The wealth that can send half of the Ivy League students there without financial aid need not be old money inherited wealth from generation(s) previous to the parents. Plenty of wealth is earned by high income doctors, lawyers, small businesspeople, etc. and thus made available to pay for expensive colleges without financial aid (which probably means top 2-3% in the case of Ivy League schools). Of course, it is the parents’ right to spend the money as they please, but it does not invalidate the observation that half of the Ivy League students come from the top few percent of parental wealth.
@ucbalumnus, depends on your definition of “wealthy”, I suppose. I don’t consider working stiffs who would see a drastic tumble in living standards and financial security if for some reason they went out of work or their business failed and they couldn’t find any good job for 5 years to be “wealthy” even if they are upper-middle class by income.
To me, someone wealthy is someone who doesn’t have to work for a living and can afford to tell his/her boss to eff off because they don’t have to worry about the financial repercussions of such an action.
It seems to me we’ve had this conversation before. I don’t remember the name of the OP, but someone was trying to make the same point not that long ago, that somehow, in addition to the high priced stars in their field, the cutting-edge research facilities, the state-of-the-art gymnasiums, and four star dining halls, it’s really the opportunity to brown nose your BFF’ s parents that’s the true Ivy draw. I guess Wesleyan would not be considered an Ivy, according to them, so I won’t share my experience. But, I am still sceptical about this.
What’s family wealth or power got to do with it, anyway? You think you’ll hobnob with the Obama kids or those whose parents have luxe summer homes in the Hamptons? Or meet some whose families run Silicon Valley or Wall St? Maybe they’ll get you a job? Dream on.
You ever stop to ask what their parents might truly see in our kids? Whether our kids’ interests and talents will even line up with their friends’ parents’ access?
You assuming those young college friends even want the same paths that “might” someday benefit our kids? It’s nice to be able to say you knew X back when. Then what?
We like to dream our kid’s roommate or friend or lab partner will be the next Gates, they’ll start a business together. Or pull each other into a top firm. Just as likely it’s some kid from anywhere, here or internationally. Some kid someone convinced to go to Harvard or Yale so they could “network” with, um, our kids.
Sure, nice to hang with other smart kids. But there are more smart kids graduating hs than fit in these few bastions. You’ll find them at many great colleges.
Networking is hypothetical. We pretend it smooths the path, works its own magic. Ime, it’s what you become that greases the wheels. Your own skills, drives, awareness. That includes social. Then your work contacts can help.
Note no one here mentioned their own success came from knowing a connected fellow alum.
70% of Harvard students receive some kind of aid. 20% go for free. 100% graduate debt free.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid
Also from the site:" Ninety percent of American families would pay the same or less to send their children to Harvard as they would a state school."
Here’s more:
Eligibility for aid
Our generous financial aid program—bolstered by the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which seeks to increase low- and middle-income students’ awareness of Harvard’s affordability—aims to make Harvard accessible to any student who is admitted.
20% of our parents have total incomes less than $65,000 and are not expected to contribute.
Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances. Families at all income levels who have significant assets will continue to pay more than those in less fortunate circumstances.
Home equity and retirement assets are not considered in our assessment of financial need.
Socioeconomic diversity is important to elite schools. They have the lofty goal of changing society one person at a time. Does this mean that there aren’t very wealthy students there? Absolutely not. Also, the preparation of low income minorities for such colleges often starts in high school: there are programs that pick kids out for their promise. You have to be able to do the work, and the work is intense.
There are plenty of “regular” folk at Ivies and elites, but as this thread shows, the mistaken notion remains that all students come from prestigious or very wealthy families.
One other thing: going to elites, or at least elites that are well-known, sometimes means you have to hide your alma mater to avoid unwelcome comments. And at jobs where going to, say, Harvard, stands out, you may face either teasing or unrealistic expectations. In some ways, it takes some social skills to step outside of the elite world once you have been in it. And your boss may have gone to the state U.
Im pretty sure most of the Ivies are more like 45% receive no financial aid, putting them in the top 2-3%. On CC, you can be “middle class” and in the top 2-3% by income, but in my mind that means you’re wealthy. Maybe there’s not a scion’s worth of wealth, but there’s certainly a disproportionate amount of wealth.
The question is how that wealth actually changed the experience, and whether there’s less wealth at most private colleges outside the Ivy League (there isn’t).
Top few percent of parental wealth does not translate to scions of wealth, ucbalumnus. You’ve done this repeatedly - conflate everyday professional class people who have six figure salaries and can be full pay (but would be shaken if a job were lost or a significant medical expenditure occurred), with people who have multimillion dollar trust funds, family charitable foundations, never have to work a day in their lives, and when they need money disbursed they call the same investment firm that great grandpa used back in the aughts.
Your two-doctor or doctor-lawyer couple are not scions of wealth.
I have a niece that graduated from Vanderbilt about a year ago. I know not top Ivy but close. She did have the wealthy friends that flew her to Australia in their own jet. A father of one of her friends did help her get her first job but it was low paying and she was laid off within 6 months. She was networking and a influential friend of her roommate did try to get her a job in NY but nothing came of it. She now works as an administrative assistant during the day and cocktail waitresses on the weekend and she does have student loans to pay. So a mixed story. She will do fine in the long run because she is smart and hardworking but it has been a hard start. It is not a Cinderella story.
Yes, and the part of the story that is missing is that networking happens everywhere, in every group of people. Networking happens at the Knights of Columbus or Elks Club meetings. Networking happens when the person training to learn how to draw blood asks her friend the LPN if she knows of any doctors who need her skills. Networking happens when the guy who runs a contracting company talks to his buddies to see if they have any young men interested in working. Networking happens when the local car dealership hires the football player. It’s not as though Ivies / similar elites invented or have the monopoly on networking, or on opportunities, despite this fantasy that your roommate Richie Rich’s father is handing out jobs right and left.
“Plenty of wealth is earned by high income doctors, lawyers, small businesspeople, etc. and thus made available to pay for expensive colleges without financial aid (which probably means top 2-3% in the case of Ivy League schools). Of course, it is the parents’ right to spend the money as they please, but it does not invalidate the observation that half of the Ivy League students come from the top few percent of parental wealth.”
Ucb, do you actually know anyone who comes from real wealth? Your doctor-lawyer or other dual professional couple still has to make tradeoffs in order to send their kids full pay. That’s not to suggest that they suffer or are deprived in any way, but they aren’t taking private jets, buying six-figure cars, maintaining multiple homes across the globe, etc. They can do some nice things – but not every nice thing, and they still have budgets they need to live within and to save for a rainy day. The scions of wealth don’t have to make tradeoffs in their spending.
I don’t get what the hoo-ha is all about. My brother went to an Ivy and I went to a top LAC. Big whoop. We lived in the NE and the school’s weren’t all that far from home. Like JHS, my COA back then was $4800. It’s a different issue now. But now these schools are MUCH more generous with need-based aid, so the class crafted by admissions looks different than when we attended. That said, I knew a few folks from uber wealthy families or with well known last names, but they weren’t really my circle of friends. I was from a middle class working family. So we’re most of my friend on campus. Some of the rich kids were obnoxious and not academically minded, IMO. Of my brother’s friends that I knew, none were from the rich and famous crowd. Seems much off this stuff is what fantasies are made of. In the real world, not so much.
@Pizzagirl, you are right about networking everywhere. Me niece’s present job came from just a girlfriend. She was promoted out of the administrative assistant position and recommended my niece for the position. She is hoping that she will also be promoted out of that position within a short period of time.
We would have been full pay at an Ivy. Believe me when I say, we are NOT scions of wealth. But we are nice people nonetheless.
And both DH and I graduated from NOT Ivy schools. We have friends from every walk of life from independently wealthy, to blue collar workers, to people collecting disability. Some graduated from Ivies, and you know what? They are still happy to be our friends even though we did not.
If your friends in life, and your complete future, are defined by the college you attend, in my opinion, you have issues.
I agree with everything that has been said. For some reason, those not in the know think most Ivy League graduates get their jobs through networking with alumni, and that simply isn’t the truth. Elite school grads build their resumes through taking advantage of opportunities available, applying for jobs that interest them, and interviewing like most everyone else. They don’t just pull up some magical roladex of alums, call and land a job. Furthermore, not all Ivy grads are wealthy nor do most aspire to the kind of wealth that the OP craves for his/her child. In fact, many that I went to school with are more of the save the world type than the chasing wealth and power type. Yes, I went to schools with some uber wealthy students with last names regularly mentioned in the WSJ. But that had no effect on my life as I didn’t interact with them and I’ve still done pretty well for myself and made a lot of friends, most from households with professional parents.
Ivys and elite schools are great for those that find them to be a great fit. And some alums do go on to become very wealthy. Most of those that do, however, would have accomplished the same things from other schools. Elite schools aren’t some magical doorway to wealth and power.
I don’t understand the whole emphasis in this thread on parental connections. Huh? I do not think that’s what attracts most people to an elite college. I know I just wanted four years devoted to the life of the mind in an ivory tower. I went to Williams and loved it. Were there some kids with parents whose names were well known? Sure. But most of my friends’ backgrounds were middle class, some were on full financial aid, etc. Top colleges aim for diversity and have the ability to help strong students from all backgrounds attend them. Whether you are rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, citizen or international, you can experience more diversity at a college like Williams than you may experience in many other times and places in your life.
It seems to me that the experiences of friends I had who went to Vassar, Princeton, Harvard, Tufts, etc. were quite similar to mine. And paying full tuition does not mean you are super rich. For example, my parents both taught at public schools. They just prioritized sending me to a great college, saving for years and remortgaging their house to do so.
The experience at a school like Williams is priceless, because of great professors and smart classmates from all walks of life. The conversations held in classrooms and in dorm rooms provide a high level of intellectual stimulation. At a less selective college, I am confident I would have gotten a good education and my future career could have been the exact same as it was. But college wouldn’t have been the same experience. And I valued that experience.
I could say exactly the same thing about my undergrad experience at Ohio University. My department was small. I worked for a professor who was recognized world round in our profession. I had friends with whom I had study groups, and excellent high level conversations.
I would hope that everyone here can say positive things about the school where they got their undergrad degree. It’s a time in your life where you have the opportunity to grow, change, meet folks from different backgrounds and places. If you attend Williams…that is really your only undergrad reference (I should add…we live about an hour from the school. We think it’s awesome…and would have been happy if our kids had been interested in it…the weren’t. They wanted to be in an urban environment).
I am still friend,y with my undergrad study friends…most of whom sequel into different professions. But we very fondly remember our undergrad years. VERY fondly. And really that’s the way it should be for everyone…not just elite schools, but even those of us who graduated from public universities in our state.
I starting laughing after catching up on the posts this morning. It’s true that at a typical Ivy sports league school about 50% of the students are full pay, and therefore they are in the “top 2-3%” of income earners in the US. (The 2-3% figure is an oft-repeated but very misleading statistic by the way; 7-13% is probably a more appropriate figure to use). I guess that makes them potential “scions of wealth” that the OP wants their son to be able to attend college with.
But here’s the hilarious part, @WorryHurry411 . You’ve said that your family is one of the full pay families. The “top 2-3%”; i.e. the “rich” that you want your son to meet is … YOU. Your family is in the upper half of the distribution at these schools. If someone is trying to convince you that “networking” with “rich” fellow students is actually one of the big reasons to attend an Ivy league school, then you have to realize that your son is one of those that students are going to try to “network” with to see if your connections can help get them a job, etc.
Of course, I don’t know anything about you … perhaps you have lots of powerful connections, but my guess is that you’re just a typical professional family and that really isn’t the case.
Just food for thought. Maybe it will help you separate fact from fiction. Sadly though, after having read many of these discussions over the years, I know that they are rarely about the facts. It’s an emotional decision about one’s children … validating oneself as a parent, prestige, ego, etc. are big factors. It’s very hard to let go of this baggage. Just be sure that your son doesn’t end up getting hurt by the process. He seems like a very good student who is involved in his school and his community. You and he should be very proud of him. I’m sure he will end up going to a great school even if it’s not at the top of the ranking list du jour.
@usualhopeful wrote:
There’s certainly less generous financial aid once you step away from the very tippy top Ivies, so it stands to reason that there are going to be a higher percentage full-pay families at some private colleges a rung or two below. And, does it change the experience for the average middle-class student? I think it does and not necessarily for the better.
Placing too much emphasis on our own experience doesn’t always serve our children well.
As an example for the OP, I have a good friend and neighbor who went to a school in the HYPS stratosphere. His experience was less than ideal. As a result, he is very jaded about elite colleges and has discouraged his kids from seriously considering them, even though the girls are fabulous students and the family could afford the tuition. I’m sure his younger daughter will do well at the state schools she’s applying to (she’s extremely strong academically), but there are times when I do wish she had been encouraged to look at a broader range of options.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
There’s off-topic and then there’s waaaaaaay off topic. Discussions about rich kids drinking more than poor kids, whether true or not, has nothing even remotely to do with the original post. Several posts deleted. Let’s stick with the question asked, please.