Why is she unhooked? Her high stats, annual trips to Guatermala, and not being an ORM seem like decent hooks to me that will likely result in her at least getting into 1 of of her college choices (not all of which are even reaches).
@chzbrgr , let’s not hijack the thread with this, because it doesn’t matter, and because your response is based on data that’s almost five years old.
I live here. I make my living here. I am the outgoing chair of a low-income housing not-for-profit, the largest in the PNW and therefore have a very good sense of the issue. $40k qualifies people for some of our units.
Tell you what. Move here and see what you can accomplish on $60k/yr. and get back to me. To be sure, you can live here on $350k, and live pretty well. You can live an upper middle class life with that income. Affluence, to the extent that means living amongst the wealthiest of the city residents, requires more … a lot more.
You will have to move to Everett, and even then live in a crap house, and you won’t have money to do anything but eat and pay some bills.
Do try and remember what Mark Twain said about lies and statistics.
@MiddleburyDad2 sorry, but I’m just not buying it. Even assuming a conservative borrowing of 3x combined gross income, such a family should be able to buy a house that costs at least a million dollars.
Let’s not conflate income and wealth, and let’s not forget how unusual it is to have a household where you have two adults earning $175k.
I’ll grant you that the data is old, but just to guess, let’s say that the income would now put you in the top 5%? Since the US lacks a hereditary aristocracy, that’s not upper-middle class by any serious definition.
I’ve no doubt that $40k qualifies people for some of your units. But then $350k is about 9 times $40k, so…
$350k means combined gross earnings of $10k a week.
“Why is she unhooked? Her high stats, annual trips to Guatermala, and not being an ORM seem like decent hooks to me that will likely result in her at least getting into 1 of of her college choices (not all of which are even reaches).”
Going to Guatemala and not being Asian is not a hook. Having a high GPA and test score are the things BESIDES hooks that we talk about.
Hooks, generally, are athletics and being an URM. Even the talented muscian, while terrific, is seldom a hook.
@chzbrgr , you can buy or not buy anything you want. I live here. You apparently do not.
In any event, we are talking about generalized cuts at social class. Hardly precise terms, but I stand by my characterization. If my friend from Minneapolis moved here with a $350K job waiting for him, and he asked, I’d tell him he’d be upper middle class, but that he wouldn’t be running with the top 5% of the Seattle proper population.
What people outside this area typically don’t understand is the sheer number of small millionaires ($4 to $6 million) that linger around here. Microsoft alone minted a ton of them. There were low-level people there, including admi. staff, who were once paid in part with stock options and, through dumb luck alone, made a pile of cash. The small millionaire is omnipresent in Seattle, and coupled with a lot of other things going on in town, it has driven the COL sky high. It’s not SF, but it’s gaining.
Yes, at $350k, you can buy a $1M house. And a million dollars gets you nowhere near Laurelhurst, Windermere, or even anything livable in Ravenna. $1M does not buy a water view of the lake from Mercer Island, though it may buy you a complete tear-down on Queen Anne. It gets you laughed at if you’re thinking of anything actually on the water on LW, even a tear-down, if any remain.
Your house is typically going to be your biggest expense and its location defines your social class. Housing in Seattle is a huge issue, because it is expensive as hell. You can’t live in Tukwilla or Everett and call yourself affluent. Affluent people live more or less where they want to live. You need to be making more than $350k for that in Seattle, unless maybe you are single and have zero responsibilities for anyone else.
Again, come here and try and make a life on 60. I absolutely guarantee you that, even w/o kids, you will not feel like you’re under the bell curve. You will feel poor, even if you’re renting. That 60 k number means nothing here, so I wouldn’t use that as a baseline for your claim.
Maybe we’re just hung up on nomenclature, but I can certainly see that $350K in many parts of our great nation puts you at the tippy top of the socio-economic sand pile. Not here.
I have to agree with MiddleburyDad2, but I recognize that the two of you may be talking past one another a bit.
I know from living in San Francisco that the necessary income to be “wealthy” is significantly different here than it is in almost any other place. People who make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year here are not hurting, don’t get me wrong, but they are not living the no worries life of people who make that or even less other places. A million dollar house in San Francisco has 2 bedrooms and probably no yard.
For college purposes, these are the “donut hole” families. Colleges assume that they have the income to be full pay, but they simply don’t have it. On the other hand, there are a lot, lot more jobs here that pay a lot more money than elsewhere else, and making a couple hundred thousand is not nearly the impressive accomplishment here that it would be in Ohio or Tennessee. It all kind of washes out - except when it comes to paying for college I guess.
Taking a one week trip to Guatemala with a group of other well-off kids where you spend a few days doing some light work, see some sights, and get an entry on your resume - that is not a hook, no matter how sincere you are. Working very hard for many, many weeks to help disadvantaged Guatemalan immigrants learn English in Seattle - now that would be a hook.
“People who make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year here are not hurting, don’t get me wrong, but they are not living the no worries life of people who make that or even less other places.”
Yes, this is exactly my point. Nobody said you’re struggling on $350 in Seattle, but by the time the tax man hits you and you have made your mortgage payment and paid your property taxes, you are a bit more like everyone else than people might suspect.
I’d say it all washes out both when it comes to paying for college and a lot of other things, including housing. Affluent people, by any normal application of that term, typically live where they want to live. At 350, you will have some constraints in Seattle.
“Going back several years in a row shows something more than your average flit around the globe.”
I tend to disagree – it only shows that mommy and daddy have the money to be able to send her there a couple of summers in a row.
Those types of volunteer/vacation
Trips to help orphans don’t impress anybody in an elite college admissions office.
If she was truly interested in helping orphans, there are plenty of places in her own country where she could volunteer her time .
Your niece has probably a very good chance of acceptance at Whitman and Reed , as well as at her safety , IF she does show them the love!!. But with weak EC’s, her chances at most of the other dream colleges on her list are minimal at best.
however Wash U DOES have a (notorious )preference for applicants who apply ED.
I would say based on my travels (pardon the pun) that the only true hooks that stand the test are athletics, URM and some very, very important connection to the school. I have a friend whose uncle was the Dean at the Lehigh biz school 10 years ago. Admissions told him that fact would be “relevant”, though likely not a full hook.
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OP: if your niece doesn’t apply SCEA to Stanford will she forever wonder “what if?” If so, then she should do it but be prepared to love her safeties and add more matches. As someone suggested she can also consider ED2 at a school that offers it assuming she doesn’t get into Stanford. But I think that sometimes ED2 does not confer the same advantage as ED1 does. It’s hard to know because most schools aren’t transparent about it.
On the other hand, she can forego SCEA at Stanford and go for binding ED somewhere if she’ll be happy to get in that school. She can take advantage of an aspect of the system that favors students who don’t have to worry about FA. Sounds like whatever happens she will have good options.
@middleburydad2 “I would say based on my travels (pardon the pun) that the only true hooks that stand the test are athletics, URM and some very, very important connection to the school.”
Now this I disagree with.
Having a huge extracurricular really only matters at the most extremely selective schools, but there, they really do make a difference in choosing which handful of students will get pulled out of the big pile of tens of thousands of academically qualified applications. The 3.9 gpa / 34 ACT kid who won an Intel science competition will get in to MIT over the 4.0 / 35 ACT kid who just got A’s in chemistry. The award winning concert pianist pr ballet dancer will get in to Yale over the kid who was a member of the high school band. The kid who started a real, successful on-line business of her own will get into Wharton over the kid who worked at Old Navy. The kid who got an authoring credit on a published scientific paper will get into UChicago over the kid who just loves science. The kid who threw her heart and soul (and many hours) into a significant community service project for years and made a difference will get into Amherst over the kid who went to Guatemala for a week with other well-off kids.
Things like that do make a difference. Not as much of a difference as traditional “hooks” like being a recruited quarterback or Emma Watson (or even better, Malala!). And nothing, nothing is better than being the 13th Rockefeller to attend Princeton and by the way grandpa just donated another 10 million. But they are almost hooks - because all of those thousands of high achieving applicants look exactly the same otherwise, but there is only room for some of them.
Of course, there are only a tiny handful of schools that can be this picky. And if you are upset because your kid only got into Cornell rather than Columbia, well you probably need to adjust your perspective on the whole thing.
Actually, it sounds like you do agree. 
“Things like that do make a difference. Not as much of a difference as traditional “hooks” like being a recruited quarterback or Emma Watson … And nothing, nothing is better than being the 13th Rockefeller to attend Princeton and by the way grandpa just donated another 10 million”
@doschicos Heh, I guess you are right. Let me try to clarify.
Lets assume fantastic grades and a 34 ACT for all of these applicants.
Estimated chances of getting into Harvard
traditional hook: recruited quarterback, Emma Watson, Rockefeller with family history of donations - 98%
big tiebreaker: major science award winner, genuine prima ballerina, genuinely unique and significant public service focus, URM, poor white from Appalachia coal town - 35%
Just a good hardworking kid with good traditional ECs like student government and volunteering - 10%
Kid with basically no ECs - 2%
caveat - I made all of these statistics out of thin air
This is so true. This is what my kids’ GC preaches, and what I’ve seen here on CC and in real life. But, I think most QUALIFIED kids who take the SCEA risk and fail, eventually land on their feet. From my daughter’s class 5 kids applied early to Princeton (apparently, the hot choice that year) and were ultimately rejected, they ended up at Oxford in England, UVA, Northwestern, Dartmouth and Emory (full ride). One girl was rejected from Yale SCEA and ended up at Vassar and one girl rejected SCEA from Stanford got in to U of Chicago, but ended up at Georgia Tech. Not bad, but definitely more stressful waiting months to be chosen RD from a broad list of schools rather than picking your choice of the lower hanging fruit in the ED round.
I have to agree with @MiddleburyDad2 on this one. I would classify then as upper middle class where they live but affluent if they lived in other areas of the US. For this discussion though I would say that cost is not an issue with her parents and they would pay full tuition wherever she is accepted.
Well hey 75% of statistics are made up on the spot so you’re close enough!
The median US income is ~$50k. Those families are also paying taxes, mortgages, college fees, and general living expenses. People who make $350k/year are nothing like them. If you think you are, quit your job and try living on $50k/year.
OP’s niece is a high stats kid with two parents who are not only willing to support her college dreams but, with an income 7 times the national median, have the means to do so. Full pay, high stats kids are at a serious advantage compared to low income, high stats kids. They know for certain that next fall they’ll be attending an excellent residential college. They won’t need to work to help cover tuition or worry about digging up enough money for incidental expenses and books, and they’ll graduate debt free. That’s a pretty good position to be in. Just encourage her to have some safeties she likes on her list and she’ll be fine.