I agree. For many of these kids it’s what they hear from their parents. And the parents’ talk of ROI…which is a function of the price that they are paying for Yale and schools like Yale.
I don’t disagree with this, but even a small amount of research on highly rejective school websites will show this isn’t the reality. IMO again, the parents of many kids are instrumental in how students view college and careers.
$200K is the max income to qualify for full tuition, not a full ride. At Yale, families making under $100K qualify for a full ride. And even then, there are asset limits in place (Yale isn’t going to give a full tuition need based award to retired parents who make under $200K but who have $1M plus in assets…one can run the NPC to see the impact.) That’s just an example, I am not sure if there is a hard cutoff for what counts as typical assets as a function of income at many schools.
Financial Aid | Harvard College
Right, for the $100-200k families it depends on other factors (like assets). Primary residence is exempt as an asset. For families making $100k or less, food, housing etc. is included. Sorry to be unclear!
Yes, which sort of echoes the problem identified in the report of many people in the public not knowing/believing some of the relevant facts about costs and admissions.
There are definitely hard cutoffs at some schools with these kinds of guaranteed free tuition programs, and I suspect at all of them - they just don’t publicize the number for whatever reason. For the current cycle, I was told by a Colby rep that their “typical asset” threshold for free tuition under 200k income is $500k in family assets including home equity, and a St Olaf rep told me that theirs is $200k excluding home equity. No idea what Yale’s is, but I’d bet they have one. And you may not always be able to reverse engineer the answer through NPC, as St Olaf admitted to me that their NPC is not sophisticated enough to handle the permutations of their affordability thresholds.
Thanks for that info.
What’s frustrating to students and families is that so many schools are saying full tuition or full ride based on X income. But, not many say the family has to also have ‘typical assets.’
I understand why of course (one reason is so retired affluent people with low income/high assets don’t qualify for so much need), but IMO the schools need to be more transparent in these marketing releases about X income = X aid level.
For some schools, provided the family runs the NPCs, it will become apparent that it’s not just income determining the aid package. It seems obvious when I type that out, but that’s not what these press releases make it seem because they don’t mention assets, just income. Hope St. Olaf improves their NPC!
Sorry, but I gotta laugh.
“Where smart people go” answers your original question about the perception of Management Consultants. I’m reminded of the “Sell-out” or “Herd mentality” discussed in another thread (can’t remember where). The fancy-school environments are the petri-dishes where the notion that consulting and IB are where the “cool kids” go grow; to help managements solve difficult problems in dynamic fast-paced environments, etc., etc., etc. This is what we’re told in the clubs, dining halls, and recruiting events. Not unlike “T20 or bust” in Prep school.
Perfectly fine job, but its just a job whose profile is inflated by a certain set. It’s not the priesthood, but that wouldn’t have as much currency at the Country Club. Would be great if the schools somehow disrupted this vicious circle, but they’re all in cahoots.
Signed, 25-plus year Management Consultant Country Club Guy.
However, their undergraduate parent SES distribution is still highly skewed upward. I.e. generous financial aid for the middle and lower SES students who get admitted (and do not have disqualifiers like uncooperative divorced parents), but they are still under represented.
Like I said in my post…this is what some students learn/perceive. I wasn’t personally making this judgment.
The audience here tends to focus more on academics and less on the practical realities of living in the United States, where layoffs can happen at any time and many people lack even three months’ worth of emergency savings.
It’s easier said for people who are already financially secure to talk about why students shouldnt think of ROI.
There are huge benefits of finding a high paying job, investing early, and building up a large nest egg so you can do what you want and have options.
I understand the rationale behind many financial aid policies/promos, but I also feel they perpetuate some bad practices for those who are in the top 10-15% of household earners (as $200k is at the 89th percentile of household income, per this source).
A 6-month emergency fund is the recommendation for people with dependents which is the group that soon-to-be college parents would fall into. So, they should have an emergency fund of very nearly $100k, and if they’re in a field with a variable income (freelancers or working on commission), then a 9-12 month emergency fund is recommended (so $150-200k).
This does not take into account saving for future needs. If a family prefers to save in advance for a car rather than needing to pay interest on a car note, then that should be considered separately from the emergency fund. Depending on how old their previous vehicles are, they may be close to the cost of new cars in their savings. So if they were on the Honda Civic/Toyota Corolla price range (i.e. not luxurious vehicles), they may have another $50-60k in the bank to replace two aging cars (and inflation is real in the car market).
Having enough money in savings to pay for healthcare deductibles, which is not an “emergency” but a known type of expense that will come up is also going to fall outside of protected retirement vehicles, but is a recommended financial practice as well.
So it is very feasible that simply by following some best financial practices, families earning less than (but nearish) $200k will have assets exceeding the “typical” ones. But if they prefer to fly by the seat of their pants with no emergency fund and being one accident or layoff away from disaster, then they would pay nothing for tuition.
The median sales price in the U.S. as of the 4th quarter of 2025 was $405,300 (source). So if a family with an income in the high $100s has a median value house, they can’t have more than $100k in assets for Colby. And since their income is well above the median, there’s an excellent chance the cost of their house is, too, in which case they have too much in assets for Colby (but it’s the family’s choice whether to spend more than the median). But this essentially means that a family can’t have a median value house and an emergency fund of appropriate size and qualify for the “deal” that Colby offers, as that would not be considered “typical” assets.
And this says nothing about the schools that exclude home equity when families decide to spend a much larger portion of their income on a house, even if it’s much larger than what might be financially advisable, and then those families get that extra equity excluded even though they often will choose to sell their house and downsize into a less expensive place once the kids graduate, pocketing that extra equity into liquid accounts.
Moreover, if a family has a senior in high school, one would hope that they had been saving some money for college in advance, but this will count against the “free tuition” offers. So families who spent every last dollar on expensive family vacations or designer labels or whatever and never saved for their kid’s education are rewarded by having “low” assets while the families that saved instead are penalized.
Suffice it to say, I’d much prefer that colleges increase their definitions of “typical” assets and lowered the income thresholds so that families would be incentivized to have healthy financial habits than to have a high income threshold with financially unhealthy asset limits in order to access their most generous financial aid offers. Of course, they’re private institutions and can do what they wish, but that would still be my preference.
/Rant over
I agree with a lot of the comments above, and this one in particular, but will also add - something the schools have no control over - isn’t that also a reflection of the fact that relatively few schools are “targets” for these industries, so in a way that drives the higher % of the class that goes into them? (Especially if the classes are not that large to begin with vs say a flagship state school.) If the companies spread their nets wider, the number of people being recruited from the elite colleges would presumably fall.
I think there is a feedback effect in the sense that firms have limited resources for on campus recruiting, so they tend to devote them to campuses where they are likely to reach the most students with a combination of the attributes they want and a potential desire to work for their firm. But then as discussed in that Mother Jones article and elsewhere, prominent on campus recruiting efforts can actually work to attract more students into those paths.
Excuse my cynicism here, but I think very many students have desires to work for these firms, and the “attributes” if you mean smart, sharp kids can surely be found in say flagships (especially honors colleges) and LACs too. But if by “attributes” you mean say connections.. that just reinforces the whole notion of a closed-door elite system.
I can clearly remember the shift in the UK in IB and other financial sector recruiting, some time after the “big bang” when the sector exploded in size. Many of the older people in the field I met were Oxbridge graduates regardless of major; many of the younger ones were from redbrick universities without posh accents but with relevant majors, and super smart, because the firms just had to spread their nets wider. I know it’s different here because majors matter but it still feels in some ways similar to me to the old style “old school tie” British way of recruiting.
Major matters - sometimes. If you go to a top LAC (ie Amherst), you can probably study philosophy and have a shot at MBB.
If you go to Indiana and study philosophy, good luck beating out the Kelly kids in the consulting clubs.
Yes, I don’t mean to suggest they couldn’t fruitfully expand the recruiting net, and indeed reportedly that is already happening, although some of that is more virtual than in person.
This thread has gotten way off the initial subject. I read the report-it is not about career outcomes and choices of Yale students. It’s about getting out of “making the world a better place “ and instead focusing on being a university that explores ideas;promoting intellectual curiosity ; stopping grade inflation and getting away from “holistic “ admissions and reducing preferences for certain categories like legacies,athletes etc. I’m not defending it but I am surprised I don’t see much about that in this thread
Because many of us actually see them at work creating nothing but chaos and unhappiness in their wakes for those left to pickup the pieces. I’d bet a significant sum that if you came back in 5 years and reviewed the results few would be measurably positive.
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If an applicant to HYP wrote in their essays that their goal is a job in IB or consulting and that they are applying to HYP because those are target schools for recruiting those jobs, would that increase, decrease, or not affect their chance of admission?