LOL. OP, they are for rich people, with a smattering of merit-based poor and middle-class famliies so the rich can feel like they also made it on merit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sort of by definition, if 2/3 are receiving aid, 2/3 are low income or poor. Also don’t forget about international students who are usually not receiving much aid (except t at a few schools) and they are 10 percent. So that could leave 30 pct of US students not receiving aid- maybe half of them are more or less just over the threshold (parents taking out loans) and half are well to do. That means a campus could be 60 percent poor and like 10 percent rich.

Begs the question- why would a rich person be excited to send their kids to a school with primarily poor kids who are there to try to use rich kids for their connections?

Receiving aid =/ low income or poor

A family making $160k isn’t low-income or poor by any definition, anywhere.

It sort of is if you look at the cohort of families where the primary breadwinner is in their 40s or 50s. Definitely closer to the median there. Not poor in the sense of on the cusp of starvation but scraping by, things are tight, and spending 80k a year on a liberal arts education is ridiculous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The opposite is true,

according to the new research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and co-authors.They show that 14.5% of students in America’s elite universities (eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke) are from families in the top 1% of income distribution, compared with only 3.8% from the bottom quintile. That’s a dramatic overrepresentation of the richest Americans.

But think about it. We are talking about a 320k education. Why would the very poor and the very rich be equally represented? Also there are many moor poor people than very rich people so while very rich people are of course over represented they seem to be very much outnumbered by lower income people on campus.

? You have a 4x better shot at bumping into someone whose family is in the top 1% than in the bottom 25%. How are they “very much outnumbered”?

Because there are more bottom quintile kids than top 1% kids. My claim is not that the average poor kid has a better chance of being a Harvard student than the average rich kid, it's that there are more of them on Harvard's campus than rich kids.

Are we just talking past each other? Lets say you are on Harvard's campus and you run across 100 kids. According to the study cited, you will run into 14.5 kids whose families are in the 1%. You will run into 3.8 kids whose families make in the bottom quintile. Yes, there are many more kids from the bottom quintile in the general population, but not on harvard campus. Thats the whole point. What point are you trying to make?

Bottom quintile is too extreme. Maybe bottom half would be more relevant. By poor I don’t mean homeless or close to it. I mean people who are scraping by and who don’t really have much by way of assets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The opposite is true,

according to the new research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and co-authors.They show that 14.5% of students in America’s elite universities (eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke) are from families in the top 1% of income distribution, compared with only 3.8% from the bottom quintile. That’s a dramatic overrepresentation of the richest Americans.

But think about it. We are talking about a 320k education. Why would the very poor and the very rich be equally represented? Also there are many moor poor people than very rich people so while very rich people are of course over represented they seem to be very much outnumbered by lower income people on campus.

? You have a 4x better shot at bumping into someone whose family is in the top 1% than in the bottom 25%. How are they “very much outnumbered”?

Because there are more bottom quintile kids than top 1% kids. My claim is not that the average poor kid has a better chance of being a Harvard student than the average rich kid, it's that there are more of them on Harvard's campus than rich kids.

Are we just talking past each other? Lets say you are on Harvard's campus and you run across 100 kids. According to the study cited, you will run into 14.5 kids whose families are in the 1%. You will run into 3.8 kids whose families make in the bottom quintile. Yes, there are many more kids from the bottom quintile in the general population, but not on harvard campus. Thats the whole point. What point are you trying to make?

Anonymous wrote:Sort of by definition, if 2/3 are receiving aid, 2/3 are low income or poor. Also don’t forget about international students who are usually not receiving much aid (except t at a few schools) and they are 10 percent. So that could leave 30 pct of US students not receiving aid- maybe half of them are more or less just over the threshold (parents taking out loans) and half are well to do. That means a campus could be 60 percent poor and like 10 percent rich.

Begs the question- why would a rich person be excited to send their kids to a school with primarily poor kids who are there to try to use rich kids for their connections?

Receiving aid =/ low income or poor

A family making $160k isn’t low-income or poor by any definition, anywhere.

Sort of by definition, if 2/3 are receiving aid, 2/3 are low income or poor. Also don’t forget about international students who are usually not receiving much aid (except t at a few schools) and they are 10 percent. So that could leave 30 pct of US students not receiving aid- maybe half of them are more or less just over the threshold (parents taking out loans) and half are well to do. That means a campus could be 60 percent poor and like 10 percent rich.

Begs the question- why would a rich person be excited to send their kids to a school with primarily poor kids who are there to try to use rich kids for their connections?

I am totally fine with top private colleges only taking the poor and rich. If Harvard can give that leg-up to poor kids then more power to them.

My own Asian-American UMC kid goes to UMD and gets merit $$. I am aware that UMD is affordable even without the merit aid, but free money and savings are always welcome.

All I would want to see is that the definition of "poor" be changed based on SES, marital status, COL. Let there we some sensible affirmative action in place. In other words, I am fine with Harvard not taking the kid of the rich Nigerian doctor, but instead they take a Black kid from the Bronx.

Similarly, the White kid living in DMV in a household making $150K needs aid because this is an expensive area. No one has any objection to affirmative action, if it is based on race and SES.

Even as I

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The opposite is true,

according to the new research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and co-authors.They show that 14.5% of students in America’s elite universities (eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke) are from families in the top 1% of income distribution, compared with only 3.8% from the bottom quintile. That’s a dramatic overrepresentation of the richest Americans.

But think about it. We are talking about a 320k education. Why would the very poor and the very rich be equally represented? Also there are many moor poor people than very rich people so while very rich people are of course over represented they seem to be very much outnumbered by lower income people on campus.

? You have a 4x better shot at bumping into someone whose family is in the top 1% than in the bottom 25%. How are they “very much outnumbered”?

Because there are more bottom quintile kids than top 1% kids. My claim is not that the average poor kid has a better chance of being a Harvard student than the average rich kid, it's that there are more of them on Harvard's campus than rich kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the society and nation to be healthy, hard working middle class should not be penalized

$100-200k HHI is hardworking middle class.

A firefighter married to a teacher in the DC area falls into this bracket. I’d love to hear people explain how those aren’t middle class professions

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poor or Rich

Middle class are fukced

Yep. This is it.

You’re free to give away your money and send your kid to high school where poor kids go if that’s so awesome.

Anonymous wrote:Poor or Rich

Middle class are fukced

Yep. This is it.

Anonymous wrote:For the society and nation to be healthy, hard working middle class should not be penalized

Nobody is being penalized except poor people.

Anonymous wrote:For the society and nation to be healthy, hard working middle class should not be penalized

$100-200k HHI is hardworking middle class.

Anonymous wrote:For the society and nation to be healthy, hard working middle class should not be penalized

Hard working poor working class should not be penalized as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The opposite is true,

according to the new research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and co-authors.They show that 14.5% of students in America’s elite universities (eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke) are from families in the top 1% of income distribution, compared with only 3.8% from the bottom quintile. That’s a dramatic overrepresentation of the richest Americans.

But think about it. We are talking about a 320k education. Why would the very poor and the very rich be equally represented? Also there are many moor poor people than very rich people so while very rich people are of course over represented they seem to be very much outnumbered by lower income people on campus.

? You have a 4x better shot at bumping into someone whose family is in the top 1% than in the bottom 25%. How are they “very much outnumbered”?