Ranking List Most Schools Don’t Want to Be on: 25 Most Expensive US Schools by Business Insider

[Data10]

@AustenNut

That said, however, if a person who cared a lot about keeping up with the Joneses attended a non-flagship public U. or a private that was not a Top X + a good number of schools, I doubt they would be seeing quite the economic distribution as those that attend a school that is one of the 75 most expensive in the U.S. and thus would be less likely to be gunning for the pinnacle of consumerism that they might aim for at a school with folks who have more conspicuous consumption.

The economic distribution can be counterintuitive. Higher price for a particular group is often correlated with increased applications. Lower price is often correlated with decreased applications. For example, among high achieving, lower income kids, many high sticker price colleges are likely to be the least expensive option, with ~$0 cost to parents. Yet this group rarely applies to $0 cost to parent colleges (see analysis at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18586/w18586.pdf ). Instead they tend to apply to the often far higher cost local colleges. Similarly high achieving, high income kids are often the only ones who are actually paying the near $100k sticker price. Countless quality colleges are less expensive for this group,. yet he group disproportionately applies to high sticker price colleges. In both cases, the students as whole tend to favor the more expensive option for them.

The Chetty study looked up tax records to show economic distribution at colleges 10+ years ago. At that time, the colleges with the worst income distribution were

Worst Income Distribution Colleges

1. WUSTL (57% in top 5%, 16% in bottom 80%)
2. Washington & Lee (55% in top 5%, 19% in bottom 80%)
3. Colgate (58% in top 5%, 23% in bottom 80%)
4. Colorado College (54% in top 5%, 22% in bottom 80%)
5. Trinity (56% in top 5%, 25% in bottom 80%)
6. Middlebury (53% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
7. Colby (51% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
8. Bates (51% in top 5%, 24% in bottom 80%)
9. Tufts (50% in top 5%, 23% in bottom 80%)
10. Georgetown (51% in top 5%, 26% in bottom 80%)

The best income distribution among highly selective colleges were

1. Berkeley (23% in top 5%, 46% in bottom 80%)
2. Smith (25% in top 5%, 47% in bottom 80%)
3. UT Austin (23% in top 5%, 44% in bottom 80%)
4. Bryn Mawr (26% in top 5%, 45% in bottom 80%)
5. UCLA (27% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)
6. Cooper Union (28% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
7. UNC:CH (27% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
8. Chicago (32% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
9. Vassar (32% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)
10. Wellesley (33% in top 5%, 41% in bottom 80%)

And the highest sticker price colleges were

1. Landmark (35% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
2. Sarah Lawrence (25% in top 5%, 40% in bottom 80%)
3. Chicago (32% in top 5%, 42% in bottom 80%)
4. Columbia (36% in top 5%, 38% in bottom 80%)
5. NYU (34% in top 5%, 38% in bottom 80%)
6. Dartmouth
7. Wesleyan
8. Fordham
9. Northwestern
10. Occidental

There was no overlap between the highest sticker price and worst income distribution lists. However, Chicago appears on both the highest sticker price and best income distribution. High sticker price Columbia and NYU were also near the top 10 best income distribution. I expect being located in a large city is a key contributing factor. As noted earlier lower income kids tend to apply to local colleges, and there are large number of lower income kids who are local to NYC and Chicago.

WUSTL had by far the worst income distribution. At the time of review, WUSTL was need aware and gave a strong admission preference towards wealthy prep school kids. I expect this contributed to a being a more common application choice, among wealthy prep school kids, creating a “feeder” relationship. Many of the other worst income distribution colleges were also need aware.

I could continue, but my primary point is, it’s a far more complicated relationship than high sticker price leads to higher income distribution.