TD – Roger that.
The problem is that terms like lower/middle/upper are used so differently that they make meaningful discussion difficult. $100k income way above median if you are talking nation-wide, but way below median if you are talking about Princeton students.
Curious what your COA range from the 7 schools was. Anyone other than P cost less than in-state?
I think discussion of what is Princeton’s median (let’s not refer to it as middle class - it just isn’t) is irrelevant to any discuss about need based aid.
It is pretty relevant, since we are talking about paying for Princeton. If you have the median income at Princeton ($186k), you qualify for need-based aid from Princeton. Princeton sees that income level as having financial need when trying to pay for Princeton.
What isn’t so relevant is that $186k puts you at the 83rd percentile, which statistically would be considered “upper class.”
@northwesty – “Curious what your COA range from the 7 schools was. Anyone other than P cost less than in-state?”
Unfortunately, when my son applied (class of 2021), we had a very atypical income report year. We had to exercise my wife’s company stocks as the exercise deadline was looming and consequently our income ballooned just for that particular income report year. It had been my son’s long wish to take a gap year anyway irregardless of our financial circumstances, so after all the admission results came in and made the final commitment to Princeton, he took a gap year. In other words, we had FA package comparisons from 7 institutions based on the atypical, ballooned income report year. Based on that, I can tell you which institutions did offer better FA packages. Princeton, surprisingly, came in at fourth in the order of best FA offer to worst. Duke and UPenn were practically full pay. Dartmouth totally surprised us with the best of the group.
Now, we had to wait for Princeton’s FA offer for a full year for the class of 2022 that my son is going to join after the gap year. Of course, for the new year, we reported our income based on our usual and typical income. When Princeton sent out FA offers to every admitted students in the RD round this past March but not the gap year students, I sort of sensed that we weren’t going to get the “enticing” offer to better their yield among the EA and RD admitted students. Sure enough, when the FA offer finally came about a month after all the others, our EFC was about $3,000 more than my NPC calculation. Still, even then it was better than my older son’s in-state cost by about $4,000, so I wasn’t going to complain.
I’d have loved to compare all the offers among the 7 peer institutions based on our typical income report year. However, I believe that NPC does a pretty good job of giving a realistic picture, although it was off by $3,000 in my case, but I really suspect that that was because of my son’s gap year student status with no other schools to go to. My son had already committed to Princeton and declined the rest 6 schools, so where could he go after the gap year?
Based on my NPC comparisons, I’m pretty confident that about 4 out of 8 Ivy schools would beat my in-state son’s college cost. Because HYP are particularly competitive with one another, I wasn’t surprised how close their NPC results were, so these three definitely.
Going back to my original point: don’t wave off the Ivy based on old and outdated perceptions about how they (used to) operate. Although your household income is at upper middle class with a sizable asset, you’d be surprised by the generous FA packages at some of the Ivy schools. You’d be doing your children injustice by making an ill-informed decision.
“why do you say that Brown still provides an ED boost? Their admissions director said that it does not.”
You can’t believe everything adcoms say, they’re well meaning but they have to be opaque in how they talk about these things, as northwesty points out. Recall that college admissions is for the benefit of the college, not the student or parent.
@theloniusmonk but isn’t it in the Admissions Director’s best interest to say ED makes a difference? Schools want kids to commit ED. It’s better for their yield and probably for their FA budget. So if he says ED doesn’t make a difference, I don’t doubt it as much. Also, as imperfect as my numbers were, weren’t they pointing to the same result? - ED didn’t make much difference for an unhooked white kid (I couldn’t tell for an Asian kid).
“Although your household income is at upper middle class with a sizable asset, you’d be surprised by the generous FA packages at some of the Ivy schools.”
What is upper middle class? If some of the families are in the 300-350K range, you’re not getting FA from an ivy, unless you have more than one kid in college. And what is your definition of generous? If you make $250K, you might get a few thousand dollars, but that’s not really that generous.
“isn’t it in the Admissions Director’s best interest to say ED makes a difference? Schools want kids to commit ED. It’s better for their yield and probably for their FA budget.”
If any admission director says that, they will give off the perception that they’re not interested in applicants from low income families, since ED is biased towards families that are full pay. So they will let the numbers do the talking (25% ED, 5% RD acceptance, overall 10%) and say there’s no advantage.
With an income of 120,000, it was significantly less for my daughter to attend Vanderbilt than UCLA (instate Regents Scholar)
My kids attended colleges (Princeton, Duke) that are more selective than those my wife and I attended (Claremont McKenna and Purdue). They entered their very strong public high school with a good head start, after attending a rigorous private school through fifth grade. In HS they both took very rigorous courses (17 and 15 AP’s as I recall), and achieved excellent grades.
@theloniusmonk - “What is upper middle class?”
See post #156.
“And what is your definition of generous? If you make $250K, you might get a few thousand dollars, but that’s not really that generous.”
If you make $250K AND receive a few thousand dollars, I’d say that’s pretty “generous” when those in such income bracket, in most cases, are likely full-pay.
Now, if you make anywhere below that, it gets more generous. If I’m paying less to send my younger son to Princeton (or Yale or Harvard or whatever) than my older son’s in-state, then I’d say that’s “generous,” wouldn’t you?
I have trouble understanding how percent of income matters that much when income itself is that much higher. Back in the day, during my S’s first go-round at an Ivy (long story) we had, for the first two years, what I thought was a definitely UMC income, and aid was not as generous as it is now. But at that income, I understood that being full-pay meant paying about a third of our take-home income. Since the other two-thirds was still higher than the average family lived on, I don’t understand why I should have expected someone else to cover it. By that reasoning, we would have written it off. But we chose to pay that one-third of take-home (about a fourth of gross).
When we went back (continuation of long story) our income was much lower, and the school had gone to no-loan, so that last semester was very generously covered.
So “out of the range of the upper middle class family” is in the eye of the beholder. (Live in a high expense state, just to get ahead of the obligatory next comment.)
Well, there are Ivy’s and then there are Ivy’s. Harvard is very generous with aid even for upper middle class families. UPenn, not so much. So while 2 or 3 top schools may not be out of reach, I’m guessing that for many, most of the top 20 are.
The families where I’ve seen this happen were families that had a bent toward lifelong learning. It was really a part of their household culture, not forced or engineered to specifically result in elite admissions. Also, the kids were mostly natural 99% testers and the parents didn’t place a lot if importance on sports, even when their kids were really great athletes.
I suspect elite adcoms know right away what they’re working with when they see the app and can tell when a kid’s been hot-housed as opposed to developing organically.
“With an income of 120,000, it was significantly less for my daughter to attend Vanderbilt than UCLA (instate Regents Scholar)”
I think all of the top schools (not just the Ivies) have strong FA at this income level. Where you see the difference is the point at which the FA cuts off and families have to start to full pay.
Princeton’s median income is $186k; Vandy’s median (not as rich as P is) is higher at $205k. Which suggests less FA and a lower full pay threshhold. Vandy’s full pay line is probably about $240k where P’s may go up to $300k. And here’s what that means.
If Vandy costs you $20k a year that’s 16.5% of a $120k income. Not cheap but a great deal for an awesome school. Anchor Down!! Better than in-state UCLA, which by itself is an awesome price/value proposition and one few would turn down.
Full pay Vandy ($65k) at $240k is 27% of annual income. Full pay Vandy at $480k is 13.5% of income. At $960k, 6.8% of income.
If your income is around where the full pay line is, these schools very often are out of reach. You pay a higher percent of your income than everyone else at the school (both richer and poorer). Your in state college will cost about one third of full pay private.
If you made $200-240k, I’d guess your kid would probably be a Bruin rather than a 'Dore.
Since everyone keeps on saying that ED is a big advantage (but I think I showed it didn’t at Brown), I decided to run the numbers for U Penn. U Penn has the same issue as Brown with reporting Asians as Students of Color, so it’s impossible for me to get a read on how Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks are impacted by admissions policies between ED and RD. But I think I was able to get a read on ED vs RD for an unhooked non-POC applicant, and I think at U Penn it is the difference between a 3.77% chance at ED and a 1.14% chance at RD. So while both of those numbers are abysmal, I have to agree that is a substantial difference. Here’s how I arrived at those numbers, and I made a whole host of assumptions that obviously impact the numbers significantly and you can all let me know if you think the assumptions are wrong. By the way, I didn’t use the Common Data Set because it doesn’t break down information on who the ED accepted applicants are, and I couldn’t find that information for last year’s class.
From different articles in U Penn’s school newspaper for the Class of 2022:
For ED: 1,312 out of 7,074 kids were admitted. 25% of admitted students are legacies, 11% first generation, 43% Person of Color and 12% international.
For the whole class: 3,731 kids out of 44,482 were accepted. 1 out of every 7 students is a first gen. 16% are legacies. 53% are Persons of Color. And 13% international.
So I calculated that for RD: 2,419 out of 37,408 were admitted. If 1 out of 7 students is 1st gen, that’s 14% or 522 students, less 145 at ED round, equals 377 first gens at RD round. If 16% of whole class is a legacy, that’s 597 students, less 328 at the ED round, equals 328 legacies at RD round. If 13% of the whole class is international, that’s 485 students, less 157 at ED round, equals 328 at RD. If 53% of the class is POC, that’s 1,977 students, less 525 at ED round, so 1,452 at RD round.
I had also seen somewhere that Penn has approximately 200 recruited athletes
In looking at the various groups, it’s obvious that some kids qualify for more than one grouping, so I added a certain number of the slots back in to address the issue of double dipping. I figured 30% of legacies are also in another group (either POC, international, or athletes), 50% of the athletes (either POC or 1st generation), 50% of 1st generation (either POC or athletes), and 50% of international (either POC or legacy).
So…
ED:
1,312 accepted students
(328) legacy
(200) athletics
(145) 1st gen
(564) POC
(157) international
RD:
2,419 accepted students and a total of 37,408 applicants
(269) legacy
(328) international
(377) 1st gen
(1,452) POC
Anyway, I hope these numbers are helpful to someone, and I’m sorry if I’m taking this thread off-track. It just kept bugging me that everyone thinks that ED confers such a huge advantage. I guess it does at U Penn, to the tune of a little more than 3x as much, although the numbers are still really tough. At fist blush it looks like kids have an 18% chance of getting in ED, but that’s simply not the case because some kids have a much higher chance (legacies at 25%) and others have a lower chance (unhooked non-POC 3.77).
We were paying 35-40% of income when our sons were in college at the same time, and about 30% with one in school.
It was cheaper for DH to attend Penn than SUNY-Bing nearly 40 years ago. This pricing structure is not new.
As far as ED/EA strategies, it would have been advantageous for my sons to apply ED. They were lopsided in terms of scores vs grades. However, their top choices were almost all EA. We felt EA would give us a good read on the strength of their apps, and if they were successful, it would make the rest of the process much less stressful. When S1 was a sophomore, I couldn’t have told you the difference between ED and EA. That’s how I came to CC!
@gallentjill I think it’s a myth that Penn isn’t generous. Their initial offer to my daughter was at least on par with other offers (and is based on no loans) , and they increased it based on information about my husband’s medical crisis and our 2017 income. BTW, she is an “unhooked” applicant who got in RD. It’s possible.
I’ve been thinking about this some more, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my analysis only said how many SEATS were available, not what someone’s chances are for that seat. For instance, for the total 597 legacy seats, we don’t know how many kids competed for those seats, and we don’t know if the legacy kids have the same credentials of the applicant pool or not. I’ve heard many people say that legacies tend to have better stats and resumes. So potentially (although I don’t think this is reality because of the # of seats available) a legacy kid could actually be hurt by being considered for a legacy seat because he/she is in a more competitive pool. I’m sure the university does not stick to any firm number, but instead has an approximate target of what percent it wants to have for each hooked category. So maybe one year legacies are 15% and the next year 16%, but I still think there’s a soft number.
“ED: (200) athletics”
You can’t and really shouldn’t assume all athletes apply via ED. For football, which is a significant part of the athletes, the signing period is early Feb, so if an athlete has an offer from a couple of schools in the ivies, they won’t lock themselves in. In fact, they’re in the power position, because they have offers from Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern say and they’re telling the school in Feb, so they won’t be ED. The non-revenue sports could use ED but I’d say half of athletes will come in via any early program.