“the microsegment of the top 4 to 5 percent (earning $222,400 to $251,100) fares the absolute worst at t20 admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I truly don't understand the obsession with top ranked schools. You can just learn to code or acquire a similar skill and out earn most of them while working from home.

Shocker: no, you can't. Sure someone can, but comparing one to all is fallacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I truly don't understand the obsession with top ranked schools. You can just learn to code or acquire a similar skill and out earn most of them while working from home.

That sounds like such an empty, unfulfilling life.

[Anonymous]

But how would they know, unless you fill out FAFSA or CSS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But how would they know, unless you fill out FAFSA or CSS?

Admissions software such as Slate and Landscape use zip codes, e.g., fed data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:only DCUM thinks this is unique to DCUM. You think Cleveland, Columbus, Chicago, Queens, St Paul, half of NJ, Colorado Springs etc aren't full of families making 225k with smart kids who have done all the same things???

I am sitting here reading this in Colorado Springs and cracking up appreciatively at the mention. We are smack dab this income and my son with a with a 35 ACT, unweighted, 4.0, and international sports experience ended up at a flagship out of state. Thank goodness for the western undergraduate exchange.

Your kid was dinged at cu-Boulder?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You mean, the DCUM low class?

+1. $222,000 is low for 1 DC earner, much less a combined HHI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But how would they know, unless you fill out FAFSA or CSS?

Admissions software such as Slate and Landscape use zip codes, e.g., fed data.

Yes, and then they make wild assumptions about you. DO NOT rent the cheapest thing you can find in a great school district with a fancy zip code. Your child will be judged same as the people in your zip code who are actually stinking rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-acceptance-rates-ivy-league-schools-wealth.html

This is probably the most DCUM-y percentile of any slice of the income ladder

Schools REALLY don’t want dcum kids if they can help it.

Dcum kids are the least liked and least desired all other factors being relatively equal

<checks notes>

Yep. That’s the same income band as people who got royally screwed in the Trump tax law while everyone else got a tax cut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because those colleges know that the parents cannot afford it, and think that they will decline, thereby impacting the yield.

I think it's as simple as this. I saw this trend with my 2 kids - one attended private, the other public. It wasn't super clear-cut - in fact more kids attended top 3 ivy's from the public than the private, but for schools like Colgate, Vanderbilt, Bucknell, Wake Forest, W&L etc. it seemed like private school applicants were the sweet spots and the public kids didn't get as many offers. My DC was not Ivy material, but with okay grades got into all of the private colleges they applied to and I think our demonstrated ability to pay full freight was part of it.

Why do colleges think you can’t pay if you don’t apply for FA? My family trust will pay for it, so our salaries aren’t through the roof, and my kid goes to public. Will colleges assume he can’t afford it just because of his public high school, or do they search the property value of one’s home? This is a weird take imo, if a person doesn’t apply for FA wouldn’t they assume the family is full pay? Especially if they live in an expensive zip code?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because those colleges know that the parents cannot afford it, and think that they will decline, thereby impacting the yield.

I think it's as simple as this. I saw this trend with my 2 kids - one attended private, the other public. It wasn't super clear-cut - in fact more kids attended top 3 ivy's from the public than the private, but for schools like Colgate, Vanderbilt, Bucknell, Wake Forest, W&L etc. it seemed like private school applicants were the sweet spots and the public kids didn't get as many offers. My DC was not Ivy material, but with okay grades got into all of the private colleges they applied to and I think our demonstrated ability to pay full freight was part of it.

Why do colleges think you can’t pay if you don’t apply for FA? My family trust will pay for it, so our salaries aren’t through the roof, and my kid goes to public. Will colleges assume he can’t afford it just because of his public high school, or do they search the property value of one’s home? This is a weird take imo, if a person doesn’t apply for FA wouldn’t they assume the family is full pay? Especially if they live in an expensive zip code?

It is not that they think you can’t pay, it’s that they think you’re a one-off case. By keeping the private school happy, they tap a rich vein and repeat applications for years to come.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. We fall into that exact segment (not surprisingly, since here I am on DCUM), and in a way, I'm glad that first DC, who is a freshman in college now, had a bit of a rough patch in high school that knocked them out of any kind of contention for a higher ranked school than just an in-state non-flagship.

Second child is in 10th, and has already expressed an interest in not aiming too high in terms of college admission. I think it's a smart strategy, he can enjoy high school, not aim for perfect grades, and get accepted somewhere medium.

Both of my white, financially stable kids will be fine. But if they were academic superstars, or had spent all of high school gunning for a tippy top college and missed, only to "end up" at the same place they would have if they'd just coasted, that would indeed suck. I feel for those kids, although I guess they're learning early that life is a rigged game, and most things aren't fair.

This is very balanced and reasonable. It's hard to be this way but you're 100 percent right.

[Anonymous]

Some of it is income, some of it is that all the students at your child's school are all applying to the same schools and most aren't going to take every application and will limit and take the best of the bunch. Richer schools often attract smarter kids, so not a wide pool of students to choose from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are kids with low income actually more likely to get into Yale, or are they more likely to be eliminated from the applicant pool before they even put together an application? Are kids in that 4 to 5% group really underrepresented relative to their percent in the population, or just relative to their percent in the applicant pool?

I have trouble reading this article about a kid who got into a prestigious K-12 prep school, and then a prestigious college that she chose to apply to and loved, as an evidence that she was disadvantaged.

This. They are looking at a socioeconomic bell curve among applicants, noting that schools have strong reasons to admit both the very wealthy and the poorest applicants at much higher rates, and of course the people in the middle of that bell curve (of which there are exponentially more) have the lowest admissions rate. This is not a surprising or even very interesting observation, and yet it's one that seems to perennially surprise UMC families who perceive themselves as being unique. We are not unique, we are a dime a dozen. Have your kid apply to a few of these schools if they have the grades/scores/desire, but aim for the state flagship (may not be your in-state flagship if you're in a very competitive state like VA, but another state flagship will do) or a less competitive SLAC because that's probably where your smart, hardworking, but otherwise incredibly basic kid is going. And guess what -- they'll probably do great there and might even be a lot better off than if they luck into a spot at Williams or Princeton where they will for sure discover, quickly, how prosaic their background is and how ill-prepared they are to compete with people who have trust funds and connections or who are genius-level talents or who are so aggressively ambitious that they will steamroll anyone who stands in their path. Which is who winds up at Ivies, for the most part.

Right, so when data naturally forms a bell curve you expect there to be selection against that tendency? Way to twist yourself into a pretzel.

Not what I said and no pretzels there.

The issue is that the income distribution of the entire US population is different than the income distribution among applicants to T20 schools. In the US as a whole, 50% of households make less than 75k. However, these families do not make up 50% of T20 applicants. They make up a much smaller proportion of applicants, and thus have a higher overall admission rate.

The lower middle class, with incomes of 75-150k, represent about 29% of the population. They may apply to T20s at a higher rate than students from families below 75k, but many students from this group will opt out because they do not come from communities where T20 attendance is considered as important, and families way worry about things like cost of travel (at 100k, a family is going to stress about the cost of flights to and from a school like Williams). So even this group may be underrepresented in T20 applications compared to the overall population.

Meanwhile, the percent of US households with an income of more than 250k is less than 4%. Even if every kid from one of these families applies to every T20, we're talking about maybe 20% of applicants. And since these applicants are going to contain a disproportionate number of legacies, donors, and incredibly well-resourced kids given every possible advantage to fulfill their potential prior to college, their admission rate is likely to be higher.

But let's look at the group the article is about. With family incomes well over 200k, these families are MUCH more likely to be ambitious in the way that attracts T20 applicants. The parents are more likely to have gone to T20s themselves, or to have aspired to go to them. They are more likely to live in cities where salaries are higher and where they are more likely to be exposed to other T20 grads, and workin industries where T20 credentials are highly valued. So a much higher percentage of students from this income level are likely to apply to T20 schools. Their parents can feel more confident that they will be able to afford to attend (despite the frequent "donut hole" protestations on this website -- if you have 1 or 2 kids and a 250k income, you can probably figure out a way to pay for a T20, even at full pay), and they are also more likely to view a T20 as worth this investment.

So these schools wind up admitting a lot applicants from both the bottom and tippy top of the income distribution curve, because there are so many fewer of them overall and they are more likely to have admissions advantages, whether that's being the valedictorian of their Title 1 inner city high school where not a single other person applied, or being the daughter of a billionaire. But students with parents making 200k to 250k are disproportionally represented in T20 applications, making them appear much more commonplace and harder to sell to admissions committees. Some will be admitted, but as a percentage of their total applications, relatively fewer.

It's not a pretzel. It's just what happens.

Lower middle class is not $100-150K. That is the problem. If you make $200K you are comfortable and upper middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. We fall into that exact segment (not surprisingly, since here I am on DCUM), and in a way, I'm glad that first DC, who is a freshman in college now, had a bit of a rough patch in high school that knocked them out of any kind of contention for a higher ranked school than just an in-state non-flagship.

Second child is in 10th, and has already expressed an interest in not aiming too high in terms of college admission. I think it's a smart strategy, he can enjoy high school, not aim for perfect grades, and get accepted somewhere medium.

Both of my white, financially stable kids will be fine. But if they were academic superstars, or had spent all of high school gunning for a tippy top college and missed, only to "end up" at the same place they would have if they'd just coasted, that would indeed suck. I feel for those kids, although I guess they're learning early that life is a rigged game, and most things aren't fair.

It’s an interesting take. My kids are very good students but not academic superstars. They weren’t gunning for T20 and I feel like looking back they had a good, balanced, high school experience. While my natural inclination might have been to push my kids to be competitive for my alma mater - observing real life of who and how people get ahead I saw that it’s not necessarily the name of the college that makes the difference long term, it’s the confidence in oneself, ability to adapt and people skills …not just being book smart.

My kids went to top privates in DC. Good grades with both getting a 35 ACT scores first sitting. My kids were tired of the small class sizes of their privates and wanted to try something new. They both chose state college flagships. Both are doing incredibly well in college, but more importantly to me, having a great time and socializing with so many kids across the country. They will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A
Lower middle class is not $100-150K. That is the problem. If you make $200K you are comfortable and upper middle class.

I am curious. Will you please provide my with a pay scale that determines where I fit? Am I lower middle class or upper middle class, or am I lower rich or middle class rich? I'm clearly not upper scale rich. Help me out Mom! I need to know where I stand when attending all of these holiday parties. I certainly don't want to get out of line with the wealthy parents!