<p>Not to oversimplify, but here are a few thoughts:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Ivy/elite private will tend to have smaller classes and slightly more access to professors.</li>
<li>The quality of education (profs, cutting-edge material, test difficulty) is most likely pretty equal among the top privates and top publics. It’s not necessarily harder to get a Bachelor’s degree at Princeton than it is to get one at Wisconsin; it’s just much harder to get into the former. Given the party atmosphere and laissez-faire student attendance requirements at UW, between two students of similar ability, it might actually be more difficult at UW. A-through-M-option multiple choice exams certainly don’t help you pass if you’re not attending class and studying. At least on essay exams an unprepared student can BS.</li>
</ul>
<p>I go to a rather good public school (University of North Carolina) and absolutely love the diversity here. It all really depends on what you want out of your college experience. At a school like UNC, the prestige is still there, yet you’re less likely to deal with the kind of entitlement or snobbiness that my friends at Ivies complain about. Kids from all backgrounds attend big public schools–low income, super high income, international, and lots of racial diversity. Plus, prestigious public schools allow you to have an amazing social college experience while also gaining a valuable degree. If you’re looking to go to a prestigious graduate or professional program, public ivies send tons of students to the actual ivies for med, law, and other grad schools. (plus you’re more likely to have a better looking GPA) </p>
<p>Public Ivies are still expensive though out-of-state, so if you have a school like U-Mich, UNC, UVA, UCal Berkeley, or others in your state, you should take advantage of that and save money for grad school. </p>
<p>First off, SVP is more of a commercial bank title. The equivalent at an IBank is “Director”. Secondly, even at the same bank, someone 10 years out could be only a VP (3 years an an Analyst, 4 as Associate, and now VP). If his career was derailed a bit along the way by firings/layoffs (which happens very often in IB) and he had to restart somewhere, he could still be an Associate. Now, $250K for a VP is low. It’s about in line for an Associate with some experience, however. Also, we don’t know if this guy is at a BB. I can certainly see $250K being all-in comp for a VP at a non-BB.</p>
<p>Oliver, I think it’s 10 year from high school graduation so I think maybe he has been working probably 6 years. I realized my error after I posted that my nephew was Borneo in 1985 so that makes him almost 30 years old.</p>
<p>@patertrium Good luck to your kid. We are on the same boat last year. My D applied to most schools that you have mentioned. This topic is very close to our heart since my daughter turned down UCLA (Regents)/UCB in favor of an elite private. Your kid can apply also to USC. My D got the Presidential scholarship (1/2 Tuition), but alas, we bit the bullet and she’s attending a non-HYP Ivy full pay.</p>
<p>Choosing a full pay private over a very good instate option works for many people but I would imagine most that are doing that could fit into these categories (but I could certainly be wrong) : can afford it , are legacies and willing to pay , have saved and always were willing to pay for a private, may have an only child but not necessarily, may like smaller schools, may like more prestige, may have family in another area where a school is located, may have promised a kid they could go anywhere, may have an athletic kid who could play at an Ivy but would have no shot at playing at a place like Cal/UCLA, etc. . In other words, who knows and answers could potentially be all over the map depending on the particular family but usually it is interesting to find out the reasons . </p>
<p>First of all, I didn’t say “most” people at Harvard are full pay. I said about half of students at top private colleges are full-pay. Harvard is an outlier both because it provides need-based FA at a higher income scale than other elite privates, and because it apparently enrolls more students from middle-income families (though apparently not more students from lower-income families, judging by the paltry number of Harvard students on Pell Grants). At Princeton, 41.1% are full-pays; at Yale 46%; at Columbia 47.9%; at Stanford 48.9%; at Dartmouth 50.3%; at Cornell 51.7%; at Penn 54.9%; at Chicago 55.2%; at Brown 55.6%; at Duke 57%. As I said, “about half.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wrong on both counts. At Yale, total COA is $63,250. At Michigan, total COA for a Michigan resident is $26,993. That’s a difference of $36K and change per year, or $144K over four years. For a Michigan resident who would be a full-pay at Yale, going to the elite private will cost well over twice as much. Or, to look at it from the other side, going to a top in-state public represents about a 60% savings in the cost of college for a full-pay. Also keep in mind that Michigan has a higher in-state COA than many publics, and many top students will qualify for merit aid at their in-state public…</p>
<p>My kids have been full-pays at elite privates. They’re full-pays because our current income is just barely above the cut-off for need-based FA at the schools they chose to attend, although our income has only recently been that high. After taxes, our net income is about $130K, so COA for one student would represent nearly 50% of our net income, and having two in college at the same time (as we did last year) would represent very close to 100% of our after-tax income. Fortunately, we had the foresight to scrimp and save for many years for our daughters’ education, making it our top financial priority along with retirement savings, and we’ve managed to tighten our belts until it hurts through the college years. That means we live in a beat-up old house that’s still under a substantial mortgage, and drive modest cars until they’re ten years old. And frankly, I resent some snotty-nosed HS kid telling me that $144K, or even your wildly fictional figure of $80K, means “diddly” to me. We’ve never paid that much for anything in our lives save our house. which we could afford only by taking on very substantial debt. So please stop mouthing off about other people’s financial situation, because you just don’t know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, each of our daughters had about $4K in net assets at the time they enrolled in college–and they only had that much because they worked part-time jobs through high school and in the summer before starting college. Fortunately, they’re great kids with good values and good heads on their shoulders, and they fully understand and appreciate the financial sacrifices we’ve made for them, which makes it all worth it.</p>
<p>I disagree. We don;t have reliable undergraduate rankings in most fields, but if you look at graduate program rankings, which basically are a proxy for faculty strength, Stanford, Harvard and UC Berkeley dominate with the most top-5 and top-10 programs combined with very broad curricula. Those schools rarely have a program out of the top 10, and they have very broad offerings across the board. Most of the Ivies are good but hardly stellar in engineering (Cornell and Princeton being the high-end outliers), and don’t offer as full an array of academic programs. Penn has an outstanding undergrad business school, but that option isn’t even available at the other Ivies (well, Cornell has a “sort of” undergrad business program in its ag school), and most Ivies are actually quite spotty in top-5 and top-10 programs. Michigan isn’t quite as strong as UC Berkeley in top 5 and top 10 programs, though it certainly has plenty of both, and it’s very rare for Michigan to have any program ranked lower than top 25, which few Ivies can claim. I look at this from a faculty perspective, as do most college and university administrators because that’s something they can control. For faculty strength across the widest array of programs, UC Berkeley is bested only by Stanford and arguably Harvard, though a case can be made either way between UC Berkeley and Harvard. .And by that metric Michigan would be very much in the running with the other Ivies. That’s not to say the quality of the undergraduate experience is the same, but to accuse UC Berkeley and Michigan of having “very weak” programs is just wildly off-base.</p>
Different elite privates have different FA policies. Most of the elite privates that have been mentioned in this thread have posted FA information suggesting your situation would be uncommon at their college. For example, Yale lists the FA stats for their 2013-14 class at <a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/financial-aid-prospective-students”>http://admissions.yale.edu/financial-aid-prospective-students</a> . Among Yale students in the $100-$150k income group, 99% of those who applied for FA received aid with an average grant of $44k per year… Among students in the $150k-$200k income group, again 99% of those who applied received aid, with an average grant of $30k per year. They state, </p>
<p>“In fact, Yale is one of the most affordable colleges in the country for families making less than $200,000 in annual income - significantly less expensive than attending a top public university, even as an in-state student.”</p>
<p>“Ninety percent of American families would pay the same or less to send their children to Harvard as they would a state school.” </p>
<p>One might wonder why only ~half of students are claiming FA if Harvard and Yale are less expensive than state schools for 90% of American families. Most of this difference relates to students from wealthy families being extremely overrepresented at most elite privates. At many elite colleges, international students have limited FA, so the vast majority are full pays. I’d expect these are the two biggest contributions, although I realize that there are many other contributing groups (families in unique financial situations, students with alternative sources of funding, families who do not want their student to have a campus job during the school year, etc.).</p>
<p>Just to be clear, the only income figure I mentioned was income net of taxes. When colleges list income figures, they’re using gross income, i.e…, income before taxes. HS students who have never paid taxes often don’t understand the difference. People who pay taxes understand the difference. Our household gross income is well above the $100-$150K figure you’re citing. Our household income after taxes is not.</p>
<p>Beyond that, H, Y, and P have uncommonly generous FA policies. Most elite private colleges and universities cut off need-based financial aid at anywhere from $150K to $180K gross income, which could be (and in most cases probably is) substantially less than $150K net of taxes.</p>
<p>Many of these are LACs (trying to buy more diversity, perhaps). However, half the Ivies are need-blind even for internationals. A 5th (Brown) is need-aware for internationals, but awards FA to ~59% of its international students (averaging ~$43K per student). At Brown, internationals comprise about 11% of incoming freshmen. So, the vast majority of full-pays must be domestic students. I would think many of those full-pay students do fall in the upper-middle income donut hole, yet could be paying much less at an in-state public university (or other school after merit aid).</p>
<p>Duke net price based on my family’s stats would be $46,300 not counting loans and work study. (and yes, we have very little money saved, as we have a HELOC for emergencies)</p>
<p>As an aside, anyone afraid to run the NPCs because it is too much work, the College Board NPCs save the data so you don’t have to keep typing it in over and over and over. However, it seems like a lot of state schools have their own NPC, so you might want to keep your 2013 taxes around (and you’d need them to start the College Board NPCs. Some NPCs show merit aid purely based on HS GPA and/or SAT scores, and that is really helpful in figuring out costs.</p>
<p>This is all very interesting, but when it comes down to it, I’m glad I ended up visiting my two top choices which helped me rule out one of them, and I was lucky enough to get in the other. My son has done three college tours and visited three other campuses, and the three he visited he doesn’t like enough to want to go on tours. I don’t see any reason not to apply to excellent public in-state schools (not all in-state public schools are excellent, and as someone said, it does depend on the major to some extent).</p>
<p>I hope anyone who is serious about wanting to get somewhere in life without wasting money still ends up visiting the campuses and finding out what kind of learning - and living - environment it is. The amount of variation in programs is significant, and some of the smaller schools have interesting ways of presenting the college experience.</p>
<p>Remember though George Bush Jr. went to Yale, Jeb Bush went to the University of Texas and turned out okay (politics aside).</p>
<p>@puzzled123
The decision was based on multiple factors. We’re satisfied so far and she’s very happy at her school. Although she’s only been there 2 weeks or so.</p>
<p>My daughter has a friend that went to Cornell turned down 1/2 tuition at USC in CS. She ended up working in the same company as her friend who went to USC for 1/2 tuition. I don’t think she had a very good experience there. </p>
According to <a href=“Need-blind admission - Wikipedia”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia; , there are only 6 colleges in the United States that are need blind and meet full need for internationals, a very small fraction of the total that are need blind and meet full need for US students. </p>
<p>"If you are not a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident, your request for financial aid will be a factor in our admission evaluation. Because of the limited financial aid resources available to international citizens, Stanford can offer admission with financial aid to just a small number of international citizens each year. "</p>
<p>“Just a small number” of internationals receiving FA sounds quite different from the large link numbers, as well as quite a contrast from US students, for which full need is met and most who are not on a scholarship receive generous FA. I could list many other examples, but the point is FA is more limited for international students at most elite US colleges.</p>
<p>The number of recipients and average amounts are precisely quantified in the links I provided above (or in the CDS, section H data). According to one of the pages I cited, at Stanford, Brown, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wellesley, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke, among others, a majority of internationals receive FA (averaging from ~ $35K at Stanford to $48K+ at Williams.) Those averages look pretty generous to me (although I cannot tell how far the FA really goes toward meeting need.)</p>
<p>At Berkeley, Michigan, UNC-CH, UVa, and Wisconsin, among other state universities, FA is not available to internationals at all. </p>