For some, the elite private schools’ financial aid makes them much more affordable than a state school.
That’s true, but the numbers are small.
It’s primarily state schools that are doing the hard work of improving social mobility of students at scale. Search google for any of the social mobility rankings and you won’t find the highly rejective schools high on those lists.
Nate Silver mentions this exception in the article which as Mwfan mentions is relatively small.
I don’t think the numbers are as small as you think. Harvard financial aid:
55% receive aid
24% pay nothing
average parental contribution $13k
100% graduate debt free
Our guidance counselor was clueless on this and assumed Ivies and other schools were out of reach financially. I wanted my kid to go to our state U for CS but we couldn’t afford it. Yes, we could afford Ivies with aid.
Just highlighting this for those who aren’t reading the article, which seems to be the usual Ivy-bashing. I doubt that state schools give a more “well-rounded” experience, at least in terms of exposure to interesting peers or different geographic backgrounds.
The proportion of students receiving financial aid is high at Harvard, no disagreement. I’m not Ivy bashing.
Just pointing out the fact that some state schools are doing more regarding improving social mobility for more students. It’s just simple numbers. Higher numbers of students having better social mobility after graduating = greater impact.
I think it really depends on the state. Our income is well above the median income in the US, though well below CC standard. Private meets needs schools were significantly cheaper than our flagship. Many thousands cheaper. A really generous meets needs school like an Ivy+ would have been even cheaper. Again, our income is well above the US median income. Suggesting these numbers are not small at all. Only a small percentage of the population is full pay although they are highly over represented at private your-year colleges (and of course two parent families are most likely to be in those upper incomes). Now getting into a meets need school is another story obviously, but my kid would have had far more loans and had to work far more hours to attend our state school than the meets need school she attends.
Just to add Harvard is actually low. Vassar claims 2/3 of students receive financial aid and my D’s experience bears that out. In some cases it may just be work study or subsidized loans of course (Vassar dues not include unsubsidized loans in their packages so it’s not that) meaning the state school is still cheaper probably, but 2/3 is a lot of kids and many of them are getting significant aid often making it cheaper than the state schools which offer little to no aid.
My D’s BF is first generation and although they appear to be solidly middle class now, this is a recent occurrence and he grew up very poor.
His middle school guidance counselor saw something in him (he is extremely smart) and helped him get a full scholarship to a very “elite” private high school. He loved it.
From there he went to an Ivy, but hated it. He transferred after 2 years to a small, non elite college (he received funding).
From there he entered a competitive gap year program. After this he worked for a very well known organization and is now in professional school.
This is a sample of 1, but IMO his upward trajectory began with his middle school guidance counselor.
We cannot underestimate the importance of K-12 education. I am not convinced that taking FGLI kids and suddenly dropping them into Ivy League schools is the answer, unless they are properly supported.
And…he achieved success with the diploma he received from his “regular” college.
The article seems to target upper middle to upper class families - everyone else would get terrific aid there and thus would be a better value. And as we know, it is specifically the students least likely to know about the financial aid who’d benefit the most. So, if you’re a multi generational 4-year college graduate family and/or make a 250k+ income, that advice is worth considering and weighting carefully.
As for scorn for the Ivy League, it’s as common as possible, most especially among pundits who themselves benefited from said colleges’ teaching&networks – but it’s easier to think that what they achieved is due to personal brilliance and to remember ways in which the environment didn’t properly lifted them, not to mention this trope of the alumni who think their college was perfect when they attended and has gone downhill ever since they graduated, especially now that a new generation is attending. 
IVY+/Little ivies all realized this and AFAIK now offer various forms of “summer bridge”, with an emphasis on socializing with FGLI peers and understanding how college “works”.
Not really relevant but I like undergrad-focused LAC’s the best and am a fan of “Colleges that Change Lives.” Ironically we were driven to need-blind “top” schools with very generous aid for financial reasons. I myself have taken classes at our state U as an adult (Boston) and was surprised that teachers taught the classes (Enlgish) and classes were about 20 students. Very diverse class in background and age at the time. So it is hard to generalize. If I were attending as an undergrad though, the state U where I took classes would have been relatively expensive.
The financial aid at a school like Harvard can’t be beat. Regarding the 2/.3 on aid at Vassar, I would be interested in how many attend for free.
To my mind, the fact that 45% of Harvard students can afford $80-90K annually for 4 years with no aid is the point. (Same percentage at Vassar FWIW based on their 2022-23 CDS.) Just one state example: that compares to 67% found to have demonstrated financial need at University of Florida, where expected cost of attendance for in-state students was $23K this year (OOS cost was about $48K if memory serves, though 80% of incoming students were in-state). UF met 96% of demonstrated need.
CORRECTION: I misread CDS, UF fully met 84% of demonstrated need. 96% got some need met. I’m not sure how Bright Futures and Florida prepaid tuition factor into need determinations/awards.
Likewise NYS (SUNY) and NYC (CUNY) although I am too lazy to look up the stats. I went to a SUNY for social work grad school. There were many adjuncts teaching courses; some were duds but most were experts working in the field and I learned A LOT from them.
@MWFan1921 didn’t think you were Ivy bashing! 
You make a good point about state schools and social mobility, but we could not have afforded ours.
Nate’s advice includes caveats such as:
“* I’d also tell them to go with the elite private college if (i) they had a high degree of confidence in what they wanted to do with their degree and (ii) it was in a field like law that [regards the credential as particularly valuable]”
That advice puts us on a track to rehash all the elite jobs/T14 Law/phD-feeder debates on CC that typically result in the concession that yes for certain career paths the elite schools can be somewhat feeder schools to these paths and CAN make a difference.
Bottom line it is his opinion. My opinion is the T10/ivy mine chose are a great fit and the resources are amazing and worth full pay, and we would have happily paid for many other top universities or LACs outside the T10, including the top two in-state options William&Mary and UVA. But there are many that are not worth the $ to us and do not provide the environment and education we see as “top”. Are DH and I biased because we went to Duke (one a Pell kid, the other FG) and it was life changing for us? Probably.
My money my choice, and if Nate Silver has children he can make his choice. He certainly attended a top school and has fared well in life.
What is far more interesting (and troubling, IMO) than Nate Silver’s comments about elite private schools is his discussion about Americans’ diminished confidence in higher education more generally.
State schools give a real world experience, with a student body that is much more representative of the overall population that students will graduate into.
Yes! This is what I focused on:
“In 2015, 57 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to Gallup polling. By summer 2023, that number had declined to just 36 percent.”
“Granted, the Gallup poll didn’t mention elite private colleges specifically, although I’d expect them to trigger an even more polarized response. A 2022 poll for New America found that fewer Americans think private colleges (72 percent) than public colleges (78 percent) contribute positively to the workforce. They also said private colleges are considerably less likely to be worth the cost:”
@GKUnion read my other post.
I saw it. My reply was specifically about the diversity of a public vs. the “well rounded” experience at an Ivy.
Did you take classes at UMass Boston, because that school is pretty cheap in-state?