Study of elite college Admissions

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is why state flagships are seeing more and more high stats students.

+100

Yale is 95-100K/year all in now.

They show that donut hole families have the lowest acceptance rate at these schools.

They want richy-rich or poor. The first will yield and pay, the second will go for free or get a large chunk of need-based aid.

The donut hole have to really think if they can get by and figure out loans/financing on their own. More yield risk.

There really isn't much of a donut hole for this tier. People making under 250k get aid. We are under 150k and got excellent aid. Are 300k+ incomes really donut hole? Not in the middle class person's book.

$300k in a high cost area, like DC, is definitely a donut hole family. Housing anywhere remotely inside the beltway is $800k-1 million+...this is with a 45 min+ commute. Childcare costs are some of the highest in the nation. People making $300k here aren't extravagant living lifestyles of the rich and famous. They are often two Fed GS-14s or below. They aren't driving luxury cars, etc.

To swing $170-180k/year for two kids to attend a school like Georgetown or Yale is a sh*tload of $. And for the reasons above ^^ saving in a 529 each year ---you will still need loans. I'm not talking about families that bought their current "1.5 million+ home back when it cost $500k in the early 2000s.

Families like this gun for UVA or William & Mary as a sound investment and ROI and $ left for professional school.

They don't qualify for any aid anywhere.

Disagree. We make under 150 and can swing 50k/year, so if someone made 150k more than that, they could easily save/cashflow another 30k from what we have. Even in DC, you all do very well and would totally have thus covered with priorities/savings over time unless you have huge medical expenses (which could be deducted from your income on css, and you'd probably get aid then, same for multiples in at same time). I would not call 300k per year without special circumstances donut hole.

You clearly have substantial savings built up across the years if you are able to afford 50k a year. I'm doing some back of the envelope calculations and with some assumptions regarding age, I'm reasonably assuming you have a low to non existent mortgage from buying a house long ago that allows you to do this. The vast majority of American families making 150k or under cannot cashflow 50k/year for college unless they aggressively built up significant savings, which is theoretically doable and some definitely do it. But many people have also suffered unemployment, other expenses, only came late to decent salaries in their careers and so forth.

+1
This poster is on all of these threads saying how she can afford an ivy full price with hhi under $150k and everyone with higher incomes who can’t has been squandering their $ on mansions and bmws. I mean EVERY thread with costs, she pops up. I call BS. Her math NEVER adds up.

Maybe she lived frugally for many years and put the money in a college fund. Some people have very different lifestyles and priorities.

Is the poster in DMV? If so, I want to know where she lives....I will move there immediately.

I knew a family in high school that lived above a crappy Chinese restaurant and worked their fingers to the bone to send their kids to top schools. You have no idea of the way some people, esp immigrants, live.

Those are the poor first gens that get full rides to Ivies, Hopkins and such.

[Anonymous]

The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

Contrary to popular misconception, legacies are not stupid. For example, Princeton data shows that legacy students have higher SAT scores, even when controlled by income, and higher Princeton GPAs than non-legacy students.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t be surprised that they do better. I know some schools will pull the siblings transcripts to consider. I’m not sure if they do this for parents too, but this would be helpful increasing the odds of admitting good students.

[Anonymous]

I think there is a benefit of legacy admission for yield management. Colleges have a difficult time predicting which students will attend and most admits don’t actually end up attending for almost every school. I have no problem with it for private schools and as an admission preference out of state applicants at public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why state flagships are seeing more and more high stats students.

+100

Yale is 95-100K/year all in now.

They show that donut hole families have the lowest acceptance rate at these schools.

They want richy-rich or poor. The first will yield and pay, the second will go for free or get a large chunk of need-based aid.

The donut hole have to really think if they can get by and figure out loans/financing on their own. More yield risk.

There really isn't much of a donut hole for this tier. People making under 250k get aid. We are under 150k and got excellent aid. Are 300k+ incomes really donut hole? Not in the middle class person's book.

$300k in a high cost area, like DC, is definitely a donut hole family. Housing anywhere remotely inside the beltway is $800k-1 million+...this is with a 45 min+ commute. Childcare costs are some of the highest in the nation. People making $300k here aren't extravagant living lifestyles of the rich and famous. They are often two Fed GS-14s or below. They aren't driving luxury cars, etc.

To swing $170-180k/year for two kids to attend a school like Georgetown or Yale is a sh*tload of $. And for the reasons above ^^ saving in a 529 each year ---you will still need loans. I'm not talking about families that bought their current "1.5 million+ home back when it cost $500k in the early 2000s.

Families like this gun for UVA or William & Mary as a sound investment and ROI and $ left for professional school.

They don't qualify for any aid anywhere.

Disagree. We make under 150 and can swing 50k/year, so if someone made 150k more than that, they could easily save/cashflow another 30k from what we have. Even in DC, you all do very well and would totally have thus covered with priorities/savings over time unless you have huge medical expenses (which could be deducted from your income on css, and you'd probably get aid then, same for multiples in at same time). I would not call 300k per year without special circumstances donut hole.

You clearly have substantial savings built up across the years if you are able to afford 50k a year. I'm doing some back of the envelope calculations and with some assumptions regarding age, I'm reasonably assuming you have a low to non existent mortgage from buying a house long ago that allows you to do this. The vast majority of American families making 150k or under cannot cashflow 50k/year for college unless they aggressively built up significant savings, which is theoretically doable and some definitely do it. But many people have also suffered unemployment, other expenses, only came late to decent salaries in their careers and so forth.

The whole point is that you shouldn't expect to cashflow college cost. We should all be saving AND cashflow and maybe some loans.

We are under 140k HHI. Started saving when kids were little. Have older cars. Don't spend on big vacations. House is not cheap, but we did refi at 2.8%. Chose growth 529s. Saved 120k by sr year for each of 2 kids. Grandparents gave each kid 15k for college. Planned to take fed loan, cashflow as much as possible, and use the minimum of 529 to get another 10k of growth over the 4 years.
I also had some unemployment and sporadic self employed work. When we started saving, we made around 90k.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It's already a barbell at the top privates. The kids either have gobs of money (think travel via chartered private jets).... or they are on scholarship. There's no one at these schools with two middle manager parents.

Agree.

The middle is the majority, how come top colleges/privates are not thinking what they are creating? Why high stat kids from MC family gets overlooked for rich or low income families? In other words, kids from MC are being discriminated by top colleges due to not their performance but due to family income.

Because it's a business. And their business priorities are
1) Grow the endowment (richy rich people)
2) Create mobility for the underprivileged (take care of the poor)
Middle-class families are not their priority bc middle-class families can access a college education. It may not be Yale but they can go to Uconn for example.

Middle class is supposed to stay middle class. If they become upper middle class trying to be entry level wealthy, private colleges put them back in middle class with high cost. If they don't go for full pay, their kids can't attend ivies, if they pay ivies, they can't retire in peace.

Yes, that is the reality.
And...........it's not like you're not playing the game. Isn't this why we have a spate of 18-year-olds majoring in CS?

So sacrifice kids at the alter, instead of letting them study what they enjoy and are good at?

DP here. Most CS students I know are CS because their parents picked their major (and school).

Regarding middle class - so it is okay for them to get financial aid and attend private high schools, but it is not okay for them to get financial aid at colleges? Not following.

Where do you live that "most CS students you know are majoring in CS because their parents picked their major"?

My DS picked his own major, fwiw, including a double major in math. Most boys seems to pick it because they like computers and don't know what else to major in. They certainly don't like the arts or English. So, the default seems to be IS or CS or engineering.

I know tons going into business-related majors...you must see that.

Not sure how Math is really any different from CS or IS or engineering, quite honestly. It's all a bunch of Math, so quite honestly your kid picked a similar major.

Generally, kids who aren't passionate about any particular subject, not great at math or don't like it that much, and need a marketable degree end up as business degrees.

Kids who like math and computers, and don't like the humanities end up as CS majors.

Yes, my kid picked similar majors because they love math, probably more than computers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why state flagships are seeing more and more high stats students.

+100

Yale is 95-100K/year all in now.

They show that donut hole families have the lowest acceptance rate at these schools.

They want richy-rich or poor. The first will yield and pay, the second will go for free or get a large chunk of need-based aid.

The donut hole have to really think if they can get by and figure out loans/financing on their own. More yield risk.

There really isn't much of a donut hole for this tier. People making under 250k get aid. We are under 150k and got excellent aid. Are 300k+ incomes really donut hole? Not in the middle class person's book.

$300k in a high cost area, like DC, is definitely a donut hole family. Housing anywhere remotely inside the beltway is $800k-1 million+...this is with a 45 min+ commute. Childcare costs are some of the highest in the nation. People making $300k here aren't extravagant living lifestyles of the rich and famous. They are often two Fed GS-14s or below. They aren't driving luxury cars, etc.

To swing $170-180k/year for two kids to attend a school like Georgetown or Yale is a sh*tload of $. And for the reasons above ^^ saving in a 529 each year ---you will still need loans. I'm not talking about families that bought their current "1.5 million+ home back when it cost $500k in the early 2000s.

Families like this gun for UVA or William & Mary as a sound investment and ROI and $ left for professional school.

They don't qualify for any aid anywhere.

Disagree. We make under 150 and can swing 50k/year, so if someone made 150k more than that, they could easily save/cashflow another 30k from what we have. Even in DC, you all do very well and would totally have thus covered with priorities/savings over time unless you have huge medical expenses (which could be deducted from your income on css, and you'd probably get aid then, same for multiples in at same time). I would not call 300k per year without special circumstances donut hole.

You clearly have substantial savings built up across the years if you are able to afford 50k a year. I'm doing some back of the envelope calculations and with some assumptions regarding age, I'm reasonably assuming you have a low to non existent mortgage from buying a house long ago that allows you to do this. The vast majority of American families making 150k or under cannot cashflow 50k/year for college unless they aggressively built up significant savings, which is theoretically doable and some definitely do it. But many people have also suffered unemployment, other expenses, only came late to decent salaries in their careers and so forth.

+1
This poster is on all of these threads saying how she can afford an ivy full price with hhi under $150k and everyone with higher incomes who can’t has been squandering their $ on mansions and bmws. I mean EVERY thread with costs, she pops up. I call BS. Her math NEVER adds up.

I think there are several of us under 150k, but I don't see anyone saying they can afford full price Ivy. People at this income get financial aid. I am the 140k poster and did the math in a previous post. We've been saving a long time and know this is a major expense that requires savings, not an expense to cashflow. My kid gets great financial aid at an Ivy. I had planned to pay 45-50k per year, but am paying 30k because of the great need based aid.
My math is great, your reading comp not so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there is a benefit of legacy admission for yield management. Colleges have a difficult time predicting which students will attend and most admits don’t actually end up attending for almost every school. I have no problem with it for private schools and as an admission preference out of state applicants at public schools.

💯

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

So the children of all those billionaire and multi-millionaire gangster rappers (Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Nas, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, Drake, Pharrell, Master P, Eminem, Kanye West) must be Dr. Who scale geniuses right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

Contrary to popular misconception, legacies are not stupid. For example, Princeton data shows that legacy students have higher SAT scores, even when controlled by income, and higher Princeton GPAs than non-legacy students.

Unfortunately my kids are double legacies at MIT. I guess they will have to make it or not on their own. Both are smart. Both have science brains. So they both have a chance. But neither have a chance greater than your kid’s chance (assuming you are not an alum). Which I think is as it should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why state flagships are seeing more and more high stats students.

+100

Yale is 95-100K/year all in now.

They show that donut hole families have the lowest acceptance rate at these schools.

They want richy-rich or poor. The first will yield and pay, the second will go for free or get a large chunk of need-based aid.

The donut hole have to really think if they can get by and figure out loans/financing on their own. More yield risk.

There really isn't much of a donut hole for this tier. People making under 250k get aid. We are under 150k and got excellent aid. Are 300k+ incomes really donut hole? Not in the middle class person's book.

$300k in a high cost area, like DC, is definitely a donut hole family. Housing anywhere remotely inside the beltway is $800k-1 million+...this is with a 45 min+ commute. Childcare costs are some of the highest in the nation. People making $300k here aren't extravagant living lifestyles of the rich and famous. They are often two Fed GS-14s or below. They aren't driving luxury cars, etc.

To swing $170-180k/year for two kids to attend a school like Georgetown or Yale is a sh*tload of $. And for the reasons above ^^ saving in a 529 each year ---you will still need loans. I'm not talking about families that bought their current "1.5 million+ home back when it cost $500k in the early 2000s.

Families like this gun for UVA or William & Mary as a sound investment and ROI and $ left for professional school.

They don't qualify for any aid anywhere.

Disagree. We make under 150 and can swing 50k/year, so if someone made 150k more than that, they could easily save/cashflow another 30k from what we have. Even in DC, you all do very well and would totally have thus covered with priorities/savings over time unless you have huge medical expenses (which could be deducted from your income on css, and you'd probably get aid then, same for multiples in at same time). I would not call 300k per year without special circumstances donut hole.

You clearly have substantial savings built up across the years if you are able to afford 50k a year. I'm doing some back of the envelope calculations and with some assumptions regarding age, I'm reasonably assuming you have a low to non existent mortgage from buying a house long ago that allows you to do this. The vast majority of American families making 150k or under cannot cashflow 50k/year for college unless they aggressively built up significant savings, which is theoretically doable and some definitely do it. But many people have also suffered unemployment, other expenses, only came late to decent salaries in their careers and so forth.

+1
This poster is on all of these threads saying how she can afford an ivy full price with hhi under $150k and everyone with higher incomes who can’t has been squandering their $ on mansions and bmws. I mean EVERY thread with costs, she pops up. I call BS. Her math NEVER adds up.

I think there are several of us under 150k, but I don't see anyone saying they can afford full price Ivy. People at this income get financial aid. I am the 140k poster and did the math in a previous post. We've been saving a long time and know this is a major expense that requires savings, not an expense to cashflow. My kid gets great financial aid at an Ivy. I had planned to pay 45-50k per year, but am paying 30k because of the great need based aid.
My math is great, your reading comp not so much.

It’s crazy that a family making just $50k more is on the hook for $85k/year vs your $30k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

This is the reality that most people simply don’t want to accept. We see countless articles about how the SAT is biased because it correlates with HHI, but the truth is if you corrected for IQ, HHI wouldn’t move the needle much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

This is the reality that most people simply don’t want to accept. We see countless articles about how the SAT is biased because it correlates with HHI, but the truth is if you corrected for IQ, HHI wouldn’t move the needle much.

SAT prep can help, though, as can years of enrichment and tutoring.

The child who had the parents read to them since they were babies is going to have a better vocabulary and be more well read than a child who didn't. We read to our kids since they were babies.

That's not to say that children who didn't have this can't do well. But, then it falls on the parents to value education for their children even as they cannot help the children too much with their education. It's easier for those parents to do that if prioritizing education is cultural.

Culture is actually really hard to break. It's why so many Asian immigrant parents still think you only need high stats to do well, and why certain other subcultures don't value education as much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The disproportionate attendance among ultra-wealthy households is partly due to the correlation between IQ and income, frankly. IQ is a strong predictor of income with a correlation of around .3, and IQ is also strongly heritable, with most studies indicating that intelligence is 50%-80% genetic. If the average IQ of these parents is approximately 120, the average IQ of children from this group will be around 113. The whole distribution curve of this group of children is higher. These children will have 6X relative odds of having an IQ of 130+ and 12x relative odds of having an IQ of 145+ in comparison to the entire population. Athlete, legacy, and donor admission are big factors in this. Athlete admissions are probably not going anywhere, but legacy admission seems increasingly threatened now that check-the-box affirmative action is gone.

So the children of all those billionaire and multi-millionaire gangster rappers (Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Nas, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, Drake, Pharrell, Master P, Eminem, Kanye West) must be Dr. Who scale geniuses right?

I’ll bet you anything that the successful rappers mentioned have much higher IQs than unsuccessful rappers. You also understand what a .3 correlation means right? I’m also amused that you’re labeling some of these as “gangster” rappers.