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And even ivies are unaffordable for most in your income range whichis why they all have such a low percentage of middle class students.
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<p>This would be the situation at any school that only gives aid based on demonstrated need. I know that my D was accepted to every school that she applied to (only applied to one Ivy). All were need blind and all promised to meet 100% of demonstrated need.</p>
<p>The overall best package she got came from williams, followed by Bryn Mawr then Dartmouth, Overall there was about a 12,000 range from the "best" to the "worse" package. </p>
<p>Our EFC from Barnard, Amherst, Tufts and Mount Holyoke was much higher and the loan componet was much larger than it was at the other schools.</p>
<p>The good thing was that Dartmouth gave us a financial review based on the package from williams, and met the williams package. Just got the package from D yesterday for junior year package, and the package is still just as consistent as it was from the time that Dartmouth gave us an adjusted package (it still makes me shake my head that the cost of attendance for 2006-2007 is $48k).</p>
<p>There is approximately a ratio of 65/35 when it comes to the amount of public vs. private/parochial students at the ivies because there are more students that attend public school in this country. I think that it is harder to be admitted into an Ivy if you come from California, Ma. NYC and the surrounding area (long island and westchester county) not only because these states are not at a loss for students applying but because there are so many competitive public schools where students are literally knocking each other out of the box. </p>
<p>In hindsight, I think the best thing my daughter did was to turn down Stuyvesant to say at her small 6-12 public school. while they had a good track record for sending students to Columbia, Penn and Cornell, in her class she was the first student from her school to be admitted to dartmouth and williams and the first in over 10 years to be admitted to Amherst. One of her friends was one of the first students to be admitted to Stanford, while another was the first to be admitted to Brown in over 10 years. As far as LACs go, her GC knew the LACs like the back of her hand so students got accepted to Haverford, Swat, Conn College, wesleyan (in big numbers almost like a feeder), Barnard, etc.</p>
<p>I think that you have to go into this process informed, and especially set financial guidelines for your kid. I knew going into the process that we were going to have to pay something and had she gone to a SUNY school we would have been full payers as even the Honors program is really not that generous with money. I used this amount as our jumping off point as how much I was willing to pay out of pocket/borrow for her education (no more that it would cost to be a full payer at SUNY). She knew that she was going to have to be an active participant in the financing of her education. For us, it became less expensive and more affordable option for her to attend an Ivy than it would have been for her to attend the "financial safety"- our state university.</p>