<p>I don’t know, kayf. My experience has shown that getting a good GC is all luck. Our local public high school is highly rated both locally and nationally. Last week my daughter got an email from her guidance counselor at that school wanting her to stop by the office to bring GC up to date on D’s plans for next year. Funny enough, my daughter transferred to a private school 2 years ago.</p>
<p>There has been some variance in certain Asian communities over time – i.e. the attitudes of those who came here in the 70s differ from those who came in the 90-2000s. It seems like the immigrants from a few decades ago believed that education was the most important thing regardless of cost. They would save all they could to make sure that if/when their kids got into the top schools, they could afford to go without concern for whether the school would offer enough FA; often that meant living in smaller homes, driving used cars, foregoing vacations etc. for many years in order to save. It seems like the “kids” of those parents are now starting their own careers and the parents are now fairly well established and able to splurge on the nicer things since college tuition isn’t as much of a focus. The immigrants from those same communities from the more recent yrs seem to place more immediate value on “stuff.” Thus, you’re more likely to hear comments like ‘I studied at unknown xyz university in my home country and I’m doing great so there’s no way I’m going to waste my money on ivys/top 10s etc for my kid because it’s unnecessary.’ Some will say that it’s more important to them to drive 2 luxury cars, have a 5+ bedroom home, etc. and if their kid wants to go to an ivy they can fund it themselves – it’s not an attitude that was ever prevalent in the older Asian generation.</p>
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<p>Dad - You’re new here, so you don’t know this, but mini knows the term. It’s just that he has an odd hobby: every time someone uses the term “Asian”, he posts that message, with a random selection of different subgroups. It’s tough to reach 10,000 posts.</p>
<p>Dad - In your post, you mention that among the non-Asian population, that “most didn’t even prep for the college admission until senior year.” Many of us don’t do any kind of specific preparation for college admission in any year. </p>
<p>But it’s not out of laziness; some of us simply don’t view it as a valuable activity. Being a good student and pursuing authentic interests really should be enough. For my own kids, I’d rather see them work in real jobs, and present themselves as who they are.</p>
<p>Re: immigrants of the previous generation</p>
<p>Some of them, not having much income or wealth to afford a full four years of university education (even at the lower (adjusted for inflation) costs of a few decades ago for in-state state universities) sent their kids to the local community colleges for two years, to later transfer as juniors to the better state universities (often choosing career-oriented majors like engineering).</p>
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<p>In what universities are any Asian applicants (including any of mini’s random ethnic groups) these days considered to be URM (as opposed to ORM)?</p>
<p>Even if a family has run the FAFSA, seeing what a PROFILE school’s expected family contribution may still be a huge shock. I just tell folks to expect that EFC will run ~30% of gross income. THAT gets a reaction.</p>
<p>I am amazed at how many parents of high school students in our community do not know how much a year at the flagship costs. If one doesn’t know that figure, it’s hard to imagine how they have managed to adequately plan for college expenses.</p>
<p>“In what universities are any Asian applicants (including any of mini’s random ethnic groups) these days considered to be URM (as opposed to ORM)?”</p>
<p>At many LAC Asians are URM.</p>
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<p>With the cost of higher education so far outstripping the pace of any other commodity in the economy, not to mention income increases, it would be impossible to actually ‘plan’ for the cost of education, at this point in time, and certainly, when our kids were small…nobody could have imagined that 4 years in college would cost the same as a house.</p>
<p>A course in personal financial planning and realities should be a requirement for every kid graduating from college. If the college doesn’t require it (very few do), the parents should. The reality is that unless you are very wealthy, the college saving needs to begin at birth (or before, if you’re really a good planner!). Even then, it was $15k/yr by the time our second kid was born close to 20 years ago. That is a sacrifice for most people, but it just gets worse the longer you wait.</p>
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<p>Which ones? Does not seem to be the case at Amherst, Swarthmore, Reed, Grinnell, or any of the Claremonts.</p>
<p>My son who is 1/4 Asian, with very fair pinkish complexion, blond hair, hazel eyes and doesn’t look one bit Asian, nor does he feel any association as such was included in a number of Diversity Experiences at the LAC and other small schools where he applied. There are a number of schools that consider Asians as URM He checked off Asian on the Common App along with White/Causcasian just as a matter of course because that is what he is.</p>
<p>“Which ones? Does not seem to be the case at Amherst, Swarthmore, Reed, Grinnell, or any of the Claremonts.”</p>
<p>Well, I guess that’s that then. ;)</p>
<p>My son is Korean (adopted) and got inundated with invitations to diversity weekends. Off the top of my head (I’n sure there were more) Colgate, Middlebury, Trinity, Conn College, St. Lawrence (which gave him a $30K yr Presidential Diversity Scholarship) and Bates, which is where he will be attending. He didn’t attend any of the weekends but all one has to do is look at the % at each school to see which ones Asians are considered as URM.</p>
<p>How do we decide if the various Asian subgroups are URM or ORM at a given school? Do we compare the school’s percentage to the overall U.S. population, the region, the state? A subgroup at a school could be URM for the U.S. but ORM for the state.</p>
<p>They are not broken down into sub groups. Most schools just list the percentage of Asians. My son’s school is at 7%. A no brainer. </p>
<p>Males, of any race, are also often UR’s at LAC.</p>
<p>At Berkeley, Asians outnumber whites. At Yale, the ratio of Asians to whites is a little less than 1 to 2. At Amherst, it’s about 1 to 4. At Middlebury and Reed, it’s more like 1 to 10. At Colgate, it’s about 1 to 20.</p>
<p>“They are not broken down into sub groups. Most schools just list the percentage of Asians.”</p>
<p>Yes, that is exactly the problem! 
Which subgroup is URM, which is ORM?</p>
<p>“My son’s school is at 7%. A no brainer.”</p>
<p>So is that 7% above or below the Asian population average for that state, region, the U.S.? When is he URM, when is he ORM?</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter which subgroup - they are all considered URM or not. </p>
<p>He is a URM when a school decides they need to be more diverse. </p>
<p>What percentage of the population is Asian isn’t what schools consider. They are only concerned about the percentage of Asians who attend college and if not enough are applying to their schools in comparison to other schools than they are URM and a hot commodity.</p>
<p>poetgrl, we assumed that college would be $50k/year by the time our kids got there and used that figure in determining how much life insurance to purchase back in 1990. Granted, we did NOT save anything resembling that amount!</p>
<p>However, saying that education educational inflation outstrips regular inflation, so how would we know how much to put away, doesn’t obviate the need to save in the first place. Even if you don’t have enough to saved to pay for the flagship, every dollar saved is one you don’t have to cut out of your budget when the kiddo goes to college.</p>
<p>If you know what the flagship costs, that’s a good benchmark for figuring out what a family can afford for a soon-to-be college student, even if it’s to say a) we can’t afford the flagship; b) we can afford the flagship but not a $50k private; c) apply where you want and we can make the numbers work (all all the permutations in between).</p>
<p>It’s the parents of HS students who don’t what the flagship costs that boggle my mind.</p>
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<p>This is exactly why I always enclose URM and ORM in quotation marks: “underrepresented” / “overrepresented.” The terms are problematic for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the nature of the prefixes “under-” and “over-” suggests that something is not “right.” There is either too few or too many of the “group” at hand. Any “group” that is “overrepresented” cannot be correctly represented, for if it were correctly represented, then it would not be “overrepresented,” now would it? No, it would be correctly represented.</p>
<p>As a consequence, second, proper usage of the terms requires a definition as to what the “correct” level of representation is. As shown in the above quote, from two CC members, ask how the terms are defined, and for people who use the term without reservation, the best they can do is pass the buck and say it is defined however admissions officers want it to be defined. Which is another way of saying that the words are absolutely meaningless.</p>
<p>When did teachers stop reproaching their students to never use words they can’t define?</p>
<p>Moving back to the opening post, I guess it’s a case of your mileage varying. With regards to my own family, I knew very well that even if we received an admittedly generous financial aid package as calculated, the total COA was simply so high that the EFC was still in the low-to-mid five digits. I attended a state school, Georgia Tech, and the price of my degree was less than the price of one year at a top private university or LAC after aid.</p>