<p>If we hadn’t inherited a bunch of money right before our kids entered college, we’d be getting financial aid. We have a comfortable life style, but also pay attention to where we spend the money. Both our kids seems to do the same. Younger son, in particular, has lots of friends with considerably less disposable cash.</p>
<p>At my alma mater, at any rate, the difference between FA and non-FA students is quantitative, not qualitative. They are ALL receiving financial assistance to attend (and if one believes the Williams hype, the student paying full list-price is receiving a $168k subsidy over four years.)</p>
<p>I think it better to think of it (as the former President of Williams did) as there is NO SUCH THING as financial aid. It is only a matter of the level of tuition discounting necessary to fill the seats on the airplane with the desired passengers.</p>
<p>And there are no “full-pay” students either, only list-price ones. The tuition (ostensibly) is set by market forces, and may have little or no relationship to the actual cost of attendance. Williams and Bennington and Ohio Wesleyan (I think) charge about the same.</p>
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<p>I think there is a formidable amount of misperception regarding the life of “Full FA” students. The grass always seem greener on the other side of the fence.</p>
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<p>It might not be a bad idea to check for yourselves what Morton Schapiro did in fact write.</p>
<p>[WPEHE</a> Publications | Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education](<a href=“http://sites.williams.edu/wpehe/research/]WPEHE”>WPEHE Publications | Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education)</p>
<p>or</p>
<p><a href=“http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wilwilehe/[/url]”>http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wilwilehe/</a></p>
<p>On the WPEHE site, there are plenty of relevant research papers on the issues debate here.</p>
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<p>What is it exactly that you keep on arguing about? I merely corrected your erroneous comparison between Williams and MIT, but I have no desire to educate you about the finer points of the NCES/IPEDS statistics.</p>
<p>(^ Sorry to interrupt: Just using a less error-prone way of checking to make sure that xiggi has received my PM communications.)</p>
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<p>This depends on the individual’s personality and formative experiences. If they grew up in a highly materialistic environment where higher prices == greater quality…this argument may have some validity for them. </p>
<p>However, some people are able to critically judge and appreciate a given item/service’s value regardless of the price of said item. </p>
<p>For instance, I greatly appreciate the education I received from both my public magnet high school and college despite the fact the former was free and the second was so heavily discounted with a scholarship that the cost was noticeably less than what I’d pay to attend state uni as an in-stater. A $10 dinner at a hole in the wall restaurant in a poor neighborhood which is delicious and enjoyable can be appreciated far more than a mediocre-poor $50-200 dinner at some well-known trendy restaurant located in Midtown. An electric guitar priced at $2000+ made in the USA is not necessarily appreciated more by professional guitarists than a Mexican or Asian made guitar priced at half or even a tenth of that price. </p>
<p>Moreover, it also goes without saying that higher prices are not always correlated with value and likelihood of greater appreciation as there are well-built/executed products/services priced at reasonable or even firesale prices and poorly built/executed products/services with prohibitively expensive price tags. </p>
<p>In addition, isn’t there also a saying that “the best things in life are free”? :)</p>
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Substitute guitar with violin, I can personally tell you that a violinist would know the difference. I don’t think you could tell any musician that quality of an instrument doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>I would just like to add it is not where an instrument is from, it is the quality of an instrument that makes it valuable.</p>
<p>^^If that is the case, why do violins come with a written appraisal. It is very hard to tell the quality of a violin and it is very personal - just like with a guitar. My husband loves his cheap Spanish guitar more than his more expensive guitars. It isn’t about the price.</p>
<p>D2 was fortunate enough to be able to select her violin from a professional. He had violins ranged from $1k to hundreds K. She didn’t know how much they cost, she selected few based on the sound. She “settled” on one which didn’t quite break out piggy bank. If you listen to that violin vs the first one we bought for her from China (on ebay), they sound completely different.</p>
<p>Yes, when something costs thousands of $, you want an appraisal for insurance, if nothing else.</p>
<p>Violins? Wow, no wonder I haven’t been able to post on this thread. Every time I look in on it it’s gone off on another completely different tangent.</p>
<p>Gotta be fast and without a real life on a Fri night.</p>
<p>So there are hundreds of LACs all pricing about the same. They have different cost structures, with some spending much more student than others. Also different levels of tuition discounting. And different perceived “quality”. So how does one figure out which one is “worth” how much? I proposed a way to begin to make that determination is to compare alternative educational uses of the same assigned funds.</p>
<p>But is there another way?</p>
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<p>That was exactly my point. Was using them as descriptors along with prices to illustrate how electric guitar companies market and price their products. :)</p>
<p>How do you rank LACs?</p>
<p>Can you really tell which has the better Philosophy department or Women’s Studies program?</p>
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<p>Anyone can make their own algorithm based on their own preferences. People do this all the time when they buy cars and houses. No one buys their home (maybe a speculative purchase, but not where they will live) based on what is the best deal is estimating what the future value of the house will be. If people did that you’d find every house is exactly the same “most efficient” design. There is something personal associated with houses. Same thing applies with college. And if that didn’t exist there’d be no discussion of “fit” on here.</p>
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Not really, although you could compare grad/professional school acceptance rates and average salaries.</p>
<p>You might find as much difficulty comparing Engineering departments at your favorite research universities.</p>
<p>Regarding jobs on campus for non-FA kids, this tightened up considerably over the last three years. I think it may have changed since some posters here had undergrads at these schools.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s just tone that rankles. I remember visiting Yale the spring son had been accepted there and chatting with students working in the admissions office. They were very friendly and I was struck by how they just assumed our son would be on FA and they kept extolling all the goodies in store for him – free laptop and lots and lots of trips abroad. It was like listening to kids who had suddenly inherited money from a rich uncle. There was a sort of glee in the tone. </p>
<p>I remember thinking “Hmmm . . . how terrific! Our kids had never been abroad (we could never swing it financially). Now son could finally have that experience!”</p>
<p>Naive me. Was quickly disabused of that notion.</p>
<p>In all honesty, I think these schools with the huge endowments should just be like Cooper Union and make tuition free for all. I really do. The way they have it structured, you have adults (20, 21 year old kids) at the mercy of their mommy and daddy coughing up tons of money for them right at the perfect storm moment of trying to prepare to retire. Inevitably, kids like that are going to have to go elsewhere, take the merit. Why would these elite and uber-wealthy schools do that? Why not simply make the matter of money go away for every kid exceptional enough to be admitted?</p>
<p>They don’t, of course. For all I know they really can’t. But I suspect that they could. I suspect that there is a disdain at some level for kids from the economic class of my kids – the striver professional class families, newly ascended to high incomes, no family money, however. Somehow, the less prosperous and the extremely prosperous kids are more desired, because obviously the truly rich are getting rather a nice deal with the FA price tag.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt all this is conscious. It’s just how the well-meaning liberal ethos has played out.</p>
<p>Finally, it has led me to question if the supremacy of these schools will really endure. I wonder if the very good schools that specialize in offering merit awards may eclipse in the long run in terms of the world’s perception of the quality of their graduates.</p>
<p>^We are a full pay family with a kid at Yale. He has had two outstanding summer experiences abroad, and we didn’t pay a nickel for either of them. Indeed, both paid all his expenses as well as a modest stipend. One program was Yale-affiliated, one wasn’t, but I believe the doors to both were open to him at least in part because of Yale. </p>
<p>Re full freight: Is it painful to pay $200,000 for college? Of course. But I can’t think of anything I’d rather spend money on than my child’s education. I am so grateful he has the chops to acquire it, and so grateful we’re be able to do it.</p>
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<p>Cooper Union has the pricing structure they have because the benefactor made free tuition for all admitted students a condition of the donation. Understandably, because of the free tuition policy…admissions is extremely selective…especially in the Engineering/Arts disciplines. Knew of some older friends who made it into MIT/CMU/Caltech who failed to gain admission to Cooper Union as a consequence. </p>
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<p>As private non-profits, these universities have the right to run their admissions/FA policies as they see fit…controlled only by the market for certain categories of students. I’ll agree with you that there is a palpable disdain for those in the striver professional classes as I’ve overheard many snide comments to that effect from some college classmates and undergrads on other elite campuses. </p>
<p>Rest assured, however, that the same disdain is also bestowed upon the FA/scholarship kids…sometimes in a far more patronizing/vicious manner due to the fact most of us tend to be from poor, working, and lower-middle class backgrounds. Moreover, the undergrads and sometimes their parents who meted out this classist treatment weren’t only from the “truly rich”, but also from the very “striver class” you identify with. Your use of the term “plebian” is a great demonstration of the disdainful tone and treatment FA/scholarship kids like myself and several other FA/scholarship kids at my LAC and several other elite campuses…including H received during our undergrad years.</p>