<p>Perhaps I am being sensitive or just where we live, I admit my sample set is small 30-40 families (and info. from our side discussions at PTA mtgs) but I constantly see these 2 repeated scenes throughout the last 3 weeks. </p>
<p>Applicants from Asian families easily attained the grades/stats, but disappointed with the setbacks from college admission outcome. Very few are concerned about COA, in fact, most are prepared to pay list price. (My understanding is that college saving is typical among this group and kids education is top priority here. Majority of them also aimed for some big schools with their reach)</p>
<p>Applicants from non-Asian families easily got admitted into the schools of their choice, but disappointed with how little free money is available. Very few are planning to attend their top choice and in fact, they cannot even afford state schools. Most will opt for local community colleges. (My understanding is that college saving is sporadic with this group, most didn't even prep for the college admission until senior year. There were a few Ivies applicants here, but much less than the group above)</p>
<p>How similar are these among your area? Is it just this year?</p>
<p>Well… it may depend as much on your high school as your area. If you went to a large public high school in our city, you would find a similar situation to what you describe. </p>
<p>In my kids smaller, private independent school, parents are more savvy about the admissions process and many have saved a considerable amount of what is needed. They welcome merit aid, but it seems like people are pretty realistic about it. Of course, parents who have older kids already in college are more tuned in But our school has get togethers for parents of younger high school kids with parents who have done the admissions process already for some q & a, so even first time parents have some idea.</p>
<p>Another phenomena that is VERY common around here is that upper middle class families that won’t be asking for need based aid are taking advantage of ED programs. In 2004 75% of students in Scarsdale (wealthy community) applied to ED (but I bet that also included EA) according to this article. <a href=“College-Bound, 8 Heed Their Inner MapQuests - The New York Times”>College-Bound, 8 Heed Their Inner MapQuests - The New York Times; I think I heard the number was about 30% of ED and EA applications in our high school in 2010.</p>
<p>I have an admittedly tiny sample size, and I am talking about a pretty good small public high school. Among the better students, there is rampant unrealistic disconnect about where they can get in and what they can afford. Over and over I hear students talking about going to Stanford, or Brown, or Georgetown, or even Wash U, with no comprehension about how difficult it is to get admitted. Then later, when students are coming to grips with the places they have actually been admitted, I hear shock and dismay when they realize no financial aid (except loans) is forthcoming. </p>
<p>Then, I watch these disappointed kids matriculate to our flagship University or community college.</p>
<p>The kids whose parents DO seem to have a clue, go to one of our instate directional colleges, flagship U, or occasionally out of state to a pretty good school. The difference is that their eyes are open and they are happy with their choice.</p>
<p>Large Public. But under 4% of the student body is Asian, and those kids are mostly SE Asian, Vietnamese, Lao, and Cambodian. I think you’d be more likely to see the push for savings and “better” schools with the Vietnamese than the Lao or Cambodian. I haven’t seen the 2010 census breakdown yet, but in 2000, that subgroup of “Asian” had a college completion rate under 10%.</p>
<p>But, I do get where you’re going with this. What kinds of trends do we see, especially wrt finances by subgroup?</p>
<p>Well, my kids’ public school district is 43% minority, 20% ELL, 57% eligible for free/reduced lunch. For many, many of my daughter’s classmates, it’s all about the money. But those kids were never probably never pushed to apply and worry about the money later. The folks have always been pushing lower cost options.</p>
<p>In the population not eligible for free/reduces lunch, I see what you see. Acceptances declined because the financial aid wasn’t good enough.</p>
<p>So are you saying DadWith2, that asians are the top achievers, but didn’t get into the reach schools because they didn’t have a hook (primarily because being asian isn’t considered URM), while the kids who were URM got into their top school but not given “enough” money? Are you also, by implication, saying that the URM kids who got into their top schools weren’t quite as ready for college level work as compared to their asian peers? Hummm … interesting discussion. I see flashpoints going off.</p>
<p>Mathmom from Scarsdale: are you saying that if you do not expect to ask for financial aid, there is an admissions advantage to applying ED? (Sorry, new to process, maybe this is all obvious to someone else).</p>
<p>I don’t have numbers (and as Mini used to say, the plural of anecdote is not data…) but in my neighborhood, the Asian (and other immigrant families) double and triple up, have grandparents or uncles move in to share the rent or split the mortgage, share a car and take public transportation, and save aggressively for college. They assume they will be full pay, and any aid (merit or need) is considered a generous and much appreciated bonus.</p>
<p>The non-immigrant families (the rest of us) don’t save aggressively or at all; took HELOC’s to finance livin’ large; assume that our kids are so special that colleges will be throwing money at us to get junior to attend. Aid is a right; our tax dollars should mean that our flagship State U rolls out the red carpet and costs the same as a quart of milk; private U’s have big fat endowments donated by big fat donors which ought to mean lots of “scholarships” coming our way.</p>
<p>Sure are pronounced attitudinal differences where I live; how this translates to the rest of the world I have no idea. This year particularly there are lots of kids who are going to live at home and commute to the local branch of the state U with an eye towards moving to the flagship for junior/senior year. How much of that is financial reality and how much is helicoptering I don’t know. The Catholic U’s seem particularly out of favor right now- we used to send a huge cohort to Villlanova, Fordham and the like- fewer of those this year and I suspect it’s finances.</p>
<p>In my town and at my kids private school there are a lot of full pay non-Asians and they were rejected this year, too. </p>
<p>As for Scarsdale - my sister lives there and she hounded me all fall trying to convince me to convince my son to apply ED to his reach school - that it was the only way he would get in (she was wrong, btw.) I finally had to tell her to shut up about it.</p>
<p>For many schools it is MUCH easier to get in ED and somewhat easier EA. If you don’t need to compare financial offers and you find a school you like enough it is really, really nice to be done with the whole process by December. Even at my son’s high school (not Scarsdale) there’s some pressure to consider ED.</p>
My kids’ h.s. too. If your top choices are 2 or 3 tippy-top schools and you are not expecting need based aid or counting on merit aid from these schools (and of course the top schools don’t give merit aid anyway), our GC’s suggest you seriously consider ED to one of these schools. Neither of my kids was interested in pursuing any Ivy League schools but our h.s. has a good track record for getting kids into darn near every Ivy every year.</p>
<p>I suspect a lot of parents just haven’t taken a hard look at finances. Our generation had a much easier time of it - college was relatively cheaper, so not so much aid was needed. Back in my day, I could and did earn about 1/3 of the full cost of a year at a private college during the summer. It was a good job, I worked all summer and lived at home, but that’s still not something that works now.
ED does give a certain boost - how much varies a lot.</p>
<p>"Did these kids know their expected family contribution? Did they know they were applying to colleges that give need based aid only? The guidance counselors perhaps need to provide more guidance. " </p>
<p>I agree. With our oldest, we diligently attended the college planning info night. They talked about application process and FAFSA (not CSS Profile). But no mention of EFC calculators, chasing merit vs FA, etc. Basically they said, “apply to a variety of colleges and then compare offers”. Argh!</p>
<p>I am an Asian parent with a kid going to UVA ( in state for us ) this fall.
And I’ve noticed even within the different Asian families I talked to about colleges, there are MANY groups with totally different views/attitude towards tuition/cost/where to apply etc:</p>
<p>~ you’ll be so very surprised that some Asians families don’t save at all for college & say ‘oh-my-kid-will-get-FA’ … hope you can see my puzzled look on my face!</p>
<p>~ or that they have no / little idea of how their local colleges rank/compare to each other in terms of everything</p>
<p>~ then you’ll have another sub-group of Asian parents ( from all backgrounds & jobs) who SAVE quite a bit & save regularly knowing that they will have to pay for tuition, regardless of their income.</p>
<p>~ then, once in a while, I will see some really wealthy families who CAN afford the full pay…that is not usual but they are out there.</p>
<p>A comment was made about students avoiding some Catholic universities because of limited financial aid. I found that to be true - my son was all set on going to one, until they offered the worst financial aid by far of the 9 colleges where he was accepted.</p>
<p>Let’s also not forget the families that thought they would have money for an expensive college, but then experienced a big decrease in their income because of the economy.</p>
But our school has get togethers for parents of younger high school kids with parents who have done the admissions process already for some q & a, so even first time parents have some idea.</p>