“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:It will be fine my kid will get into Clemson, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Purdue, and Washington University in St. Louis. I'm not stuck on Ivy thank goodness. But he better get into Hopkins!

(from the article, kids from the top 5 to 10 percent attend at rates similar to, if not higher than, the wealthiest applicants.)

The article made these sound like great alternatives if you can’t get into an Ivy, but they’re not all that easy to get into either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You mean, the DCUM low class?

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

Oh F off and get your head out of your sheltered behind.

[Anonymous]

The parents interviewed for this article are pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The parents interviewed for this article are pathetic.

They embarrassed themselves.

[Anonymous]

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???

225k in those cities is a lot richer than here when factoring cost of living.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You mean, the DCUM low class?

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

Oh F off and get your head out of your sheltered behind.

No one on DCUM admits to a HHI less than 440K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be fine my kid will get into Clemson, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Purdue, and Washington University in St. Louis. I'm not stuck on Ivy thank goodness. But he better get into Hopkins!

(from the article, kids from the top 5 to 10 percent attend at rates similar to, if not higher than, the wealthiest applicants.)

The article made these sound like great alternatives if you can’t get into an Ivy, but they’re not all that easy to get into either.

The acceptance rate at Washington University is 11% and at Johns Hopkins it’s 7%.

[Anonymous]

Middle class always gets screwed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be fine my kid will get into Clemson, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Purdue, and Washington University in St. Louis. I'm not stuck on Ivy thank goodness. But he better get into Hopkins!

(from the article, kids from the top 5 to 10 percent attend at rates similar to, if not higher than, the wealthiest applicants.)

The article made these sound like great alternatives if you can’t get into an Ivy, but they’re not all that easy to get into either.

The acceptance rate at Washington University is 11% and at Johns Hopkins it’s 7%.

That's still higher than an ivy acceptance for our income bracket

[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.

DC looking at the list of WUE schools as well - do you mind sharing which one your DS is at and their experience so far? We’re in CA and while DC is going to apply for some in-state’s, I’m curious what other schools in the WUE people have experience with.

[Anonymous]

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

THIS 100%

[Anonymous]

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.

It’s always the people in the middle who are on their own, the boring ordinary. It’s amazing to me that people like the woman in Westport feels entitled for her daughter to attend a top college because she paid so much for private school. That’s just ignorance. Her daughter would have been fine at the public schools.

[Anonymous]

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.

Which is why we can thank the ivies for unleashing so many sociopaths in public office. Really, ivies should do a better job at weeding them out. Ah, but they’re rich with connections. So sorry your perfectly great kid with the same stats isn’t rich or poor enough for us to give her a second thought. No ladder for you!

[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.

My dd is in the arts and thankfully needed an audition to get into her study not SAT scores. Her friends weren’t the group that took all the APs or went all out with Ed’s. She had two friends who were in all special Ed classes go to BU general studies. Other middling students who liked to party more than study ended up in Clemson, SMU, Rollins and others. These were all full pay students who didn’t need financial aid. Their ability to pay was everything.

[Anonymous]

UMC, Gen X … full pay, no breaks, all da time