Reply to Bethesda Magazine - List of College Acceptances

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The big difference between the top publics' exmissions and the top privates' exmissions? Family finances. Step out of your bubbles, won't you, and take a look at the realities facing families who aren't already shelling out $35k/year for private school.

Your average two-govt worker family with a household income of $200k faces the following facts: 
- None of the Ivies offers merit aid. None of the Ivies.
- The $200k HHI family won't qualify for any financial aid.
- The $200k HHI family will probably be hard put to pay the full $60k/year Ivy/private university tuition.
- UMD and UVA look like bargains by comparison.
- Early decision boosts your acceptance chances dramatically, but it's a game for families that can lock into a school without waiting to see the financial aid award.

Why you guys can't see this is mystifying. Welcome to the real world.[/quote]

Yes, I'm sure every family looks at college costs and factors that into decisions.  And perhaps that analysis scares off some students from matriculating/applying.  But the Holton/Landon % are three times higher than the Whitman percentages.  Are you really trying to argue that three times as many Whitman students would have been admitted to Ivy colleges, but simply chose not to apply because they couldn't afford it?  That seems unlikely to me.

Also, FWIW, are student loans no longer available?  When I attended college, I was in the exact situation you describe -- parents made enough to limit my financial aid options, but not enough to pay for college -- so I just financed my college tuition via low-cost student loans.  I spent the first several years of my working life paying those off, but that's just the price I had to pay.  Even dumb me knew it was a smart bargain.  And if I'd been admitted to some fancy-pants college like Harvard or Yale, I'd surely have taken on extra loans in a heart-beat.[/quote]

Yes, of course student loans are still available, both subsidized federal loans for low-income kids, and non-subsidized federal direct student loans for your generic two-govt worker family. But when you attended college tuition was much, much lower. Now tuition is at or over $60K at many private colleges. For a family that's not already happily shelling out $35k/year for private high school, that probably means borrowing tens of thousands of dollars over four years. Oh, and the interest rate on non-subsidized federal direct student loans is now something like 7%, and it begins accruing while you're still in college. Student loan debt is the new crisis in higher education. Of course state schools and smaller SLACs that offer merit aid are going to look like bargains in comparison to the high-priced Ivies.

FWIW, I personally know several kids at a big MoCo high school who were admitted to schools like Yale and Columbia this year, but turned these down for smaller SLACs that offered generous aid. I'm sure many more families think this through before even applying to Ivies, so they don't end up in a position where they're turning down Ivies like the kids I know.

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