Sometimes the drama here makes me chuckle.
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Not so much. see High school graduates, by sex and control of school: Selected years, 1869-70 through 2027-28
In the year I graduated 1975-76 there were 3,142,120 HS grads. The projected numbers for this year 2020-2021 are 3,613,030.
Yale, for example increased their entering class size by about the same percentage in the last few years. Doesn’t seem to have resulted in fewer applications or made admissions less competitive there.
Colgate updated their financial aid starting with the class of 2026. Income of $80K or less is free, $80-125K pays 5% of income, and $125-150K pays 10% of income. Seriously - an income of $150,000 pays $15,000, which is still less than in-state tuition at SUNY!
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However, if the family instead earned $124k, the in-state tuition could be $0 under SUNY’s Excelsior scholarship. SUNY plans to extend the free tuition threshold to higher income levels in the future. While HYPSM… type colleges do generally have excellent FA, high income kids who are academically qualified for HYPSM… type colleges generally have some good lower cost alternatives via state publics and/or merit scholarships.
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A current running through these quotes (and through posts by others in this thread) is that, despite some messiness, the applicants are getting what they deserve, with the “excellent students” ending up in the top schools, and the rest, having aimed too high, rejected.
If it is true (and I believe it is) that the highly qualified but rejected students don’t deserve admission to the school of their dreams, then the accepted students don’t deserve admission either. The pool of highly qualified students for the “elite” schools greatly exceeds the number of available spots. Anyone who gets picked got extremely lucky. Those accepted could just as easily be on the outside looking in.
But for the grace of Harvard Admissions go I.
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So…basically, your assertion that only URMs and First Gens choose the ivies for economic reasons rests on the idea that upper middle-class families have economically viable choices while URMs and FGLIs don’t?
That really is not true, the Excelsior only covers last dollars. Also, only the tuition is free. Students either need to live at home and commute or pay room and board.
https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/Tuition-Free-Excelsior-scholarship-first-graduates-16205112.php
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I will say we would pay for room and board at SUNY or need to buy an additional car, insure it and pay for gas plus still house D in our home. Both of those options would be more than our need-based payment.
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I’m not sure how you got any of that from my post? Maybe you listed the wrong person in the reply? I didn’t list anything about URMs or first gens in that post. In an earlier post I mentioned that lower income kids tend to favor local options and are underrepresnted within the Ivy-type applicant pool, which also doesn’t fit with your comment. I also mentioned a different point about “higher income” and "wealthy’ students.
But, you would agree with the statement that URMs and FGLIs have extremely tangible economic motivations for applying to “top schools”?
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Both my post and your post I replied said “tuition”, not room and board. SUNY is not the only available merit scholarship for kids who are academically qualified for HYPSM. For example, the valedictorian of my NYS high school chose a full ride to Hartwick, which at the time covered both tuition and room & board.
“Seriously - an income of $150,000 pays $15,000, which is still less than in-state tuition at SUNY!”
“However, if the family instead earned $124k, the in-state tuition could be $0 under SUNY’s Excelsior scholarship.”
1975-1976 was the peak of the baby boom. By 1993-1994, the number of HS graduates dropped to 2,463,849. The number of HS graduates exceeded the baby boom peak once again in 2007-2008, and is now 15% larger than the baby boom peak, and 47% larger than the trough.
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There is randomness, but there is far less randomness than appears by looking at the acceptance rate. For example, we know that the admit rate of recruited athletes at Harvard is about 83% based upon data released from the SFFA lawsuit. Essentially, Harvard was a safety for them.
Likewise there are certain academic competitions that are themselves close to a golden ticket for the winners. One that I followed closely resulted in an average of 3 HYPSM acceptances per winner. For these applicants, the HYPSM were effectively low match schools. There is a different award where I am seeing that roughly 80% get into at least one HYPSM based upon a sample set of dozens, making each HYPSM a high match school. In practice, the HYPSMs are not “reaches for everyone”.
Given the fact that some categories of students have much higher acceptance rates, then the flip side is that for most other unhooked kids, the acceptance rate approaches zero. There are certainly borderline cases who don’t get accepted, but if these students planned their range of apps properly and paid attention to them, they will typically get accepted a notch below, hence the rejected at Stanford but accepted at Vanderbilt scenario.
ETA: There is an old but still active thread that lists the prestigious awards which are ranked 1-10, where 10 = Recruited Athlete (closest to a sure thing). A lot of people dismiss this list, but I have nearly current information on the outcomes of students that won at least one of four awards, one at level 9, two at level 8, and one at level 7. For each award I am talking dozens of students, a small number of which have multiple awards. Here is what I saw in terms of outcomes:
Level 9: Average of 3 HYPSM acceptances
Level 8: 80% accepted to at least one HYPSM
Level 7: 35% accepted to at least one HYPSM
I cannot speak to the accuracy of the remaining awards and how they are listed, but there seems to be a lot of collective wisdom in this list:
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First off, it is good to establish that URM is not synonymous with lower income. In the Harvard lawsuit, only 28% of URM applicants were classified as SES disadvantaged, which generally corresponds to below ~median US income. The other 72% of applicants were not classified as below ~median US income. Instead URMs who applied to Harvard had a wide range of incomes. There were even many full pay URMs, although notably less than average among Harvard applicants.
The term “URM” stands for underrepresented minority. One of the key reasons why URMs are underrpresented among enrolled students is that they are underrepresented among applicants. I expect this is even more true among lower income URMs. Relatively few lower income URMs apply to HYPSM… type colleges. The rates are even relatively low among high achieving lower income kids for reasons discussed in the paper listed earlier. The linked paper discusses why most lower income high achieving kids were not applying to any highly selective colleges, in spite of often being lower cost after FA. I expect similar comments could me made for most lower income URMs and first gens, although there are certainly exceptions. Some lower income kids apply to HYPSM… type because they are lower cost. Most high achieving lower income kids instead apply elsewhere, in spite of often being higher cost after FA than HYPSM… type colleges.
You’re equating URM with low income? There was no economic motivation for my URM as she would have been full pay. Lots of URMs pay full freight at top privates. We avoided them partially because of economic motivations, ie no value for us.
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And, they do so and often prefer HYPSM despite having perfectly viable low-cost alternatives. Is that a reasonable assertion?
You ignored the following sentence stating most high achieving lower income kids did not apply to HYPSM… type colleges and instead applied to other options that were often more expensive after FA. “Some” meaning a >0% minority did apply to HYPSM… . I have no idea what the actual percentage is, but the overwhelming majority of lower income kids do not apply to HYPSM… type colleges. And among the minority who do apply, I expect most would still apply if the net cost after FA was significantly higher. However, yes, a non-zero amount of low income kids did apply to HYPSM… .and a portion of this group would not have applied, if the cost was higher.
I’m saying many well-off families make the same economic trade-offs.
Nobody said that finances are not a consideration in college decisions. However, this is different from saying that higher income / wealthy families that are academically qualified for HYPSM… type colleges usually have quality lower cost alternatives via a combination of merit scholarships and/or publics.
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Nobody said that finances are not a consideration in college decisions. However, this is different from saying that higher income / wealthy families that are academically qualified for HYPSM… type colleges usually have quality lower cost alternatives via a combination of merit scholarships and/or publics.
Would you explain what you just said?