In order to give a frame of reference on “middle class” I’m going to quote myself from a post on a different thread (link leads to the entire post for anyone interested):
So, does EA “hurt” students from certain income levels more than others? I suspect that students from lower class and lower middle class probably qualify for free/reduced lunch and therefore can get free application vouchers for college applications. Thus, the cost of application fees is not a hindrance to them, though the amount of time necessary to do numerous applications might be a barrier (i.e. if they have to work, or take care of family responsibilities, etc).
For middle and upper middle class families, the application fees themselves may prove to be a barrier. If applications are about $75 each, then the amount in fees themselves could be substantial for these families ($375 for 5 applications, $750 for 10 applications, $1500 for 20 applications). These families may not have the means to “throw an application” out to see what kind of merit they would receive, or at least, not as easy to do (particularly in the $52-100k range).
Additionally, I usually recommend that an individual not ED to a school that they haven’t visited. But even visiting one school might be $1,000 (flight, hotel, and food for the kid and one guardian) which can be a substantial amount for families in that price range. And that’s assuming there is only one school to which they are considering ED…what would be the cost to compare multiple? So these families who might qualify for very generous financial aid at a Top X school then either have to go in blind (i.e. no visiting) or forego the ED boost.
I don’t think that “EA” is hurting applicants so much as the idea of many students applying to Top X schools are applying to 18-20 schools. Because a student will only attend one school in the end, then there are all sort of yield calculations that come into play that would not have if most students apply to a smaller number of schools since many of the schools on their list have similar pools. So, to be “safe” students have to apply to more colleges, which can be a real hardship for families in the $52-100k range.
$7.25/hour in my state, which is the federal minimum wage.