<p>As we prepare apps and wring our hands over where DS’s aid packages will come in, we read constantly about the “average” aid packages offered by colleges.</p>
<p>But what I’m curious to know is what the average household income is of people who send their kids to colleges? Is it vastly different than the U.S. average as a whole?</p>
<p>I’d also like to know how this average income changes for people who send their kids to in-state publics and those who send their kids to private LACs or universities?</p>
<p>Maybe this will help us get an idea of where we stand in the pool of people applying to the schools DS is applying to.</p>
<p>A quick look at Wiklipedia cites a study from 2003. It says that average household income of people with a bachelors degree was around $72,000 at that time. It’s likely that since then incomes have not advanced that much considering the economic conditions of late. Is it fair to say that “on average” most people that send their kids to college have a bachelors degree?</p>
<p>When you say “sending them to college”, what do you mean? Do you mean just the fact that their kids go? Do you mean that they’re paying for it?</p>
<p>ETA: I will say this. I’m sure “on average” that those with bachelors degrees have children that go to college. I don’t necessarily think the reverse is true. I don’t think that the average college student has parents with bachelor degrees.</p>
<p>Well, there is a big difference usually between the public school tuition and the private school. Unless merit aid or major scholarship money comes into play, you need rich parents to afford the private school without taking out huge loans. The public school is usually more affordable on the economic scale (parent wise). Private schools with huge merit aid and scholarships can still be very much more expensive than the public route.
Where do you stand? Hard to know until you apply. Some schools brag about their financial aid packages that never deliver–no aid or not enough to make the school compete economically with a state school. Or aid comes in the form of loans–not great either.
Best advice–apply to the best school that satisfies your requirements–major, financially safe, reputation. Then apply to the others and if the money fairy appears, decide if it’s better than your first choice.
As for income, that depends on so many factors. How many kids? Other financial needs?
Savings?</p>
<p>I don’t have access to stats that would prove this, but I strongly suspect that average household income escalates as you move from the pool of families whose children attend community college, to those who attend directional state school to those who attend state flagship to those who attend private colleges and universities. This is not to say that lots of high income households don’t send their children off to publics – both flagship and directional. A recent story about Michigan pointed out the high percentage of students whose parent or parents were physicians. (I remember this article because the son of a local doctor here in smalltown Upstate NY goes to Michigan). Many of the children of our neighbors with household incomes over $100K attend SUNY colleges.</p>
<p>As it happens we are not rich and sent our two daughters to private schools for about what it would have cost to send them to a SUNY. Daughters go/went to colleges that provide “100%” or close to 100% “need” with a minimum of loans. Daughters did not have “good stats” as they are often defined here on CC. We, not the girls, will pay those loans. Yes, we’ve made personal sacrifices to minimize loans and pay as much as possible from current income.</p>
<p>No two families are exactly alike. We are happy with the path we chose. Other people might have different ideas. As long as people don’t tread on mine I won’t tread on theirs.</p>
<p>It’s hard to generalize. One school I work at is a small private. most of the students there are Pell Grant recipients. Few have parents with degrees.</p>
<p>Other school I work at is a better-than-average directional. students run the gamet in my class from probably-Pell-level to UMC. Mix of first and non-first gen.</p>
<p>Since most adults in the US do not have 4 year degrees, and more than half of HS grads at least start college, my take is that more students are first gen than not. I think it’s hard to generalize about; anything we say here probably does not apply to any one particular college.</p>
<p>So knowing average incomes across the board most probably won’t tell you how families fare at your particular schools.</p>
<p>Do the schools you’re looking at have FA calculators? Do they spell out their aid policies? Can you use an online calculator to guesstimate your EFC?</p>
<p>I would think that you would be much better off generating a ‘consensus of aid amount’ by using the NPCs.</p>
<p>For us, I ran the NPC calculators at a 3-5 sample set of ‘similar’ schools (price,location,student quality). For example, I did…</p>
<p>Set 1…Centre, Hendrix, Rhodes
Set 2…Wooster, Denison, Gettysburg, Dickinson
Set 3…Bates, Colby, Hamilton
Set 4…Lafayette, Bucknell, Lehigh, Colgate</p>
<p>I found that the out of pocket cost for us was very close across each sample set giving us a good idea of approximate cost for a similar school. There really were not any cost outliers when you compared similar schools. What you can’t do is compare Centre to Gettysburg. While they are closely ranked, their location, initial price, etc are vastly different so they can’t be grouped together to get an aid consensus.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this is what you are asking for, but you can check out the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) and from their homepage, click on College Navigator. From there, you can enter in a particular college. On each college’s page, you will see information about enrollment, admissions, tuition, financial aid, etc.</p>
<p>One bit of info on each college’s page is ‘net price’. The information there will break down the average ‘net price’ of the college by family income level–which is very informative. They state that “average net price is generated by subtracting the average amount of federal, state/local government, or institutional grant or scholarship aid from the total cost of attendance.”</p>
<p>Of course, as garland suggests, running a net price calculator will give you a more specific estimate, but you have to have your tax returns handy, etc. IPEDS is a much quicker rough estimate.</p>
<p>It gives more information that just the average cost of attendance, because you get to see, for your particular income level, what the net price would be.</p>
<p>Thanks skrivr. I went to the site and looked up Denison University. I went to the Net Price section and it said for someone making up to $100,000 their net price would be $39,000 then I noticed that for some making $0 to $30,000 it says their net price is $37,000 – only $2,000 less. So I guess I’m questioning the validity of this info.</p>
<p>fYI – I’m also running NPC’s quite regularly on a number of schools. My questions above are more a curiousity than anything else.</p>
<p>[url=<a href="Net Price Calculator; own Net Price Calculator<a href=“which%20uses%20the%20College%20Board%20Net%20Price%20Calculator”>/url</a>, gives, for a 4.0 student whose parents make $30,000 per year and have minimal assets (I put $0 for everything except $1,000 in bank accounts), a net price of $17,455. This comes from the list price of $53,590 minus a $4,600 Pell Grant and $31,535 institutional grant. A $6,500 student loan is also offered, leaving the student and family to come up with $10,955 from other sources.</p>
<p>It is doubtful that such a student could realistically afford to attend Denison.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s strange, especially when it gives the average net price for Denison at $23, 668, yet none of the average net prices by income level is below 30K.</p>
<p>The data for other schools seems more realistic. College of Wooster, for example, has an $8, 805 net price for families in the 0-30K range, and $28, 666 for families above 110K.</p>
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<p>Yes, and this is why it kills me every time someone moans on this board that it’s only the ‘very poor’ and the ‘very rich’ can afford college, because the poor get aid and the very rich have enough to cover full COA, leaving those making 120-150K to deal with crushing college costs, too wealthy for aid but too poor to cover full COA.</p>
<p>There is but a handful of schools in which if you make below 50K where the ‘very poor’ might have great financial aid. The rest look very much like Denison. And as for those making 120-150K, these upper middle class kids typically have good GPAs and test scores and qualify for merit money at schools like Denison. Often, the working poor/lower middle class families do not have as high test scores, and therefore are shut out of merit. money.</p>