One reason we see this is because the US is a huge country while our elite privates range from small to tiny compared to international counterparts (both of Oxbridge take in more undergrads than the biggest Ivy/equivalent, Cornell, does). Total places at all 30 schools I have as Ivies/equivalents, when taken as a percentage of the national population, is less than what Oxbridge+LSE+Imperial offer in the UK.
Another is, yes, that different schools look for different things and are holistic. So among the American elites, Caltech is most academically focused in admissions, with no discrimination by race, legacy, or athletic ability. Northwestern has a 3 year program (ISP) that I believe is comparable to the Cambridge Natural Science Tripos and was founded to train research scientists. But many top STEM kids don’t apply to those 2 for whatever reason.
@PurpleTitan I know the numbers, it still does not explain admission madness here. It is unfair to the kids to be subjected to the lottery. And they dont even know how many numbers they need to pick in order to win.
@jupiter98, rather, what numbers to pick.
It is indeed an opaque and maddening process to those on the outside. It’s not quite a lottery because the schools know what they want; how many of what types in their social engineering experiment.
@PurpleTitan , you are not including the mandatory college fees at Oxford, which add £7K to the £23K tuition, so it comes out to about £30K. (plus room, board, books and travel) And no American college student can be admitted to without enough AP credit to have the equivalent of 1 year of college in the US, so either way (US or UK), it is a 3 year program. There are definitely many less expensive unis in the UK, and the cost of living is less for a student, but the well known ones are pricey.
I would disagree with your comment about no American student being admitted without one year’s worth of AP credit. and it being a three year versus three year comparison. Oxford accepts SAT2s in lieu of APs from American students. You get no credit for those. Plus, when we looked at how US schools would recognize AP courses, many only offered only advanced standing versus full credit. With the number of APs that my son has/will have (BC Calc, Comp Sci, Physics C (both), Econ (both), USH), the best result that we could figure out for him from the schools he applied to was skipping one semester at Princeton. In my son’s case, his Oxford offer was covered by AP comp sci, physics c and calc bc. That’s the equivalent of five US core courses (one semester of comp sci, two semesters of physics, and two semesters of calc) which translates into one semester total at most US schools if you can get credit.
@HazeGrey: Depends on what schools. For instance, at UIUC (which has a CS+math major and is one of the best CS schools in the US) the max amount of credit-hours you could get from those APs is 28, which is near the 30/32 credit-hours a student there would take each year: https://admissions.illinois.edu/Apply/Freshman/college-credit-AP
“The relative transparency of admissions in European and Canadian universities (academics based) make them attractive to the students that don’t want to play the holistic admissions game at American universities.”
I agree. We live in the US, but my youngest only applied in Canada. The Transparency of Admissions was a significant factor. With only A’s, and >1400 on the (two part) SAT, admissions in Canada becomes almost a non-event. This makes the whole thing a lot less stressful. In her case the same probably could have been said of our local state university, but our local state university is much larger than what she was looking for.
Two advantages that Canada has over Europe for an American student: It is physically closer, and the education system is very similar to the US.
I think compared to US taxes, European taxes are outrageous. In the US, the taxes are only at 50% for the 1%, which is a bit unfair but they find their own ways out of it. And, if you move to a state like Texas or Washington (I live in the first and want to move to the latter), you avoid state income tax on top of federal income tax. So, in comparison, you save loads by getting a US degree and getting a US job (especially considering the fact that we pay more for most jobs as far as i’m aware).
@QuadCFreshie: to be exact, it’s not 50% on total income, but on marginal income. In the US, it used to be 91% on the highest margin (in the 1960’s). To make things simpler imagine your income is divided into slices. In the US, there is no “slice zero” so even if you make only $9,000 a year you pay taxes. In other countries, there’s a “slice zero”, so that the first slice is not taxed (poverty-level income), the second slice is 10%, third slice is 15%, fourth slice is 25%, fifth slice is 28%, sixth slice is taxed 33%, seventh slice is 35%, and eighth slice is 39.6%… That’s called progressivity of taxation and it’s an essential part of modern democracy. In the US there’s no slice zero so if you’re at the poverty level you pay 10%, then on top of that if you’re working class/middle income you pay 15% on the second slice, then if you’re at the national median you pay 25% on top of that on that third slice.
In France, one of the most taxed countries, you don’t pay taxes at all if you earn less than $12,000; you only pay for any earning over that for the next level, which is 14% up to incomes representing the median income.
So, the middle class actually pays fewer taxes in France.
In the US, the really weird thing is that there’s no difference between $191,000 and $416,000 - not long ago, there used to be an extra “slice” distinguishing between top 5% and top 1%… So, the US system really mostly benefits the top 5% (and perhaps really only the top 2% earners.)
So, sure, in Europe, their slices are different from those here and go higher, but would it be so terrible if people in the top 1% in the US had to pay a 50% marginal tax on their “top slice” of income? And their sacrifice allowed everyone to have affordable college, for instance?
(I really don’t like to pay taxes, but there has to be a balance - Once you’ve worked and lived in different states with different tax policies, you start seeing benefits to moderate taxation over low taxes. It’s all a matter of ROI.)
There are few things I wanted to comment about re your post:
- While there was a 91% income tax rate at one time, the reality was that only a handful of people ever paid it, nationwide. During those high tax rate years, there were a large number of deductions that dramatically reduced the effective tax rate for the vast majority of high income earners, most of which disappeared in conjunction with tax reform in the 1980s. Because very high tax rates incent people towards unproductive tax shelters, the realized taxes are relatively invariant between high tax rates and moderate tax rates.
- The standard deduction provides a zero tax rate on the first $6,350 - $12,700 of income depending upon filing status. Some families are also eligible to receive the earned income tax credit, and their effective tax rate on their initial income is actually negative.
- There are a number of deductions that phase out or disappear as income increases, while at the same time the tax rate rises. The combination of the two, in conjunction with state taxes, can and does push up marginal tax rates on income above 50%.