Game Theory and undergrad/grad admissions

SlitheyTove
Fri, 24 Apr 2015 00:28:12 +0000

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.