@LOUKYDAD, I think that is a broad generalization that isn’t supported by the data. @observer12 mentioned percentage of 1% students at schools that had high 4-year graduation rates.
According to the NYT article, 51% of Pitt students come from the top-20%, that compares to 40% at Wisconsin-Madison, 54% at Purdue, 59% at Alabama and 60% at Amherst. While many LAC’s are in the 70% range, I don’t think its unique to LAC’s
Here’s just a few of the elite colleges that enroll the highest percentage of low- and middle-income students
COLLEGE PCT. FROM BOTTOM 40%
Yeah, I don’t know how we got on this subject but not all of us worship at the altar of USNews and its false positives for selectivity. I don’t know of a single Wesleyan graduate who wouldn’t know what to do with an endowment the size of Amherst’s and that would be to spend every penny of it on recruiting kids from working class families with good, solid academic credentials; studies have shown that they binge drink far less, do far less drugs and are much more self-reliant than their 1% peers. It’s unfortunate that our high sticker price scares so many of them away. Okay, rant button off.
@Chembiodad I have seen these statistics before and don’t doubt them. I have spent enough time on this site and elsewhere trying to gain an understanding of the landscape in order to help DS18. I get that the financial aid policies of the elite need blind schools can make it very affordable for a bottom 40% family to attend an elite school. Often no cost difference for these families vs. a state school. Of course I am sure you know that isn’t true for those who are top 20% but not comfortably 1% either.
I also know that the elites do very little to differentiate between a family with over $XXM in inherited wealth versus a first gen college graduate like myself who is striving toward and touching 1%. Yes of course I know I am fortunate and don’t deny that. I also know there is a big difference between my financial situation and how I got there, and how DS is hopefully going to get there, than those in $XXM category. And that is why you won’t see very many kids from families like ours at those institutions. What you do see is a lot of 1% kids and a few bottom 40% kids, enough to make 1% families and the campus community feel better about the situation, but hardly enough to make it representative of the real world off campus.
No one is playing with the numbers, as the group was focused on the bottom-20%, not the top-20% or the top-1%.
That said, the highly selective LAC’s and private uni’s have a lot of both, just like the state flagships - the top-20% cohort is the same for schools.
Again, the discussion was about the percentage who come from 1% income households.
I’m not sure why you keep focusing on the top 20% or bottom 20%.
As someone who attended a public magnet HS (which had upper-middle-class, dirt-poor, and everything in between but very few 1% income kids) and an Ivy-equivalent (which had all the above groups as well as a healthy representation from the top 1-2% income level), there is definitely a difference when the student body is differently composed that way. As someone who came from the bottom 20%/40%, I could still relate to upper-middle-class kids. Yes, they had more goodies but they still knew that they had to find a career to support themselves or else had to sacrifice to pursue a non-lucrative career path (like the arts). I could not relate to kids from 1% incomes (often scions of rich/famous families) who always had the bank of mom/pop to fall back on and could spend the entire summer hitting all the ritziest places in Europe.
I think the point others are trying to make is that the biggest difference between the public flagships and many (not all) of the highly selective private colleges isn’t the % of students from the top 20%. While most private schools still have more (but not significantly more) students from the top 20%, what they have many times more of is students from the top 1%. (That means over $630,000 annual income!) And I suspect more at the higher end of the top 2 - 20%.
At Vanderbilt U., 23% of the students came from families in the 1%.
The median family income at Vanderbilt is over $200,000. There are quite a few selective LAC colleges and universities where more than half of your classmates are from families with HHI over $200,000.
The median at public universities tends to be significantly lower. And there is only a very small % of top 1%.
Think of the people you have met in your life from the big public schools and from LACs. Do you like those people, enjoy being with them, enjoy talking to them? Are those the people you want your kid to be like, to hang out with? Do you find a big difference at the office for who went where? I really don’t. I like people who went to big schools and (some) who went to LACs.
Seems to me that is a way too monolithic view of people who go to different colleges. And maybe its more true of smaller colleges? But at mid/large institutions, I does see the concept if “I like the 5 people I know who went to X so I want my kids to be like them.”
College in certain majors like science, engineering is pretty rigorous at most schools, so you don’t need to take honors courses in the same way you do in high school.
I think honors courses benefit a student who is not sure what they want to do career wise, and who wants to delve into different subjects, wants to have discussion based courses and small class sizes.
@PurpleTitan, the discussion didn’t turn into a top-1% discussion until posting by @observer12 in posting #194. I agree with @twoinanddone, as great students and good people are found at every income level, and yes most students are oblivious to it as they are all broke at that point in their life.
I also think a small LAC, or an honors college within a larger uni, or a traditional uni experience can work well. That said, different styles work for different students - its not an either or.
@Chembiodad the reason why your statistics don’t tell the full story, is because by using the top 20% rather than top 1%, you are equating families with household income of $100k+ and household wealth of $500k+, with families with household income of $500k+ and household wealth of $10M+. A 20% family has very different economic pressures and lifestyle than a 1% family.
That is a very interesting point. The NY Times link breaks it down and at many of the small LACs, there are a lot more students in the top 10% of family incomes than in the top 11% - 20% of family incomes.
For example, Amherst has 60% of the students in the top 20% of family income, but it breaks down to 51% in the top 10%, and only 9% in the top 10-20%. Many private colleges are similar – they have far more students in the top 10% than in the 11% - 20% range. Even many of the flagship state colleges have more students in the top 10% than in the 11% - 20% range, but the difference isn’t quite as stark. For example, U. of Iowa also has 60% of the students in the top 20% of family income, but the breakdown is 37% in the top 10% and 23% in the 11% - 20% range.
Which is probably why Bernie Sanders’ idea for free public college tuition was so popular - I suspect a lot of families with what seems like high incomes (in top 20% but not top 10%) are still struggling to afford the tuition even at state colleges and the private colleges either have limited financial aid to make those schools affordable or just admit far fewer students from that cohort. And if offered, those families opt for merit scholarships.
Edit: I didn’t mean to sidetrack the discussion but I do think it relates to the topic – which is “high end colleges vs. honors programs at state college”. It isn’t that there aren’t a lot of high performing students at many public universities (whether in honors programs or not), but overall you won’t find the high concentration of the highest income students that you do at “high end” small LACs and some larger private colleges.
I was trying my best not to put a value judgement on it! (I’m not sure if I succeeded or not).
I think a lot of very high income parents will pay a premium for their child to be in a “highly selective college” where the “median” (both in standardized test scores and HHI) is high.
It’s similar to parents who pay a premium for their child to be in an expensive private school from K-12. For both good and bad.
I think this is less of an issue for students whose low family incomes mean that the cost of a private college that gives generous need-based financial aid can be even less than at their state university. It’s a no-brainer!
And if your HHI is such that you have been spending $30 - 40K per year for 13 years of private school and paying a bit more for 4 years of private college is not a significant burden, it is likely that attending a private college does provide more small classes and other advantages that may be appealing if cost is not a factor.
It’s generally the families in the middle who ask this question. Their students will be more represented in those state college honors programs – which often come with merit scholarships. Those programs will likely have just as many lower income students in them, but far fewer very high income students.
FWIW, I went to one of those small LAC colleges myself, on financial aid, and I met many middle class students like me who also got financial aid and some more affluent students who didn’t. (And I loved my experience there). But that was when cost of attending a private college was something many upper middle class families could afford. Since then the costs of attending a private college have exploded (publics, too). I think cost of attendance is almost 8 times as high as when I attended but I don’t think that middle class/upper middle class HHI have multiplied to keep pace. When over half the students are in the top 10% of HHI – and often clustered at the higher end of that – I suspect that those colleges have somewhat of a different vibe than they did 35 years ago. And I think many professional families who might have been able to afford those higher private college tuitions in the past can not easily do so now.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that some of the most wealthy families I currently know are also some of the most down to earth. It was like that in college for me too. Sometimes I wouldn’t know for a very long time that a friend was wealthy. It would only be when I maybe visited them at home that I figured it out. A friend of mine’s son is at a top LAC right now. He went a whole year without knowing that his roommate’s family flies him back and forth from college to home on their private jet.
On the flip side, plenty of families in the top 20 with “newer” money sometimes love to flaunt their “stuff”. I don’t think a school should be judged solely on the wealth of the families who send their kids there. Best to visit to get the vibe.
" I don’t think a school should be judged solely on the wealth of the families who send their kids there."
I agree. But I think if you are going to give a complete answer to the question: “honors programs at state universities… …what they’re like compared to high end schools…?” you should include the fact that the affluence of the students will be very different. And when the majority of students are in the top 10% in HHI – even when they are very down to earth – it is a different feel from the majority of the students being upper middle class/middle class.