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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These articles focus on career “success” and not money “success”.

The insurance policy is that the graduates have rich friends and/or marry someone rich. How many parents on this board earned their 1% vs married their 1%? I am semi-successful professsionally from a meh-private college; my money comes from my husband’s family, not my career.[/quote]

Both former low-income, heavily aided students who met at an ivy, went to med school at a different but top school, and earn top2%. Most of our adult friends are in medicine or law. About half came from no money and did not marry into significant (top-5%)money. We are younger than the ave college parents, just turned 50, college '97. Our friends are all similar. In fact the smartest two from '97 are a top lawyer and a research MD-phD.about 40% of my ivy was on need-based aid when I attended now it is 55%. parents on dcum who went to college in the 80s have a very different understanding of college compared to people from the late 90s. The legacy friends in my adult involved alum group are predominantly new to the top incomes, and were not legacies ourselves. My ivy absolutely changed my trajectory and it continues to do the same for a larger and larger portion of the undergraduate population. [/quote]

This is a powerful defense of Ivies as institutions but it is hardly an argument that full-pay families not already in the top 1-2% should shell out an unlimited amount of money for these schools. The top 10-20% of American households is a pretty comfortable place to be, especially if you’re not hellbent on living in the center of an expensive city and you don’t saddle your kid with massive unnecessary debt. Obviously if you have functionally unlimited money, it doesn’t matter how you spend it. Good for Ivies, for redirecting a lot of that excess wealth to poor kids. But there’s absolutely no reason families in the 85th-95th percentile should voluntarily subject themselves to that tax. [/quote]

Fair point, though families in the 85-95%ile will actually qualify for the most need-based aid from the top schools: Princeton Penn MIT Yale provide aid for household incomes up to around 250k. The rest of the ivy+ is up to 200ish as a need-aid cutoff. Marginally lower ranked privates in the 24-30 range are no where close to the same financial aid yet almost as hard to get accepted to.

For the full pay families, which we are (as well as former low income/FG), some will want to pay for the name, of course, and some are so rich they do not consider 93k a year expensive. 
Others will want to spend the $ even if they are not too far above the full-pay line of 250kish because our experience at similar schools made a lasting positive impression based on the experience. I wanted my kids to have what I had: uber smart peer group who became lifelong friends, small classes with engaged faculty. I wanted our kids to have a chance at the same and are quite happy and proud to be full pay as well as to donate to financial aid for the next generation who needs aid. Mine are at different ivy/elites than I attended and so far it is beyond their and our expectations, and frankly less rich-white/pretentious  than our DMV private school which is a welcome change. Hopefully our third gets into a similar level of school. 
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