<p>Kajon,</p>
<p>I was told earlier in this thread that 40 -65K is middle income. In my neck of the woods, for a family of 5, that would practically make you eligible for food stamps. (high cost of living).</p>
<p>I consider us middle income, but we make way more than that. It seems especially troublesome for the group somewhat above 65K that loses access to financial aid but does not make enough to pay $$$ for college.</p>
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<p>Travel for FA aid kids are paid through their summer contribution money, not from the schools. My D was a QB match recipient and a Gates Scholar, and I still have to pay for her travel, which of course I gladly do.</p>
<p>PG, are these direct quotes or your words? Would you mind give the post #if they are direct quotes?
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<p>Really? Because I’m on full financial aid at Stanford and I didn’t get a plane trip back and forth. Someone alert the Stanford FA office.</p>
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<p>They can’t have a non-work study job?</p>
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<p>Hmm… me neither. Newsflash. Being on financial aid is not the utopia it’s made out to be.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Keep in mind that the top 5% of income earners begins at about $150,000. You may feel middle class, but no one in the top 5% of income is “middle class.” America prides itself on being middle class, so I’d consider it fair to consider the 20-80% mark middle class. So…</p>
<p>Lower = $20,000 and under (19.4%)
Middle = $20,000 - $90,000
Upper = $90,000+ (20%)</p>
<p>The fact is that the middle class IS getting a great deal at HYPSM+ - they are paying nothing or 10% of their income. I do understand that income can vary greatly by geographic location. I simply can’t justify someone in the top 5% of income earners as middle class.</p>
<p>[Household</a> income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States]Household”>Household income in the United States - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>Hyperbole or no, that simply isn’t true. Federal means-tested benefits are not adjusted for an area’s cost of living. Food stamps and other benefits end at 150-185% of the poverty line, depending on the program. The area doesn’t matter. Although you may think $65k would be a struggle where you live, the fact is that your cashiers - no matter how uncomfortable their life - probably haven’t starved to death yet. Living on a smaller income is possible.</p>
<p>sewhappy, our financial positions are probably somewhat similar in that we are a full-freight family, as per the FAFSA gods. Our positions are different in that we chose to limit our children to schools we believed we could afford. Over the past decade, that amount has usually been between $8-12K annually less than the cost of a need-only private school. No agonizing, no bitterness from parents or kids - why should there be, when, in our very fortunate situation, there are so many outstanding options? We never labored under the illusion that only an Ivy or top 20 school could successfully launch our kids. </p>
<p>And, as it happens, one even graduated from a top 20 uni, with a generous merit scholarship. The choice was hers, though - when she graduated from high school, she could have gone wherever our budget would have taken her, and she had 5 excellent affordable options. She was thrilled with those and didn’t waste a moment bemoaning the affordable options other students had. “Sweet deal”? Certainly - and one that any Harvard-accepted student could probably have made happen. It helps that none of us buy into the notion that Ivy = inevitable lifetime success. We’ve saved that $8K or $12K for retirement each year. I’ll never post asking for hotel suggestions in Hawaii, whatever the season, because that money is paying for someone’s education or someone’s retirement or even, in 18 short months, someone’s wedding. And that kid was thrilled with what we offered her, even though it’s not as much as an average wedding in her area costs (if you believe the wedding industry folks, which I don’t - but enough of that …) </p>
<p>I’ve read CC for more than 5 years, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a deeper level of bitterness from a parent who 1.) has a child at Harvard and 2.) can afford to send him there. I suppose I should feel some variant of empathy, since you are obviously unhappy. If you hadn’t equated financial need with bad parenting - and if you hadn’t made those points in a number of threads over the past year - I might have chalked your comments up to a bad day. But you’ve been angry a long time.</p>
<p>Then the answer you are really looking for isn’t to let everyone be tuition free, but rather to have HYP charge MORE than the current tuition.</p>
<p>That way if they up tuition say maybe $30,000 more per year the very wealthy will be paying $80,000+ and those earning say a little more than $200,000 will receive about $30,000 in financial aid. And the schools will be able to not have to dip into their endowment as much.</p>
<p>That would make more people feel like they are getting their discount, their financial aid. Its a win-win situation!</p>
<p>And HYP and others would also raise tuition and the cycle will continue with even higher tuition.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>To POIH:
One has to decide priorities in life. In this country, the way it works is that private college tuitions + endowments + donations do subsidize the educations of those less able to afford that school but who have equally merited such an education by virtue of academic and extracurricular accomplishment. In fact, actually, the elite colleges take an opposite view from yours – one deeply situated in the concepts of opportunity and access which underlie the very foundation of our democracy – not perhaps the democracies of other nations, nor the totalitarian & repressive governents elsewhere. The Elites which can afford to do so consider those who accomplish as much as your daughter, but without the income of her parents, to be more worthy of acceptance into their U’s, comparatively speaking. Not having the income for private test prep and other nifty advantages of high-income parents, low-income high achievers are rewarded for that differential. Very often much of that achievement comes at considerable pain and personal loss – but heck, let’s not worry ourselves with the pains and losses of others. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>So you could have chosen another country in which to educate your daughter – one without the philosophy I just described, but since you have chosen this country, I suggest you come to terms with the ramifications of the mission of opportunity which characterizes many of our institutions.</p>
<p>A third option would have been to insist that your daughter apply only to need-aware schools, so that the riff-raff mentioned by PG would have been eliminated, and in your mind only the “financially deserving” parents would be “rewarded” for being in a special class. Make no mistake about it, though: those colleges do not have a different philosophy; they are merely in a different practical situation than HYPSM, in that need-aware schools must be need-aware so that they enroll mostly full-pay who can meet the college’s bottom line.</p>
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DD was accepted at every Ivy except Harvard, so no sour grapes there.</p>
<p>sewhappy, you are making an arguement you could not win. Not one is forcing you to make that much money, I bet you will not want to give up that life time of enjoyments of higher income for merely 4 years of FA. </p>
<p>No one has yet to agreed to give up their jobs and donate their $$ so they could qualify for need based aid.</p>
<p>Skrlvr:
Define Rich first.
Making $200k/yr is not rich from any angle.</p>
<p>200K is about 4 times as much money as I make.</p>
<p>And I feel that I lead a very comfortable lifestyle. </p>
<p>So yeah, I feel that 200K is wealthy.</p>
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<p>envyable results. Your DD is a wonderful student. Why pick M over P? Why continue to apply to so many schools after M EA? I am just wondering without any judgement and/or anyother motive.</p>
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<p>If you felt so strongly that it was unfair that HYPSM has discriminatory financial aid, insofar as it gives more financial aid to lower income students and little or none at your level, why didn’t you encourage her to apply to many other equally-fine schools that are known for merit aid scholarships? Why, for example, did you not look at WashU – a fine school that gives merit money? Certainly someone smart enough to be making $200K within a few years of arrival into the US is smart enough to realize that there is no significant difference in educational quality between HYPSM and another school ranked in the top 20.</p>
<p>This is where you come across as entitled, POIH. Because we all know that you never, ever, ever would have considered a school other than HYPSM for your daughter. Because you’re still laboring under that prestige-seeking mentality – even though the people with <em>true</em> prestige in this country think well beyond HYPSM. Because you believe there’s a meaningful gap between those schools and anything below. And yet – while you’re restricting yourself to your perception of Only The Very Best – you insist that these schools – * the most generous in the country! * – aren’t giving your daughter enough and are somehow penalizing her / you. Is there no end to your sense of entitlement?</p>
<p>You might be interested in knowing that the other thing about the prestigious class that you so desperately want your daughter to be a part of – the well-to-do in this country do practice noblesse oblige. That’s why they donate to scholarships and buildings and so forth. And they pay full freight with the attitude that they know how privileged they are and they won’t complain. There is nothing “elite” or “privileged” about the attitude that “HYPSM isn’t doing enough for me.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite.</p>
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<p>What difference does that make to anything, Dad II? If POIH’s daughter preferred M over P, then so be it.</p>
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<p>Sorry…but from this angle…$200,000 per year IS quite a high income. Sorry, but you SHOULD be able to pay for your kid’s Ivy education…or any other college education for that matter. And if the price of that Ivy is too high…why didn’t you have your child attend your flagship U…or some school where they might have garnered significant merit aid. Heck…if the kid is “ivy caliber” they could have gotten significant merit aid at a school other than an expensive Ivy that their POOR $200,000 a year income parents feel is NOT rich.</p>
<p>Oh…but there is that little “prestige factor”.</p>
<p>Give me a break.</p>
<p>skrlvr:
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<p>Ok, peace out. I might be out of line with respect to it as most of the people I know or see in this area makes more or less what I do.</p>
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<p>According to you, I must be a failure as a parent. Great. Since you are equating parenting with economic success, I am a huge failure as I probably make 1/10th or less of what you make. Yes, I am a failure, I sent her to public school, not “The Harker” school. I’m a bad parent that didn’t have the economic resources to have access to the same things your child did. Spank me silly, bad me! Oh, that’s right, my D turned out relatively the same academically as yours did. So call me a failure if it makes you feel good.</p>
<p>::: looks up from a ringside seat and giant tub of popcorn:::: This thread belongs in the cc hall of fame!! Priceless!</p>
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<p>Wait a minute. POIH, your D was admitted to many other fine schools WITH scholarship money – you chose not to accept any of them because, of course, the sun rises and sets on HYPSM – and then you complain that you have to pay full freight and that MIT is discriminatory in not giving her money??? Nothing prevented her from taking any of these opportunities.</p>
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<p>Why wouldn’t you have an idea what the average person makes, though? You really think people of “average” income send their kids to Harker at $35K / year?</p>