Yes, it was the same 15 years ago. She was probably offered need based financial aid. Williams is quite selective so the track athlete part may have been an admissions boost from the track coach.
Regardless, still an impressive story.
@northwesty - Okay, I’ll play. Using the Dennis Gilbert, 2002 or William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, 2005 Academic Class Models, we fall solidly in the Upper Middle Class (top 15%; nowhere near the top 1%).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
We are family of three with an AGI under $100,000, significant home equity in a high cost-of-living area, decent assets, mostly in retirement funds, driving Hyundai Elantra and Subaru Forrester. We get some (not much, i.e., under $10K) financial aid. Attending full pay is a sacrifice, thankfully not a struggle.
Would D have turned down a Duke Roberston full-ride? Don’t know; it wasn’t an option; she did get it. If Duke were as good a fit as Stanford, she probably would have chosen it. Her full-tuition options were hard to walk away from, but the schools were not good fits. Had D not liked Stanford, she might have taken full tuition scholarship at WashU over full pay at Yale; she didn’t visit Harvard or Princeton, so I can’t say.
With each of her choices, we compared the costs with her other options.
Full tuition scholarships at USC/WashU/Vandy, etc. (ca.$15K COA) versus UCLA/UCB ($35K COA)? She takes USC/WashU/Vandy. Easy choice.
HYPS or U.Chicago (ca.$60k COA) versus UCLA/UCB at $35K COA? Slightly more difficult choice, but she takes HYPSC.
HYPS or U.Chicago (ca.$60k COA) versus USC/WashU/Vandy, etc. (ca.$15K COA)? Tough choice. Came down to fit.
Here are the Gilbert/Thompson/Hickey categories, descriptions and percentages:
Capitalist class (1%) Top-level executives, high-rung politicians, heirs. Ivy League education common. (Gilbert)
Upper class (1%) Top-level executives, celebrities, heirs; income of $500,000+ common. Ivy league education common.Solidly middle/upper-middle class. (Thompson/Hickey)
Upper middle class (15%) Highly-educated (often with graduate degrees), most commonly salaried, professionals and middle management with large work autonomy. (Gilbert)
Upper middle class (15%) Highly-educated (often with graduate degrees) professionals & managers with household incomes varying from the high 5-figure range to commonly above $100,000. (Thompson/Hickey)
Lower middle class (30%) Semi-professionals and craftsmen with a roughly average standard of living. Most have some college education and are white-collar. (Gilbert)
Lower middle class (32%) Semi-professionals and craftsmen with some work autonomy; household incomes commonly range from $35,000 to $75,000. Typically, some college education. (Thompson/Hickey)
Working class (30%) Clerical and most blue-collar workers whose work is highly routinized. Standard of living varies depending on number of income earners, but is commonly just adequate. High school education. (Gilbert)
Working class (32%) Clerical, pink- and blue-collar workers with often low job security; common household incomes range from $16,000 to $30,000. High school education. (Thompson/Hickey)
Working poor (13%) Service, low-rung clerical and some blue-collar workers. High economic insecurity and risk of poverty. Some high school education. Underclass (12%) Those with limited or no participation in the labor force. Reliant on government transfers. Some high school education. (Gilbert)
Lower class (ca. 14–20%) Those who occupy poorly-paid positions or rely on government transfers. Some high school education. (Thompson/Hickey)
From the comparison tools at https://www.shnugi.com/, our household income puts us in the top 15% of households (ages 18-100), and our household net worth puts us in the top 8%.
^ upper middle class according to the Gilbert/Thompson/Hickey categories above.
One kid, no debt, some help from grandparent (but could make it work without, if need be).
@northwesty kid got offered a presidential scholar at USC. They also got into a lot of other schools including Harvard and Stanford . They chose Harvard at full pay. To them it is a once in a life time experience. They have had four great summer internships. They are starting graduate school in the fall and they have had the choice of many opportunities for graduate school at top ranked grad schools (according to US News and World Report) that are completely free(except for a little teaching). Some of the graduate schools wanted to see the other schools offers so they could match or better them. They have had the opportunity as an undergraduate to work with professors who have world class reputations and who have helped them make other contacts in their field. They have made life long friends. They have two friends who recently became Rhoads scholars. Their UG GPA is around 3.65 but it doesn’t seem to matter. The cost for the 4 years has been around 300k. No regrets even in the slightest.
@SouthernHope on her parents dime?? OMG
D1, as a National Merit semi-finalist, was offered a free ride at our state U who offered that to basically all semi-finalists at the time. (thereby magically converting them to “scholars” via college sponsorship, which is how some institutions managed to show huge #s of National Merit “scholars” attending) The deal was such that I thought she would actually be making money to go there. But don’t ask me how, it was a long time ago and I don’t recall.
She didn’t go there because she felt she was very different, intellectually, socially and politically, from the people she knew who were going there. She wanted to go to a “better” school that had a potentially more compatible student body.She only applied there in the first place as an absolute safety.
As for the law school thing, my understanding is a lot of the T-14 have access to the same opportunities, but various law firms will have different GPA cutoffs at different schools; eg they my go deeper in the class at some schools than others. But on the other hand it may be tougher to do well at some schools than others too, so not clear kid would necessarily be disadvantaged by going lower and taking the money.
And when it came down to making her choice, D was very well aware of what it meant in terms of her other life choices. As an only child, she knows that whatever we spend on her education now is money that she might otherwise inherit or use for grad school, down payment on a house, pay for HER kids’ education, etc.
D was tired of swimming in a little pond intellectually-speaking. Her main criterion in selecting a school was that she wanted to be around a lot of really smart, highly engaged students that shared an interest in exploring the life of the mind in a collaborative, fun environment. She did not want to be the smartest kid in the room and wanted to be intellectually challenged. She is by no means at the bottom of her class, but she’s nowhere near the top either. And that’s exactly where she wanted to be.
As for the Bruni/Gladwell references, I find Bruni’s argument of “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be…I went to a public school and turned out fine” a bit disingenuous – the UNC Moorehead-Cain is harder to get than an acceptance to HYPS and it comes with unique mentorship opportunities, etc., so it’s not like he “turned down Yale and just went to (his) state flagship”… Besides, he also went to grad school at Columbia for journalism, so there is that…
Bard – agree on calling BS on Bruni. He wasn’t picking SUNY/Buffalo over Yale. Many people pick UNC/Morehead over Yale for reasons having nothing to do with money.
Gladwell does make that big fish/small pond argument. He compares top of UMD/College Park to bottom half of Brown.
A friend’s son chose the UGA foundation fellows over Harvard, for the opportunities it offers.
When my son was in 5th or 6th grade, he asked me if he worked hard, and got into a top school, would I be able to afford it? As a single parent, always frugal, I answered that I would find a way. He continued to work hard.
Based on my income, son would have received FA at a top college. Both my parents died while son was in HS, so his wealth excluded FA. At that time, 1/3 of his inheritance would go to tuition each year. So, our FL schools would have been free for him, but he was accepted to several top schools, and went. He worked in the campus coffee shop the first year, then had school jobs, and won an upperclass merit award which paid half tuition. His summer internships covered all his living expenses and books and entertainment.
This is a very interesting discussion!
However, one thing I noticed is that this seems to be not a question to students themselves “turning down” free college but their parents doing that. And in most cases it wasn’t really that much of a financial hardship to come up with $65,000 or $70,000/year (plus an increase each year) to pay for it. I think that places people into a very select group of Americans no matter how you slice it. And I think most 17 year olds would happily accept the free gift of being able to attend their favorite college at no cost to themselves over a different free gift given to them in 10 years of the money for a house downpayment or grad school or whatever fun thing they could imagine doing with that money down the road.
I suppose my question to all of you is to imagine if the choice is not that your child can chose between two different gifts and decide which one he preferred. Instead, the choice is for them to take on $200,000 – or even more – in debt THEMSELVES when they graduate from their favorite college versus graduating debt free from a college that gives them a full ride? There is a real cost to that choice that the student pays, not parents who can afford it without going bankrupt and are happy to do so.
I imagine almost every parent who can afford it would be happy to pay for their child to attend the prestigious university no matter how much it costs. But would you feel the same way if your child was taking on that debt and you did not have the resources to cover it for them now or in the future? In other words, they can attend Stanford or Yale or Princeton but they incur nearly $200,000 in debt themselves and a parental bailout down the road if they can’t pay that debt is not an option. Or they can graduate with no debt from the university offering the full merit scholarship. Does that change your advice to your kid? When you know it is your kid who pays the cost differences by taking on that debt when he graduates and your kid doesn’t have an inheritance from relatives to cover it and it will not be forthcoming unless you or he wins the lottery?
No one should go into hock for 100-200K for undergraduate. That’s simply unwise.
I am also very glad that when DS#1 went to his almost fullpay school (a top 20) it only cost us around $30k/yr
I can’t imagine a scenario under which I would allow my kid to incur $200k in debt for any undergraduate degree from any college. Part of why I’ve been successful enough to be able to afford to send my son to college as a full pay student with no debt on his or my part is my tendency to closely analyze risk/reward and ROI and to be generally debt averse.
So, no, I would not support any student incurring $200k in debt for an undergraduate degree and would even be leery of incurring that for all but a few graduate degrees as well.
Observer – kids can only borrow $50-60k aggregate for undergrad on their own. Only parents can borrow six figures.
A kid has to attend grad school to dig that size of a debt hole all on their own. Law school is a great way to go bankrupt!
One reason I posed the question – these days even a family earning $200,000 does not find it easy to save for 2 or 3 kids each needing nearly $280,000 each to pay for 4 years of college. And while those top colleges are very generous with financial aid even with more affluent parents, I have talked to many relatives and friends who are stunned at how high the sticker price is even after some “need based” financial aid is awarded. When you fall into that donut hole of being very affluent by any standards but still not finding that you can save what is now well over half a million dollars to put 2 kids through 4 years of a private university. And if it is 3 kids it is even harder.
I think in this scenario there is a very big difference between earning $200,000 year and what you can save over 15 years and earning $300,000 or $400,000 year. Unless you are in a job that gives bonus windfalls of $100,000 or more, it is not that easy to save those sums – even if you are quite frugal and aren’t taking lavish vacations and drive the same mid-priced car for many years.
I’m not sure that there aren’t ways for students to end up far more than $50k - 60k in debt.
I think there are loans that parents can co-sign and loans that accrue higher interest. And credit cards to pay the non-tuition expenses that you don’t realize add up quickly.
I came out of college in the early '80s with only $10,000 in debt and that seemed like a huge amount in those days. Yet I was able to make my loan payments working one of the lowest paid jobs (non-profit). I even paid it off early (I think I had a 10 year plan). But it seems as if the huge increase in debt for college now is in no way proportionate to the increase in salaries that most grads who aren’t on Wall Street or similarly high paying jobs are earning.
"I think in this scenario there is a very big difference between earning $200,000 year and what you can save over 15 years and earning $300,000 or $400,000 year. "
Yes. The one thing I’d point out is that at those income levels taxes increase substantially - not just rates but phase outs of any deductions - so it’s not quite as easy or peachy as you’d imagine. But that is truly a First World Problem.
I grew up poor. I vividly remember being hungry. I’m still very, very grateful for having air conditioning and being able to afford to buy fruit. So I’m aware what things are like a different income levels and am truly appreciative of being able to offer my kids the college education of their choice. We live modestly in other ways, but I feel no guilt at all at being able to provide education to them.
No one should feel guilt because they can provide a debt free college education to their kids! That’s a great thing. Your kids are lucky they have that hard earned gift thanks to all your work.
I see your law school and raise you vet school.
Back in 2003,DS turned down a very high merit offer to attend his college…but he also,for a decent merit award there. Just not as much.
In 2006, DD turned down a very very generous scholarship to attend her college with a teeny teeny little drop in the bucket award. It was the right decision.
We did the money talk before applications were sent…and our kids were fortunate that costs did not have to factor into their undergrad matriculation decisions.