<p>I was thinking about the cost of college this morning as we anxiously try to balance cost, fit and quality. My tuition with room and board at an Ivy school (I was almost full pay-very small scholarship) was about 5-8% of my parents income. Most of Ds college choices for tuition, room /board with big scholarships will cost anywhere from 30-50% of AGI per year. I guess those really were the good old days! Why does her state school option have to be 7 hours away in a small city that holds no intetest for her? </p>
<p>I applied to 3 schools and was accepted at all. I am not working in my field of study and I even changed majors at the end my junior year. That typewriter was really heavy and loud. The college application process is way more stressful and expensive today!</p>
<p>marybee333–I’ve found that COA has been pretty stagnant over the years or actually lower relative to income. You have to compare apples to apples. How much is someone making today working the same jobs with the same experience as your parents? Looking up Harvard back when I was in college in the mid-80’s, COA was in the $32,000-35,000 range, which would have been 80% of my Dad’s income at the time. Today, that same job my Dad had, Harvard would be about 37% of gross for that same job, same company.</p>
<p>Harvard’s own stats show the same (and most of the Ivy’s would be similar):</p>
<p>SteveMa- maybe my parents lied to me about their income…but I know I felt guilty about the cost back then. We were just an average middle class family. I think I am comparing apples to apples as far as percentage of income. And I attended a different Ivy which had an in-state tuition component.
PS if what you state is actually true across the board about tuition, then maybe I should not feel such sticker shock… or maybe our income has not kept pace. Maybe my parents were better off than we are right now. I know my mom started working again when I went to kindergarten to help pay for college for everyone in our family. I wonder if my parents felt as stressed? I wish I could ask…my mom passed away last year and I never thought to ask her until now.</p>
<p>I remember one more thing: the essay for Stanford had to be hand-written. My friends and I who applied to Stanford all thought they were going to use handwriting analysis on our essays.</p>
<p>1973-'74. I applied to 4 schools and was accepted to all 4, visited 3 (all private and all which were within 200 miles or less from where I lived.) I went by myself, staying overnight with older friends already there. The 4th was a large OOS public school that I never visited and arrived on campus never having stepped foot onto it before. </p>
<p>I took the SAT’s once and several achievements. I went to a private high school and all the kids took them. </p>
<p>I was the average student in my family, my older sister was the “star.” My parents were very much like the typical parents on CC today with her. They visited highly selective schools up and down the east coast. She ended up only wanting to go to my mother’s alma mater (a Seven Sisters school.) For some reason I don’t recall her applying anywhere else and that she got in early though I’m not sure if they even had ED then so my recollection could be wrong. </p>
<p>If I was applying to colleges today I’m pretty sure my parents (well, my mother) would have been a CC superstar. ;)</p>
<p>Universities don’t price their full pay tuition and fees agains median income. They price themselves versus income at the 80% or 90% percentile in family income. As the income distribution has gotten more skewed towards higher incomes, the income at the 90% percentile has gone up much more than the median.</p>
<p>I didn’t learn about the PSAT until after the fact, when a few friends were named finalists. I was surprised when my peers took the SAT a second time. I did the same, though, without understanding why or how it would help.</p>
<p>Applied to 3 colleges, got into 2, never saw the one I chose before student orientation. I had no parental or other adult involvement in the search or selection process. There was no concern with money until I changed schools twice and majors three times and it was clear I was headed for a 6 year BA.</p>
<p>notrichenough–oops you are right-- I thought that was weird–the 35K was the average income for families with college kids–$13,100 against an average salary of $32,592. They are comparing to the median income of families with college aged students, not nationally. If you look further down, that ratio has remained constant for over 20 years.</p>
<p>I went to a public HS in Maryland. The University of Maryland College Park sent admissions reps to our school. We put our paper applications on our desk. They walked around and stamped it if you were accepted. Anyone with at least a “C” average and 1000 M/V SAT score was accepted. No essays were required unless you wanted to apply to the Honors Program. </p>
<p>I also applied to several more selective schools and was accepted to all of them with stats that current CCers would laugh at.</p>
<p>If the ratio you are talking about is cost to median income of families with college students, it hasn’t remained constant from what I am seeing in that document, and a subsequent one for later years:</p>
<p>Notrichenough - Thank you for the verificarion. My post was comparing then and now tuition relative to what my parents earned and what my family now earns and I was thinking…wow…scary! Thanks for confirming the data based on the math of my personal sitiation…not that it makes me feel any better. I just keep trying to decide if tuition costs are really worth it. Even though I went into this process with eyes open,.when it comes down to writing the check, I am still suffering sticker shock. Will the costs of college be worth it in the end?</p>
<p>I don’t think our guidance counselor talked to anyone at all about college. I applied to two colleges (USC, Cal Poly SLO, went to Cal Poly), got into both with what would probably be pretty poor stats these days (1260 SAT, ~3.6 GPA). Couldn’t (or didn’t) apply to any UC schools because my HS wouldn’t give me foreign language credit because I took high school level classes while in middle school (didn’t find this out until senior year, I had transferred from a DOD school). They did make me take multiple periods of PE sometimes, because they did require 4 years of PE to graduate. Probably was the only hard and fast rule! Never visited any schools, my parents bought me a big book to read through.</p>
<p>I don’t recall exact costs, but I do recall that I paid tuition and books from summer work (parents covered room and board), and that when I started, books were usually more per quarter than tuition. When I graduated, I believe tuition had overtaken books, but could still be earned from summer jobs.</p>
<p>Except for a few majors, Berkeley was not all that selective in the 1980s, although by that time it had gotten more selective than baseline UC eligibility (which was 3.3 (including +1 honors/AP points) GPA with any SAT or ACT score, or a lower GPA with a high enough SAT or ACT score). The four year graduation rate was only about a third (compared to 70% now), and most entering freshmen had to take a remedial English composition course (compared to under 10% now). In-state tuition, in inflation-adjusted dollars, was only about a quarter of what it is now; out-of-state tuition was relatively inexpensive compared to private schools. In-state total cost of attendance, in inflation-adjusted dollars, was only about half of what it is now. Although fewer students needed financial aid since the list prices were lower, financial aid was more of a black box in the absence of net price calculators.</p>
<p>However, there was a common UC application; students who did not get into one of their top three choices but were UC eligible were offered admission to some other campus (I seem to recall people getting Irvine).</p>
<p>I did remember obscure out-of-area colleges sending marketing mail in response to taking the SAT. Back then, there was no internet to allow browsing the web pages to see if the academic offerings matched one’s interests.</p>
<p>From my high school graduating class, about half went to the local community college, while about a third went to four year schools, mostly various CSUs and UCs (local ones being more favored).</p>
<p>Fun fact about correction fluid – it was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham in the 1950s. Her son, Mike Nesmith, was one of the Monkees (the tall skinny one with the hat.)</p>
<p>I did well in high school and was a girl wanting to major in engineering, so I could have gone anywhere. I picked UT-Austin, in my hometown, because it was ranked highly in civil engineering and cost only $4 a credit hour! I got the standard valedictorian scholarship the first year, but not much after that, surprisingly. But it didn’t matter, since my entire bill for each semester, including all fees, was well under $500. My parents splurged and let me stay in a wonderful dorm, just off campus. Good times.</p>