When 99% of admits get “merit” award it is a “merit” award, it’s a discount from an inflated list price.
This should be made into a poster, framed and displayed in every guidance counselor’s office.
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I actually wanted to go with that at first, but opted to stick with the original order.
If that got me a personal philosophical treatise from @MITChris himself - hey, I’ll take it! 
Wow!
Call me partial (because, of course I am), but I think that of all the imperfect adcoms in the land, MIT’s is the least so. 
Well, you know what they say about wanting to have things done right… 
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Oh yes — I misread you saying “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it,” but then after you wrote this realized you and I were saying the exact same thing, just with flopped words. Nevertheless!
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I had one of those. Up on a Sunday morning at 7 to do chemistry homework because she had to play lacrosse all afternoon. She worked very very hard for every grade she got, and they weren’t all perfect. But she didn’t want to go to MIT or Yale so was very happy with her options.
Doesn’t make the system broken or that she should have expected to go to UF. Could she have gotten in? Maybe. It would have depended on if the 30 kids ranked higher than her also wanted to go to UF; not all did, some went to UCF and FSU and MIT and Navy, but UF is not going to admit 50 kids from the same high school so even if you are in the top 10%, you have to be realistic.
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If you mean direct (formerly Stafford) loans, the limits have been the same since 2008 (effectively being lowered each year by inflation).
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2019/10/two-decades-of-change-in-federal-and-state-higher-education-funding indicates how various funding changed over time from 2007 to 2017. Note the effect of recession on state funding (dip due to the recession) and Pell grants (bump up due to the recession). But it has not overall changed that much.
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Well my son submitted a video to Duke and Colby on a platform called Glimpse so they know what he looks like. Not sure what I think about this.
Brown made us do this too.
Actually, in Germany, they submit head shots with their resumes. All clearly professionally done. I found it so off-putting!
Interesting analogy. Kohls practically pays me to buy stuff. Once they actually did (a blender was on sale, and with some additional percents off and kohls cash, it cost $7, and the receipt printed a $10 rebate.)
The other day I sent my granddaughter some sparkly boots that were on sale, with an additional 40% off. And free shipping. The original price was $59.99. I paid around $7.
Yes, but really among the elite universities. They like to pretend it’s for the smartest kids, but it’s really about appeasing rich donors. Rich and powerful people often have back-door connections. That’s why we see admissions scandals, to which we’re barely scratching the surface. Kids are giving themselves mental breakdowns over the inhuman and unrealistic standards for getting into these schools, when a large portion, if not, most applicants are simply put ahead of the stack because of their wealth and influence. I have a boss that went to Columbia, and knows many people in the admissions committee. And that is EXACTLY what they do.
My advice to young people is to avoid these schools. The admissions process is stacked against them, otherwise the competitive requirements wouldn’t be so inhuman.
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I think this is the most important paragraph in the article you posted:
“If America’s top firms, hospitals, and political parties stopped favoring Ivy grads over similarly qualified individuals, then Harvard’s admissions policies would not matter as much. Given that many of the students who don’t get in to a top-tier college are academically indistinguishable from those who do, it is not clear that this bias in favor of Ivy grads can be justified even on meritocratic terms.”
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I’m not sure that hospitals favor hiring Ivy grads. The medical field seems to be more meritocratic than other occupations.
But I agree that part of the allure of attending an Ivy school (or equivalent) is the perception that one has gained entrance into a storied, exclusive club populated by the international rich and powerful and that those associations (students, faculty, alumni) have implicit advantages that are not readily available at other schools. For some situations, that could be the case.
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I assume you’re referencing UMass Amherst. I believe Amherst is ranked around 160 globally. The university my older son attends, a public university here in Canada, is ranked around 138 globally. More or less of comparable standing. So to give a cost comparison, his first year of university he lived in residence. Total cost of attendance before a small merit award was $20,500. After that he moved off campus and total COA including living expenses before merit was around $17,000. Tuition itself is around $6,000 and fees a further $1,100.
Is Amherst really worth $13,000 more per year? I know that global rankings don’t really measure undergraduate quality, but ds was able to get a first class education with a residential campus experience for $50,000 less. His admission was also relatively stress free as it was 100% stats based and we were pretty much certain he’d be admitted before applying.
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The transparency of the Canadian system is why S24 had McGill on his list (he was admitted). It’s a well regarded school that he was pretty certain he’d be admitted to - for us that was important as he wasn’t interested in our state flagship as one of his “likely” options.
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Ds could have just as easily and affordably attended UofT, UBC, or McGill or any other university of his choosing had he wished to, and still been mostly admitted on the basis of stats (there are some programs that have a holistic aspect to admission but he wasn’t interested in applying to those). From an academic perspective he had a choice of around 7 comparable schools where he could have gotten an equivalent education, where he would have been equally surrounded with highly academically achieving students, and where he was virtually guaranteed admission. Out of those he chose the school he did due to location and fit with campus culture. Note the difference. The schools don’t craft a culture and then try to choose students that match it. The schools have a culture that evolves organically and students self-select which schools to attend based on their academic profile, goals, and whatever other criteria are important to them like campus culture (and the various universities absolutely have different cultures). The fact that the cost of tuition is similar at most schools really helps in that regard as does knowing ahead of time what your relative chances for admission are based on your individual academic profile.
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100% agree. People on this thread are way too enamored with which schools their kid gets into. Where you go to college is just one small factor in career success. It’s not where you go to school, its what you do while you and in your LONG career after are there that will determine success. I went to a lessor know LAC, got a great education, and am now a partner at a major private equity firm. There are lots of paths, it is a marathon not a sprint. Kids and parents need to chill about getting into a specific so called elite list of colleges.
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I know nothing about the legal profession, but I found this Yale article interesting.
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Maybe, but I’m not convinced. Because a lot of successful people keep saying this… but then send their kids to the Ivys or NESCACs or wherever else advantage clusters.
So no, I don’t exactly shed a tear over a smart middle class kid who ends up at Binghamton instead of at an elite school. But that should hold equally true in reverse, no? If elite schools hardly matter in the marathon of life, then why should it be important for rich people to have the benefit of legacy, and niche sport recruiting, and “feeder” schools to help get them get into these schools?
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Interesting how that happens, huh?