<p>My kids go to a "wealthy suburban high school" that is always on the Newsweek Top 100 List. It's been impossible for me to get an actual list of what instutions of higher education our students actually attend, but the reality appears to be SO different from what I read on CC.</p>
<p>Quite a few attend the local cc, for financial reasons.
Quite a few more attend the local commuter college, for financial reasons.
The top of the class kids tend to go to UT Austin or A&M. (Of the 5 vals and sals in our district, we have one Dartmouth, one A&M, two UT and one OU.)
Lots of other kids go to the "no name" state Us.
Almost no one attends private schools. The exception is that the NM Scholars attend schools like Baylor that are generous with NMS.
I know one kid who is heartbroken because he got into A&M but can't afford to go. He's in the top 20% of the class, great ECs, URM, and was relying on scholarships to pay which didn't pan out.</p>
<p>This really brings home the point that most institutions of higher education are far from affordable for so many families. Maybe the problem is that we are a "wealthy" district - wealthy enough to not qualify for need based aid, but certainly not wealthy enough to pay $20,000-$50,000 to a college every year.</p>
<p>In your kids' schools, is attending the local cc or communter college for financial reasons the exception or the rule?</p>
<p>D is at an all girl Catholic that sends 100% of the girls to four year colleges. While there is an enormous amount of wealth in the school, that certainly is not true of every family, including ours. What I observed in the last two years is girls turning down ivy/elite schools that didn't give merit aid for schools that do. I have no knowledge of their personal finances, but I'm guessing that these were middle class families who just couldn't justify the "value" of paying full fare.</p>
<p>My D is going to attend a local community college for a few qtrs- she has already been accepted at a 4 year school. ( only partially for financial reasons)
She has a few friends who will either attend a CC or attend the local U, although they won't live at home.
Many of her friends however, are going to be attending schools on the east coast-( all schools w merit)</p>
<p>I think it varies according to the part of the country you're from. This is not to say that an area may be "wealthier" or even "snootier", but there are different considerations. Missypie, you're obviously from Texas, where the state schools are reasonable academic choices for a lot of talented kids. Ditto for people from California, Virginia or the Northern states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Those of us from the northeast don't necessarily have those same kind of choices. </p>
<p>To answer your direct question: community colleges are rare in d's school; commuter colleges are also rare, because there aren't many within a decent commute as defined by a college student (my daily commute is rough if you also want to have any sort of college "life"). There are quite a few, though, who do attend the flagship and other campuses of the state university, and fewer who attend the state colleges.</p>
<p>Missy, in the west there is more of a tradition of going to the big state university than in the east, where the private northeastern LAC has been the tradition for a lot longer than many western state universities have existed ;) The junior/community college system is also more established in the west, though I could be wrong about that. (I'm thinking in particular of CA, where it really costs very little to attend community colleges.) </p>
<p>But you do bring up an important point: for an increasing number of American middle class even the state u is becoming a financial reach. And that is a huge problem for the society as a whole.</p>
<p>I know what you mean. The discussions here on CC are a far cry from what I encounter IRL. I actually find the "Colleges" and "Financial Aid" forums, "Visits" and "Stats Profiles" to be my favorite sections fo CC cuz they're less obsessive. </p>
<p>I visit the "Parents," "Search," and "Admissions" sections when I need to giggle. Some of the stuff there is great comic relief. </p>
<p>As for my kids' school, I think it's a little of everything. Today 300+/- kids will graduate.<br>
I think we've got 2 going to Ivies, and 3 going to service academies.<br>
I'd say 50 don't even head to college.<br>
Another 50 head to CC.
About 12 enlist in the military.
And of the remaining 180, I'd say it's 60 at Maryland public, 60 at OOS public and 60 at private.</p>
<p>Those are just my guesses based on what I hear. My numbers could be off, but probably not by much.</p>
<p>Like you, our area has a higher than average household income. I'd say if my neighbors' kids get any aid, it's merit, not need-based.</p>
<p>We live in the part of the country where more adults have at least a bachelors degree than not, so you would expect a fairly high percent to attend college. However, it is expensive & our K-12 schools are not so great. Of D's friends who will be attending private colleges, their merit aid is dependent on continued academic performance. ( some quite expensive schools)</p>
<p>A couple of kids- I am not worried about, but for a few, I think that will put a lot of pressure & stress on them, because it has already on their parents.</p>
<p>At my kids' large urban public academic magnet, about 20% of the graduates go to the local community college, another 20% go to the largest local public commuter college (although many of those kids decide to live in dorms there rather than to commute), and maybe another 20% attends local colleges to which they could commute. Something like 25% goes to public colleges elsewhere in the state, and the remainder go to private universities or LACs, or out-of-state public universities, usually (but not always) within a couple of hundred miles of home. Cost and financial aid, both need-based and merit, drives lots of decisions. There is enormous economic diversity among the students, but most are working-class. However, historically it has been almost unheard-of for a student who had applied to and been accepted by a high-prestige, Ivy-level university to turn it down for a better financial offer elsewhere. (But not at all unheard-of for a good student not to apply to such universities and to concentrate instead on places where he or she would expect a lower cost net of financial aid.) In the last four years, they only knew of one clear-cut example of someone who turned down an Ivy on financial grounds, and it was fairly extreme circumstances: a kid with absolutely no resources (in foster care for most of his life), $100,000 difference in the financial aid packages, and the cheaper (negative-cost) alternative was NYU.</p>
<p>Emerald, we're certainly going to have to watch out for that ourselves. Of the 10 schools on my son's preliminary list, all but one are safeties or matches (at least statistically) and it looks like he will qualify for decent merit aid from 6 or 7 of them. But we've got to pay close attention to the GPA he must maintain to keep the aid....he doesn't have the best study habits in the world and I predict that freshman year may be a bit rocky.</p>
<p>I would say this is true, with a bucket of salt. I find public schools in King County (about a third of the people in Washington live in King County) to have wildly varying quality. My sons attend(ed) two different public high schools in the same district, and one is great and one is not so much. I agree with you that the University of Washington is bizarrely expensive, and I'll add that their recent attempt to "exclusive" themselves into Berkeley/Ivy/UVA status is unseemly.</p>
<p>I just meant living in this * area* is expensive- and I am just speaking for Seattle schools- which don't really reflect the numbers of people that have degrees, because once they have kids they seem to send them to private or move to the suburbs.</p>
<p>I will also say that IMO as someone who has attended & worked at two Seattle community colleges & attended two suburban community colleges, the community college I am now attending ( Edmonds) feels more like a " college" with a great deal of on campus involvement and support services.
The urban colleges, did not have 1/2 the support or participation in campus activities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The top of the class kids tend to go to UT Austin or A&M. (Of the 5 vals and sals in our district, we have one Dartmouth, one A&M, two UT and one OU.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Missypie, I think we are probably neighbors or nearly so. :) One thing to remember is that UT and A&M offer a full-ride scholarship to valedictorians of Texas public high schools. I think that's a big factor. For that matter, I think the same offer applies to vals of accredited Texas private schools.</p>
<p>One thing I have seen is that when some of these good students in our part of the country do decide to go for the reaches, they have no clue how competitive that is. </p>
<p>One of S's friends applied to a bunch of top 20 schools and was rejected by all of them. He'll be attending the University of Houston this fall. I don't know this boy's stats, but I am guessing he was "a very good student", which, as most of us here know, is not nearly good enough for admission to a top 20 school. For that matter, he also applied to UT Austin and was capped there (assigned to attend a satellite campus of UT in another city...not Austin).</p>
<p>But you are right about the expense of the state u's. We have a son at A&M and tuition + fees + room + board is about $15K per year. While that's certainly very reasonable compared to most schools, that's still $60K for a 4 year education.....and what if you have 3 kids? It's just not doable even for a lot of people making $100K per year.</p>
<p>Our high school does not make the top 100 of the Newsweek list,though it *is *in the top 1000. 25% of the kids go to community college (many will start at the local CC and then go on to a SUNY to save money), I'd guess a somewhere between 25-50% go to SUNYs. 1-2% go into the military or work. The rest go to a mix of private LACs and Universities and public universities in the rest of the country (U. of Michigan, U. of Indiana are two I know kids are at). The top 25 kids in my older son's class (2111) went mostly to Ivy's or schools that are on CC's list of "top colleges". I don't know how far down the ranking kids were still getting into top schools as only the top 25 get read off at the awards ceremony. Number 25 went to Brown. :) We have a couple of colleges in town and I'm always a bit surprised how many kids stay put to attend them.</p>
<p>I think location has a lot to do with it. My state gives the least support to college students out of any state in the US, so our state university is not really 'affordable' for middle class families. That said, a LOT of kids go there. I know several wealthy families that sent their kids there because they would get no need-based aid, and they saved their resources to help pay for grad school. For middle to low-income families, it often makes more financial sense to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Still, I think CC is representative of only a small portion of the population. Obviously, it attracts people who are actively seeking options, not people who already know that they want to go to State U.</p>
<p>A fair number of kids from my kids' high school go to Ohio public schools. Ohio State, Miami, OU are the favorites, but we see Kent State, Cleveland State, Bowling Green, and probably others. </p>
<p>Very few kids start out at community college. The guidance counsellors are, I think, a bit down on the idea of starting out at a community college. </p>
<p>We hit the top schools pretty hard, although maybe only seven kids out of 400 going Ivy this year, as far as I know. A fair number of kids go to interesting schools like Georgetown, NYU, Vanderbilt, Emory, Northwestern, U Chicago, etc. And I learn about new schools every year: I knew of Elon but had never heard of Guilford before this year. (Guilford sounds cool.) We have a few kids going to places that surprise me a bit. A couple to the U of Vermont, for example.</p>
<p>D is at a small private HS in NYC. Over 40% are going to top 20 private schools. Another 30% (including D) are going to top 50 private schools. Three are going to top 80 public universities, and the rest are going to private schools ranked between 50 and 100. Four students are studying overseas.This is pretty consistent from year to year, though fewer kids were admitted to HYP than in the past. About 1/3rd the class received financial aid that influenced their choice of school.</p>
<p>I actually am quite relieved that D is going to be starting out at a community college.
Although last month, I tried to talk her out of her plan to work at a residential camp all summer, go to Ghana for two months, then work for 10 months , sleeping in church basements with americorps before she goes to college- she was adamant that she could handle it.</p>
<p>All on her own ( although she may have talked it over with her friends) she had now decided to stay here for two qtrs after working this summer, taking part time community college classes, to reinforce her background for college, especially in math, which our district does a poor job with, volunteering/working, * then* going to Ghana for spring qtr.</p>
<p>That will give more time to her priority- working in Ghana- more time to prepare and get support for the trip & while she still wants to do Americorps, but after college & by that time she should have more experience taking care of her health & advocating for herself.</p>
<p>We still have to figure out which CC will be the best- I would love to have her go with me to school, but my program is on a different schedule & many classes arent' based on campus.</p>
<p>I often feel like I'm looking in a window to a different world when on CC. We live in a college town (midwestern) for our state's land grant institution; HS just gained Newsweek Top 500 status. The community vibe is upper-middle class overall. Of the 324 who graduated in D's class last month, 3 are going to Ivies, 1 to Stanford, and 2 to Cal-Berkeley. About 5% joined the miltary (but up from only 3 last year) and somewhat less than 10% go to a CC (sometimes for athletic reasons.) About 10% go to small midwestern LAC's, most instate or in neighboring states. A few others go to elite LAC's or top 20 universities or schools with strong programs in special interests such as dance or art. The rest go to in-state 4-year publics, with far and away the highest percentage going to the local U; most of those, however, choose to live in the dorms instead of commute. How many pick the in-state flagship instead varies from year-to-year, not sure why. Seems like a lot this year, but maybe I'm hearing more about it because that is what my D ultimately chose after looking to go far away instead.</p>
<p>We live in a very large, very affluent sububan school district with 4 high schools. The HS our Ds attend is known for its high achieving students. I'm sure there are students who attend CC but in all honesty I don't know of anyone over the past 6 years! It is almost as if there were two HS in one building. The honors/AP track and the regular class track. It's very strange. There is even a special guidance counselor for these kids who are invited to be in the "high potential" program. Most of the non-honors kids attend various state Us but the honors kids head to LACs, U of MN or WI. There are always a handful who go H,S, Y and Duke. Hmmm...never heard of anyone at P! Always some at Emory, MIT,Middlebury,Carleton, WashU, UChi. With approx. 600 kids they are everywhere but the majority stay around here.</p>
<p>I went to what was considered one of the best two high schools in my state (both of which are public magnets, incidentally). Students' socioeconomic status covered the whole range, with a leaning toward middle and upper-middle class. Most of the students went to state schools, the local Catholic college, or a particular in-state medium-prestigious LAC that gives huge scholarships to strong in-state students. A handful each year went to elite schools and to the service academies. A larger handful did something in between, and about as many went to community colleges. Some of the strong performing arts and visual arts students went to conservatories and other art schools.</p>