I might be totally wrong on this, but does it seem that the Elite schools skew towards the edges of the income spectrum?
I have done decently over the years, but can’t fathom how someone from middle class or upper mc would be able to cover the parent contribution at many of the elite schools. Even if I would have quadrupled the college savings I think it would barely cover half of what the fafsa would be telling me what I should contribute. Maybe we just didn’t save enough. I don’t have any hard feelings around it. I am just looking for facts.
If many people are in the same boat as I am then it would seem that the extremely well off people who can fullpay an elite will make up a decent percentage of the students. Then you would have the people that are just getting by who get tons of free aid from the elites. I know about that because when I was a student I was one of those kids. I went to a need based university and I could only go there because of all the free money they gave me. I did find some outside scholarships to make it doable. The students from the middle are probably missing. Or at least less than the normal population.
It would just seem hard to imagine if you have a high stats student whose COA could be $10-$20K at many schools compared to having a COA of $30-50K at some elites.
I am sure this is not new in this world. But I ask myself who are at these elites. My D19 favors a non-elite right now over any elite. We are hoping for some good merit. She will still probably apply to some elites but I am not holding my breath for anything to come through.
I have been told recently by some people I trust very well to try to get through undergrad as cheaply as possible and save some $$$ for grad school. Of course you still have to do well enough to get in a decent grad school.
Most Ph.D grad school programs are funded. It is medical, dental, business, law and ??? That are private pay, tho some partial scholarships are available. Master programs are usually Self funded too.
The elites I am familiar with give aid to families with incomes up to $150k and more. If you make more than that, is it really out of reach or just imprudent. Probably the latter. Many kids in the “middle” are indeed going to state universities, including honors colleges, and I believe some are using the two years of community college to further reduce costs.
“Elites” are very generous with FA, regardless of what the FAFSA says. My DD gets a grant of over $40K a year at Penn, and we are solidly middle income.
Strongly toward the upper edge. A typical elite private college has about 35-60% of its undergraduates attending without grants or scholarships. It probably takes a family in the top 2-3% income to do so. Meanwhile, only about 10-20% of its undergraduates receive Pell grants, whose eligibility approximates the bottom half of the income scale (about a third of all undergraduates receive Pell grants, since those from lower income families are less likely to attend college at all).
This is likely attributable to admission policies and criteria, since elite private colleges tend to have policies and criteria that skew their admissions classes upward on the SES scale (e.g. preference for legacies, recruiting athletes in preppy sports, preferential connections to elite prep schools that are heavy with scions of the SES elite, etc.), presumably intentionally to keep the financial aid budget in check and because elitist employers recruiting there prefer that their recruits come from a predominantly high SES environment.
In terms of your personal financial situation, you can check the net price calculator on each college’s web site to see what its financial aid and net price may look like if your student is admitted.
The majority of students at most “elite” private colleges claim financial aid. Most families making ~$200k/yr get noteworthy FA at many “elite” private colleges, which is above typical “middle class” ranges. For example, Harvard’s NPC calc estimates the following parents contribution by income level among levels that some consider middle class, assuming 1 in college and typical assets. It’s one of the most affordable US colleges for middle class families, outside of non-need based scholarships, more affordable that typical in state publics or community colleges.
Top 45% of household incomes ($65k) – $0 contribution
Top 30% of household incomes ($95k) – $5k contribution
Top 20% of household incomes ($120k) – $8k contribution
Top 15% of household incomes ($140k) – $13k contribution
Even though Harvard is affordable for typical middle class families, Harvard’s income distribution skews towards the high end, like most private colleges, particularly highly selective ones. The NYT report stated that the median income among Harvard parents families was $170k, with 53% of families in the top 10% of income and fewer than 5% in the bottom 20% of income. It’s not a doughnut hole with middle class missing, as you suggested. Instead all groups under top ~20% are underrepresented, especially lower income families.
Ok, this is anecdotal, but we met the daughter of an friend at Barnard two years ago who graciously gave us a tour with my then Senior in HS D. She said almost everyone she met there was either full pay or full / very significant financial aid. (Kinda surprised that they even talked about it but she was charming and outgoing!) She has a parent who is a professor so got tuition benefits to be there. She said the missing contingent she noticed was upper middle class (like her). Since our EFC last year was $63k putting us right on the bubble for any need aid that unsolicited comment always stuck with me.
I suspect a lot of these anecdotal suffer from a combination of inaccurate guesses about how rich/poor other kids are, and differences appearing exaggerated as a comparison to what they are used to from HS. The NYT link you referenced for “real data” shows the following for Barnard: It’s the same pattern as the others – the higher you go up in income, the more the group is over-represented; and the lower you go in income, the more the group is under-represented. The “upper middle class” group seems to have near balanced representation. The NYT article mentions Barnard incomes ranked 24th out of 65 “elite colleges.” Many have much larger portions of wealthy students.
Top 0.1% income – 3% of students (30x over-representation)
Between top 0.1 to 1% income – 14% of students (15x over-representation)
Between top 1 to 5% income – 29% of students (7x over-representation)
Between top 5 to 10% income – 10% of students (2x over-representation)
Between top 10 to 20% income – 9% of students (balanced representation)
Middle 60% income – 29% of students (2x under-representation)
Bottom 20% income – 6.6% of students (3-4x under-representation)
Percentage of incoming first year students determined to have need: 38.3%
Percentage of all students determined to have need: 38.8%
So that’s 61% of the student body = full pay
That was with a COA of $72.3K for students living on campus.
Average financial aid package: $50.2K
Average need based grant: $44K
So-- on average-- a Barnard student receiving aid would be paying $22.1K out of pocket for college costs, and additionally taking on $6200 in loans plus work study.
So definitely skewed toward the wealthy, but then the balance depends on your definition of “middle class”. Basically that “average” would probably correspond to families in in the ~$80K income range, under Barnard’s current financial aid practices. Obviously some more, some less, since an “average” is only that.
For undergrad, elite schools are very much focused on lower, lower middle and wealthy households. There is a small 5% upper middle class demographic whose children are being asked to make their parents pay unreasonably high percentage of their incomes for elite colleges or go else where.
Not only on financial side but they are also disadvantaged in admission process as their lower income peers have lots of free resources and booster programs while their wealthy peers have access to donation, contacts, resources, opportunities and legacy cards.
I hope at some point this would get corrected as these applicants have no control over how their families or colleges want to spend their money. Their dreams get crushed even when they beat all the odds and secure a seat in an elite college. There are lots of stereotypes about them.
I don’t think that anyone really disagrees with the OP. When my kids were born, we really made a sacrifice and began to save at the time a pretty sizable chunk of our monthly income for each of our three kids in a 529 account and now that we have 2 in college and one 3 years away, I am glad we did, but for the 2nd child it only really covered 25% of the education fee. Luckily, I was able to progress enough in my career that we can afford to send our kids to an elite college, but if I wouldn’t have been so fortunate, there really is no way.
That being said, the US has more than 50 of the worlds top 100 universities, and many of them are state flagships and some states like California have more then one public in that list. Rankings are great to have a datapoint or validation that your school is good, but any school on that top 100 (which doesn’t include LACs which many believe are as good as those on the list and some believe better) you will get a great education. Instead of worrying, “But I didn’t get into Harvard!” look at the great opportunity you do have by living in a country with so many options.
I’d be curious how one could take a wide variety of large Out-of-State Publics, Large Privates, Small Privates, Urban, Rural and make them equally accessible to all. Most Universities do not believe that educating is their core mission. The Research Uni’s look at the undergrad student body as a raw material in their mission to Further the Body of Knowlege and apply that improved knowledge to the betterment of society. They believe that their current admissions formula is working very well and see no need to change. This upsets and confuses many, especially those for OUS who want to send their kids to the very tippy-tops of the ranking list.
I would love to see the NYT data by each income decile to see if where the escalations, dips and plateaus lie.
In the Barnard example, the fact that the number of students from 80th and 90th percentile ranges are slightly below balanced representation could be an indication that price sensitivity does impact full pay or near full pay students attending that college.
I support aid for low-income students. Even so, there’s little doubt that we have a very convoluted pricing structure for higher ed that creates some marginal winners and losers. That said, the funding inequities in our K12 systems are a FAR larger and problematic societal issue, IMHO.
I think it would be great if only poor kids applied to the elite colleges, and smart kids from well to do families applied to Honors Colleges with merits. Then, all of them if accepted can go to colleges for free.
The elites are not focued on low income students. Look at the actual data; low income students are very under-represented at elite schools. Most low income students have little to no access to “free resources and booster programs”. Better off students, even middle class suburban students, have access to the most important resource - a good education and the expectation that the student will go to college.
That being said, the reality is that for many families with good incomes, especially those start their adult lives with student loans and no savings, it is just not possible to save enough to be full pay (or close to full pay, a $5,000 grant doesn’t make much of a dent when the COA is $70K), and fund retirement, while living a reasonable, realitively frugal life. I certainly didn’t project that private college costs would be over $65K at top college back in the 90s when my kids were born.
As long as there are enough high stats, qualified students to pay for an education at elite colleges, this is not going to change.