Hmm, well I can’t speak for everyone, but in our case, applying elsewhere due to cost. And I don’t really think only the low and high income are able to gain admission, while middle class kids are not. I think that is the point of the article.
Primarily cost. IMO, 15k for a family making 130k is huge–roughly 20% (give or take) of take home pay. Of course, it sounds nice, given that it’s a lot less than full freight 80k, but still.
Many many price sensitive students don’t apply to $70k plus schools. And you def. don’t get in if you don’t apply, lol.
Of course, many price sensitive students are in the top quintile income too (my kids included). But for truly middle class families (middle three quintiles) I think they see these colleges as a non-starter and don’t realize an Ivy plus school may be same cost as a state school.
It’s amazing (and good) that some low income students are getting the message. But I don’t think in the actual middle class that’s a message that is being adequately sent nor received.
My D18 was NSF, blah blah and I remember getting postcard from Harvard asking if our family income was less than $75k and, if so, to return it to them filled out. Princeton did something similar. But what they should have shared was an estimate of what it might actually cost to attend. Just lay out some real numbers for families. Instead it was vague. And, it’d be even better if that went up to $100k, IMHO. We still wouldn’t have been in range but I’ve seen other middle class affordability efforts use that threshold.
Yes, I agree with the findings of the article but it bothers me a bit that some folks are shocked by them. I find this to support the idea that those families are making financially wise decisions and Ivy + worship is declining at last.
But is it likely that the $130k family will find a lower net price than $15k besides maybe commuting to a nearby community college and then commuting to a nearby state university (not the typical options mentioned by those complaining about being in the “middle class donut hole” here)? Remember that full tuition scholarships to non local colleges will leave a remaining net price around that much, and full rides have become scarce.
Exactly. In the first place, the authors’ opinion is just that. They have zero data to indicate that a 1400+ SAT student will do much better attending an “Ivy-plus” college vs. instate public flagship. None.
And of course in the second place, we’re only talking about maybe a couple of thousands kids per year if fully implemented? Not even a rounding error when it comes to the middle class who attend college.
Moreover, this so-called research doesn’t even fit into the organizations mission: “Our mission is to identify barriers to economic opportunity and develop scalable solutions…”
Focusing on the top dozen or so private, sleep-away colleges, some of which are in rural no-man’s land, is just not scalable. Perhaps they need to focus their efforts on why the public colleges aint’ doing the job for the middle class. Now that is a scalable solution.
My feeling is that, if an applicant is competitive for Harvard, that applicant has a number of other attractive options that will come in at less than 15k. No, they won’t be Harvard, but they won’t be community college, either. I do concede that full rides are becoming more scarce, but they are still out there (as long as an applicant is not hung up on “ivy-prestige”).
The NPC results can be quite off putting for many “professional class” parents. At least in high tech I am seeing most of the best graduates today coming from U.Mass Amherst and other public universities because that is where their parents can afford to send them. Two different hiring managers have told me the same thing.
This has already been noticed by hiring managers. It will take quite a while before this is reflected in the university rankings.
Even way back when I was in university, I do not recall seeing any children of small business owners, farmers, or rental property owners attending top ranked schools in the US. Because of the way that financial aid is computed, they could not afford to attend the top ranked schools. This is even more true today, but it has expanded to cover parents with mid-high incomes (roughly $150,000 to $200,000 range).
This is not true in other countries. I know or have met multiple farmers whose children attended top ranked universities in Canada. Farming is a very tough job that requires a lot of talent and a lot of hard work. These are qualities which often carry over to the kids and often result in strong students. We see these kids at UBC and McMaster and McGill and Toronto and some strong small universities in eastern Canada (where D2 is currently studying).
The relentless increases in tuition are surely playing a role. Columbia is around $80K COA this year; in 4 years with 3% annual increases, today’s HS class of 2021 will pay $90k during their senior year there, and possibly even earlier. There appears to be no upper ceiling to tuition increases, and plenty of world-wide wealth willing to pay any full fare, I expect the demographics to become more bimodal at Ivy plus.
- $15K is a big deal if you're only bringing in $100K/year for the whole household.
- The number of schools who can be as generous with fin aid as Harvard College is tiny. You probably can count them on one hand.
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Well now we are just changing the topic here. The topic is that less middle class kids are attending the ivy-plus schools than lower and upper class, based on the linked article. We have discussions about other affordable options elsewhere.
@ucbalumnus: There almost certainly is a lot of variation even among that >$130K bucket, but the researchers obscure that variation by squishing the upper-middle class, well-off, and truly rich all in to one bucket.
@AlmostThere2018: https://myintuition.org/
A quick and dirty estimator.
@ucbalumnus
“But is it likely that the $130k family will find a lower net price than $15k besides maybe commuting to a nearby community college and then commuting to a nearby state university”.
Depends on the state. In many “flyover” states (excluding IL), a student who is competitive for an Ivy can often get merit scholarships that stack up to covering all of tuition and much of R&B at their in-state flagship.
@PurpleTitan – agree about the top quintile. I think the researchers should additionally break the top quintile into top 10%, top 5% and top 1%. The income variance in that quintile is huge!
Yes, it woud be really interesting to see a breakdown with top 20, top 10, top 5 and top 1. Additionally, I’d love to see the breakdown of SAT scores (and even GPA’s) among those groups.
Finally, I am having trouble accepting that 1400 SAT would be an average score for Harvard and other ivies – wouldn’t 1400 be around the 25th percentile range?
@DadTwoGirls: “This has already been noticed by hiring managers. It will take quite a while before this is reflected in the university rankings.”
I was going to say it may barely or never be reflected in the USNews rankings because of how they are calculated, but that’s not actually true. Below 30th, there have been some relatively big moves. Big moves up by publics GTech, UCSB, UCI, UF, and UGa. Big moves down by small schools BC, W&M*, Brandeis, RPI, and Lehigh.
Below 50, you see massive moves up by FSU, UMass, SUNY-Buffalo, and NCSU.
- Also BU and NEU; being a big comprehensive U in a big city is evidently a plus these days.
** W&M is a public but being relatively smaller, outside a big metro or college town, and not having engineering evidently hurts these days.
"Finally, I am having trouble accepting that 1400 SAT would be an average score for Harvard and other ivies – wouldn’t 1400 be around the 25th percentile range? "
Me too!
It really comes down to the fact that if a student is competitive for Ivy admissions they are more than likely competitive for those full-rides that are out there. For middle class families that are savvy enough about admissions that they are looking outside of their local schools/state flagship and are aware of rankings, meeting need, holistic admissions, etc, they are probably aware of merit scholarships. Those kids don’t end up applying b/c they can find much more affordable options regardless of the institutional grants being targeted toward the middle class that leave a gap between EFC and real ability to pay…
It does not mean commuting to the local CC and then transferring. Even enough automatic merit exists out there that attending cheaper than the EFC at a higher ranked school is fairly easy to find.
perhaps a better place to look for income distribution at various colleges is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/princeton-university
Several folks in this thread seem to be misinterpreting the study, perhaps based on the somewhat misleading thread title or a definition of middle class that doesn’t fit what the study was using (or, frankly, actual income distribution in this country).
The idea that the bulk of kids at these schools are either very rich or poor just doesn’t fit reality (and isn’t what the study concluded). The top quintile is definitely overrepresented, but that starts just over 100k and includes kids that many CC posters apparently would define as middle class.