<p>Geez, 67 pages long. A little light summer reading.
(Actually, appendices make up lots of it).</p>
<p>thanks to danas, leonine, marite and especially northstarmom for interesting stuff.
I'm conflicted here and still thinking stuff through. With y'all's (y'uns?) help, maybe I'll figure it out in time to give advice to my kid.
She knows that many years ago, I chose my Big State U over Northwestern, and cited finances as the reason, when it was really more complicated....
And perhaps for this generation, it still is. But it's good to know that finances aren't an insurmountable obstacle in some cases.</p>
<p>"Family wealth doesn't make a student any more intelligent."</p>
<p>Excellent point -- a too-often unacknowledged point buried in discussions on other threads about aspects of the admissions process. A lot of assumptions & prejudices about wealth that do not pan out in real life, or even in college performance. U.C. Berkeley did a study on this, proving this also.</p>
<p>My daughters have attended private elem. & private high schools. In each environment there were actually far more brilliant lower-middle-class students than wealthy ones, and vice versa: an awful lot of not-very-intelligent but well-off students. Obviously this is not projectible beyond those populations, but I bring it up because I acknowledge the (previous) prejudice of my own expectations. I <em>expected</em> the wealthy ones to be more intelligent, <em>and</em> to perform better. More often than not, neither was true.</p>
<p>epiphany - Well said!</p>
<p>If kids can have 3 meals a day, they should be able to do well in school. Look at the poor countries: kids don't have 3 full meals a day but they still do well in school.</p>
<p>"My daughters have attended private elem. & private high schools. In each environment there were actually far more brilliant lower-middle-class students than wealthy ones, "</p>
<p>That probably is because in order for a poor student to get to private schools, either they or their parents have to be unusually bright and motivated to navigate the system to go far outside of the places that their friends and peers go. In addition, the private schools are going to accept only the creme de la creme of the poor students who apply who obviously will need financial aid and not be from families who not only can pay the private fees but also can contribute in a big way to the various fund raisers and other activities.</p>
<p>" Look at the poor countries: kids don't have 3 full meals a day but they still do well in school."</p>
<p>Who says they do well in school? In most poor countries, only the very brighest and most highly motivated students get to go to even secondary school. Of course, those students will do well: If they didn't do well, they wouldn't be able to go to school.</p>
<p>What you're saying is the equivalent of, "Look at the poor kids who go to Harvard. They don't come from families where they had three full meals a day, but they still do well in school."</p>
<p>I actually have been to developing countries and have visited some of their schools, volunteered in a school, and talked to students and their families. I saw students who were acting out in an elementary school in Jamaica. Indeed, when I volunteered there, the majority of students were misbehaving. One student, however, stood out for being very motivated. She also seemed to be the only student who was headed to go to high school, which was in another town and required fees.</p>
<p>"the private schools are going to accept only the creme de la creme of the poor students who apply who obviously will need financial aid and not be from families who not only can pay the private fees but also can contribute in a big way to the various fund raisers and other activities."</p>
<p>^^ so true, NSM, and true esp. at this school in question. The non-development admits are astounding bright, and already quite accomplished in extracurriculars by the time they enter the h.s.</p>
<p>A key quote from Tokenadult's Harvard study on finaid:</p>
<p>"Consider students whose parents have medium-low incomes (defined as $40,000 to 80,000.) They are sufficiently well off to be asked for out-of-pocket payments that are substantial.... Yet, medium-low income parents may be unwilling to pay out-of-pocket college expenses. In short, the circumstances of at least some medium-low income students generate maximum susceptibility to small grants that represent a large share of comprehensive costs. .......
The students who lose the most are precisely those students who accept aid that is actually quite modest in value but covers a large share of comprehensive cost at a college that spends very little on instruction." </p>
<p>My thoughts: The study assumes that the higher-priced more-selective schools increase "human capital" the most. Study CEOs' backgrounds and one might reach a different conclusion. Study academics' backgrounds and one might reach a similar conclusion.</p>
<p>The study also incorrectly names the Morehead Scholarship at UNC, calling it the Morehouse Scholarship (p. 11). Not a big deal, but hurts the study's credibility. That scholarship is now called the Morehouse-Cain Scholarship.</p>
<p>Okay, I'm sure that this is coming from "left field" for most of us. But Ivan Illich argued that there is no shortage of the means and opportunities to learn. Schools argue that there is a shortage of such opportunities, and therefore resources must be directed toward them.
My kids did not go to school after sixth grade. The biggest expense for them was overdue fines at the Chicago Public Library. I can't imagine them having a more enriched background- going one-on-one (in print) with the greatest minds in history. No particular income level needed. Benjamin Franklin is often credited with being the modern proponent of the lending library.
In my mind, it wasn't necessary that they subsequently matriculated at elite colleges. That they did just served to quiet judgmental relatives.
Please know that income does not have to be a bar to human development. Nor do schools.</p>
<p>Oops. I meant Morehead-Cain, not Morehouse-Cain. Though for some it could mean More House. Ha.</p>
<p>danas speaks truth, for all ages. Distance learning, beyond just the University of Phoenix, is spreading to credible institutions.
From the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer:
"Educators who run the University of North Carolina system are hungry to enroll more students like Rob Gray.</p>
<p>A physiologist at Duke University Hospital by day, he drives about 20 miles west each evening to Efland, where he eventually settles in for a few hours of classwork at the Rob Gray campus of East Carolina University. The location is better known as Gray's home, where he is earning an MBA online in addition to spending time with his wife and 2-year-old son.</p>
<p>That type of interest has convinced UNC system leaders that it's time to launch the University of North Carolina Online. The system will better organize and market the courses and degrees it offers online, putting more than 90 programs on one Web site. The campaign takes aim at the nation's largest online institution, the University of Phoenix, with ads that boast: "All of our online degrees come from universities your prospective employer has actually heard of."</p>
<p>marite: I don't begrudge the colleges for having the financial aid policies they do, I was only commenting on mini's oft quoted sentiment that the group being left out is the middle income group, or perhaps upper middle income in most places. Even merit aid often doesn't make it affordable for many, though others are indeed helped by it. I see many students who do not even bother to apply to top privates, for which they might otherwise qualify, strictly for financial reasons. These students come from families who often make in excess of $100,000 in annual income. Here is a link to the average aid by income for UChicago for 2005-2006. With the recent donation, this will change, but it is still useful for illustrative purposes. For those making $108,000 - $117,000 the average award was about $22,700. Which still leaves more than that amount to be paid by the parent, which is at least $5000 more than the total costs at the Univ. of Washington, for example. <a href="http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/prospective/average_aid.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/prospective/average_aid.shtml</a></p>
<p>"I see many students who do not even bother to apply to top privates, for which they might otherwise qualify, strictly for financial reasons."</p>
<p>The same situation existed when most of us were young. I actually think that a higher proportion of middle class people are going to top private colleges than existed when I was young. This is just a guess, however, as I haven't seen any stats on this. I think now, people's expectations are higher than they were when most of us were college bound. After all, it wasn't until the 1940s that most Americans graduated from h.s. When we were young, it still was a very big deal for most middle class people to have kids going to college even if that college was an in state university. Now people feel they deserve more.</p>
<p>I believe mini quotes 7% of students are in the $70,000 to %160,000 range (not very many), but perhaps we will get the real numbers when mini reads this.</p>
<p>idad:</p>
<p>I think we are not in disagreement. There are indeed very few colleges that can afford to spend a large amount on finaid. I read that last year, Harvard spent $86millions on finaid, and Princeton, with a smaller student body, spent as much proportionally.</p>
<p>But while some students don't bother applying to top privates for financial reason, we also read that some students find that going to top privates with finaid can be more advantageous than attending their flagship university.<br>
They should apply to both private and public schools and compare finaid packages. Deciding to forgo private schools a priori may not be the wisest choice.
Finally, one must decide how much dollar value to put on intangible such as class size, guaranteed campus housing and other factors. For some families, a higher cost of $20k over four years for attending Chicago instead of UWA may be worth it. For others, it may not.</p>
<p>I tend to agree, often the privates are better deals than most realize. But, it is still not easy for many to attend, even though they are not considered to have much need. I'm sure we don't disagree about that either. I have a close friend who's income is in the upper 70's who can barely afford to send his kid to their flagship state university, even with scholarships. It's often quite tough out there.</p>
<p>I think the toughest row to hoe is for families who are poor or middle class and whose kids are average, not stellar. The kids may make perfectly good students at many schools, but they are unlikely to receive either merit or need-based aid, and the flagship university may indeed be difficult to afford.</p>
<p>"Good point, Marite. I think the colleges, or at least Harvard, really are being honest these days about aiming "affirmative action" more by socioeconomic status than by ethnicity as such. Admission offices want both kinds of diversity on campus."</p>
<p>The data just don't show this to be the case. The majority of prestige colleges have a lower percentage of Pell Grant students than in 1993-1994, and, even after the new admissions/no-loan policies, they are less economically diverse than they were 25 years ago. </p>
<p>Gordon Winston has demonstrated pretty conclusively that there are 2 1/2 to 3X as many "qualified" SES students out there as are actually being admitted and are enrolling. If they want them, the schools would have 'em. </p>
<p>But that's actually quite okay, as the prestige privates' loss represents a gain for UCLA and the various state u honors colleges.</p>
<p>"I was only commenting on mini's oft quoted sentiment that the group being left out is the middle income group, or perhaps upper middle income in most places."</p>
<p>It varies from place to place, but the big losers are students in the middle to upper middle group - $45k-$92k. At some places, their numbers have indeed shrunk to virtually infinitesmal, if you take out the recruited athletes and URMs. Those above there, especially $125-$160k, have done quite well, and are the plurality beneficiaries of the new "no-loan" policies. And for a college, it's great to have them. For the cost of one low-income student, they can get 5 or 6 top 20%ers with small scholarships, have them and their parents picking up most of the tab, and yet have the college look more generous by increasing the percentage who receive need-based aid.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>The same situation existed when most of us were young. I actually think that a higher proportion of middle class people are going to top private colleges than existed when I was young. This is just a guess, however, as I haven't seen any stats on this.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I also believe this to be true. I think that one thing that has changed is that middle class people have become investors. Back in my younger days, investing was something that only the "rich" did. The middle class put their money in savings accounts in banks and looked forward to pensions when they retired.</p>
<p>Now with 401Ks, etc., the middle class is more comfortable with investing and risk. More are able to put together a college fund for the kids and thus more prestigious and private colleges come into the affordable range.</p>
<p>I think we are bastardizing the word "blue collar" here. In the northeast, firemen, cops, nurses, construction workers etc. are considered "blue collar" but make well over minimum wage. They are considered middle to upper middle class when both parents are working. So to say that Harvard is looking for more "blue collar" families just doesn't fly with me. I was at a val/sal reception in my area and the kids who are going to Harvard were not from "blue collar" families.</p>
<p>Janesmom makes a good point.<br>
S's friend, on full-ride, is from both low SES and blue-collar background. His dad is a mechanic in a small town where the median income is well below the national median.</p>
<p>Though we can all come up with anecdotes, including myself, it still does not disconfirm mini's point that the percentage of lower SES kids is actually dropping, and the presence of middle income (often blue collar) kids is negligible. Income stats are a little hard to interpret as well. An income of $100,000 isn't so grand when a 1000 sqft. house in an okay neighborhood costs $400,000.</p>