Why the middle class has a huge disadvantage in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Seems like the same advice should also go to low income people. Please quit the I-haven’t-figured-out-how-to-get-ahead-so-give-me-everything-for-free pouting.
It is true that life is unfair… for everyone.

I grew up in a high poverty area and I never knew a single kid who so much as applied to an Ivy school. This is a total myth invented by disgruntled high-income-but-not-rich yuppies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

So have this conversation with them when they start high school/ start thinking about colleges.

We did, but DC came up with different arguments like the state university is high school 2.0 and it is too big.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

Your kid isn’t getting in to the Harvards of the world (neither is mine). But if a/he got in, you would figure it out. 84% of students accepted to Harvard accepted a spot there this year. There were some that chose other schools but it is unlikely that many kids got in who decided not to go because of the cost. The data doesn’t support this.

Not Harvard but DC was accepted to t-10 college.
And that’s the exact conversation we had.

There are tens of thousands of kids every year who would be competitive for T20 schools and simply never apply because they already know they can’t afford it. This isn’t some new phenomenon or rare exception.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Seems like the same advice should also go to low income people. Please quit the I-haven’t-figured-out-how-to-get-ahead-so-give-me-everything-for-free pouting.
It is true that life is unfair… for everyone.

I grew up in a high poverty area and I never knew a single kid who so much as applied to an Ivy school. This is a total myth invented by disgruntled high-income-but-not-rich yuppies.

All the smart kids from my husbands blue collar town in OH made it out. He had a single mother with 3 jobs.

Columbia, Duke, Hopkins, a few state flagships. Back then Pell grants and tuition not as outrageous made it possible. But it takes a good HS counselor and someone telling them they can do it.

The ones that screwed around and partied and got pregnant in high school or thought they were rich from their job at TJ Fridays are still there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Seems like the same advice should also go to low income people. Please quit the I-haven’t-figured-out-how-to-get-ahead-so-give-me-everything-for-free pouting.
It is true that life is unfair… for everyone.

I grew up in a high poverty area and I never knew a single kid who so much as applied to an Ivy school. This is a total myth invented by disgruntled high-income-but-not-rich yuppies.

I think most people are talking about good schools including good publics and even instate tuition/other at UVA ends up at 90k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem for middle class is affordability of colleges unless it is in state universities.
Not rich enough to pay and not poor enough to get financial aid.

Yes disadvantaged for being in the middle..

Most of the lower class/poor don't even apply to "elite"/$80K universities. They have had far more problems in live due to their economic status, living in areas with really crappy schools, etc. They are just considered lucky if they are even thinking of attending any college, and most often it's CC to 4 year state or just a 4 year in state school. So I'd argue they have many many more disadvantages in life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

Your kid isn’t getting in to the Harvards of the world (neither is mine). But if a/he got in, you would figure it out. 84% of students accepted to Harvard accepted a spot there this year. There were some that chose other schools but it is unlikely that many kids got in who decided not to go because of the cost. The data doesn’t support this.

Not Harvard but DC was accepted to t-10 college.
And that’s the exact conversation we had.

There are tens of thousands of kids every year who would be competitive for T20 schools and simply never apply because they already know they can’t afford it. This isn’t some new phenomenon or rare exception.

Nobody said it is new phenomenon.
This is about being not rich enough to be full pay, or poor enough to get financial aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Seems like the same advice should also go to low income people. Please quit the I-haven’t-figured-out-how-to-get-ahead-so-give-me-everything-for-free pouting.
It is true that life is unfair… for everyone.

I grew up in a high poverty area and I never knew a single kid who so much as applied to an Ivy school. This is a total myth invented by disgruntled high-income-but-not-rich yuppies.

All the smart kids from my husbands blue collar town in OH made it out. He had a single mother with 3 jobs.

Columbia, Duke, Hopkins, a few state flagships. Back then Pell grants and tuition not as outrageous made it possible. But it takes a good HS counselor and someone telling them they can do it.

The ones that screwed around and partied and got pregnant in high school or thought they were rich from their job at TJ Fridays are still there.

Of course they got out. They went to state flagships. Not expensive private colleges! Back in my day, 2005, that was not realistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

Your kid isn’t getting in to the Harvards of the world (neither is mine). But if a/he got in, you would figure it out. 84% of students accepted to Harvard accepted a spot there this year. There were some that chose other schools but it is unlikely that many kids got in who decided not to go because of the cost. The data doesn’t support this.

Not Harvard but DC was accepted to t-10 college.
And that’s the exact conversation we had.

There are tens of thousands of kids every year who would be competitive for T20 schools and simply never apply because they already know they can’t afford it. This isn’t some new phenomenon or rare exception.

Nobody said it is new phenomenon.
This is about being not rich enough to be full pay, or poor enough to get financial aid.

The only thing has changed is schools do more for poor kids than before. Not being rich enough to pay has always been a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^as if all of us did European vacations and drive Mercedes. LOL. Clueless. Net price calculator EVERYWHERE is that we will get $0. We saved, we aren't big spenders, etc.

There is this complete disconnect that people don't understand how hard some of us worked and the sacrifices we made after paying off our own student loans because now we fall just outside the aid group. And, any generational advantage we managed to scrape up to will essentially be wiped out by college tuition.

Instead of fighting with each other, we all need to demand something be done about the exorbitant cost of college these days. It will be $100k year soon for many of these private universities and the publics will bump accordingly. AT 85K, we aren't that far away from it.

Since you have struggled so much with student loan debt of your own (and your spouses), I would think you would understand that where you go does not matter---it's what you do while there and that student loan debt is NOT worth it. Amazing that you list that as a struggle yet somehow still think your kids and/or you should take on massive debt for college. Imagine the gift of state school or private with good merit that means your kid only takes on $27K total of debt and you take on none.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Yup, life is terribly unfair. You can choose to live your life feeling sorry for yourself or go into debt to try to do what you think you deserve or you can accept that, and forge the best possible path.
And the good news is your kid with the stats/resume for an elite/T25 university will get into plenty of your state schools, often the honors programs, and plenty of schools in the 40-80 range that give excellent merit. So if you apply accordingly, your kid will have excellent places to go that cost the same or less than instate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bad news is that life is terribly unfair. The good news is the military is hiring & their education benefits are outstanding. So quit the I-live-in-McLean-and-only-make-$200k pouting & get your kid to start doing 200 push-ups per day.

Yup, life is terribly unfair. You can choose to live your life feeling sorry for yourself or go into debt to try to do what you think you deserve or you can accept that, and forge the best possible path.
And the good news is your kid with the stats/resume for an elite/T25 university will get into plenty of your state schools, often the honors programs, and plenty of schools in the 40-80 range that give excellent merit. So if you apply accordingly, your kid will have excellent places to go that cost the same or less than instate.

The only people mad about this are people who are educationally “downwardly mobile.” They can’t afford for their kids what their parents afforded for them, AKA “the best school you can get into.” For most of us, state flagship was always the ceiling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get frustrated by people that get so bent out of shape about this.
I get being frustrated by the rich (I say we eat them! ) but the simmering resentment about people at lower incomes disturbs me.
Yes, you will not qualify for financial aid (or very little financial aid) if you are at a certain income level. But people just throw the word "aid" around like it's just a big present wrapped up in a bow with no strings attached. Yes, some aid is just a grant--essentially free money. You have to be very low income indeed to qualify for that. Would you really want your income to be that low, just for the four years of grant money that your student would be eligible for. Think of the impact that lower income has on every facet of a person's life. Do you really feel that they are getting some kind of unfair advantage because they get more money for this one thing, while you have access to more money for... everything else.

Lots of aid is work study. It's not a free ride--the student has to spend hours of their week doing work. We did not qualify for financial aid, but both of my kids have found part time work while they are in undergrad to offset living expenses. If your student doesn't get officially "work study" you can make your own work study.

Finally there's the financial aid that is loans. Loans are not free money. Loans have to be paid back, and they have to be paid back with interest. That student that got the big aid package is often getting a big loan with it. Yes, it's the "nicer" loan, but it's still a loan. It's still starting off post grad with debt, and because that student is from a lower income family they do not have the "cushion" that a student from a middle class family has.

I'm grateful that we had the means to put a lot of money into a 529 to pay for tuition at state schools. I'm grateful that we are able to continue to put that same amount of money away each month while they are in school to pay for rent/expenses as they finish up. We were able to do this because I used the many, MANY tools that are available to give middle class people a VERY CLEAR picture of the cost of education. Having that knowlege, and having the goal of paying for undergrad for our two children, allowed us to plan accordingly.
-We made it abundantly clear to our kids that we could do in-state tuition (or the equivalent if they somehow won the merit scholarship lottery)
-We live in a modest townhouse
-We have one car
-Our family vacation were in state parks, while some classmates went to Europe

I'm not begrudging people who made different choices. If we had more $$$, heck yeah I'd have done European vacations!
It would also be fun to be able to tell my kids they could go to literally any college they wanted, private or public, that would have them.
It's also fine for people to put a higher value on certain kinds of homes, or activities, and be putting less money away in college savings.
What bugs me is the griping from people who's kids are exiting high school that seem to suddenly have the huge amount of outrage, and act like this is some kind of new explosive revelation.

I agree there's resentment and the college cartel and their enablers are telling us to direct it at the lower income folks while it should be direct at the college cartel. They are for-profit non-profits, pay no taxes (i.e. we subsidize them), government funds a lot of their research (i.e. we pay for their prestige and salaries of several staff), they hoard wealth (i.e. sit on their endowments which should really be used to subsidize tuition for everyone. I know what an endowment means. f' that!), their staff have fantastic job security, fantastic work environment, fantastic pay and we pay for all that through annual tuition increases regardless of whether inflation is zero percent or 10. And please google their salaries and benefits before coming on here and saying they don't get paid enough.

This is utterly wrongminded to me. Research benefits societies and private companies--most technological advances, knowledge about our environment, health and impact of policies comes from university research--not to mention documentation and analysis of history, keeping archives of language, art and culture. Full-time professors spend 8+ years in higher ed, and earn less than their similarly capable peers. Every analysis suggests they work over 45 hours a week even averaged across breaks. If you figure in their time educating and preparing courses, adjuncts which are increasing used to teach courses, earn less than restaurant workers. Some admin and definitely college presidents are over paid--but not compared to CEOs. Colleges educate our population in so many fields. Most colleges do not have huge endowments, and those that do operate under significant restrictions. I do think there should be some reform around the % required to be spent out. But I am sick of people critiquing higher education which is one of the biggest strengths in the United States and one of the key drivers of our economy. Colleges offer significant value--I think they should be further supported by society not less.

Ha ha! Yeah, I’m sure those professors would be making $500k out in the free market with their English, Poli Sci, and Philosophy PhDs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

Your kid isn’t getting in to the Harvards of the world (neither is mine). But if a/he got in, you would figure it out. 84% of students accepted to Harvard accepted a spot there this year. There were some that chose other schools but it is unlikely that many kids got in who decided not to go because of the cost. The data doesn’t support this.

Because many parents know they will be full pay and do not allow their kids to get their hopes up and apply to schools that would be unaffordable. If I made $300K and only had $25K/year saved for college, I'm smart enough to know the T25 schools are not giving merit and definately not giving me financial aide, so the only choice is for me to pay it. Since I'm not willing to do that, I have that talk with my kid during 10th/early 11th grade so they know what we can afford and that we have to pick schools accordingly---don't let them fall in love with something you know you can't afford. That is why most matriculate at Harvard---thousands of kids simply do not apply because they know it's unobtainable for them financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not use the state school option?

A lot of middle class do it.
But the conversation with your teenager is not going to be easy.
Kid: I am so excited to be accepted to my favorite and top college in the country.
You: We can’t afford 80k a year, instead you should go to state university.
Kid : So, tell me why I was working so hard in high school?
You : Well…

So have this conversation with them when they start high school/ start thinking about colleges.

We did, but DC came up with different arguments like the state university is high school 2.0 and it is too big.

You are the parent---you simply tell your kid "We can afford to pay $X per year for college. Anything else is on you. No we will NOT be co-signing any loans. Now lets do some research and find the right fit for you schools that are within our budget and how much you will be able to earn with a summer job and jobs during all your breaks, so we can see what we can afford as a max and go from there. Oh, and look at these excellent private schools just a level below T25 who give excellent merit...maybe we can make these work if you work hard and get good grades you might get good merit as they actually award merit to top students."

Serious, this should not be the first time you've had the "living within our budget talk" with your 16/17 yo.