Reply to 100k+ COA is here

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "100k+ COA is here"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I heard on YCBK that the average discount is now like 53%.  So college has become one of those markets where most people don’t pay the sticker price and those that do are massively subsidizing the rest.

My sister is a donut hole family and her kids went to ivies for basically free because they hit under their newer income caps.  We’re paying full pay at one of the above listed institutions — I’m just taking it off the top of what I otherwise would donate to charity because I understand that them overcharging me is allowing them to provide full rides to people with lower incomes.

It’s a progressive tax system but the problem is that it’s not very transparent because the merit aid stuff is all over the map.  YCBK had an interview the other day with the head of admissions for Connecticut college and it makes it sound like these mid tier colleges themselves don’t have a very rationale approach to the merit aid — they want good yield stats and if they think they are at risk of losing out to a peer institution they will throw money at the kid.  But they don’t know how much the peer is offering so they don’t know how much to offer as an incentive.

I feel really bad for all the truly middle class kids especially the ones whose parents don’t understand the system.  I was that kid decades ago and an admin officer from Pomona kindly took the time to explain financial aid to my parents — otherwise they would not have allowed me to apply to private schools with this big ticket prices.  Back then, I think the financial aid did a better job of covering truly middle class kids — most of my friends at school had financial aid. Everyone knew who did because we all had to stand in a line on first day of school to pick up our check to then bring to the registrar.   Now it seems like there are three categories; 1) ivies committed to covering family who make under X amount; 2) everyone else who really only cover the neediest; 3) the Wild West of merit aid at the mid range schools.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics