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<p>I didn’t know that MIT considered legacy status in admissions. Learn something new every day.</p>
<p>Oh, wait, you’re NOT talking about legacy? </p>
<p>:D</p>
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<p>Point is that they are asking this to only some of the students which is a discrimination. They admit two 18 years old and tell one
- Here is the acceptance and a way to pay your bills; come on we adopt you
While to the other - Here is the acceptance and now go to hell, rob, steal or ask your parent to pay for these tuitions that are going to go up every year</p>
<p>How come this is fair?</p>
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<p>There are many noble professions that people undertake that leaves them unable to pay the 50K tuition at a private college. Professions such as teachers, firefighters, police officers, stay at home moms come to mind.</p>
<p>I know some wealthy people. They didn’t work for it, they lucked into it. Life is unfair, as earlier posters have pointed out, it always has been, it always will be. Harvard knows this and so every year they accept a few lucky souls who are bright and worked hard but weren’t born into a family of means and Harvard provides them with the same educational opportunities as they did the Kennedys and the Cabots. It is one of the most inspiring attempts at addressing the unfairnesses of life that I can think of.</p>
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<p>When your daughter was accepted to MIT they told her to go to hell?</p>
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<p>No its not same all examples listed from clother, cars to airplane tickets are up in the air to be grabbed by anyone who wants to pay. </p>
<p>No one charge you more because of what you do, have or your race. If you book early you get cheaper ticket than if you book later or may be if you fly red eye or may be there was an add you didn’t look at.</p>
<p>HMSPY on the other hand single out students based on well defined notions and they will not give you FA if you fit those notions then it is discrimination.</p>
<p>No, they are asking both 18 year olds to pay the tuition. And both 18 year olds can ask for help from the institution. The institution says that both can ask for help, but it also says that we can only help certain students. </p>
<p>It just so happens that when you ask for admission, you at the same time ask for help. And at the same time you hear that you are admitted, you also hear if the school will help you out with tuition.</p>
<p>Let’s say both are admitted. So both need to come up with tuition. But these schools may have decided that they will help one kid out based on family income but not the other.</p>
<p>Pea:#184, it is a figurative meaning of when the institutes say here is the acceptance and now you are on you own to figure out how to pay to a 18 year old.</p>
<p>MIT didn’t accept me I presume but DD. She had no way to pay the bills and MIT knows it. By just giving her the acceptance and then telling to now bring $50K to pay is same as saying that we don’t care how you come up with the money.</p>
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<p>But then that is discrimination. As student has no control on what the parent may or may not do and Federal laws are very clear about it.</p>
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<p>This isn’t how it works. Both students are looked at in the same manner (whether you agree with that manner or not is a different tangent). It’s basically a sliding scale. HYPSM says okay, you have $x money in the bank so we are going to charge you $x. This has nothing to do with the willingness to pay, only the cold, hard, calculated ability. Student #2 in this case is deemed to have the ability to pay. That doesn’t mean they want to, it only means that they can.</p>
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<p>It’s not discrimination against a protected class. You’re saying that it’s discrimination for two students to pay a different amount. Are merit scholarships discrimination?</p>
<p>Again merit scholarships are available for everyone and doesn’t rule out any one while need based FA rules out students based on factor not in their control.
It is student effort that is rewarded with merit scholarship but it is student’s parent failures that are rewarded in the need based FA.</p>
<p>There was a soap on TV “Still Standing” and Bill (father) tells his son it is my inability that got you the need based FA you received so you should thank me.</p>
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Seriously? Seriously? How about all those irresponsible, bad parents who are police officers, firefighters, nurses, farmers, schoolteachers, and members of the military? Want to live in a world without them? I surely don’t. And I surely don’t know how most of these folks could come up with $50K per year per child to meet the cost of a private college or university. </p>
<p>Yes, public universities offer hardworking students an excellent education. I think that all of us - the working “rich,” the truly wealthy, the squeezed-dry middle class, the working poor, and talented students of all backgrounds - are better off if higher education offers those students a choice of where to go to school. Where is the benefit for anyone if top-20 private universities are reserved for those children who, by accident of birth, have parents who can pay the full sticker price? Are we talking about colleges or country clubs?</p>
<p>Look, it’s your money. Spend it on your kids’ educations or don’t. I really wish there didn’t have to be quite so much grousing about it from folks who already seem to enjoy many blessings.</p>
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<p>As far as I know, the school we attended, our IQ, our family circumstances, etc. are all out of our control - and yet you consider merit scholarships to be available to everyone. It was out of my control that I have had to work 25+ hours a week in school and that brought down my GPA - and yet you say merit scholarships were equally available to me. It is out of John Doe’s control that he lives in Baltimore and goes to an inner city school that set him behind when he started studying for the SATs, and yet you say that merit scholarships are available to anyone.</p>
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<p>Believe it or not, low-income =/= failure. It was certainly out of my mother’s control that she ended up a single mother. It’s out of her control that she has poor health (from genetics) and thus works at a low-paying job. When merit scholarships are awarded, they are given with as much respect to a student’s “effort” as his or her background - often uncontrollable factors. My sister was on track for merit scholarships but got mono for three months in her Junior year and all but flunked out. How, then, was her loss of merit scholarships within her control?</p>
<p>Of couse merit scholarships rule out certain people; they rule out certain people who don’t meet the conditions of the scholarship.</p>
<p>For instance, I can set up an endowed scholarship that is available only for people of a certain heritage who have achieved a certain ACT score. There’s nothing in federal law that says I can’t do that. It’s my money. In fact, if the people running the scholarship don’t distribute the money in the way that I ask, I can take them to court for that.</p>
<p>Likewise, Harvard has set up certain scholarships for people of a certain income level. They can do that because it’s their money. </p>
<p>If you don’t like schools that practice that kind of behavior, don’t send your child to school there. If you feel that by sending your child there, you are ‘subsidizing’ these other people, then send your child to school somewhere else.</p>
<p>Harvard is pretty clear that it awards scholarships based on family circumstances. It is also pretty clear that it awards acceptances based on participation in extra-curricular activities. You can’t force Harvard to accept that high achiever with 2400 SATs but no ECs on account of the fact that it ‘discriminates’ against those kids who don’t want to do ECs. You may think that it is unfair, but Harvard has set up its acceptances this way.</p>
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<p>And the professors can’t possibly want that either. The professors that are teaching the classes at HYPMS are themselves in the middle class. Even they can’t afford the sticker prices of these places where they work.</p>
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<p>So what should MIT have done with your daughter? Admitted her and said, “Ask your dad to pay whatever he wants. If it’s only $1,000 / year, don’t worry, we’ll come up with the rest”?</p>
<p>You were seriously willing to consider leaving your jobs and moving all the way across the country to be near your daughter as she studied at MIT – an option that only someone who is fairly well-to-do could even CONSIDER entertaining – but you also think that MIT “owes” your daughter something in financial aid??</p>
<p>Sorry. Your D already had the advantages. She had a family who made a lot of money compared to the average American. She had a top-notch private school education, probably one of the top in the country. And you think she was “punished” by MIT? </p>
<p>The entitlement attitude of both “there are only a handful of universities even worth going to in this country” coupled with “and they had darn well better give us financial aid, even though we’re well-to-do” is mind-boggling. What else does the world owe you?</p>
<p>And do you think MIT should give you FA so that you don’t have to cut into your daughter’s $700 / month spending money?</p>
<p>“I don’t have it” is a legitimate reason to need FA. “I don’t wanna pay” isn’t.</p>
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<p>Seriously. My husband and I would have loved to be in any of those professions - shorter hours, far less years in college, earlier retirement, FAR greater job security than working private sector jobs that pay more. In our case and I suspect the case of many parents socked with full freight tuition from colleges, we actually paid some attention to the rising costs of college back when our kids were practically babies. We did some simple arithmetic and it disturbed us greatly that we were far off target for ever paying for it. So my husband left his tenured academic job with six weeks off a year and - let’s face it - darn little stress, and I left my job in a public school system and we moved to jobs where we worked far more hours, endured far greater stress, paid much more in taxes but did manage to build our income to the point where Ivy League schools charge our kid $200K and the kid of a teacher or fireman virtually nothing.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some lectures about “choice” on this thread. Well, the modest earning parent with high aspirations for their kid’s education has the choice to pursue a career that will enable him or her to pay for that education. Is it so hard for the teacher or fireman to look at their darling girl or boy and think it would be nice for them one day to go to Yale or Harvard and maybe go back to night school and take some risks and leave their comfort zone and work for their child’s future instead of expecting others to pick up the tab?</p>
<p>I don’t mean to sound as if I think everyone should pay every penny of their kid’s tuition. I actually thing the schools with the big time endowments should stop charging any tuition. </p>
<p>Low endowment privates, publics . . . a totally different can of worms.</p>
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<p>This is why it’s all talk and no action. For all the hand-wringing over how awful it is that HYPSM set up their systems in this manner, the people who are doing the hand-wringing wouldn’t DREAM of withdrawing their children from these schools.</p>
<p>It’s like the people who complain that admissions to Ivies aren’t purely numbers-based. Well, there are plenty of universities with pure numbers-based admission systems in this country - get a x.x and a XXX SAT, and you’re in. If you dislike the Ivy admission system so much, don’t go there. But the complainers never seem to stop longing for the Ivy prestige. </p>
<p>I myself will be DELIGHTED to send my kids full-pay to the schools of their choice, I know full well I’ll be helping subsidize other people, and I’ll be delighted to do so.</p>
<p>Let’s play out the “HYPSM (etc) shouldn’t charge tuition” hypothetical a little bit.</p>
<p>OK, HYPSM announces tomorrow it’s not going to charge tuition.</p>
<p>What happens to …
… the applicant pool (quality, size)
… the admissions process
… the role that well-to-do families (who donate / would donate) will now play
… the diversity of the campus</p>
<p>Anyone?</p>
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<p>On the contrary, you have complete control POIH. Quit your lucrative job, give away all your assets to a worthy charity, and you can have the FA you want. Voila! Then come back and report how you’re liking your life as a poor person.</p>
<p>I often wonder if parents that have the mindset about need based aid pass down their disdain for it to their children, and it affects how they view classmates that are not as fortunate as they are.</p>
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<p>You are completely wrong. We have talked about it often and come close. As it stands, ours will be graduating a year earlier to save $$$. And we are encouraging our younger to look at publics and privates that will offer her substantial merit.</p>