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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A lot of people who claim to be "donut hole" families have lived lives of increasing lifestyle creep as their incomes have climbed up 200k, and then want to complain that they don't get enough need-based aid. Well, did you really need a new car every 5 years? Expensive vacations? To redo the kitchen?

If you want to argue that a family making over 200k is middle class, then live like middle class people -- budget, accept you won't be able to afford everything you want to do, and sock money away for retirement and college.

We make well under 200k and this is what we do, and we have friends making over who go out to eat three nights a week, drive luxury cars, and take multiple vacations overseas every year, have weekly cleaners, etc. Those people are not entitled to need-based aid. It's not my fault, or the college's fault, that they chose to just live nicer, more luxurious, easier lives instead of saving their additional income for their child's education. We've scrimped and saved and still won't have enough. AND work in helping professions. I don't cry myself to sleep over the doctors and consultants and well-paid feds who will be disappointed in their FA award while crying into their Tesla upholstery and trying to console themselves on the flight to Aruba. Boo freaking hoo.[/quote]

That's fine but look what you've done.  You've sacrificed your whole life only to be ripped off by a system where more than half the kids are practically going for free, while maybe a quarter of the parents are rich people for whom $320k is a fraction of an annual bonus.  You are kind of the sucker here.[/quote]

Nope, we will qualify for considerable financial aid. If my kid gets into one of these tippy top schools, we will pay nowhere near the sticker price because they do in fact have need blind admissions and there is no accounting of our finances that wouldn't find plenty of "need" in that situation.

However we have saved money so that if our kid isn't both incredibly accomplished AND win the admissions lottery (those odds are so slim as to be non-existent), we will be able to help pay for another school, whether that's an in-state school or a small private that offers aid or what. We will need help to pay for school and we will look to minimize or avoid loans as much as possible. This is almost certainly what paying for college will look like for us, and we will be glad we have saved as much as we can to pay for it. If you have a family making upwards of 200k per year, the idea that you are somehow too good to do the same, or that your kid deserves one of those lottery spots at Harvard or whatever, is just entitlement. That's it.

Now if you want to advocate for affordable, or even free, public universities so that it is possible for anyone who is qualified to get a college education, I'd be right there with you. If you want to talk about the funding of PUBLIC higher education and how we actually make this affordable and accessible for kids of all backgrounds, sounds great.

But this thread is just about UMC people who feel entitled to send their kids to "T25" schools whining about how much it costs. You're not mad about the cost of college generally, you're mad about access to a certain brand of "elite" education that you think will mark your kid as worthy and better than other people, and you're mad that you see rich kids who didn't really earn it, and poor kids who don't have to pay for it, getting this thing you've decided is your kid's birthright. Get over yourself.[/quote]

OP here. As I said, I'm full pay and nowhere near qualifying for financial aid under any conceivable scenario.  My kid is going to a private college full pay and I'm delighted.  But as someone who came from an upper middle class background, I don't like what I see happening at my alma mater and peer schools.  I don't think it's right, and I know for a fact that a lot of people at elite colleges are worried about this as well, especially as the price tag approaches the dreaded $100k/yr.  I don't think it's healthy when America's bests colleges consist only of children from very modest backgrounds and children from very immodest backgrounds.[/quote]

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