Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:26     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
You can't have this conversation in the DMV because too many people here have internalized the idea that attending an Ivy or "top 20" school makes you an inherently better person. They are upset if their kids don't get into these schools because they think it means their kids are less than. And they blame the URMs and sometimes the athletes for "stealing" the spots they think should go to their children, but are less worried about the legacies and donor-class admits because, on some level, they truly believe those legacies/donor-class kids are more deserving of spots at those schools by virtue of that status.

When people have wholly bought into a value structure that says Harvard>State U, no matter what, you can't reason with them because they are blind to the ways in which this is not true. It doesn't matter what you say. This will never not feel unfair to them because they truly believe that admission to this short list of schools is the rubber stamp that marks you as a worthwhile person.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:23     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-acceptance-rates-ivy-league-schools-wealth.html

Basically it seems athlete, monied donor, first gen (the new proxy for race), legacy are about it.

I hate the examples that so many books give for how the balance the athletic “allotment” - they may need a piccolo player in the band. I was in the band at an Ivy; it’s run by the students and there is zero interaction with administrators other than permission to play at games and rent buses. It is nothing like the bureaucracy advocating for athletics. I guess MAYBE at a Big10 school with world class marching band? But theater and music and debate teams at T25 schools aren’t coordinating with admissions about their future slots or participating population, that’s just a polite fiction, there just isn’t enough administrative support to even make those assessments let alone factor into admittance.

I think the article is actually under reporting the dead zone salary - $222k in manhattan?! I’m guessing probably $150k to $500k — they are looking for donors and two Fed employees making $180k aren’t going to be writing big checks.


DCUM has argued for the longest time that poor white, first Gen students were shut out by wealthy AA students and suddenly being first Gen is a proxy for race?


+1

Aggrieved DCUMers will move the URM goalposts. Gotta blame somebody when DC gets rejected.


Look they have nothing against extending opportunity to the disadvantaged just as long as their special kid also gets a slot.

It’s fine when SOMEONE ELSE’S kid gets rejected to make room.

Nobody is entitled to a seat at a specific school, not even a 4.5/1600 with a Nobel Prize and an Olympic Medal.

What’s very middle class is the idea that if you follow all the rules very closely you are guaranteed the result you want. It’s incredibly naive.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:20     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Yes, we’ve been complaining about that here for years. That’s why our high stat, heavy EC, volunteer kids mostly end up taking a scholarship to Big State U. Our kids are too privileged for a hand up and not privileged enough for a handout. No one cares about them.


And, I think these complaints are overblown. My high stats, heavy EC, unhooked, public school kids are both at Ivies. One in at multiple, the other early and done. At 140k HHI (despite good college savings from us), they offered us way better FA than any merit (except UMD). These schools are longshots for everyone (except maybe the billionaires), but lots of kids that get in are unhooked.


They're not really overblown, despite your sample size of 2.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:20     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Yes, we’ve been complaining about that here for years. That’s why our high stat, heavy EC, volunteer kids mostly end up taking a scholarship to Big State U. Our kids are too privileged for a hand up and not privileged enough for a handout. No one cares about them.


Your kid’s education was subsidized both by the state and by a scholarship but you didn’t get a handout?



No, they earned it with high stats and crazy hard work and they raise the test score and GPA stats for the school in return. As opposed to just the pure luck of being born into a wealthy or political family and getting an Ivy education that will continue to make them more wealthy than their state U middle class peers even if they had lower stats.


Well I’m glad you think your kid is special but nobody else does.

They can definitely be rewarded for their superb work with massive merit aid at the University of Alabama or even full scholarships at many midrange (but very nice) private schools that cost $55k a year and not $90k a year.

Tim Cook, who is CEO of the richest corporation in human history, went to Auburn.

The current President of the United States went to U Delaware. The VP went to Howard. The Speaker of the House went to Louisiana State.

Success comes from talent and work, nobody hands it out at Yale.


Anecdotes are really not an effective way to prove a point. For every Tim Cook, there are 100 Stanford, Harvard, etc graduates or dropouts that have a net worth probably 100x+ of Tim Cook considering he was not a company founder.

At least use the founder of Nvidia as an example…though while he did undergrad at Oregon State he did grad work at Stanford.

The Google guys also credit Stanford and its connections far more than UMD.



Steve Jobs went to Reed and dropped out.

Steve Wozniak went to UColorado and was expelled. Then he went to De Anza College (COMMUNITY COLLEGE) before transferring to Berkeley.

Most senior executives at Fortune 500s are not Ivy+ grads.

Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:19     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:Screwed from getting into an Ivy in order to get a Federal job? Kids can go to GMU if they want to make $180K. I'm not sure of what we're being screwed out of.


Ofc you know. It's kids who work just as hard as kids with hooks. Some of that is simply due to family circumstances (kids can't change the fact they're not first gen). And yet, other kids get preference -in terms of admittance and maybe aid- because of those things, and get them at top schools.

You think GMU or Radford or Nova are so great? Why don't you send your kid there?
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:16     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:That’s not middle class.


It is totally middle class. My husband and I are teachers and we are solidly middle class. We make the amount that is in the range of the title of the article: "Kids whose parents make $158,200 to $222,400 a year have the worst odds of acceptance".

If you make $40 an hour that is around $80,000 a year. Two working parents would make $160k. What crazy world do you live where $40 an hour isn't middle class.


We live in a world where middle class is actually upper middle income, like the rest of the world. Middle class Is a lifestyle not an income bracket. Which world do you live in?
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:16     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-acceptance-rates-ivy-league-schools-wealth.html

Basically it seems athlete, monied donor, first gen (the new proxy for race), legacy are about it.

I hate the examples that so many books give for how the balance the athletic “allotment” - they may need a piccolo player in the band. I was in the band at an Ivy; it’s run by the students and there is zero interaction with administrators other than permission to play at games and rent buses. It is nothing like the bureaucracy advocating for athletics. I guess MAYBE at a Big10 school with world class marching band? But theater and music and debate teams at T25 schools aren’t coordinating with admissions about their future slots or participating population, that’s just a polite fiction, there just isn’t enough administrative support to even make those assessments let alone factor into admittance.

I think the article is actually under reporting the dead zone salary - $222k in manhattan?! I’m guessing probably $150k to $500k — they are looking for donors and two Fed employees making $180k aren’t going to be writing big checks.


DCUM has argued for the longest time that poor white, first Gen students were shut out by wealthy AA students and suddenly being first Gen is a proxy for race?


+1

Aggrieved DCUMers will move the URM goalposts. Gotta blame somebody when DC gets rejected.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:15     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:Yes, we’ve been complaining about that here for years. That’s why our high stat, heavy EC, volunteer kids mostly end up taking a scholarship to Big State U. Our kids are too privileged for a hand up and not privileged enough for a handout. No one cares about them.


And, I think these complaints are overblown. My high stats, heavy EC, unhooked, public school kids are both at Ivies. One in at multiple, the other early and done. At 140k HHI (despite good college savings from us), they offered us way better FA than any merit (except UMD). These schools are longshots for everyone (except maybe the billionaires), but lots of kids that get in are unhooked.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:13     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:Yes, we’ve been complaining about that here for years. That’s why our high stat, heavy EC, volunteer kids mostly end up taking a scholarship to Big State U. Our kids are too privileged for a hand up and not privileged enough for a handout. No one cares about them.


I feel like you may have missed the spirit of that word "volunteer" on account of maybe being kind of a selfish and terrible person?

I'm in the same donut hole for salary you are--only worse, actually, because I bet we have less cash. I value education enough to take out loans to send my kid to the best possible school they can attend. We applied to state schools, but I'm not convinced they're the best option. And certainly not the default because I'm whining about how poor I am... when I'm not.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:11     Subject: Re:Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
I make $90K. I am putting DD through college to be a vet without aid or a dad to help. CC to in-state. It's not impossible and she's already working in her field PT.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:10     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:As a graduate of a state U, haver of tons of friends who went to state U, parent of state U kids, etc., all I can say is that I feel and they feel no disadvantage to not going to Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown.

That is just silly.

College is what you make if it and many state Us have more resources, opportunities, and connections than little schools in freezing climates.



I don’t disagree with your general post, but you list schools that often times actually do offer more in terms of per capita resources, opportunities and connections.

Also, many times it is just one or two State Us (mainly flagships and one or two others depending on state), that even compare…and there are dozens of State Us in each state that offer very little of what you describe.


I 100% disagree with your first sentence.

And if a family feels their dc was 'screwed' out of an Ivy so they have to attend a state u, then 99% of the time that state us IS a flagship with all of the resources I was referring to.


You can’t disagree with the facts. On a per capita basis, Dartmouth as an example exceeds any flagship State U. The school is very wealthy, does a ton of research, etc and has relatively few students.

Berkeley has more total resources, but spread over a vastly larger student population and the fight for any individual student for those resources is intense. It is similar for many top flagships.

I don’t understand how you are arguing the opposite.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:08     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:As the article itself points out “All of which is to say there’s a real disadvantage here, but it’s impacting kids who, as a group, have had most every advantage in life”


They've had every advantage in life because their parents worked their butts off to get to the point where their kids would have every advantage. So the idea is to just strip away those advantages because someone else's parents didn't work as hard?


Really? Their parents "worked their butts off?" In what, pilates? Look, law school was hard and all, but it's not exactly building a railroad, or building a building.

Paying for Larlx to have extra French lessons and fencing instruction doesn't make them a better person, or one who is entitled to an "elite" education.

Truthfully, I'm a bit of a snob about colleges, myself. But I lump the ivies in with those anonymous state schools--not where I'd send my kid to get a real education. Any school that can't grade for effort isn't worth it. And the connections? Lol. The problems with clubs where everyone thinks they are special to be members is they have far too much invested in that aggrandizement and not enough invested in community.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:06     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:As a graduate of a state U, haver of tons of friends who went to state U, parent of state U kids, etc., all I can say is that I feel and they feel no disadvantage to not going to Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown.

That is just silly.

College is what you make if it and many state Us have more resources, opportunities, and connections than little schools in freezing climates.



Exactly. There are plenty of State U grads out here living happy, productive lives. Your kid will also be fine.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 09:02     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:As a graduate of a state U, haver of tons of friends who went to state U, parent of state U kids, etc., all I can say is that I feel and they feel no disadvantage to not going to Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown.

That is just silly.

College is what you make if it and many state Us have more resources, opportunities, and connections than little schools in freezing climates.



I don’t disagree with your general post, but you list schools that often times actually do offer more in terms of per capita resources, opportunities and connections.

Also, many times it is just one or two State Us (mainly flagships and one or two others depending on state), that even compare…and there are dozens of State Us in each state that offer very little of what you describe.


I 100% disagree with your first sentence.

And if a family feels their dc was 'screwed' out of an Ivy so they have to attend a state u, then 99% of the time that state us IS a flagship with all of the resources I was referring to.
Anonymous
Post 01/09/2024 08:59     Subject: Sorry DCUM middle class, your kids are screwed for college
Anonymous wrote:As a graduate of a state U, haver of tons of friends who went to state U, parent of state U kids, etc., all I can say is that I feel and they feel no disadvantage to not going to Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown.

That is just silly.

College is what you make if it and many state Us have more resources, opportunities, and connections than little schools in freezing climates.



I don’t disagree with your general post, but you list schools that often times actually do offer more in terms of per capita resources, opportunities and connections.

Also, many times it is just one or two State Us (mainly flagships and one or two others depending on state), that even compare…and there are dozens of State Us in each state that offer very little of what you describe.