CC Obsession with Ivies and Top Tier Universities

Parents Forum
61

My son’s aid was all grants, no loans.

Really? You think people who have incomes over $100k wouldn’t think paying $20k a year instead of $60k a year isn’t generous FA? You think a college that gives a person $40k a year in grants thinks that isn’t substantial need?

We may not have been classified as high need but I don’t see why that matters. The fact is we got substantial need based aid for someone with our income and college wasn’t even HYPSM or little Ivies. It’s not even one of the colleges whose endowment is near what its peer schools are.

In my opinion the need based only schools are the best financially for most people - especially for those with incomes between $100k-$150k who get practically nothing from most other schools except loans. That being said, the student does need good grades/stats to be accepted.

We paid $10k less a year then was suggested by our EFC and none of my son’s merit awards came close to his FA package at need only school.

62

@emilybee I did not say the financial aid you received was not generous. It is. I was merely commenting that when I mentioned “substantial” financial aid in my post, I was thinking of “high need” students. For them, $20K would have been insurmountable.

It is fantastic that you got this FA package. I also agree that endowment does not necessarily correlate with generosity. Barnard has a small endowment and has a policy of meeting the full demonstrated need of all students and is need blind for domestic candidates. Far wealthier colleges are no longer need blind, i.e. Smith, Willilams and Mount Holyoke.

63

@emilybee Our kids would have to live at home and attend our local RNP university if need-based aid schools were really the best financial option out there. Full-tuition and full-ride schools are the only thin that makes college affordable for our kids. The difference between $12,000 for Room and board and even $20,000 (though our EFC at top schools is more than that) for a great school is $8,000/yr too much.

That is true amg a lot of families we know.

64

@Mom2aphysicsgeek That was my point too. For many families I came to know, $20K might as well have been $80K. But in the case of @emilybee it is fantastic that they received the FA package they needed to make it work.

65

" I did not say the financial aid you received was not generous. It is. I was merely commenting that when I mentioned “substantial” financial aid in my post, I was thinking of “high need” students. For them, $20K would have been insurmountable."

A “high need” student at same or peer college would receive much more than we did. A friend, single mom 3 kids approx $75k/yr income is paying $5k/yr COA at a peer school of my son’s. I know this because I assisted her in finding schools her very smart D could get into and would be affordable. I saw her two best FA packages and this need based only school was by far the best. It was also not and Ivy or little Ivy or M/S. And that $5k includes room and board.

You stated:
" When I spoke to them, I often heard, “but we thought your financial aid was generous”. It is, but not for people with incomes over $100K."

That is just not true at need based only schools. Even Brown. $40k a year grant for people making over $100k is very generous. I cannot believe that is even up for debate. And we made between $25-$28k a year more than that.

I don’t even live in a high COLA area but in upstate NY. My mortgage is only $1k/month.

66

@widgetmidget, you can’t have it both ways. You are bemoaning the obsession with Ivies, then turning around and saying to ignore the NPC and apply anyway because you might get more aid. Sending that message is a sure way to increase the number of applications, and give us many more students in the spring on CC who are deveststed because they hit into a highly ranked school that is unaffordable for them.

You are new to CC. I’d suggest you spend a full year as a regular poster helping students and parents to see the way the site actually functions before making assumptions about how CC helps or hurts the admission process.

67

@widgetmidget “@Much2learn I agree. However my point was that thousands of students–and their parents–seem convinced that it must be an Ivy or top-tier university or nothing, that the key to success is having gone to one of these universities. Nothing could be further from the truth. True, these universities–especially the Ivies–have always endowed a special status but today it is becoming obsessive. People are applying just because of the name (witness the fact that Harvard stated that “several hundred” applicants mentioned in their essay that they were applying to Harvard because it was a “small liberal arts college”.”

People post some crazy stuff, and much of what drives that is a very large information gap.

For most parents, when their student becomes a high school junior, they begin to think about college, for the first time in 20 years. These parents are shocked by what they see in terms of cost and complexity of admission. In my mind if a new poster asks what they have to do to get their kid into Harvard, I don’t take it literally. I hear it as a metaphor for a good school. They know their student gets mostly A’s so they think that means they will go to a top school, and Harvard may be the only top school they know.

I am amused that Northeasterners think that students want to attend an Ivy League college for prestige. The next time you are in the midwest, ask an average person to name as many Ivy League schools as they can. Some people can’t name any. Many will only get Harvard. Others will say Stanford. Some will say Michigan, Northwestern or Wisconsin. The percent of average people who can name all eight schools is deminimus. These schools really can’t be prestigious to people who are completely unaware of them. As @Pizzagirl may have mentioned (lol), all colleges are regional.

cc: regulars work to educate new posters, broaden their perspective and range of options that families are considering, and try to help them identify what may be feasible and helpful for them. For income-focussed posters, there is discussion about selecting a major being more important than choice of school. Hopefully some of that gets through. I think it does.

@widgetmidget “the key to success is having gone to one of these universities. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

I agree that where students attended matters less than what they learned and experienced. The value of the name itself can vary wildly, depending on the area of study. If you are a social worker or education major, I think it matters very little. However, in other areas it can matter a lot. For example, last month I completed a job application (in the midwest) and the position asked whether you (the applicant) have an MBA. The next question asked which college you attended. The options were something like: Harvard, Stanford, Penn Wharton, Chicago, MIT, Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, and Other Miscellaneous School. I have to say that I thought I should just stop there, but I filled out the form and had to write Michigan State University under Other Miscellaneous School. Ugh. In my mind it felt a bit humiliating, but I felt a bit better that Northwestern and Michigan weren’t listed either. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear from them. lol

68

@widgetmidget I agree with others. Please join us in responding to random questions and trying to help people. You can actually help someone and will learn some things yourself.

69

"Perhaps for Brown, but that is not the case for the vast majority of US colleges. "
Widgetmidget, That is what I wrote and for the VAST MAJORITY of US colleges- i.e NOT the IVYS, not the TOP 25 USNWR colleges,NOT the TOP NATIONAL Universities such as the UC’s, UM, etc, etc-- you get my drift??
= I an NOT wrong. There are 4000 colleges in the US and MOST of them would love to have top stat students apply.
They are NOT trying to find reasons to reject top students.
Try reading what others say more carefully.

sheesh/.

70

Well, that was good for a laugh.

71

I go to an upper middle class school. Our guidance office has surveys that show everyone’s class rank, extracurriculars, and where they got into college. Last fall I was curious what high ranked older alums turned into, so I looked them up on LinkedIn.

I noticed many top students ended up turning down high ranked out of state privates. Those who stayed close to home for college seem to do post-grad nearby too, and then settle close to home for careers. Not to say they’re not successful, but their jobs sound a little…boring. Quite a few boomerangs who interned or worked for 1 or 2 years in a major city and then returned back to the area. I personally find it unappealing to spend my entire life within 60 min of the provincial dot on the map I grew up in.

Those who went away for college — especially to a top 30 private — seem to have a more cosmopolitan life, established durable new circles of friends (went away and didn’t come back), tend to have post grad degrees also from schools far away, and were more likely to work for blue chip companies.

72

I think that at one time attending one of the NE prestige unis, the Ivies of course but also RISD Amherst and some others, did have cachet for aspiring middle class families. Their kids would be rubbing shoulders with children of families of means and connections and the burnish would elevate them. But in my humble opinion, as those colleges have expanded their efforts to diversify, specifically socio-economically, per capita there is a diminished capacity. I would hazard a guess that there is more wealth in the fraternities and sororities at University of Michigan and while those NE colleges have managed to corner the market on high stats, high GPA kids, there are colleges across the country that also have concentrations of students as good as those in the NE. And despite best efforts NE colleges still draw strongly from their region. But this board did grow from parents and students trying to get into the Ivy League and this board was strongly northeastern in the subscriber base. I can understand why the Ivy or bust mentality does seem odd to newer and more geographically diverse posters.

73

This has been done to death.

On the one hand, we are told that no one outside a small group thinks of most of the Ivies and the elite LACs as prestigious, or has even heard of them. On the other hand we are told that trying to get into these schools is ruining the lives of some large number of people.

Which is it?

And of course it is perfectly fine to want to go to U of M or Cal or Stanford or Georgia Tech because they are perceived as top schools (and are), but it is empty prestige-seeking to want to go to one of the Ivies because they are perceived as top schools (and are). Anyone who pays for an elite LAC is of course stupid because “no one” has heard of them, and any school in the Big 10 would be “better.” And let’s not even get into the question of bothering to spend one thin dime on the education of a kid who doesn’t want to major in a STEM subject! Just take the money out in the back yard and burn it, right?

Aren’t there are kids who try hard to qualify for UCLA or Cal or the University of Michigan? Are they ruining their lives, too?

Apparently no one believes that there are actually kids who just do what they enjoy in HS and somehow emerge with the course rigor, grades, test scores, and ECs to get into top schools. This is akin to the mindset that firmly states that kids force themselves to take APs because they are seeking elite college admissions, not because – gasp – they actually enjoy them more. (Anti-intellectualism runs deep in the US.)

I believe that there is some subset of kids and families that go nuts on this stuff, but frankly I wonder how many of them are actually successful in getting into the Ivies and equivalent. Because I think there are enough kids to whom it comes naturally to fill them all up

Personally, I come from a family of people who went to elite schools and I expected my very bright, intellectually-inclined S to go to one also. So sue me. (Moreover, my kid needed pretty much a full ride. Obviously, the only schools that were going to give him that kind of need-based aid were elite privates that actually met full need. And they did.)

74

Wow @SlackerMomMD , you certainly did not take my response in the way it was meant. Two of my three kids were not in the elite range (and top 25 is certainly elite). I said more selective schools - which are in range for many B/B+ students. More selective schools, according USNews, includes schools like Fordham, Miami of Ohio, U Del, Rutgers, George Mason etc. which are ranked as low as the 130s. These are not local directionals, but also not HYPS. How is that condescending or even untrue?

75

Speaking from personal experience, I know that many parents initially join these boards looking for info on top colleges not just because of the prestige, but because they went to these colleges themselves and had great experiences, and want their kids to have the same great experiences themselves. Very soon these parents learn that things indeed have changed enormously in the last 20 years and they now need to re-orient themselves and their kids to aim at lower-tier colleges for variety of reasons, including financial.

To me, it was an eye-opener to read through the admission thread for my alma mater and realize the caliber of kids who are applying (and getting rejected) these days. Frankly, it gave me a bit of an inferiority complex - I think I would have never been accepted if was I applying today. So yes, these threads need to exist, I wish GC would make it mandatory reading for all the HYPS hopefuls and their parents.

So number one thing I learned on this forum - low admission rates don’t reflect a higher number of non-competitive applicants, kids today really have 1 in 20 odds of getting into these colleges even if they are top of their class and so 95% or above on standardized tests and have impressive EC’s. I told my daughter it’s a lottery that she is welcome to play if she buys a ticket (i.e. maintains her 4.0 GPA throughout high school, does well on her SAT’s and extends herself beyond academics), but she shouldn’t get her hopes up and shouldn’t feel any less about herself for being rejected.

Second number one thing (pun intended, since finances should indeed be a major consideration) I learned - both parents and kids need to think about the money even if parents have been able to save up for college and consider themselves “all set” to provide their kids with #1 choice education. These savings often fall behind tuition growth rates so yes, there is a sticker shock. But at least some parents fail to think beyond undergraduate years, and again, I was guilty of that, too, when I joined this board.

When I sat down with my daughter to have the lottery talk (yes, she is only 12 and only 8th grader, but I believe she is mature enough to understand), I also showed her the balance on her 529 plan, and explained that it would cover a chunk of an elite college, or a chunk of an elite grad school, and in the end it would be her decision where to spend the money on. I also explained that all that extra work in college won’t be “wasted” if she gets rejected by an elite college - on the contrary, it would help her get substantial merit aid at a great non-elite school, and that would free up more funds for graduate school. In fact, it would make attending elite graduate school more of a reality.

Going back to the OP, I think it’s good that Ivy league obsession does not go away completely - it gives parents like me a great starting point. If all I saw when joining this board was discussion of non-elite colleges, I might have passed it on as irrelevant in my ignorance. So glad I didn’t!

76

@MotherOfDragons You are just determined to be snarky. Doesn’t bother me.

77

@menloparkmom I’m happy for you to believe what you will. Great that your child went to USC. I see her turned down Brown for it. All clear now.

78

widgetmidget-
He turned down Brown because it cost too much! As did Chicago, Wash U, Carleton, Pomona, Dartmouth and 6 other colleges that I cant remember. Was I happy that he chose to turn them down? no and eventually… yes…
He applied to college in 2006 ,when I believe you were in HS, and before the top colleges became so generous with FA. And he ended up at USC on a full tuition scholarship. Thank the lord for that, because if he had gone to Brown, or any of the 11 other more expensive colleges he was accepted to, we would have had to pull him out in 2009, during the financial crisis, when our income dried up .
So once again, snarky comments such this one
" That must make you feel good. People often feel good turning down Ivies."
show a lack of perspective and knowledge of how much college admissions have changed in the past 10 years on your part.

79

edit- during the past 10 years

80

@typiCAmom

This can make sense if a student is looking at law school, an MBA, or med school, or an unfunded masters (which are rarely worth the money anyway). Students going for PhDs don’t need you to pay, as those positions are typically funded (if not, you probably shouldn’t be doing a PhD). You might supplement your kid a bit in a PhD program, as the stipends are not that big, but it is nothing like paying for an undergrad education. Plus, sometimes the “elite” school isn’t even what is best for your kid in a PhD – if they have a specific area of focus, finding a school with good research in that area can be a better thing than a big name.

Also… if your kid’s goal is med school, the point of this thread about elite schools not being the be-all and end all applies there as well. A doctor from a lesser known school is just as much a doctor as one from an “elite” school. I do agree that name matters in Law School a LOT these days (not that I would advise my kid to go down that path at all at the moment), and quite a bit in MBA programs (although I have done quite well with a very good undergrad school and an MBA that wasn’t from a top 20 program).