I am currently a junior in high school, and I’m trying to decide what college to go to. I plan to major in electrical engineering, but I am unsure what colleges would be best for me. Specifically, I have a few questions about Ivy League schools.
First off, do Ivy Leagues pay as much attention to undergrad students as other schools do? Or do Ivy Leagues not care as much about their undergraduate students?
Second, what is it like going to an Ivy League as a poor kid? I come from a poor background, but I may get enough scholarships to afford an Ivy League comfortably. However, I realize that the majority of children who go to Ivy Leagues come from upper-class families. So, what is it like going to an Ivy League as a poor kid? Are you alienated? Can you afford all the luxuries they have there?
I appreciate any help. Two of the Ivy Leagues I am looking at specifically are Columbia and Cornell, in case that helps. Thank you.
If you’re a junior in college, you need to apply to college first. You can’t decide where you want to go before you’ve been admitted anywhere, and if you are curious about Ivies, then you can just put your preferred ones on your application list and see what shakes out.
It depends on what "other schools" you are comparing them to. Obviously a school like Haverford or Pomona will be paying more attention to their undergrads than Columbia or Cornell, but a place like Michigan or Berkeley may pay less. Also, all the Ivies are different - Princeton and Brown are noted as being more undergraduate-focused, for example.
Having attended an Ivy as a grad student and not an undergrad, my observations are only second hand.* I also went to Columbia, which is one of the more diverse Ivies. My sense is that although there was definitely great wealth there, the majority of students got along and learned a lot from each other. I advised resident assistants and had a very diverse (racially and socioeconomically, as well as in other ways) team of students and didn't detect any huge divisions in them among economic lines, although I know that some of my RAs were quite wealthy and went to fancy private schools and others came from struggling families.
Obviously poor kids cannot afford ALL of the luxuries - an expensive night out at a nightclub, a spring break trip to an exotic locale, a summer abroad. There will be some things you can afford and others you cannot. But the long-term impact on your career (and the resultant income) might be worth the relatively momentary discomfort.
(*I mean, I did experience it myself as a grad student - I come from a working-class background and my classmates ranged, but most of them came from more wealthy backgrounds than I did, and I had/have a few close friends who are very and very wealthy. Columbia was the first place where I realized that my family wasn’t solidly middle-class and that my experiences growing up weren’t universal. But like I said…some of these people became my close friends, despite class differences, and I’ve learned a LOT from them both directly and indirectly by listening to their stories. It does cause a bit of stress but overall, it’s not bad. I realize that this may be different from the undergraduate experience, though.)
Thank you for the response. I understand that the undergraduate experience may be different, but this still is helpful. I will keep what you say in mind. Thank you.
The Ivy Leagues plus peer institutions (Stanford, MIT) have VERY GENEROUS financial aid for lower middle class students and below… at most of the Ivy league schools, if your family income is under around $60,000, then you automatically get a free ride (all tuition, fees, room, board). Up to around $120,000 family income, the financial aid is very generous, covering almost all tuition, but not room/board. Families above $150,000 generally have to pay full costs unless they have multiple kids in college at the same time.
I ran Brown’s and Stanford’s net price calculators for a hypothetical family income of $200K.
Even with income that high, and even assuming the family only has one child, either school would award some aid. The Brown NPC estimates $3577 in grant aid; the Stanford NPC estimates $6900 in grant aid (assuming $100K in home equity and $100K in financial assets).
YMMV.
At the Ivies and many other very selective private schools, roughly half the students receive need-based aid.At Brown, the average n-b scholarship/grant is over $41K/year (according to 2014-15 CDS data).
One crude indicator of “attention to undergrad students” is the average class sizes.
You can look up these averages in each school’s US News entry (under “academic life”) or in its Common Data set, section I. Cornell’s average class sizes are higher than the other Ivies’, and not much smaller than Michigan’s. At Columbia, the overall percentage of “small” classes (< 20 students) is even higher than at some LACs. Keep in mind that at most research universities, you’re likely to see more relatively large lecture classes in popular majors, pre-med, or lower division courses.
The objective financial aid info is out there and it’s been summarized above and you can find it. In terms of what it “feels” like – yeah you will definitely notice a LOT of wealth at the Ivys. A lot of students are full pay (or nearly full pay) and you can tell they/their families aren’t financially stressed in the slightest – they still go away on ski vacations or Europe or wherever on breaks; they can take on unpaid internships in places like Manhattan with their parents picking up their entire living cost etc. And day to day you notice it because they think nothing of grabbing a $15 lunch between classes and then cabbing it to some restaurant with friends on a Monday night where they drop $200 on dinner.
So guess what – those won’t be your friends. It’s not that they aren’t nice or don’t want to be friends, it’s that people with that kind of wealth get bored pretty quick with eating dinner in the cafeteria and catching a (free) a cappella performance on campus. BUT at a school like Penn – I’d imagine that demographic is 50% max and they will all hangout with each other. That leaves another 50% who are solidly middle class or below – meaning their parents may be paying for a lot of school but they also have a lot of loans and need to keep costs down; they may be working work study or off campus jobs for spending money. Those are the kids you’ll hang out with – simply bc they will be around you more; they won’t be heading downtown for the night the minute classes end. Rather they’ll be eating dinner in the cafeteria, spending the night hanging in the dorms or libraries, and when they want to go out – it’ll be activities on campus which are free. Frankly engineering students – whether rich or not – are more likely to fall into this group anyway bc they have to study/do labs etc and can’t spend all their time spending money.
And as a poster above said, EVEN if you don’t fit in financially (which will NOT happen) – if you get a shot at an ivy, go, work hard, and the types of internships and jobs and financial security you’ll get in the long run will be worth any discomfort you feel in college.