<p>frazzled1 and Hunt - apologies if my comment came across as snarky and apologies for the misattribution. No hard feelings intended. Certainly I am sure there is some college or university out there that calculates outside aid into its “Percentage of Our Students Receiving Some Financial Support” (or some other murky description that overestimates what the school itself provides).</p>
<p>This discussion is certainly interesting. I don’t think anyone is saying that there should not be generous financial aid. I agree that high achieving kids should have access to the top schools. The problem is how aid is determined. The only reason we have our income and savings is because we have BOTH worked very hard and saved a lot. My kids will be full pay anywhere without merit aid because we were very conservative, lived well below our means, and had only two kids. For the record, I had a boatload of loans when I finished undergrad and grad, my husband paid for his education with military service, and we give generously to our alma maters, church, and multiple other organizations. My kids are high achieving students. Do they have less of a right to access just because their parents are hard working savers? Not all middle/upper middle class kids are entitled, spoiled, coddled kids. It is going to HURT to pay for school. I am all for financial aid, but some of the generalizations on this board are overboard. Noone is entitled. My kid can go to a less selective or public school and get a free ride. So can anyone with the stats!</p>
<p>“Colleges look at income in from all sources - tuition/endowments, etc. and then price the full tuition based on what they need to bring in to supplement tuition, pay expenses, etc. Of course what the full pay student pays depends in part upon what they are giving away for need.”</p>
<p>IF you assume they would get the same level of donations whether they gave need based scholarship or not. I doubt they would. I sure dont give donations to my local car dealer. You cant have a business model and then ask your alums for THEIR hard earned cash. This is even more true of course for donations that are spefically earmarked by DONORS to need based scholarship funds.</p>
<p>" Look, I think it is great that awesome kids whose parents do not earn a lot get to attend when they have accumulated the records to gain entrance. But let’s not act like the schools that the middle/upper middle kids can afford are substandard. They are not. If you look inside their numbers, their Honors kids can compete with anyone…and they do. "</p>
<p>So fine, then let the whiney upper income folks send their kids there. In fact our DD had very good reasons for not going to our state schools. Thank goodness she got a good FA package from RPI. RPI will I think be very pleased with what she adds to campus life and to their alumni network. If YOU can’t afford full pay at RPI, despite having an income that leaves you with more money after tuition than we have, well there are plenty of “not substandard” schools your children can attend. RPI is a private institution, and has the right to make the decisions that make sense for them.</p>
<p>
That does not match what I have read where most top tier schools claim that full-pay students are not covering their own costs either … that endowment funds are supporting all students; supporting FA kids more but supporting all. Which makes the claim that full pay students are subsidizing the FA students not true … at least at these schools if they are being straight with us.</p>
<p>^Exactly the point Brooklynborndad</p>
<p>Lots of private institutions offer generous packages. My son will also have a lot of those kinds of offers. Even with whiny upper income parents. (Are you SERIOUS?! THAT is the attitude that really gets me going.)</p>
<p>“The only reason we have our income and savings is because we have BOTH worked very hard and saved a lot.”</p>
<p>I know a couple who do not have a lot saved - the father had a spell of unemployment that ate up much of their savings, and the mother had a spotty employment record, in large part due to being consumed with their children’s learning and other issues. Every life story is different, and its not really possible for university financial aid offices to judge each life story. </p>
<p>If you assume that higher income means higher effort, and that lower income and savings is due to laziness or spend thriftness, than of course higher income families DESERVE more opportunities. </p>
<p>Of course if you think those things are true, I am not sure why you would want to have your children study social science at an elite private, where they are likely to be taught that that is not true. ;)</p>
<p>I’m middle-class income and I’m not whiny. And my kids aren’t spoiled or “entitled” either.</p>
<p>"Even with whiny upper income parents. (Are you SERIOUS?! THAT is the attitude that really gets me going.) "</p>
<p>It gets you going that I see some upper income parents as whiney? Geez. Well Im sorry. That’s the way I see it.</p>
<p>But it is ok to come on here and shout claims that your dollars are paying for those who have less. The alumni dnations are paying for those who have need not your tuition money. Schools like MIT and Cornell could not survive on your tuition money if that was being used for more than one kid. The people I thank are the generous alumni not the parents who are full pay.</p>
<p>It makes me about as irritated as it might make you to hear someone call the parents of lower income students slackers or lazy. It usually isn’t true and it usually isn’t fair. It’s a slur.</p>
<p>“IF you assume they would get the same level of donations whether they gave need based scholarship or not. I doubt they would.”</p>
<p>I disagree. Contributions from alumni are generally made because former students want to give back to the school- however the school thinks fit to spend the donation.</p>
<p>I"t makes me about as irritated as it might make you to hear someone call the parents of lower income students slackers or lazy. It usually isn’t true and it usually isn’t fair. It’s a slur. "</p>
<p>I certainly did not mean to imply that all upper income parents are whiny. If that is how it sounded, I apologize for my poor wording. I meant to refer only to those upper income families who come here to complain that folks with lower incomes than themselves have it easier.</p>
<p>"I disagree. Contributions from alumni are generally made because former students want to give back to the school- however the school thinks fit to spend the donation. "</p>
<p>As an alum of a private instution who HAS given donations, I certainly care about what they use it for. The amount of effort they put into letters, fliers, etc explaining to alums precisely WHAT they are using the money for (including need based FA) persuades me that I am not alone in that.</p>
<p>I will tell that to all the upper class in my community (one the wealthiest communities in NJ) who during breaks are traveling to their homes in Tuscany, Hawaii and Paris…just to name a few. They cry about the unfairness of financial aid and that the URM’s and poor kids have it made. It makes me sick because they have no idea that my kids are recipients of said aid. They would never think that in their own back yard one of those exists. We have done remarkably well considering my husband lost a great job years ago but we do not live like the people around us. I am sure they have picked on the fact that we drive very old cars parked in our paid for house but the property taxes alone could pay most peoples mortgage. Again, I am thankful for the generous Alumni of Cornell and MIT but not to full pay families. You did not give my kids the opportunity to attend my kids worked for it.</p>
<p>Sweeping generalizations are generally–dead wrong.</p>
<p>As for the high cost of college, I admit to being in shock when I found out that the approx 80k we’d saved would barely make a dent in the cost of a private university. And that as upper middleclass family (income approx 120k) we’d either have to borrow the rest (income had taken a nose dive, so amount we could pay out-of-pocket wasn’t nearly what our EFC was)…or look for more affordable options. Sort of like when we were house-shopping. We saw plenty we liked, but the price tags weren’t always realistic!</p>
<p>We found a more affordable option, and D is happy as can be. I feel blessed we can pay for it. She feels blessed she won’t have loans when she graduates. No, she’s not at a private college. Yes, she’s getting a great education.</p>
<p>The more I’ve thought about, the more blessed I feel. My D certainly had way more options than her friends from lower-income families. Maybe not as many as friends from wealthier families, but she has landed in a great spot, and we are grateful for it.</p>
<p>452</p>
<p>I found this in about 10 seconds of googling. AFAICT it is not atypical.</p>
<p><a href=“http://giving.columbia.edu/cucampaign/Kluge_challenge_010908.pdf[/url]”>http://giving.columbia.edu/cucampaign/Kluge_challenge_010908.pdf</a></p>
<p>Poor John Kluge. The man pledges 200 million bucks for financial aid, (its Columbia, so its ALL need based) and folks come on here and tell us, with a straight face, that donations are not made with need based financial aid specifically in mind.</p>
<p>I would say that this is one limited area where poor people do have an “advantage” over middle-class people. But it’s balanced out by a lot of disadvantages.</p>
<p>My D’s lower-income friends by and large wound up at CC/local u, because all the other schools they applied to, while generous, usually had a gap that required the family to come up with 5-10k (in addition to the student taking a loan, and doing work/study). For them, this amount might as well have been a million!</p>
<p>The way I see it, I would be able to find someone to lend us the additional money we would have needed for private U. If we had decided that was absolutely a priority, we could have made it happen. We are lucky.</p>
<p>But D’s lower-income friends generally didn’t have the assets or credit needed to borrow even 5-10k additional. One friend who did go to a private U had an institutional grant disappear (endowment problems at U) in sophomore year, and almost had to drop out, because his parents were unable to borrow $3k. An uncle scraped up the money at the last minute.</p>
<p>Perhaps I am misreading, but there seems to be a belief system amongst some of the correlation: expensive = better quality
full pay = whiny and/or spoiled</p>
<p>I believe both of these premises are inaccurate</p>