<p>They’re already doing that.</p>
<p>Harvard had close to a 30% acceptance rate in the 90s.</p>
<p>but acceptance rates at public colleges are still extraordinarily high… but I can understand that…hmm…</p>
<p>Depends on the college. Berkeley is considerably low.</p>
<p>And those that have high acceptance rates give little financial aid. My friend got a $3,000 subsidized loan to a college that costs $20-30k a year. Great financial aid he got.</p>
<p>DAMM… that sucks… is he or she doing the work/study program…?</p>
<p>I’m not sure. But even if so, he would get $2,500 in work study per year. Around 10% of the actual cost.</p>
<p>Damm… public school is money strapped…</p>
<p>Post #41 –
You can easily get $10K worth of merit aid at many private schools. There are plenty of schools to choose from.</p>
<p>Private colleges choose how they will subsidize some of their students and what percentage of students they will subsidize. Merit-based aid tends to discriminate in favor of more affluent students, who have grown up with the resources that allowed them to attend better quality schools and to receive better academic support outside of school, in turn resulting in better grades & better test scores. </p>
<p>No one forces you to limit your college aspirations to those schools which choose to award only need-based aid.</p>
<p>Dollar-for-dollar, merit based aid at the high end is more generous than need based aid, because they sometimes exceed the overall COA at a school, come with extra perks such as priority registration, and don’t include loans or work requirements as part of the package.</p>
<p>If you can’t afford a $50K school then don’t go there. Our Ds made school selections based on merit aid offered. I went to a service academy because I couldn’t afford college any other way. Life is hard. Get used to it. If cost is really a factor, go to CC and transfer later. Many people do it this way.</p>
<p>Well, at least it is in Illinois.</p>
<p>Didn’t read this entire thread, but imo, the people most advantaged by FA are the children of highly-educated, underemployed parents. These students have received the advantages of an optimal home life (highly intelligent parenting with more time to parent), and they will be most likely to qualify for merit and FA, allowing them the widest range of college choices.</p>
<p>I liken the current financial aid calculator to the same mortgage calculators that told people they could afford more than they actually could.</p>
<p>^Well, here’s to hoping I graduate before the crash :D</p>
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<p>Taxguy, I think what you meant to say is that we CHOOSE NOT TO subsidize education to that extent in the U.S. Every household had a ‘budget’ and allocates resources to priority areas. Every country and economic system does the same. If the U.S. were a ‘household’ then, I suppose it would be opting to live beyond its means and allocating resources in a way that DOES NOT PRIORITIZE education.</p>
<p>Little surprise, then, where we rank in the world in terms of overall education of our population. --Well behind countries such as Sweden and Canada, where governments at least attempt to make education accessible and high quality for all:</p>
<p>(From Student Performance on the Reading, Scientific and Mathematical Literacy Scales, mean score, 2006, OECD… believe there’s a newer ranking that’s even worse!)</p>
<p>Rank Country Reading Math Science</p>
<p>1 Korea 556 547 522
2 Finland 547 548 563
3 Canada 527 527 534
4 New Zealand 521 522 530
5 Ireland 517 501 508
6 Australia 513 520 527
7 Poland1 508 495 498
8 Sweden 507 502 503
9 Netherlands 507 531 525
10 Belgium 501 520 510
11 Switzerland 499 530 512
12 Japan 498 523 531
13 United Kingdom 495 495 515
14 Germany 495 504 516
15 Denmark 494 513 496
16 OECD average 492 498 500
17 Austria 490 505 511
18 France 488 496 495
19 Iceland 484 506 491
20 Norway 484 490 487
21 Czech Republic1 483 510 513
22 Hungary 482 491 504
23 Luxembourg 479 490 486
24 Portugal1 472 466 474
25 Italy 469 462 475
26 Slovak Republic 466 492 488
27 Spain 461 480 488
28 Greece 460 459 473
29 Turkey1 447 424 424
30 Russian Federation 440 476 479
31 Mexico 410 406 410
32 Brazil1 393 370 390
33 United States … 474 489</p>
<p>So a further irony of the private/commoditization of college/university education in the US is that according to ACT fewer than 50% of HS grads are prepared to pursue post-secondary education, meaning about 32 other countries are producing students in theory that should or would be competitive (on “average”) to our US class.</p>
<p>You may also notice some of the countries ahead of us on the list are ones who’ve elected a meritocracy in education. </p>
<p>The guaranteed way to get the absolutely LEAST competitive class in a college is to base the criteria on fiscal capability. Just about everything else works better ;)</p>
<p>So, we’ll offshore brain power next, will we? That is what the pundits are saying, but others recognize this crisis in education to be the cornerstone of the decline of the American empire.</p>
<p>To the original poster – sorry to hijack your thread.</p>
<p>In answer to your question, I do not find financial aid to be grossly unfair, per se, so much as grossly ineffectual in light of the present college system. By ineffectual, I mean that financial aid doesn’t really facilitate sufficiently a students accessibility to quality programming. That’s because the pell grant is inadequate for most schools and loan limits are typically lower than the general cost of education, and I feel the interest on the loans is far too high (almost twice the market rate). So compared to other countries where financial aid is half grant and loans are at 3%, for example, it actually seems exploitative of the students to me.</p>
<p>So while there are issues – your described scenario is not one of them. As other posters have said, you over-estimate the benefits of federal financial aid. Institutional aid is another matter.</p>
<p>But what I actually wanted to say to you is that you are young, and can master the shift in attitude to be grateful for what’s available to you instead of feeling that somehow others are getting breaks that you aren’t. When you’re inside the space of feeling gratitude, life goes a little more smoothly. When you choose to look through the negative lens, there is plenty to see, but it can contaminate the way you approach things. So while critical thinking is valuable and dissent triggers change, you may still want to depersonalize your outlook a little to have a more joyful life.
Best wishes.</p>
<p>*Damm… public school is money strapped… *</p>
<p>Scales…most public AND most private colleges have little need-based money to give. Most rely heavily on federal aid, which we know is low.</p>
<p>It’s not a given that if you go to a private you’ll pay less. That only works if you’re lucky to get accepted to one of the few best privates that has a good endowment and you have demonstrated need. Most privates don’t have much to give. And their CoAs are usually higher.</p>
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<p>Ok, in one sentence you say a limited subsidy was ok for me and in another you say that it would have been better if I had just taken another year or two to graduate and gotten no subsidy. That doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>I think you are missing something in this argument. As soon as I graduated and got a much higher paying job than I had ever previously held (by 2.5 X), I was also paying a lot more in taxes. Surely, by virtue of being able to pay more in taxes, I have more than paid back the aid that I received for school, so I would argue that it was money better spent than a lot of government spending. </p>
<p>Not only that, but I climbed out of the grinding poverty I grew up in wherein I received food stamps, afdc, free lunch, etc. My children do not receive those things, so I broke from the cycle of dependency on the government that is all too common among the poor. How is that not a good thing for government, and society in general? IOW, how is that not money well spent?</p>
<p>xeniamom notes,
"I think you are missing something in this argument. As soon as I graduated and got a much higher paying job than I had ever previously held (by 2.5 X), I was also paying a lot more in taxes. Surely, by virtue of being able to pay more in taxes, I have more than paid back the aid that I received for school, so I would argue that it was money better spent than a lot of government spending. "</p>
<p>Response: No, I would have preferred that you got NO subsidy;however, I could live with small amounts of subsidies if I were president of the US. As for your argument, there are plenty of folks who go to college and law school etc and aren’t employed or are underemployed. Because you did particularly well does NOT mean that everyone who finishes college will do particularly well. </p>
<p>Moreover,even if there were a more direct correlation, we cann’t afford to keep subsidizing people. We don’t have the money.Sweden tries to do it and the economic cost of huge taxes isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>xeniamom notes,
"I think you are missing something in this argument. As soon as I graduated and got a much higher paying job than I had ever previously held (by 2.5 X), I was also paying a lot more in taxes. Surely, by virtue of being able to pay more in taxes, I have more than paid back the aid that I received for school, so I would argue that it was money better spent than a lot of government spending. "</p>
<p>Response: No, I would have preferred that you got NO subsidy;however, I could live with small amounts of subsidies if I were president of the US. As for your argument, there are plenty of folks who go to college and law school etc and aren’t employed or are underemployed. Because you did particularly well does NOT mean that everyone who finishes college will do particularly well. </p>
<p>Moreover,even if there were a more direct correlation, we cann’t afford to keep subsidizing people. We don’t have the money.Sweden tries to do it and the economic cost of huge taxes isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>As for the rankings of the US in math, I believe that these rankings are due to measurements after or while in high school. If that is the case, we should certainly strengthen out primary school curriculum.</p>
<p>Ok if you have enough food to eat and money to pay your bills you should be happy and stop complaining about not getting aid. These middle class families have a leg up to these much lower class families in many ways so if a student can make it to college then they deserve the aid.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe in financial aid for college, do you believe in public elementary and secondary education?</p>
<p>It makes sense to subsidize some of those who go to college, up to the point where marginal cost equals marginal benefit. I guess society has to determine where allocative efficiency is met for highly-educated individuals. However, I don’t think taxpayers should be footing the bill for every low-income student at every McUniversity.</p>
<p>In the case of the ivy league, however, they have to provide the opportunity for low-income students to attend. The image they want is that they serve “the best.” At least a few token, high-achieving poor persons must be accepted each year to maintain this reputation. Otherwise, the ivy league will lose its lay reputation: it will no longer be seen as a group of “the best,” but merely a group of the “best rich students.”</p>