Reply to Are top private colleges mainly for poor people now?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just to confirm--OP and a few others on this thread are arguing that low-middle or middle-class families (approx. $65-150K) are poor and therefore, 2/3 of elite schools are full of poor (lower class) kids??

OP, do you consider everyone under $200K poor? So there are only the lower class, UMC, and the UC/wealthy?

[/quote]

I would consider someone poor who qualifies for financial aid that is basically or equal to a full ride. Perhaps poor is too harsh. I don’t mean it in the sense of indigent. I mean it in the sense of someone who has minimal ability to accumulate savings, is basically just surviving, and has insubstantial assets. [/quote]
+1 "poor" is a relative term, as is "rich".

If you're getting financial aid, then you are "poor" to those expensive colleges.[/quote]

I think the big picture is- you have to come from fairly modest circumstances to be able to afford it, because most or all of your costs will be covered. Alternatively, you can be very affluent such that 80k is not a big deal. But there is a very large segment of the population that is “doing okay” but for whom it’s just not practical to stretch their personal finances to pay full price, go into debt, etc.  Full price for a private education is a lot higher than it was 30 years ago because the price tag has surpassed the inflation rate and this has compounded.  At the same time, financial aid for the bottom segment has become a lot more generous as endowments have exploded. But instead of using the endowment money to slow down tuition hikes, they use it to cover costs for lower income students. The end result is a very bifurcated class profile where the majority of the class comes from modest (if not poor) backgrounds and then for the most part the rest of the class is loaded. But most of the kids come from modest/poor backgrounds- whatever adjective you want to use. As opposed to [b]middle class or upper middle class backgrounds which is how it was historically[/b]. [/quote]

I don’t believe this. Top schools have historically been mostly RICH students not UMC. 18+ years ago, prep schools were sending hordes of kids to these schools. Their college counselors would speak on behalf of students routinely.[/quote]

I went to an Ivy in the late 1990s. The average student was from a comfortable professional UMC family who paid full tuition. But not rich. Were there rich kids? Sure. But most were not. Just as most were not poor either.

It's no secret the donut hole demographics, upper middle class who could have afforded private colleges in the past but who can't quality for financial aid, has grown over the last two decades. It's been an interesting evolution and one even sees this in the recent admittees from private schools, either wealthy AND connected or financial aid pupil from a disadvantaged or minority background. The horde of unconnected kids from prosperous but not rich families has fallen sharply in the pipeline to the Ivins.

I do wonder what it means for the long run. In many ways, the Ivies and certain elite LACs are losing cultural prestige. I know in my workplace we no longer look at recent graduates from the Ivies in the same light as we did just 10 pr 15 years ago and our best associates now come from a much bigger range or colleges and I know from conversations they often picked their colleges due to merit packages.[/quote]

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