<p>I don’t think that is it, I think it more the glass is half empty verses the glass is half full point of view. There are plenty of posters on here talking about the financial aid they didn’t get and how unfair it is. There are plenty of other posters on here talking about how there are still affordable schools.</p>
<p>I can’t change the present system. What I can do is not feel limited by it. Whether that means going to a state school or finding a way to finance a private school that doesn’t involve need-based assistance, the opportunities are there. Spending time upset about a perceived unfairness in the current model isn’t going to accomplish anything.</p>
<h1>300: I"m not young and I don’t live in the NYC metropolitan area because it’s awesome; I live here because both my husband and I can find jobs in our respective fields. Personally, I dislike New York and would love to live in the Midwest but cannot find equivalent employment there. Doctors are not a good example because they are unusually mobile as a group and not dependent on a corporation or regional industry for a paycheck.</h1>
<p>"It’s BS that the reason we all don’t move to Tulsa is because of transaction costs. Doctors right out of a GP residency can go anywhere they want. The unsexy areas of the country desperately need doctors. Most of the new grads don’t have families or mortgages yet. But young people with all those options crowd into NY and SF anyway, because those cities are AWESOME. That’s why we live there, regardless of the cost. We think it’s a good deal. "</p>
<p>I cant speak for you and your doctor friends. I used to live in Baltimore. I found baltimore way more awesome than DC. However when I needed to find a new job, i found the job market in my area way to thin. I was pulled to DC by its job market, not the awesomeness of its traffic, its air pollution, its weak communities (by baltimore standards) or its insanely competitive parents.</p>
<p>“How many poor kids (kids receiving Pell grants, let’s say) actually go to any of those schools?”</p>
<p>well of course thats one reason its easier for a harvard to offer their policy than it would be for many other schools, endowments aside. When you dont have that many families with below income X, its a lot easier to make generous promises to families below income X.</p>
<p>“I’m just questioning this ridiculous and annoyingly common assertion that it’s so much easier for poor kids” </p>
<p>Gardna, I think you can try to come up with all the stats in the world but your not going to convince some folks on this thread that being poor is not a “good deal.” Some folks have tunnel vision. I’ve given up and am a bit appalled at what I have read from some posters. I admire applicanot for the good fight but logic does not work for some that feel disenfranchised from the college admission process.</p>
<p>You can frame it any way you like. But high cost of living area also have higher standard of living. Name just one plce with high cost for low standard of living. If cost of living is such a big deal, why does federal government adjust only minimally in figuring out AGI?</p>
<p>“Poor” kids do get the PELL and other monies. But most go to local schools. Unless you are well versed in college lore, have an adult who is guiding you that knows the college process, have high test scores, have parents that will complete the financial aid processes, where you will likely go if you have college aspirations and are not in a school where it is a big deal, not in a family where it is a big deal, not among peers where it is a big, is a local college. They will sit down with you and enroll you, walk you through the registration process, scooping out all of the federal and state money you can get. That is how many of such schools run their business. It’s great that kids do get an education if they can stick with it, but if you have ever seen this process, it is one that is strongly based on getting those government bucks and getting the student to sign some loans.</p>
<p>"Gardna, I think you can try to come up with all the stats in the world but your not going to convince some folks on this thread that being poor is not a “good deal.” "</p>
<p>Thought experiment (i know these numbers are wrong, lets not worry about that)</p>
<p>Family A makes 60K after tax and pays zero for college. Family B makes 120k after tax and pays 50k for college.</p>
<p>Asssume same city, same family size, same work hours, commuting expenses, etc</p>
<p>At the end of the day, Family A has 60k. Family B has 70k. family B has 10k more than familyA and is better off.</p>
<p>But you can see why Family B is ****ed, no? The implicit marginal income “tax” is beyond what most folks, even “socialist” Prof Reich, would consider reasonable. </p>
<p>Folks with 120k are SUPPOSED to live better than folks who make 60k right? Right? Of course right. </p>
<p>I am not only being facetious. Folks with 120k have friends, social networks, etc that folks with 60k dont. Income doesnt just buy things -it buys relational good, items that establish social place. It may well be harder for them to downshift.</p>
<p>of course if they have been saving massively all these years, they wont have to downshift. Thats another argument.</p>
<p>"You can frame it any way you like. But high cost of living area also have higher standard of living. Name just one plce with high cost for low standard of living. If cost of living is such a big deal, why does federal government adjust only minimally in figuring out AGI? "</p>
<p>because NYC and SF and DC are not swing voting areas, thats why.</p>
<p>Its another, and larger, injustice, and one more obviously a public issue.</p>
<p>Even given your hypotheticals, BBdad, which squeeze the difference a little extremely, there’s a built-in choice there. My family was the second family, basically–sending our kids full pay meant living the lifestyle of someone making half what we did. If living like our monetary peers was important to us, we could have made a choice for the less expensive schools. Then we could have “preserved appearances”</p>
<p>Luckily, we didn’t have to worry about that, because we’d chosen from the start to live the more spartan lifestyle (out of necessity, and then out of choice), and our actual peers were living a similar one. Saved us the embarrassment of not keeping up with the Joneses!</p>
<p>Please give a list of what “institutional lifelines” are more available for truly lower income students with family income below say $30K at colleges* other than * HYPS, and preferably include some public U’s in your list since that’s where the vast majority of the kids with family income < $30K wind up since most of their kids are simply not competitive applicants for the elite privates that promise to meet full aid without throwing in massive loans above the Staffords.</p>
<p>And don’t list Pell Grants or State Grants because those are NOT institutional.</p>
<p>Brooklynborndad - That was my point exactly. Most people with a 150k NYC job would NOT give it up in order to have the “same” life in Omaha. It’s not worth it.</p>
<p>
I’m glad to see that you acknowledge the CHOICE of living near extended family. Similarly, my parents could have chosen to stay in China near their extended family; instead, they chose to move halfway across the world and live in poverty for five years before working up to middle-middle class (still qualifying for FA even under the current screwed-up system). Someone who happens to have all their extended family in Omaha is lucky, the same way someone raised as upper-middle-class in Montana is luckier than the same person raised in NYC suburbs because colleges seek geographic diversity.</p>
<p>I, too, am framing my perspective with institutional self-interest. I believe that institutions may be principally committed to socioeconomic diversity, but in the end, they only pursue it because it benefits THEM in some significant way. Thus, it is pointless and misleading to discuss financial aid policy changes that would make college more easily affordable to the upper middle class without reducing current benefits to someone else–where is that extra money going to come from?</p>
<p>A generally fair-intentioned policy that, let’s say, works 75% of the time and fails the other 25% of the time is pretty inefficient, but not arbitrary.</p>
<p>
But this is not the assumption made by FA, that people of X income deserve X standard of living. The assumption made is that people who make 60k have to spend all of their money to maintain a minimally acceptable standard of living, and everyone who makes 60k+X can “afford” to spare X toward college expenses and still maintain the sameminimally acceptable standard of living.</p>
<p>We are neither doctors nor young but still both DW and I love NYC and SF.
We won’t survive in a smaller place anyway. We love the metros or cosmopolitan areas as these tend to be more liberal, diverse and generally less orthodox in nature.</p>
<p>DD seems to be of the same nature and that is why Cambridge(Boston) was way high on her list over Princeton(Town).</p>
<p>Hanna great idea, let’s throw out the notion of COA altogether. Everyone fills out the FAFSA and whatever your EFC is calculated to be that’s what you pay $50,000, $150,000, $300,000 is doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Let’s not stop there. From now on rich people should pay $25 for a gallon of gas. If a rich person dares to using up a bank’s lending capacity by taking out a mortgage, charge them a 15% interest rate.</p>
<p>A Big Mac should now cost a rich person $20. While we are at it let’s create a “Healthy Food Choice Credit” (refundable of course) so that if a non rich person forgoes the Big Mac and opts for a salad, the salad is free AND the smiling clerk gives them a dollar to boot.</p>
<p>You’re absolutely right. That’s why the merest fact that these three or four schools offer no loan financial aid packages to the poor is functionally meaningless; how many kids actually get into Harvard and Yale (in total)? How many of those are Pell-eligible? How many of those have 0 EFCs? You’ll never be able to get to the ridiculous situation that people make up all the time, where Ivy League schools are dominated with billionaire kids and kids from desperately poor families in roughly equal or similar numbers. It doesn’t exist. It’s not true. It’s not a valid construct. It’s… well, honestly, by now, it’s just a fantasy. They might as well be blaming the cost of college on Obama’s health care law like that one guy always does in the Fin Aid forums.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The sad thing is, I understand that they’re frustrated. They have a right to be frustrated, and they have so many legitimate reasons to be angry that making up these stupid, absurd fantasies is just a pointless distraction. Instead of getting mad at these fictional kids, why not get mad at the people who are actually to blame?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As I said before, I understand why upper middle class families are angry. I’m just pointing out that the thought experiment that you described here, where low-income families get to go to any college they want for free or for close to free without any loans doesn’t really exist outside of that HYP that people always trot out. Low-income kids who don’t get into Harvard or Yale – and that’s pretty nearly ALL of them, since not that many people get into Ivies! – end up going into massive debt just like middle-class kids or having to go to a CC or commute to a state college. They have to live within their means or get screwed with debt, just like middle class kids!</p>
<p>“Brooklynborndad - That was my point exactly. Most people with a 150k NYC job would NOT give it up in order to have the “same” life in Omaha. It’s not worth it.”</p>
<p>my point is that living in NY rather than Omaha is not a “luxury”. Folks paying 150 to live in NYC instead of 100K to live in Omaha are not paying 50K for entry to Central Park or the joy of riding the LIRR. They simply face higher prices, for a very large part of their consumption packages for similar goods. And the notion that you can say, if you dont like it move, is laughable. And I am willing to bet no college official would suggest that with a straight face.</p>
<p>Gardna, my observations were strictly limited to HYPSM and a few others with super-sized endowments and need-blind, no-loan policies. Those are the schools were Pell-eligible kids are now being more aggressively courted and offered all-grant aid. (My take on the main reasons for that were detailed in a prior post of mine.)Unfortunately, those are precisely the schools that the upper-middle class most wants to send their kids to, but find themselves often unable to afford without massive debt. Hence the sense, among that particular group, that the Pell kids are in a relatively advantageous position to actually attend that small subset of schools.</p>
Um… sorry? I’m going to assume that you meant EARNING 150k, not PAYING, and go from there.</p>
<p>I agree with you that no college official would dismiss a parent’s complaint about cost of living; that’s simply not politic. But is that the underlying thinking? Who knows.</p>
<p>Do you disagree that given the same standard of living–disregard income and consider only equal basic necessities–more people would prefer to live in NYC than in Omaha? I don’t actually know anything about Omaha, so I’ll simplify the comparison to major metropolitan city vs. rural town. If so, then there must be some benefit to living in NYC that is offset, in practicality, by the cost advantages of living in Omaha. Off the top of my head, access to arts/culture and public transportation are some major benefits.</p>
<p>“We are neither doctors nor young but still both DW and I love NYC and SF.
We won’t survive in a smaller place anyway. We love the metros or cosmopolitan areas as these tend to be more liberal, diverse and generally less orthodox in nature.”</p>
<p>baltimore is wonderfully diverse, has some fine pockets of liberalism, etc, etc. I certainly found less conventional thinking there, than here in DC.</p>
<p>I am not saying there arent special things about NYC or SF. There are also special things about Orlando, and Tampa, and well, even Omaha. </p>
<p>I AM saying that the income differential between high wage metros and low wage metros in general is driven more by cost of living than by quality of life. </p>
<p>For the most part, I think wages/cost of living are generally in equilibrium. But then most folks don’t make their key early adulthood decisions with the nuances of FAFSA and CSS in mind. in 1992 I had a six month old. I didnt know what her direction would be, or whether they should would go to an Ivy, to a state school, to become Marine officer, or what. By the time things gelled, I was pretty committed to DC. </p>
<p>All I am hearing is laughable things, either about the luxury quality of life here, or about how I should go get a job in Omaha. Look folks I’ve been to Omaha. Its swell. Really it is. Fine people. A couple of nice museums. A lovely little restored section downtown. Those crazy wide streets. But I CANNOT get a job there. And I am not about to switch careers, right now.</p>