It’s not about spending and saving. You’re saying it wouldn’t be fair to penalize people in lower cost of living areas, why is it ok for the current system to penalize people who were born and raised in higher cost areas?
If two families both net 20k a year after income minus cost of living, why should either get more financial aid than the other? Financial aid should be based on the net, not an arbitrary regionally generated COL
You seem to miss the one about COL being a choice. I was raised in a high COL but moved to a lower one very early into my career, taking a significant pay cut on paper but one that allowed me a better lifestyle and ability to save. Many make the same choice. Why should the family that stays in LA or NY get more financial aid? Then let’s take two families in the same COL area with similar incomes. One buys a house at the top of the mortgage range offered by the bank and the other buys one that’s half of that. Why does the one that chose the bigger house deserve more financial aid?
Financial choices always have consequences.
I’d love to see evidence for your claim “as few as possible”. I can only speak to my own alma mater- Brown- which has invested tons of money as it transitioned from need aware to need blind, AND has invested in identifying and encouraging as many low income kids (whose HS records suggest they could be successful, i.e. in and out in four years) as they can find.
Why spend a nickel on special programs if your claim- “as few as possible” is accurate? You can skim the top of a couple of the well known urban magnet HS’s and get “as few as possible”. One phone call to the college counselors at Stuy, Bronx HS of Science, Boston Latin, TJ and you are done. Let the HS’s do all the work for you- they are already admitting the cream of the crop with a healthy percentage of first gen/immigrant/low income families.
It would be insane to invest in any sort of programs if you only wanted the bare minimum number. There are easier and cheaper ways to get there, and the universities know this. What I’ve seen is that they want as MANY as possible. There is always another scion from another wealthy family to balance it out- those kids are NOT hard to find and require zero investment to identify, since the heads of the Family Office are constantly on the phone to set up a meeting with the development team to learn which department needs a funded chair or two- and oh by the way, does that get my grandson in?
Hank, if it’s so great being low income- let’s all try it for a while and report back…
I 100% agree with @itsgettingreal21 here.
The size of U.S. families has been decreasing over time. But what has been happening to housing sizes? During the yuppie phase of the 80s houses started getting bigger and bigger and the trend continued. New houses have nearly twice as much square feet/person than they did 50 years ago.
People then started thinking that they “need” a bigger house. The bigger house costs more (to buy and for upkeep) and thus their cost of living is higher. Most people in the U.S. lived in significantly smaller houses up until about 40 years ago. People around the world (including nearly all “1st world” countries) live in houses that are much smaller than ours. And for a different visual, this shows how much new houses have grown in size over the last 100 years in various locales.
Yes, things are more expensive than they used to be. But as a society, we’ve also come to expect a lot more. People have choices in how they spend their financial resources. Among them are where they live and what size property they live in. It also has climate considerations, but that’s a different thread…
@itsgettingreal this is so true. So much of COL is discretionary. If believe FAFSA assigns a very low baseline number for food, shelter and other necessities on a per-person basis. This is not a middle class or upper class COL - it reflects the cost of the bare necessities, as it should.
But your points are well taken even without the geographic differences is in COL. Two families from the same area with identical incomes can live two very different lifesytles. Geography just adds another layer to the argument.
There are savers and there are spenders/borrowers. Our society has always rewarded/bailed-out the spenders/borrowers; they are what makes our economy go, after all, consuming at the redline until the economy/housing market/stock market comes under duress and those who are over-leveraged feel the brunt. Why should they get more need-based aid just because they spend more?
@AustenNut remember when typical families had kids sharing bedrooms, and entire families sharing a single full bathroom? Not anymore. It’s interesting to see how, when families move from coastal high-cost-of-living areas, they go large, with midwest and sunbelt areas seeing home sizes double in some cases.
Let’s look at some public colleges:
The median family income of a student from Georgia Tech is $130,000 , and 59% come from the top 20 percent.
The median family income of a student from University of Georgia is $129,800 , and 59% come from the top 20 percent.
This is just your assumption with no data behind it. According to the NYTimes link, only 2.9% of Tufts students were from the bottom 20%.
Thanks for injecting some data into the speculation.
Upper middle class folks like to think that “meets full need” colleges are just chockablock with poor kids (who have either “taken” their kids seat, or who have “taken” all the financial aid so there’s nothing left for Johnny paycheck trying to make ends meet in Palo Alto on $400K per year).
Fair point. Even the NESCAC schools who have been recognized for admitting more low-income kids (Williams and Amherst) still only have about 5% from the <$20k income bracket. Still, that’s enough to pull Amherst’s median income to $158k. But I agree there are still more rich kids than poor ones, at least as represented by this data (which I believe is now pretty old; published by the NYT in 2017). The barbell is definitely lop sided and makes you wonder if there’s even a “bulge” on the left (lower) side of the income range.
For those who haven’t had the chance to explore this NY Times article, here are a few visuals that might be helpful to show what kind of students are attending which kinds of universities.
And if we’re talking about Tufts specifically, here’s the family income breakdown from the NY Times:
Nearly 2/3 are in the top 10% of incomes, and more than 3/4 are in the top 20%. That leaves 20% of students whose families are between the 20th and 80th percentile.
ETA: To provide some additional context on these numbers
Typical US Household Incomes (source)
Household Percentile Incomes (source 1 & source 2)
Since a lot of posters forget what these incomes percentiles are, here’s a reminder that top 20% is any household with income more than about $145k. Top 5% starts at about $450k. The study data NY Times has is older, so these levels would be at somewhat lower incomes.
There is no “bulge” at the bottom. From the article link @AustenNut posted:
38 colleges had more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent
This includes Tufts as well as 5 ivies.
Top 1% income = $630K+
Bottom 60% income < $65k
A family making $50k and living in CA with one sibling, $1k in savings and renting would pay $1050 per year. The student would pay $1600 and contribute $2k from work.
Only $1k is included for travel and $1500 per year for personal expenses so that kid can’t Uber around with friends or go home or out for spring break like others. They can get the $5500 loan to cover “extras.”
A friend works for a charter school in Dallas. He worked with Johns Hopkins to get a bright kid a full ride but he backed out. Too daunting.
This NYTimes data was eye opening, but I really wish they would update it. The first graphic, as well as next table titled “38 colleges had more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent” is for college graduating class of 2013, nine years ago.
The outcomes data (the graphic titled " Poor students who attend top colleges do about as well as their rich classmates" and the following table " Colleges with the highest mobility rate, from the bottom 40 percent to the top 40 percent" use data from college graduating classes of 2002-04.
I am not comfortable drawing conclusions based on this data or even assuming any of this data applies to today’s situation. Again, it would be great if this data were updated because it is important data.
I agree, it would be great to see an update. Hard to imagine that the skewness toward wealthy families has improved in those nine years, at least as a trend. There may be individual schools making strides, but I doubt the “more 1%ers than bottom 60%ers” types of stats are improving for elite schools as a whole. Just my take.
It absolutely has improved at some schools, and dramatically. I don’t disagree that it’s still skewed though…the bottom line is that higher income families are more likely to attend college for many reasons, including affordability. On the flip side, there aren’t nearly enough college options for non-high stat, low income students (which is a sizable number of students).
Good point. In my opinion, the overall picture is likely not much different now than it was then.
As much as some of the schools would like the public to believe that they are making strides in admitting low-income students, the numbers show lots of room for further improvement, at least as of 2017 when the poorest kids only represent single-digit percentages at many schools:
It appears that the issue has become a point of consternation at Tufts: https://tuftsdaily.com/opinion/editorial/2022/04/15/editorial-tufts-admissions-process-favors-wealthy-applicants-that-needs-to-change-/
@SouthYankie made a good point about providing some context for the income numbers at the type of colleges, so I edited my original post to share some more information on the income thresholds discussed to provide some additional context for readers.
And I agree that it would be lovely to have some updated numbers as to student enrollments at all of these universities and from which socioeconomic classes they’re coming from. But like @dadmiws, I don’t think there’s been a huge shift in the makeup of the student bodies. As @Mwfan1921 indicates, this data isn’t from the last couple of years. But the trend lines shown here going over a decade didn’t have significant change (at least not for anyone outside the 1%) (Source is the same NY Times article from above.)
