<p>The Manhattan ZIP Code 10021, on the Upper East Side is home to more than 100,000 people and has a per capita income of over $90,000.[123] It is one of the largest concentrations of extreme wealth in the United States. Most Manhattan neighborhoods are not as wealthy. The median income for a household in the county was $47,030, and the median income for a family was $50,229.</p>
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<p>hmm … people can live quite well in greater NY for $150,000 … most live on much less … 3togo (former resident of NYC suburb in NJ)</p>
<p>I disagree that everyone with an EFC of less than 45,000 is getting financial help (in the form of grants) because there is plenty of gapping, but I agree with the overall idea above. I don’t think that it is right that mutli-millionaires pay as much as the person with EFC of 45,000. </p>
<p>I also agree with MilitaryMom in post #47 that EFC does not reflect how much has been spent on older children. It may look as though parents were not saving, but this might not have been the case at all. Savings may have been depleted out of necessity on older children.</p>
<p>polarscribe - your assertion that $150,000 per year is “wealthy” by definition is absurd!. If one is single and living in Idaho - sure, but not is one lives in Boston or San Francisco and has four kids. A US dollar is merely a place holder for value. One cannot exchange it for the same thing everywhere. A 1000 sq foot apartment in NYC costs a lot more in US dollars than a 1000 sq. foot apartment in Henderson, NV. Maybe you can buy yourself dinner for under $10 at your local grocery, but can you feed a family of six for that same $10 in Fairfax County, VA? Good luck with that.</p>
<p>If you make $150,000, you are wealthy - close to the top 5% of all American households. Period. The choices you make as to how to spend that income (living in a high cost of living area, etc.) are irrelevant to that fact.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if you don’t think people live in San Francisco and its surrounding areas on incomes of far, far less than $150,000, you are willfully delusional. I grew up in a family of three living just across the bay from SF, and our current income of $90,000 puts us well above the average for our community. Before my mother put herself through night school fifteen years ago, we made far less than that.</p>
<p>Financial wealth is a relative thing. 150,000 and even half that amount (75,000) seems very wealthy to person who is working PT for minimum wage, does not have a home/car of his/her own, and be seeking assistance from a food bank. </p>
<p>For a family of 4 living in NYC/ Boston/ San Fransisco, trying to pay for college for 2+ children, this is not wealthy (it is not wealthy even without college costs).</p>
<p>My definition of wealthy is: can live whatever lifestyle I want, without having to work if I don’t want to. Wealth usually refers to assets, not income.</p>
<p>$150K in income might make you “high income” depending on where you draw that line (95th %tile? 90th %tile?, 85th %tile?), but it doesn’t make you “wealthy.” There’s a difference.</p>
<p>And throwing out a number and claiming everyone at that number is equally “high income” without factoring in cost of living and the number of people living on that income doesn’t make any sense.</p>
<p>None of this really matters, does it? No one is really entitled to attend a school that costs $200,000, no matter how hard they worked in high school or how high their family income is. College is a consumer product, and if so many people didn’t harbor so many delusional fantasies about having to attend only their Dream Schools and how they’re above attending community colleges or even looking at schools that offer merit aid, this problem might be partially mitigated.</p>
<p>In order to analyze whether all income levels are equally represented in colleges, you’d really have to compare those who are qualified with those who attend. Many students who grew up in poverty, for one reason or another, like poor English skills, poor educations generally, criminal histories, etc. etc. aren’t qualified to attend college. So you can’t compare raw percentage of poor in the population to the poor attending college. </p>
<p>But anecdotally, yes, I think more middle class parents are sending their kids to public universities even in they could have gotten into more so-called prestigious universities simply due to the Great Recession.</p>
<p>Since we are a military family, we have well seen how the same income in different places is a whole different ballgame. When my husband was a Captain in the AF, we moved from one area where his income put him in the top 20% of income and to another state where that same income had now fallen to bottom 40% of income. How did that practically affect us? We lived in a worse home, our kids had greatly reduced activities (in each place, activity prices were based on median income of the surrounding areas), we had to be much more careful with food buying and it was almost impossible to save any money. </p>
<p>One further point- we are discussing three different concepts- wealth, income and class. They are not the same things at all.</p>
<p>As well as at some of the public schools.I recently have had 2 friends (they don’t know each other) tell me about all of the really, really rich students their own kids have met at our state flagship. Meanwhile D attends a private college and her friends seem to be mostly middle class.</p>
<p>‘Rich’ is a very subjective thing for a college student to think they know…How does your child know her classmates are middle class? Did she ask their income level? Or does she not see the ‘trappings’ that might leave her to this belief?.. Same goes for thinking most kids are rich at the public school…Because they had the latest and greatest technology toy? Designer clothes or handbags,or Uggs?..I know many middle class children that if you looked at them and their stuff,you’d think they were well-off…And I know just as many wealthy people who you’d never guess had more money then you could possibly need…looks are deceiving as are lifestyles…</p>
<p>^^ Exactly right! I know that my son thinks he knows, but he does not have a clue. For example, he thought one friend was wealthy because he lives in an apartment by himself, has a car, and has taken 2+ trips during the semester to another part of the country. What my son recently learned is that the apartment is HIS MOTHER’s HOME (he is living with his mother, not in his own apartment, which is not even allowed for freshmen), and recent trips were to visit his father (parents are divorced). My son had his facts wrong.</p>
<p>Many of those schools may not offer FA, but they offer to meet 100% of financial need. It cost us less than one year of the “inexpensive” state school to have DD attend 4 years at an elite school. The state U had little, if any FA. We saved a huge amount of $ by choosing the priciest school to which D was accepted over the state school, and we are middle class, not poor.</p>
<p>This is very, very true. It’s actually always been a joke around here that the person driving the oldest car is probably the wealthiest. Of course, over the past 25 years that’s changed. Used to be that you’d drive into the country club parking lot to see THE most beat up cars in the area.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is always an interesting and degenerating debate. Those in the middle are the ones who end up priced out of college, not those who are truly wealthy. Those in the middle also face bracket creep, tax-wise. They pass a tax at a certain income level and then iflation drives people into a tax bracket they do not belong in…then…people say, “Wealthy.”</p>
<p>As others have noted, high income (for a year or five, at the bottom level of high income) is not the same as wealthy, nor is it the same as really, really high income. But, the financial aid dollars are lacking, and loans are the current financial aid of choice, which is what keeps the prices artificially high. What do the schools care? They don’t have any “skin in the game,” as we like to say about kids, when the kids are the borrowers. And, with the way they sudent loan racket is set up, the lenders have no skin in the game, either.</p>
<p>The only ones with any skin in the game in the borrowing to finance college costs game are the kids and their co-signors. (Nice racket if you can get the government to set it up for you. )</p>
<p>Back to the original question . . .
I know a family that is currently trying to answer this very question for their own child.</p>
<p>Before reading this thread, they would have described themselves as lower upper class or upper middle class. Their “relatively high income” is very similar to the number thrown about here as “wealthy.” They also have assets, albeit modest, that would further support their being in the latter category. They have not lived a flashy lifestyle–same home for years (and years), no vacation home, sporadic and reasonable vacations, new American cars when the old ones hit 150K miles or so. (Don’t jump on them for that American bit!) The recession has affected them in both income and assets but because they were not “livin large,” they are doing just fine. </p>
<p>So, hmmm, maybe they are in fact wealthy. They compare themselves to the Joneses and don’t think so. Funny thing, they only look up the chain. Let’s not even talk about the Gateses. At any rate they find themselves in a position to consider a $50K+ COA school. Their EFC was surprisingly high to them, but only because they were new to this, and will likely result in no need-based aid or loans at best. Their darling senior is a good student and a wonderful person, but not stellar by any definitions in use at “the best schools,” so no likely merit aid either. </p>
<p>So, with no need and no merit, they are seriously considering paying this out of pocket. Seriously?! It begs the question, “Why would anyone do this?” They can’t really put their finger on it, but the answer seems to be, “Because they can.” It’s not because of the prestige of the school, nor for bragging rights, nor any form of self-aggrandizement. It’s not to keep the darling child content at all costs. They’re really not like that. It just is what it is. And as long as you have people that feel that way, there will be people that pay. Can you really put a $ limit on that? As long as there is a demand for it, the market will provide it. Personally, I don’t see how it can be sustained. Perhaps that will be one long-term outcome of the Great Recession.</p>
<p>I think the statement was a family making 80K when the baby born are the one making $200K now and for such a family it should be doable, you just need to make some choices.
Also it’s true that parting with it come Spetember is difficult. We had to use everything we saved on DD’s name because it was use it or loose it preposition. But moved to pay as go with the rest.
If you can save it you can pay it too and keeping the saving and paying as you go is much more satisfying.</p>
<p>We’re middle-class, pay our EFC, and our daughter gets a lot of need-based aid at a top school. </p>
<p>The key for us was staying in our “starter” home in a cheaper (less desirable school district) neighborhood. We live in the northeast so we have the same expensive costs for a lot of things but housing was one thing we could control. That has led to a lot less of keeping up with the joneses.</p>
<p>This is a great question. I 'm going to be reading through this thread tonight. I have been asking this same question for years as I’ve watched the prices skyrocket. At a time when the economy truly tanked several years ago, my son’s college, among many others had the gall to raise their already top of the line costs about 4% over all and presented the increase as a favor to all of us. </p>
<p>I think that full pay kids might find admissions to some schools a bit easier when it comes to those schools that are not need blind. I can tell you that a number of state schools have become far more selective. I know a number of kids who spent their entire lives in Catholic schools and would have ordinarily gone on to a Catholic college who chose state schools last year because the parents just could not come up with the money to pay private college costs and they did not qualify for enough financial/merit aid to be able to swing it. </p>
<p>Some friends of ours let out a huge sigh of relief when their son chose to get a car, stay at home and commute to the college where his Dad works and he gets some or all tuition paid. He had been accepted at some more selective schools, including his father’s alma mater, and ordinarily the family would have loved to have seen them there. But the economics made a huge difference in the situation as much as they wanted to say it was well worth the cost. I was surprised at a number of choices that were made because of the costs. So there is an effect. But not enough that it has reached the schools were the applications are so plentiful and parents would beg, borrow and work themselves to the bone to send their kids. It’ll be a while before that level is reached. But the schools that do not have the reputation but are priced up there, have to be suffering.</p>
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