Types of Students at UChicago/Student Life

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

@groweg Interesting. I can probably imagine what some of the “dimensions” of difference are, but am curious what they are specifically based on your experience.

I believe that the emphasis on ED and resulting daunting admit rates for RD and even EA are scaring off some middle class kids. A parent friend of mine whose kid was accepted at both Uchicago and Princeton told me that at Princeton people were discussing an income “valley” among students (i.e. fewer kids from families in the middle and upper-middle class).

22

@BrianBoiler , I am wondering what the level of FA at Chicago would be for a kid in the true middle-middle class - the child of, say, a letter-carrier (such as my own father). Would it not be much more generous than that your son received?

I remember classmates of mine lamenting the hardship of their own cases because their parents were high-earning professionals who were paying full freight or close to it. That was a cause of both some guilt and some resentment over the extended period of dependency. Whereas kids of working class parents may have had it easier: they were often able to attend with little or no actual parental assistance. It may be hard to imagine, but in 1963 when I went up to the University of Chicago the financial aid office pegged a typical student’s budget as $3,200 (composed of tuition, room and board in residence, books and a miscellany of other items). (That would be $26,000 in 2018 dollars, which still seems like a bargain.) My need-based scholarship was slightly above $2,000, and it fell a bit in later years. It contemplated a component of student contribution through work, parental assistance and loans to augment the scholarship. It placed me in roughly the same financial position I would have been in at my state university.

My point is that the University of Chicago was not in those days at all out of reach for working class kids, and there were plenty of them there. The sticker was a big one, but you didn’t pay the sticker price if you were in that demographic. I made it through four years of school on the basis of pre-existing savings, working jobs during the year and summers and taking modest loans. Very little parental support was necessary.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone with more up to date data on this. Is it really true that for these middle-middle class kids the U of C is out of reach, or reachable only with hardship?

23

@marlowe1 - just look at the data, here and here:

https://financialaid.uchicago.edu/undergraduate

https://financialaid.uchicago.edu/undergraduate/costs

Chicago provides full tuition coverage (but NOT room and board coverage) for families making less than $125k. That means, for a middle class family making, say, $90k a year, they’d still be on the hook for the $22k in living expenses (and related costs) a year. For a family of, say, two teachers making around $130k a year, they’d be looking at very little aid indeed. Of course, need is different for every family, and the actual level of grants will vary.

Still, this policy is tough for families making more than $65k and, indeed, less that truly high-net earning families.

With a policy like this, it seems those from quite modest means (like under $65k a year) and those quite wealthy (who can afford $80k in fees without blinking) would be least impacted.

24

@Cue7 , $22K/year is about what I would have expected and I would think about what one would pay for all costs at a state university if not living at home. Yes, it will be a strain, but, with some combination of funds from student jobs, loans and direct parental contribution, ought to be doable for most. And shouldn’t one be willing to pay for something as valuable - in all senses of the word - as a U of C education?

My belief is that, though there’s an economic component here, the decline of the middle has a strong cultural dimension.

25

@browniesundae asks for specifics on the dimensions of difference between UChicago and large state universities in the South. Some of my impressions are: 1) People at Southern state universities are highly polite, even graceful. UChicago values the frank and open airing of differences of opinions and ideas. There is little holding back out of concern for injuring pride or ego. 2) Sports at UChicago do not have the cachet they enjoy at large Southern state universities. On a campus tour last April, I remember gazing in awe from the edge of the football stadium at the University of Georgia. UChicago has nothing like that.

26

Of my son’s close friends at UChicago, these are the common traits:

  • Most are an only child
  • All have married parents; maybe some had been remarried after divorce, but none are currently single parents
  • Most have two professional level employed parents - lawyers, professors, doctors, etc
  • All but my son and one other (who is an Odyssey Scholar) attended private schools

Small sample size but other than the Odyssey Scholar they all sound like at least upper middle class families. Most either kept their family size small to be able to afford private schools and college or make enough that cost is bearable. His interpretation is that his was the most “blue collar” lifestyle of all his close friends but he can be a bit melodramatic and is apparently whinging at us sending him to public school (I’m rolling my eyes as I type this.)

So far, his experience has very much been the donut hole or valley effect predicted with students either being from very modest or fairly upper income backgrounds and little in between.

This is not just happening at UChicago, but is happening at private schools across the country that give little or no merit aid and instead only give need based aid. The middle income students with the stats to gain entry into a top selective school will qualify for large merit aid at other schools, so it is a hard choice to ask a family to pay so much more to go to a tippy top selective rather than going almost free to a top selective instead.

27

@marlowe1 - sure, there is a cultural dimension, but I think the financial dimension is extremely strong.

As an example, the total sticker price (tuition and living expenses) at Chicago is close to $80k. The total sticker price, say, for Penn State main campus (for a PA resident) is about $33k, and $28k for a Penn State satellite campus.

For a middle class family, that’s some serious sticker shock. I do think it’s scaring off potentially great Chicago talent.

But, Chicago has little incentive to woo the middle class. They’re getting plenty of great, wealthy talent, and are striving to get more great lower-income talent.

Remember, the wealthy are a target for obvious reasons, and lower-income students have recently grown more attractive to elite colleges (for reasons that now include US News incorporating lower income presence in its rankings). There are no such strong incentives to get the middle class talent.

28

I think the assessments above are largely correct. Of the people of means, maybe 5% are Richie Rich clones, while 95% are friendly and well-adjusted people. But the denominator is large enough that the 5% make their presence felt through various forms of conspicuous consumption.

For a (highly unscientific) look at this phenomenon, you can buy a coffee, sit on the quad, and count Canada Goose jackets. The brand’s parkas retail for $800 (at the low end), so they’ve become something of a punch line on campus. In the winter, it’s not uncommon to see groups of 3 or 4 students, all wearing some variation on a Canada Goose parka. Groups like this are hardly the norm, but you see them often enough that they aren’t surprising either.

29

But, @Cue7 , if we stick with just the economics, there is not a good explanation for this disappearance of the middle - unless it is laziness in not looking beyond the sticker price. The actual cost for this demographic at the U of C after f.a. is on the order of $22,000, whereas the total cost at Penn State is $33,000. It would take over $10,000 in merit scholarship to make the latter preferable financially. How frequent, @milee30 , is that level of scholarship? A kid or kid’s parents who make something like 5k or so the reason for choosing Penn State over Chicago probably isn’t sufficiently motivated in any event by what Chicago has to offer. We are brought back to the cultural dimension.

30

@DunBoyer I had never heard of Canada Goose (shows you what income bracket I’m NOT from) until my first year D told me a few weeks ago that she and a friend were making a game of counting them on campus. What we don’t know is how many of those Canada Goose coats are fakes:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-goose-counterfeiting-1.4849455
https://www.canadagoose.com/us/en/counterfeit/counterfeit.html

31

"How frequent, @milee30 , is that level of scholarship? "

I don’t have enough data to even guess, especially if you’re referring to Penn State. We live in Florida, so it’s an entirely different value proposition. DS could have gone to University of Florida almost completely free when you consider the state scholarships - Bright Futures, Benaquisto and others for NM. $0 for your state flagship vs. “only” $22k a year is still a large difference. Over 4 years, it is very close to six figures. It’s very reasonable families consider that, not lazy at all.

32

@marlowe1 @Cue7

I think you both may be on to something.

Yes, a family earning $75K a year would probably pay less at UChicago than at their state school, after need-based aid. But taking the time to look beyond the sticker price, and deliver into fairly opaque financial aid guidelines, requires a belief that “people like me” actually go to UChicago.

If a student doesn’t know if they can compete with the groups who routinely fill 80% of a class, they look at the sticker price and it confirms all their beliefs about who UChicago wants here. Few students look further than that - why bother?

I saw variations on this phenomenon as a tutor for the neighborhood schools program, and several friends (who did look further, and applied, and got in) have described a similar feeling.

Putting the real cost of attendance front and center, instead of making it an asterisk two clicks away, could make a big difference.

Sue Dynarski at the University of Michigan just put out an excellent study on this - below is an excerpt from the press release (see https://news.umich.edu/hailed-it-tuition-free-promise-effectively-recruits-low-income-students-to-university-of-michigan/)

Full study is linked at the bottom of the release - it’s a Google Doc so I can’t post the link here.

33

“it’s not uncommon to see groups of 3 or 4 students, all wearing some variation on a Canada Goose parka”

Interesting that the CG wearers travel in gaggles. When DS was admitted and I asked both here on the forum and some of my IRL friends from northern climates what sort of warm gear he would need several of the IRL Boston and NY friends suggested CG. We decided not to go that route; we’re not a conspicuous consumption family (hence, DS’ comment about how we live a “blue collar” lifestyle even though we’re a full pay family.) A few days ago I jokingly asked if he was the only one there without a CG jacket and he said none of his close friends wear them. He said they all have proper warm gear, but none of them are flashy, either. If they’re the unadorned flock, maybe they’re a “murder” of mud-hued students in contrast to the gaggle of glittery geese?

34

@milee30 , my hat is off to you and your son. With his option of a free ride at his state university you were nevertheless willing to pay full freight at the U of C. That’s saying something about what you and he thought of a Chicago education. To some degree almost everyone who attends the University is paying something additional for that value. That’s a choice and an allocation of priorities I honor. Would it be going too far to suggest that the choice was based on the inherent quality of that education as against the more obvious branding cachet offered by the other elite schools?

@DunBoyer , it wasn’t always the case that this middle demographic couldn’t see themselves as students at Chicago or couldn’t be bothered to look further beyond the sticker price. That wasn’t so several decades back. What has changed? Could it be the dreaded Princetonization that we all so feared once upon a time? Has that reduced the place in the eyes of this demographic to just another preserve of the posh? Or does this tell us that something is more seriously wrong not with the College but with the aspiration and initiative of the middle class itself? Perhaps it is both these things and is merely the bimodal way we live now. Perhaps @Cue7 has it right in saying that admitting too many of the middle people can no longer be justified financially in a world where the truly disadvantaged also need a place at the table. These are to me profoundly depressing speculations. I hope they may be only half-true.

Perhaps Chicago’s midcentury will some day be looked on as its golden age - when it truly did offer a unique education that appealed to a select number drawn from all demographics. All golden ages are replaced by silver and then bronze ones. Have we now entered an iron age?

35

In no way do I have any racist motive but my observation is that most of the students wearing Canadian Goose tend to be Asian students, especially foreign students who seem to be very brand conscious. I have read in Japan even high school students will be wearing Prada and Chanel. I guess this may be a cultural thing.

My feeling is that you have to take the good with the bad in the transformation of U of C in the last couple of decades. Hyde Park and U of C in the 1980’s and early 1990’s wasn’t the nicest of places. Indeed it could be downright seedy and unsafe. The whole university seemed to be stagnant in appearance. If successive University Presidents spruce up the campus, jack up the yield and lower admission rate and in general make the school far more popular, you simply don’t expect the gritty intellectual loner character of the 1970’s and 1980’s U of C to survive unchanged.

Going forward how can U of C attract true middle class? It is going to be tough without infusion of ridiculous amount of capital. If Warren Buffett decides to give U of C $5 billion, I think Zimmer more likely will spend it on Medical School and Biological Science Division than on more financial aid for middle class student. And I would agree with Zimmer on that decision. Unless Bezo or Putin suddenly decides to donate $20 billion to U of C, I don’t see the trend of diminishing presence of middle class reversing. U of C doesn’t have enough money to do everything. And I would believe spending more money on research will likely beneficent the school more than awarding more FA to middle class in College. It is a cold heart brutally rational decision that probably will not win many fans amidst the middle class applicant pool but I just don’t see where the school can find the money to finance more FA with competing priorities.

36

@marlowe1 - up thread, you emphasized the cultural dimension for middle class students eschewing Chicago. Coming back to the financial point, though: you need to remember that, a middle class kid accepted to Chicago is almost certainly in the top 5% of applicants for all but the most tippy-top public schools.

So, to use the Penn State example, the middle class cross-admit between Chicago and Penn State will almost certainly be accepted into Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College. This student will have tuition, room and board all covered, AND will have access to the honors dorms, specialized research opportunities, classes, etc.

At Chicago, this student would be a run-of-the-mill admit, and would be looking at around 20k/yr in expenses (plus any travel costs, if they’re not local).

For a middle class family, the Penn State offer is highly appealing indeed. Also, these honors colleges do a wonderful job, and invest a lot of resources into their honors students (to the extent where, for a family with financial concerns, investing ~$90k in Chicago - for all its long term benefits - may not be better than taking another, great option with Schreyer).

And, that’s what makes wooing the middle class kids even more difficult. The exceptional middle class kid considering Chicago has tremendous low-cost options available too. And, for a family that is more price-sensitive than the upper crust (and the lower income who pay next-to-nothing at Chicago), those other options move the needle.

Also, re “Princetonization” - I don’t think this is just happening at Chicago. The wealthy and the lower income are the two groups that will receive the most preferences in admissions, and the student bodies at top schools reflect that right now.

37

My D was telling me that people were getting their Can. Goose coats stolen during Fall quarter. She has an LL Bean so way uncool - and completely theft-proof.

38

I see what you mean, Cue. It is sad to see this demographic declining at the U of C, where it was once so vibrant. However, you have to give the state universities credit for developing programs capable of luring talented kids with all that money and special treatment. I suppose Penn State and the others are able to offer these free rides to middle-income high achievers when the elite privates don’t or can’t do that simply because they have the state treasury to call on.

Still, in the end a kid has a choice, and there are good reasons why a talented kid and family would be willing to pay $80,000 over four years in order to go to the U of C. The amount I paid in the 1960’s, adjusted to 2018 dollars, was probably two-thirds or so of that, and I only retired the loan twenty or so years after graduation. It seems right to me that unless you come from abject deprivation you should have financial skin in the game. I don’t quite approve of free rides at state universities, much less at the University of Chicago.

39

I’m a first year (class of 2022) and completely agree with @dunboyer. There are too many types of students here, much more diverse than my high school. While there certainly are a lot of wealthy kids, there are lots of people from the middle-class and lower socio-economic stratas.

40

Apparently LL Bean duck boots are considered way cool, according to my D.