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So a middle class kid with top grades and a high SAT score has to settle for a state school?
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<p>I don't know if I would necessarily call it a matter of 'settling'. Many of the state schools are better than many of the private schools out there. For example, I'd probably prefer to go to Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, or Virginia than to most of the private schools out there. Some of the individual colleges that comprise Cornell University are contract colleges that receive subsidies from the state of New York, and hence charge cut-rate tuition for state residents. </p>
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Not everyone is CC smart. Many scholarships are academic relate and some students just don't qualify for a substantial academic scholarship. Also, many schools, including some of the more elite colleges, don't even give scholarships. My chem teacher, who was about 26 years old when I had him soph year, was a really good student who attended NYU but didn't get a dime in scholarship $. He's still paying student loans and still lives w/his mother due to the overwhelming cost of an NYU education. If he was rich, the costs wouldn't be a big issue. If he was lower class, a lot of his education would be covered by government grants. IMO, the middle class has the toughest time paying for college.
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<p>I'm afraid I can't really sympathize with this argument. After all, you brought up the notion of elite schools such as NYU. Look, if you're good enough to get admitted to an elite school, then you're good enough to also get a full ride somewhere else. Yeah, it probably won't be as good of a school, but hey, it's a full ride. </p>
<p>Then again, it might be as good of a school. My brother got into MIT early, but with no aid. Then he got into Caltech - with full ride + stipend. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which one he chose. Other top schools like Duke and Carnegie-Mellon also give out substantial merit aid. If you're good enough to get into one of the very best schools, then you are probably also good enough to get one of these rides. If you choose not to take it, well, I don't know what to tell you. </p>
<p>So when you say that your chem teacher got really good grades yet didn't get any money from NYU - well, if he was really such a good student, he should have been able to get a full ride somewhere else. Otherwise, he must not have been that good of a student. Furthermore, if you are just going to end up being a teacher anyway, then you don't need to go to a school like NYU. </p>
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Also, I believe the Ivies only give money to needy students, so if a student say, wanted to go into business, and got into Wharton, I am not personally aware of any way for a middle class student to pay, besides small outside scholarships, which are relatively hard to come by and are usually not sufficient to pay such a large tuition.
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Most top universities have few or no merit scholarships. I know many, many middle class kids who end up with much more college debt than any poor kids because the poor kids get need-based aid and the middle class kids don't but their parents cant/wont pay 45,000 a year.
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<p>It should be said that EVERY top school does indeed offer significant 'merit scholarships' in a certain sense. I am talking, of course, about the funding that PhD students at those schools get regardless of income level. For example, I know a number of Harvard PhD students who are veritable millionaires, but are getting full funding+ stipend from Harvard anyway. For example, I know some people who have worked in the finance industry for awhile and have made enough money that they never have to worry about money ever again. But they decide they'd like to spend the rest of their lives being academics, so they decide to get a doctorate from Harvard. Harvard still gives them full funding regardless. These guys clearly don't need the money. But, hey, if Harvard is just going to hand it to them, why not take it? That's basically a merit scholarship right there. </p>
<p>Furthermore, in many cases, the doctoral stipend you can get from a private school will exceed what you can get from a state school. Almost all full-time doctoral programs waive tuition. The question is about the stipend. I know several Harvard doctoral students who found that the stipend they would get from Harvard exceeded what they would get from the equivalent doctoral program at a state school - sometimes by almost double. The choice was already easy before, as Harvard had a better doctoral program, but now because of the stipend difference, the choice is not a close call whatsoever. Let's see, you can go to a better and more famous doctoral program that ALSO gives you far more money, or you can go to a less famous and worse program that gives you less money. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. </p>
<p>Now of course one might say that not everybody is going for a PhD. However, it is also true that not everybody 'needs' an elite undergrad education. Like I said, if you're good, you should be able to garner a full ride, even if it's from a no-name school. While you won't get an 'elite' degree, you will at least have a debt-free degree. </p>
<p>Once again, I would invoke my brother. He got a full ride + stipend to go to Caltech for undergrad. Now he is getting a full ride + stipend for graduate school at Stanford. {He also got a full ride + stipend to go to a prep boarding high school}. He has never paid a penny in his life for any of his elite private-school education. On the contrary, * the schools have paid him*. His whole life, he has been 'making money' by going to school. If he can do that, other people can do that too. </p>
<p>And besides, you invoked the notion of Wharton, so let's talk about Wharton. The truth is, the plurality of Wharton BS graduates are going to become Wall Street investment bankers, where they can make 125k+ to start. So I don't exactly feel a lot of sympathy that a middle-class kid might have to go into great debt to get such a degree. It's like feeling 'bad' for medical students who go into a mountain of debt while they're in med-school. You don't feel bad because you know that they will quickly be able to pay it all off once they are fully-practicing doctors. I don't feel bad in the least for people going into debt to get their MBA's at Harvard Business School, when you consider their opportunities. Hence, I don't feel that bad about people going into debt to get their BS degrees from Wharton.</p>
<p>One might reply - what if you don't want to become a Wall Street investment banker? Then the answer is simple - you don't have to go to Wharton. Like I said, you can choose a lesser school that will offer you a full ride. </p>
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No, you are mistaken. The colleges want to see excellence in spite of low income -- it shows the applicant has overcome adversity. But if the applicant has not-quite-top stats and doesn't show the excellence of other applicants, but is a low-income student, it shows he or she didn't overcome adversity. And this isn't even considering that most universities don't have need-blind admissions / aren't able to meet all of a student's need.
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<p>I think this is right on the money. Let's not romanticize the life of the poor. Let's face it. Many of them won't even go to college at all. Many will get caught up in the destructive lifestyle of gangs and crime. When you're a young kid growing up in ghetto infested with gangbangers, it's hard to resist that lure to become a gangster yourself. Even if you don't live in such a neighborhood, you probably don't have parents who don't place value on education, especially higher education. I know one guy who basically went to college against his parents's wishes, as they wanted him not to go to college at all, but rather to get a job right after high school to help support the family. In fact, even high school was rather suspect, as the family placed pressure on the kids to drop out of high school in order to make money. That's why he's the only person in his family to have even graduated from high school. It all worked out well for him - he's now a graduate student at Harvard - but it was a very tough choice to defy his family like that. </p>
<p>And besides, I think we are discounting the fact that problems of the poor don't end after they get into college. They still have to GRADUATE from college. It has been posited in this thread that less qualified poor students can nevertheless get into college, because the college sympathisizes with their plight, and then once they're there, they may get a full ride because of their low income. Yes, that's probably true. But what happens when they are IN college? Because they are less prepared, they tend to do poorly. Many of them will flunk out or drop out. While a middle-class student had to go into debt, at least he is better prepared and so he will probably get a degree. The poor student may never get a degree. And even of those that do graduate, many of them will barely make it with mediocre GPa's, which will detract from their ability to go to graduate school or get a good job. </p>
<p>I know several people whom this happened to. Some poor students were brought in for undergrad, and then just got absolutely mercilessly crushed. One of them at one point literaly had a 0.5 GPA (half D's, half F's). Within several years, they were all expelled for poor performance. The students were simply not prepared for the rigors of the school. So what was so good about the fact that they got easier admissions and need-based rides? They all ended up with no degrees and ruined academic records. Yeah, maybe the middle class kids had to undergo a more rigorous admissions process and had to go into debt. But at least they got their degrees.</p>