Please share this article with your favorite high school student. The hyper-competitive culture that surrounds college admissions in affluent communities is extremely detrimental.
I needed this :-bd :x
Yes, this is a good article.
I disagree that the cause of their angst is the American dream. Their parents are already in the 1%. What more do they want?
And I disagree that “the stakes are higher for privileged kids” because the “starting point is high.” The stakes are higher how? When your parents can pay for whatever school accepts you, it’s a totally different ballgame from the kids whose parents are struggling to pay application fees and whose education is counted on to get the next generation out of poverty. Those are high stakes.
I understand her message – the children of the 1% are stressed. I think it’s largely self-induced and I agree they need to rethink their priorities. Kids shouldn’t have to resort to anxiety meds to get through high school. But I don’t think she understands how difficult the process is for middle and low income families. The stress the 1% is feeling isn’t unique. The causes are just different.
I didn’t love the article. Using terms like warped and ruthless to refer to full pay families is using an awfully broad brush.
@elenaclaire828 - are u the author?
Way too broad of a brush - IMHO.
This is one person’s reflection of how being in the top-1% shaped them. While there are some good lessons learned that others can likely benefit from, projecting is inappropriate as it not everyone’s reality in the top-1% - everyone is different, everyone’s journey is there own.
Here’s the thing. She’s in the 1% so she could afford to apply ED and her parents are probably full-pay at F&M for her and her twin sister.
IMO, it’s much harder on the 51-80 percent “upper middle class” who cannot spend $60K/year on college and who has to try to figure out this confusing game to determine where they might get merit aid. It’s especially hard if the family lives in a high cost of living area, which is not factored in by the formulas.
Every “B” feels painful because it may cost in merit aid dollars and I have to be harder on my kid than I would like to be. I worry about him getting burned out or having a nervous breakdown, but if he doesn’t take the AP classes and get mostly A’s, and high test scores, it does not look like he will qualify for merit aid. So I’m not too sympathetic to the 1%-ers or the 90+%ers. I’m sympathetic to those of us that cannot pay full price even though the EFC says we should, and who don’t have reasonable state school options that are actually good schools (not the case in some states). Yeah, I’m jealous when I hear of all the huge amounts of FA going to lower income, when we busted our butts in life to make and save $ for college and retirement. The upper middle class and middle classes have it the toughest right now. Not the 1% and not the lower end, because the 1% can pay and the lower end gets FA.
@sunnyschool “yeah,I’m jealous when I hear of all the huge amounts of FA going to lower income, when we busted our butts in life to make and save $ for college and retirement.”
I am one of those lower income parents. I too busted my butt in life to pay rent and put food on the table. I busted my butt, but didn’t have enough for college OR retirement. I was blessed to have a child who was admitted to a full meets need school. I then busted my butt, sometimes eating beans and rice or ramen, to fly my kid home for the summer. I’m only telling you this so you may realize that those “lucky” low income FA kids have parents who bust their butts as well.
I am so tired of the “I’m too rich to get financial aid. Woe is me” Would you like to change places, 10 years ago? I don’t think so.
Trust me, we will be eating Ramen noodles if we pay what the EFC says. So basically we are closed out of even applying to those schools, even though my student has the stats to do so. Apparently your kid could apply - and go - since you know that they could meet need.
Well, having a retirement is a good thing, @sunnyschool … not everyone will get one of those. And you said you saved $ for college too … not everyone could do that either.
I am in the financial aid doughnut hole right along with you, and I’m in PA, where there are no low-cost options at all. And I also feel like I’m continually hectoring my kids to get the best grades possible because maybe we also can get some merit aid. And while we are technically upper middle-class, we are often living paycheck to paycheck, as I’ve been clear about in other threads, so there is not any money put aside for college, nor is there any expectation of being able to come close to meeting our EFC.
But I’m lucky and so are you, and our kids have the unquantifiable but amazing advantages of security and middle-class life. I bet you had time to sit with your kid and read him books for hours every night when he was a toddler. Probably had playgroups, or a Montessori preK or all kinds of enrichment activities all through school. That stuff - it doesn’t show up in a paycheck - but it matters so much. Don’t discount it or, good grief, wish you didn’t have the ability to give all of that. Your kid is where he is today because of those things, and he will do just fine wherever he goes, because it really is not the end of the world if he isn’t at .
I appreciate the author providing insight into her world.