Harvard is introducing for the class of 2020 a Start up Grant for incoming freshman. Those students whose parents or caregivers make less than $65,000/year are offered the start up grant.
“Eligible students will receive $1,000 each at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters in addition to other financial aid. For one in five undergraduates whose annual family incomes are $65,000 or less, Harvard already covers the costs associated with tuition, room, board, books, travel, and other expenses.”
Harvard is trying to make a difference for those students.
My D attended Harvard and graduated 2015 and had several friends from various socioeconomic backgrounds. Some of her friends did go to exotic places but Harvard offers grants and financial aid for students to attend Summer School in Europe or study South America. Several students receive aid to travel during J term. The students have many resources at Harvard and are able to travel and receive funding for a variety of projects.
We are very middle class and my D was awarded some financial aid to attend Harvard. She wasn’t able to come home for some Holidays however, she was able to travel to Africa for research and Harvard provided funding for other research projects.
Concerning several mentions of Amherst, it has one quarter Pell students. Maybe by the luck of the draw you got a valley girl tour guide, but I would have investigated further & not used that as a deal breaker. (By the way, the sushi place is fabulous.)
My D attends a boarding school on almost a full ride. No one asks or pays attention to socioeconomic status. She has gone home with her roommate whose family’s 2nd home has an indoor swimming pool. Same roommate has visited us in our 1200 square foot 2 BR home on a 50 foot lot.
Many international students cannot go home for shorter breaks and someone always takes them home. I’m sure it’s the same in college.
I didn’t read the entire article, but I think it would not be out of line for such students to take small loans to cover the gaps, if possible, assuming their full ride did not already contain loans.
Sorry, I got cut off while editing so here is what I wanted to say. I took some minutes to review the article and then edit. Took too long apparently.
Concerning several mentions of Amherst, it has one quarter Pell students. Maybe by the luck of the draw you got a valley girl tour guide, but I would have investigated further & not used that as a deal breaker. (By the way, the sushi place is fabulous.) And kudos for Amherst’s program to cover taxes on FinAid. I’m sure the taxes due are a big surprise and that’s something I would support doing away with, like if you qualify for Pell, then none of your FinAid would be taxable.
My D attends a boarding school on almost a full ride. No one asks or pays attention to socioeconomic status. She has gone home with her roommate whose family’s 2nd home has an indoor swimming pool. Same roommate has visited us in our 1200 square foot 2 BR home on a 50 foot lot.
Many international students cannot go home for shorter breaks and someone always takes them home. I’m sure it’s the same in college. Hard to understand a student not having someone to go home with by Spring Break, or even split the time between 2 families if you don’t want to wear out your welcome.
I think it is not out of line for such students to take small loans to cover the gaps, assuming their full ride did not already contain loans. $20,000 for an ivy league degree is a bargain. Maybe the thing to do is to better educate full ride students about possibly needing/wanting more money, and about borrowing responsibly and conservatively.
20% Pell means 1 out of 5. And the other 80% is not all the 1% for heavens sake
There is a big difference between a family earning $35k per year with another 4 kids at home and a middle class family making $80k sending the last child off to Columbia on a full ride. The second family, even if on full aid, would probably not expect the student to send home extra money and may even have enough money to send a few dollars to the student. That family might have enough to send an airplane ticket, or a care package with some essentials. When I was in school, I was pretty poor, but I didn’t send money home to my family and in fact my grandfather, living on SS, would send me $10 a few times a year. It was wonderful.
Not sure I see how this is a bigger issue at a State U. At taxpayer supported Us the full-pay students are paying around $20-$25K in-state not $60K to $65K. Some kids pick roommates from HS, but most do not, choosing to move beyond their HS friends. Most of the very wealthy kids from our town chose to go to private schools (full pay) or at least OOS publics like Penn State. The cost is difficult for very poor students, and those who have the stats may well be better off at the handful of super elite schools that meet full need and then some, but the full-pay kids come from a vast range of income levels and not just those that can afford $65K. At the not quite so elite colleges, the group that is missing are those that don’t quality for much, if any, financial aid, but who also cannot or will pay for a private college.
I can only speak for the two elite institutions I attended, but at both schools the administration worked with me. I only needed to ask and was never denied. I was not ashamed to ask for additional financial assistance but many are, which is understandable.
Being able to ask for stuff you need is a skill that people without money might have trouble knowing that they need to do. It’s just one of those tricks of social polish that they never learned and never practiced.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing for schools to offer a course on a topic such as “social norms for living in high society” for those who are interested who didn’t get a chance to learn it from their parents. Though that might end up opening up a further wedge between them and their community back home (which happens frequently the world over among those who leave a poorer community for a well-ranked university).
@mom2and, these days, the numbers of the (lower) upper-middle class may be kept down at elites, in other words. Which would still make them decently represented (higher percentage of upper-middle class kids are among the super-achieving). And the really rich, really poor, and those making around the household average of 60K or so would be represented.
At a public, pretty much everyone OOS would be either on merit scholarship or upper-middle class or above. Fin aid tends to be bad outside of Federal and state grants and loans. 20-25K is a real stretch for those making 60K or below.
Furthermore, the rich elite privates provide a ton of opportunities to everyone (grants for unpaid internships; school-funded trips to NYC and DC to network and interview for internships, etc.) while state schools tend to be cash-strapped now so they tend to nickel and dime for everything. Rich and upper-middle-class kids could still organize trips to NYC to network, but if you can’t pay, well, tough; the school doesn’t have the money.
“Not sure I see how this is a bigger issue at a State U.”
Not every state U, but many. The big difference is the economic segregation in housing. Many big public schools have much nicer housing available at higher prices. Lots of flagships, such as Texas, Illinois, etc. also have private dorms that are considered on-campus housing but are expensively run by private organizations. Some of my friends who lived in the private Illini Towers at UIUC called it “Israeli Towers” because so many Jewish students from the North Shore lived there. It’s nothing like the deliberate mix of students that Harvard/Yale and also Williams, Grinnell, Haverford, etc. try to create,
Big residential Greek systems are also often quite segregated by class, even if membership isn’t more expensive than dorm life.
Yes, like in Paying for the Party. The authors observed that a lot of well-off parents who send their kids to a less expensive public school make up for it with cars, clothes, vacations, etc. Of course, there are plenty of parents at Harvard etc. who can pay the full freight AND all those luxuries, but some of the most conspicuous displays happen at public schools. To be really blunt, if you’re a status-conscious family, you can use the school brand name to make your point (in which case you may not need to show off to distinguish yourself from other students at that school), or if you go to a school without that brand, you can look for other means of display and ways of avoiding the riffraff.
Ah yes. At some flagships (and USC comes to mind as well), what Greek letter organization you get in to may be a big deal. Definitely in terms of social status, but also potentially in terms of networking.
Seems like one of the bigger differences in housing at the more residential public schools is that most non-frosh live off-campus at many of them. So family resources could play a significant role in which off-campus housing students live in, since the variation in cost of off-campus housing can be much larger than the variation in cost of dorm with meal plan.
I think the difference between the full ride students at public schools and private the meet need are the numbers. There aren’t that many students at the public schools that are told by the universities that they will will have their COA met, and we’ve seen enough kids post their awards on here to see that usually the awards just cover the billed amounts and already include the student loans. Some will have outside scholarships that will cover tuition, fees, R&B, but often those scholarships don’t promise to cover COA or all incidentals. The students may also be closer to home, going to their flagship, so can go home for holidays and breaks without needing a $300 plane ticket. The athletes were in that position until this year. They received tuition, fees, books, room and board. Until this year, no spending money, no toothpaste money, no beer money. Those who qualified for a Pell grant got that. Travel was very difficult for some families. Now, the schools can give them up to the COA as a stipend, and that $4000-5000 stipend should be enough to keep them fed and provide some entertainment.
I wonder if the students in the article have any idea how good they have it compared to other colleges? S1 is at an Ivy and S2 will be starting at a private LAC in the fall. I have already noticed the following differences:
No deposit at Ivy. I had heard about deposits and had always assumed it was like a down payment on tuition for the fall semester. Surprise! It is a 4 year security deposit, so $500 held captive until graduation. I wonder if it pays interest?
Laundry is free at Ivy, not at LAC
Ivy has "late meal" included with unlimited meal plan so you can get another meal after the dining hall closes up until 10pm or so. There is no reason to ever have to pay for food. LAC dining hall closes at 7pm and that is it for the night.
Ivy Pre-orientation programs are free for those on FA. At LAC Pre-orientation programs are only available to those that can pay.
Ivy COA includes travel, books and misc. expenses that are part of the FA determination. LAC does not even list indirect costs in their FA package never less consider them for aid.
Ivy has no loan, LAC does. A student at an Ivy can still opt to take loans to cover additional expenses. The LAC student is out of luck because the loan has to be taken for direct costs.
I read a course description for aLAC freshman seminar which stated "field trips will be taken during class time and student will be responsible for admission charges to sites." That would never happen at Ivy-outrageous for a college that charges almost 50k per year tuition!
LAC has tiered housing prices after freshman year. I am going to wager a bet that FA is not going to expand if S2 wants to house with friends in one of the higher priced dorms.
At LAC there is a "reservation fee" for Parent's weekend...what?
Health insurance fee is covered by aid at Ivy, you have to come up with the extra 2k on our own at LAC
These are just a few differences I have already noticed and I am sure the surprises are going to continue rolling in the upcoming year. I for one am very, very thankful for S1’s Ivy FA policies!
@planner03, re: #6 and others: Just making sure that you and others understand that it’s a school thing, not an Ivy thing. Some Ivies are more generous than some LACs and some LACs are more generous than other Ivies.
Likewise, some Ivy-equivalents offer more “perks” than some Ivies and vice versa.
I respect your opinion and I give it a lot of weight; and I’ve spent some time looking at how I think about wealth, social stratification, and how it applies to college.
I recognize that I have a lot of rather provincial opinions with regards to college-most of it stems from a fierce desire to protect my daughters and keep them as safe and as happy as I can. Ironically, I’ve lived all over the world and you’d think I’d be a little more worldly. Evidently not.
I already have the fear of them being marginalized by the “brogrammer” set (one is definitely CS, one may go human-computer interaction), and I do a lot of research on colleges where that is prominent and try to note that on some of my spreadsheets. I also worry about them losing opportunities because it’s not in our value set to spend lavishly to keep up with the Joneses.
However, I do recognize that operating from a position of fear precludes me from seeing opportunities for them, which totally pisses me off, lol.
So, I just go round and round, and struggle with the entire thing.
^^They will. They’ll have their list, we’ll have our list, and somewhere in that big pile of will be several good colleges that work for them and that work for us.
My struggle is with recommending one that may not be good for them.
I really don’t like making mistakes, and in my world, asking a kid to find a college all on their own is not how we roll.