And yet the crux of the article is focussed on access to elite schools not the cost of attending other schools.
His argument is that “you do need to be born into a family with the resources to make lavish investments in your early education.” There are so many middle class/upper middle class families with strong academic kids that go to public k-12, dont have access to a team of tutors, don’t enroll in expensive SAT courses or have ghost written essay writers for their common app.
We’ve also seen lots of legacy families get denied despite really strong applications,
While I agree that more has to be done to help disadvantaged students get access to a good education, I disagree that admissions to elite schools is primarily because of access to wealth. Although it may be true for mega donors, the reality is that most kids who get in are super high acheivers on their own right and not because mom and dad went to the school or spent $50k on private tutors.
The vast majority of kids cant get a 1550+ SAT no matter how many tutors they get.
How do you explain the disproportionate number of private and boarding school students accepted to the highly rejective schools? Or that many selective schools are comprised of 40%-50%+ full pay students, which is a significant overrepresentation of the number of families at that income/asset level?
What are the variables? Arent Asian Americans overrepresented at highly selective institutions? How do we explain that? Is it because they are wealthy or is it because they have a strong cultural expectation of higher education?
What percentage of CC Match Me students/Reddit forums are Asian Americans? who come from all different economic backgrounds.
According to Department of Education statistics, though Asian students are 74% of Stuyvesant, they represent over 90% of students who qualify for free or subsidized lunch. Mar 27, 2019
I’m not sure what you mean by this. The two statements I made are facts (for many highly rejective schools).
Yes, Asians are overrepresented at many highly rejectives, but not all…for example they tend to be underrepresented at selective/highly selective LACs.
Many Asian American people are immigrants or only a generation away from immigration originally as PhD students or highly skilled workers. It is like that this very selected subset of the population (compared to their countries of origin or the US) confers both nature and nurture advantages to their kids with respect to educational achievement.
This phenomenon is much less noticeable among non-Asian American people, because of large populations of those who are not of recent immigrant heritage, although it occasionally gets noticed that a large percentage of Black students at prestige colleges are of recent immigrant heritage, and those working in areas like computing may notice that among many White and Black coworkers in technical roles.
I think this trivializes the role that economic background plays, by trying to limit it to “wealth”, “mega-donors” and “private tutors”. Listening to friends who spent a lifetime teaching at an inner-city public high school, in a problematic neighborhood, there is a stark contrast of their experiences with what I know from the public high schools in the suburbs - and it’s not just the scarcity of resources and quality of staff.
These kids from all those underprivileged neighborhoods have parents that work long hours in multiple jobs, no one home to prod/support/further them academically, offer them any kind of enrichment during off hours or weekends, a quiet air-conditioned study area - not to speak of the fact that many have food insecurity. (You don’t learn well on an empty stomach.)
While teachers in suburban schools have to rush parents through their assigned 15 minute time slots during parent-teacher conferences, teachers (in core subjects!) in inner-city schools can count on one hand how many parents they met in any year.
So your “most kids who get in are super high achievers on their own right” mostly are able to “achieve super-highly” because of their economic background and the educational background of their parents! Just like SAT/ACT scores, GPAs too are related to income ranges.
The effects of economic imbalance go way, way beyond 50K tutors and mega-donors.
The median Income for Indian American families is the highest for any ethnic group in the USA, including White families.
So yes, wealth has a large part of it.
Moreover, there is no such thing as “Asian” as some large homogenous group. Including Chinese Americans and Indian Americans as though they are one group makes absolutely no sense, and is really only done because of laziness, political agendas, and a good amount of Eurocentrism.
Different immigrant groups from different parts of Asia have very different experiences in the USA. People who come from poor countries in Asia and come without education and existing wealth do not do well, and do not attend elite colleges.
Probably a byproduct of recent immigration selection in favor of PhD students (often in CS and engineering) and skilled workers (e.g. physicians as well as those in computing and engineering). Of course, with such high educational attainment, it is no surprise that the kids of such parents tend to do well in school.
The median income is about $100k? Im not sure how families making $100k can afford to make “lavish investments” in education to give their kids such a decided edge in the college process. The higher salaries are typically in the East and West Coast where state income taxes and standard of living are higher. $100k doesnt get you very far.
And if they did it’s probably because of the sacrifices they made from spending less money elsewhere because $100k pre tax doesnt afford any “lavish investments”.
Let’s assume they make $200k. How does a $200k family even afford a Harvard education. Assuming they dont meet any need based aid, they would have to spend more than half their entire disposable income on college.
And although Indian., Chinese, Korean families may have higher median income, they also are less likely to acheive the upper upper echelons of wealth due to the “bamboo ceiling”.
Yes of course it’s possible but it requires a lot of commitment, dedication and sacrifices.
I understand fnancial planning extremely well and have experimented with thousands of Monte Carlo simulations/financial outcomes.
There are tens of thousands of donut hole families who are too “wealthy” for need based aid but paying $360k is also a substantial economic hurdle.
I had a co-worker whose son went to Tufts and when they asked for financial assistance, Tufts response was “you’ll figure it out, people at your income level always do”. They were just “regular” people who were above the line for assistance but wanted to make it work for their overacheiving son. And they spent ZERO dollars on SAT tutors, fake EC’s, $500/hr college counselors etc.
Know nothing about Monte Carlo / Atlantic City, but put away $350 per semi-monthly pay cheque, aggressive growth fund plus the occasional gift from grandparents. Paid for college, with money left for grad school now. Didn’t feel like I was sacrificing (I spent more each month dining out) - was just being prudent.
However, we had stopped at one child, because she was a good sleeper. (No point tempting the law of averages. )
Things would have been different if there were siblings.
I do think the current schemes are not fair/unrealistic for families with multiple children!
The systems are set up to capture past earnings (i.e. savings), current earnings (what you can cash flow) and future earnings (loans). Nobody wants all three included, depending on their own situation. If you’ve saved diligently and want to buy a ski chalet with your savings, you are indignant that “college is going to take all my money”. If you are currently earning a lot- but it is recent, you had a big jump in compensation in the last several years so you haven’t been able to save, you are aggrieved that income counts for so much in the formulas. And of course, who wants loans?
That’s the system. Love it, hate it, someone’s always got their nose out of joint. It’s cheaper to live in Wyoming so your money goes further. It’s more expensive to live in MA than NH so even though your job is in NH, you live in MA because the schools are better.
Etc.
But what is “fair”? Penalizing low income kids with no siblings because there’s no money left, since the college has a very generous financial aid package for kids who have 6 siblings?
I was at U Washington a few weeks ago and the AOs said that they anticipate the new FAFSA SAI methodology will enable a significant number of their partial Pell grant students to get more Pell $, and an additional number of relatively low income students to get some Pell $. That’s where that money should be going IMO. I know everyone doesn’t feel the same way (especially about the elimination of multiple siblings in college benefit), but the reality is funds are limited and the DOE has to make hard choices (as do the school’s FA depts).
In San Jose, CA, $100k household income is 37th percentile, while $200k is 66th percentile.
If those (particularly 66th percentile) are “poor”, then that suggests that the US has already become the kind of economy where most people are “poor” and there are only a few non-poor people.
Rich, wealthy, affluent, opulent mean having goods, property, and money in abundance.
Does a family of four in California making $200k have abundant after tax money where they could send their kids to any school in the country or spend lavishly to game the system so their kids could attend an elite insitution as the article implies?
$200k gross income. Between federal income tax, state income tax, and FICA taxes, you start off around $140k.
Subtract out mortgage, health insurance, homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, car payments, HOAs (if applicable), utilities and all the daily living expenses like food, clothing, repairs, etc etc etc , how much disposable income does a family have?
If you put away $15k away in a 401k, how much can you allocate towards college?
Are you saying this family could afford $360k towards Harvard with no issues? $720k for 2 kids?
Wealthy people can. Middle/upper income families can also but it would not be easy.
Please don’t let this devolve into yet another “you think we’re affluent but we’re actually poor because we live in CA, NJ, Seattle” thread. We have beat that horse to death.
We will ALL stipulate that it is harder to save money for college in a high cost of living area than in Cedar Rapids or Cincinnati or Tulsa.
My point is these articles seem to imply that just because you have some money, that’s the magic elixir to college admissions at highly selective schools.
Most people cant “buy” their way in. Unless you are literally cheating (Lori Loughlin), money and tutoring doesnt buy you a 5 in AP BC Calculus or Physics and kids dont waive a magic wand and get a 1550 SAT score.
This morning I was reviewing the Duke ED thread and so many legacies were denied (including some high contributers and double legacies) with high stat kids.
People who write these articles always just assume that wealth buys success and everything is rigged when there are so many other considerations where wealth is just one of many factors (parental involvement, cultural expectations, work ethic, natural abilities etc).
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