time undergraduates.

(2) Very, very expensive.

(3) Like, if you attended college during the 20th century, you almost wouldn't believe how expensive they are.

(4) Rhode Island is far away from where I live.

I learned #4 because I had to drive Elissa to Brown from Northeast Ohio. Ohio and Providence, you will note, are only close when viewed on a globe.

When viewed on, say, a road map, they are quite a ways apart. Several states apart.

One of those states is New York. New York, it turns out, is a very wide state.

By my estimate, it took us 18 days to cross New York.

(It was actually only about six hours, but I was fairly certain it would never end. How on earth do people drive across those gigantic Western states without shriveling up and dying from boredom?)

All told, I think it took us 10 or 11 hours to get to Providence. I drove Elissa there on a Saturday. We stayed overnight in a hotel, then moved her into her dorm at Brown on Sunday, at which point I immediately got back into my car and drove those same 10 or 11 hours back to Ohio.

We'll be doing the same with Chloe, or at least that's the plan. We may tell her to pack light and just fly there.

One way or another, Chloe will spend half a month at the same university where countless famous politicians, artists, actors, athletes and other well-known people earned their degrees.

In a way, I view the whole thing as a bit of a cruel joke. These kids get to go to a nice school, they grow to love their surroundings and the learning environment, and then they come home to realize they will most likely never actually attend that school as a full-time student.

The reason, as noted in Scott Learning Points #'s 1 through 3 above, is that it is financially prohibitive to enroll at these schools, to say the least.

The admissions people from the Ivy League institutions, who as a rule are bright, articulate and very genuine, will tell you that schools like theirs strive to ensure that money is never an obstacle for a deserving student. Their financial aid is all need-based.

Two things to note from these statements:

(1) If they don't want money to be obstacle, then maybe they shouldn't charge $58,140 per year (Brown's 2012-13 undergrad cost).

(2) Their idea of my financial "need" is very, very different from my own idea of my need. My idea is that I'm approximately $58,100 short of being able to send my kid to Brown for a year (I'm willing to spring for the 40 bucks). Their expectation of what I can contribute to her education is, suffice to say, significantly higher.

So in a way, these pre-college programs, while undoubtedly wonderful experiences, are also the equivalent of academic teases.

Do I think my daughters have the credentials to get into schools like Brown, Princeton, Penn, Harvard and Yale? Eh, maybe. Hard to say. They're both smart girls. Very smart girls.

But there are lots and lots of smart kids at those schools, and it's difficult to tell whether my offspring would have what it takes to get one of those coveted acceptance letters.

My kids are at least smart enough, I can tell you, to know that any sensible person wouldn't drive round trip to Rhode Island in a single weekend if he didn't have to. Which puts them light years ahead of their father.