With seemingly everyone applying to the most elite undergrad schools they can and taking out large loans to do so when necessary, does that make it easier for students who went to state schools on full rides to go to an elite school after undergrad?
My logic goes like this: Mom and dad shell out the cash and take on loans to send their son or daughter to an elite school.
When he/she graduates from the undergrad school, there is less money left to pay for elite law school, med school, business school, or grad school - not to mention added pressure to join the workforce and defer post-undergrad education altogether. I have also heard that after undergrad, universities are less generous with financial aid.
With all of those factors at work, does that make elite schools easier to get into on the back end for students who went to state schools for undergrad?
True - but many people do. Others can afford to send their kids without loans to undergrad but deplete every last dime to do so.
Back to the question: is the road to “elite” schools less competitive after undergrad for the aforementioned reasons?
We would need data comparing the admit rates of medical schools, law schools, and MBA programs as well as average MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT scores respectively over the last 15 to 20 years to ascertain the answer to this question. If anyone has the data I would love to see it (my personal belief is that it would heavily track the economy), but I seriously doubt that the rising price of college impacts graduate school competitiveness.
In many academic fields graduate school tuition is completely covered for doctoral programs, along with a TAship stipend to cover living expenses. So even apart from your question about the influence of undergraduate educational costs on access to and affordability of graduate school, it isn’t possible to make sweeping generalizations about the affordability of graduate education (elite or otherwise) when you lump together med school, law school, business school, and a more generic “grad school” for other academic fields in the same category of education.
It really depends (on your goals and what you bring to the table). You really have to be more specific in order for people to say, but certainly, some grad programs are easier to get in to than undergrad at most elite privates.
Seems like someone has never heard of the top 1% (lowest threshold for qualifying is at least $250K/year) or the top .1% (lowest threshold at least $1.6 million/year).
But, sure, if you invent an imaginary world where most parents struggle to send their kids to an elite school, you’ve got a point
Undergrad prestige is an important factor in some graduate school selection (B school comes to mind, for example). You would have to put in more effort to get into the top business schools from a state school.
Parents are less likely to pay for professional school (leaving out grad school because that is usually funded by the department). It’s very common for the student to shoulder the cost beyond undergrad, generally by taking on loans. Yes, if you’re already in the hole for five or six figures for just undergrad it’s going to impact your ability to take out more loans. For your theory to work, you’d expect to have a significant percentage of students who finish undergrad with that kind of crushing debt burden. Many students owe money on student loans, and more than expected owe major money. But the horror stories are, thankfully, the exception, not the rule. And many of the people with massive student debt attended schools that are decidedly not elite, e.g. for-profits. They’re not going to be part of the competition.
Some parents do strike a bargain with their children, agreeing to pay for med school or law school if the kids go for lower-cost undergrad. And some parents can afford to pay for both full-pay undergrad and beyond without breaking a sweat. That’s who mikemac is referring to. Yeah, that’s only (roughly) one percenters, but there are a LOT of one percenter college aged kids in the tippy-top college population. Not a majority, but enough to fill up a lot of seats at, say, the top ten law schools.