“It looks like the full pay window extends to the group just below the very top as well.”
. . . . in the Northeast (and West Coast).
Note that BU (and I believe Lehigh and Lafayette as well) also give merit money. I think roughly a third of students at BU are full-pay.
I did note the regional differences.
According to the most recent CDS for BU, it looks like around 54% are full pay if I did my math correctly.
Don’t forget that full pay does not always mean the family is wealthy. It could mean they opened a 529 as soon as the child was born and contributed to it diligently, in addition to taking out federal loans and paying some out of current income. It could mean the family has been living well below its means and saved a lot. It could mean that the family or the child got a nice inheritance that they have designated for college costs. It could mean that grandma and grandpa are alive and are paying. It could mean they are taking out a ridiculous amount in loans and will be sorry about it later.
@brantly All good points.
@doschicos, whoops, I misremembered. It’s Miami where roughly a third of the student body are full-pay (I was looking at BU’s and Miami’s CDS one right after the other).
My main point (that merit money is easier to get outside the Northeast and West Coast and tougher to get at schools in those locales) stands, though.
At WashU the median family income is $272,000 per year (per NYT article). If 50% of parents make more than that why is it so surprising that 20% make more than $630K? Have you visited the WashU campus?
Most private schools are still the domain of the wealthy albeit much less so than 20 years ago.
Probably a common such situation is parental non cooperation on FA forms. So the student is treated as full pay and often cannot attend any college at all, except possibly the local community college or if s/he earns a full ride merit scholarship.
@ucbalumnus, well in this case, are talking about students who are attending, so parents must be cooperating.
But to me, “wealthy” means you don’t have to work any more, so, IMO, most full-pay families are not wealthy even if they are upper-middle-class.
Interestingly, we spent time with a charming first year at Barnard last year (friend of a friend who showed us the campus) who said she felt like for the most part her fellow first years were either on full or almost full need-based aid or were really wealthy (and I assume full pay). She said there were not many “in betweeners.” She considers herself in that category – she could afford Barnard b/c of tuition benefits b/c one of her parents works at en elite private, but they are certainly not wealthy. But she wouldn’t have been full or almost full need either. . .
I thought that was an interesting comment – and something she offered, not because we asked.
I can appreciate and understand where those perceptions comes from, but Barnard stats don’t bear out that impression.
Barnard meets full need (as it defines it) and for Fall 2017, COA was just shy of $70K. Barnard meets full need, as it defines it. Looking at section “H” of the common data set for 2017-2018 – only about 38% of students overall are receiving need based aid. (This is down from about 45% from when my daughter was a student, so it looks like overall the student body is skewing richer).
Average financial aid package was between $50-$51K.
Average need based grant was $46K for first years, dropping to a little under $44K for all students. The balance of the financial aid was self-help (loans & work study) – of about $4500 fo first years, rising to $6000 across-the-board. (As students move further along they become eligible for greater amounts of loans and work-study expectations tend to go up as well)
Source: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/cds_2017-2018_2018-03-01.pdf
So basically, on average, there is about a $20K gap between COA and financial aid. – which I would not consider to be “full” need based aid. These dollar numbers are about the same as when my daughter was at Barnard – and correspond fairly closely to our level of aid. (Our grants were smaller, but so was the COA).
Of course an average is just that --for every student who has a full or almost full package, there would be that many more “in betweeners” whose parents might be on the hook for $30K or $40K or $50K.
I’m posting because I do have a parental familiarity with Barnard and its environment, but I think that this pattern is probably true at most elite schools. I think that the student perceptions aren’t always in accord with reality, simply because many students might not be discussing their financial aid packages with others. And a daughter from a family whose expected contribution is $50K might look “rich” to others, even though she is receiving a $15K college need-based grant.
I do think that Barnard and other elite colleges tend to lose a significant amount of upper-middle class students because of the gap between public/private costs. That is, there are probably a lot of families who qualify for some need based aid when COA is $70K and climbing … but if the COA for public is $30K and the family is expected to pay $50K at a private college – then it can be hard to justify the costs even if the family is eligible for some aid.
This is true even between Barnard and lesser ranked privates which give more in the form of merit aid. For top students, it can bring the cost very close to that of an in state public.
Exactly. The upper-end financial-aid qualifiers are going to have fairly high quality but less expensive options. It’s not that hard to come by merit awards in the $20K & up category these days at private colleges. They don’t always make much of a dent in overall COA, but they may very well be greater than what the upper middle income family qualifies for in financial aid.
I know Barnard says they are need-blind and meet full need as they define it. But I wonder how that works in practice, especially at the early decision stage. They don’t have the resources of, say, Columbia, and, in order to balance their budget, they need to be careful to admit and enroll a certain percentage of people who don’t need aid. This would be easier to manage in early decision, where they don’t have to worry about yield rate. They could just let in a bunch of women who didn’t need aid and were within the range of credentials of admitted applicants, and be assured they would enroll. Other similar students who did need aid might be deferred into the regular applicant pool. This would of course be inconsistent with a need-blind admission process, and I would add that without more insight into the actual admissions numbers at early decision, it is just pure speculation.
Barnard functions the same as other so-called need-blind colleges - they use tools such as ED & also admission criteia to achieve a statistically-predictable mix of students that fits their financial aid goals as well as other institutional goals. ED by definition is a process set up to favor high-income students – but that really is the same for all schools. Barnard also is not need-blind for the waitlist, which means that they are able to backfill their class with full pay students. So, for example, last year they took in 51 students from the waitlist – that was 8.5% of the overall class. Not necessarily all full pay, but the point is that they are working with financial aid and know what funds are available before they invite students from the waitlist.
Schools like Barnard also have their own definition of need which includes the CSS profile. They expect families to tap the equity in their homes and other sources as well.
To me when I read all these stats about full pay families at these expensive colleges, it just shows the vast wealth that people have out there. The amount of money people have is astonishing. The middle class is shrinking and many cannot afford college but the wealthy are growing and have even more money to spend on college. Colleges are all too happy to take the cash and hence can increase tuition by 3-5% every year. The supply of full pay kids is astonishing.
I agree, it’s eye opening. And yet at the other end there are so many talented young people for whom even paying for in state public college costs is a huge struggle. They can get a Pell grant, yes, but its ‘buying power’ has dropped from paying 70% of cost of attending a public 4 year in the 1970s to 30% today. If you look at the work of Sara Goldick-Rab from Temple something like half of community college students struggle with food security and 13% are homeless (often they are couch surfing with friends and family). In my home state 50% of public K12 students qualify for free- and reduced- lunch. What do you think happens when those same kids try to go to college? Yes, the high flyers can get great scholarships at selective colleges, but the vast majority of poor kids are left trying to work and borrow their way through community colleges and broad-access public 4 years – if they go at all. And when you work too much, you can’t be a successful student. It’s a difficult treadmill to patch together the credits for a degree, and graduation rates for these students attest to the difficulty. (And don’t get me started on all the credits students lose when they transfer; it’s a travesty.)
If you’re interested, Raj Chetty from Harvard (or Berkley?) has done amazing work in recent years on growing economic inequality in the US. Google the Equality of Opportunity Project. We like to think anyone can make it to the top – the definition of the American Dream and our national narrative. But in fact, by far most kids born at the bottom stay at the bottom or only move up one quintile in income by the time they are adults. We have tremendous ‘stickiness’ at both ends of the income spectrum, and in fact that distance between steps on the economic ladder is growing.
Raj and his colleagues have done great new analyses of which colleges promote the most economic mobility too – great stuff.
Richard Reeves is another great read on this – esp. his new book Dream Hoarders.
(Yes, I study this stuff for my work and recently wrote a policy white paper on financial stability for college students.)
Exactly. There is a myth that simply won’t die that there is a wealth of aid available to poor families and so they have easier access to college. The number of spots available at the few elite colleges that cover full need is so small as to be meaningless to the vast majority of truly poor and lower middle class families.
If the most elite private colleges wanted to raise their prices to $100,000 or $200,000 per year in tuition there are more than enough high net worth families that could pay sticker price. There are more than 1 million families making more than $630,000 per year and over 10 million families with a net worth of over 1 million dollars in the US alone. Clearly, $75,000 per year in tuition is not too high. Demand is still very strong as evidenced by the recent postings on CC.