<p>epiph,
With all due respect, there are some low income people who feel that others should pay full freight and provide for those who cannot. That said, maybe thats understandible and what entitlements are for, and who should be first in line for the FA programs. However, it is not meant for those who game the system, hide assets, have discretionary funds but still want to go for that golden goose and get something that really was meant for those in need.</p>
<p>Post 338: I was responding to your post, which stated “authoritatively” what “low-income families” think. Since I’m one of many, and know how these other personally known families think as well, apparently you did not apply any scientific method to your (nonexistent) surveying of low-income families.</p>
<p>Nor did I ever state that I “know about all parents who pay full freight and complain.” I limited myself to the posters on this very thread, which was clear in my posts. I know “how they think,” because they’re making it plain how they think.</p>
<p>So apprently both your writing skills and your reading skills need improvement.</p>
<p>::: uh oh, the donuts might be flying soon:::::::</p>
<p>(I won’t be responding to post 341 because my previous posts covered that already.) Some of you have fertile imaginations about how much and often the FA system is “gamed” at the Elites, specifically, which is what this conversation is/was about.</p>
<p>I remember when each of my kids received their financial aid packages for the first time. I cried because I knew their college education at MIT, Cornell and dd undisclosed private U was made possible by very generous people who invested in my kids. I sent each of the college presidents a thankyou letter because I was so trully touched that there were people who felt it was their honor to pay forward. So I would just like to say to those parents who are paying the full price that you are so fortunate to have circumstances that have allowed you to do so but don’t think for a minute that those of us who have not been able to pay full price are not thankful. </p>
<p>As I mentioned earlier, it will be my sons’ job to pay forward the kindness that has been shown to them. It is really a cycle that is designed to keep our country on an even keel and not a class system.</p>
<p>Epiph,</p>
<p>Sadly, there are many with financial means who gloat about their meetings with their accountants and financial advisors when their kids are in middle school and early high school, and plan how to hide or shift assets/ come up with strategies no different than hiding significant assests so grandma will get her nursing home paid for by medicaid. It just doesn’t pass the smell test, and it isn’t one’s imagination.</p>
<p>is there some correlation between ambiguity of theme for a thread and ire of the posts?</p>
<p>Not entirely sure what this thread started out being about but it keeps going to heated places.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, Yeah I do think we aren’t born to our station in life, although some are born so darn rich they can’t ever stop being rich no matter how stupidly they live their lives. That’s always a sorry spectacle but seems to be part of the indelible American social landscape. But for the rest of us, I do think we can to some large degree affect where we end up. Don’t most of us on this forum? Isn’t that the underlying dream of education in America?</p>
<p>epiphany, I don’t understand your point of view. To depersonalize the issue, consider two families, Family A and Family 1, with essentially identical incomes, including gifts, inheritances, prizes, lottery winnings, coins found on the ground . . . Families A and 1 live in the same town, for the same number of years.</p>
<p>Suppose that Family A buys a house with monthly mortgage payments that are half of what they are “qualified” to pay, buys used cars, vacations cheaply or not at all, and saves money. Family 1 buys a house at their full “qualified” payment level, buys new cars, vacations well, and does not save money. Is it not the case that the calculated need of Family 1 exceeds the need of Family A? Why would it be distasteful to point that out? Where is the assumption that either family worked harder? Where is the differential in the opportunity to save, in this case? (not denying that it definitely exists in others)</p>
<p>Is the view that one should not know anything about other families’ finances one of those upper-middle-class taboos that was somehow bypassed in my less-than-upper-middle-class upbringing? No, no one in my family would flat out ask anyone how much they made. But at a conservative estimate, I’d say my mother spent 10,800 hours conversing with other mothers, while I was growing up . . . probably more. If people are open, they can share quite a lot of information with each other in that period of time. I wouldn’t consider it “gossip” unless two people were talking about a third person. It was just conversation. As I said, a different era.</p>
<p>(When it comes to my colleague who bought the expensive house when his children were in high school, he explicitly told us what he was doing, and why.)</p>
<p>applicannot,
your breakdown is a surprise. Very skewed in what i had in mind. To me
low - 50k and under
middle - 50 - 200
upper would be 200k+</p>
<p>I am glad I have asked, various posts might be interpreted very differently.<br>
We need common base. Maybe it would be much less confusing if we mention actual monetary level, instead of very vague low, middle, upper.</p>
<p>Here is a link to a paper written by a Harvard professor discussing merit aid to upper versus lower income kids. </p>
<p>[Who</a> Should We Help? The Negative Social Consequences of Merit Aid Scholarships](<a href=“http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/meritaid/merit_aid02.php]Who”>http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/meritaid/merit_aid02.php)</p>
<p>I would like to Second post 345. Unlike some posters on this thread who feel entitled to FA, though relatively well-off, we have never felt entitled to FA, though quite un-well-off. We have felt grateful beyond words. Every year I made sure that my daughter sent hand-written personal thank-you notes to her donors. I was so thankful that her Ivy gave us the names and addresses of her scholarship providers. The U would contact her with that info, every year and also send a notification to me. I always got on her case to make sure she sent those hand written letters, but I didn’t need to. (The U gave the family plenty of time and started the communication about it early, so no one would complete the academic year forgetting to notify donors.)</p>
<p>
Bingo! Thats it exactly.</p>
<p>Post 348: I loathe repetition, so I’m not going to repeat my previous posts. Indirectly, they address some of these tangential questions. But if you want to “know where I’m coming from,” all you need to do is check out PG’s replies on this thread. She apparently feels similarly to me about the quite unclassy curiosity about the finances of others.</p>
<p>There have been threads about this in the past, with the astute observation by many about how lots of people claim things that never occurred. I also have casual acquaintances who have made statements that appear that they have gamed the (FA) system; only one discovers later that their benefits and supposed gains were minimal. Don’t believe everything you hear. FA officers aren’t that stupid that significant numbers of students accepted to this handful of Elite U’s are making out like bandits.</p>
<p>sewhappy:
Man, my irony button must be broken. Im not usually so thick; and actually, I still dont see the irony in these statements:
In my irony-impaired state, that all sounded pretty biased. But Ill take your word for it. I wouldnt want to have written any of that in all sincerity, either.</p>
<p>epiphany, to go back a few posts…</p>
<p>I lol’ed at your mention that your missives to the FA folks resulted in the middle-class initiatives. I have often felt the same way, like those folks do on the Windows 7 commercials . I blasted the FA folks at Yale with several pages of suggestions to make FA more “fair” (imo) for the “middle-class”. So, when the changes went in the very next year…I claimed my share of credit, too.</p>
<p>“Middle-class initiative at Yale - it was my idea.” ;)</p>
<p>Thanks, cur. I needed that. :)</p>
<p>I know that Pizzagirl shares the epiphany’s point of view about not discussing finances. My “unclassy” attitude might be one of those dead give-aways about my origins.</p>
<p>I have no idea how many people are shifting assets as my colleague did. (And I doubt that he had sufficient resources to <em>really</em> shift assets.) But he was an alum of H, interviewed for H, and I have no doubt he worked the numbers before he made the move. Also, I think he was sharing the information with us as a suggestion for the future. </p>
<p>I just think that it would be better if people knew the FA algorithms in advance, so that they could make informed decisions, in their own cases.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon,</p>
<p>You need to go back and get the job done right.</p>
<p>Thank you for the the quotes and highlights, Frazzled. I’m quite proud of the post although was pretty tired when I wrote it.</p>
<p>The post is not an indictment of fire fighters and teachers. The post was a response to modest earners with kids getting FA getting huffy with high earners who pay full freight and complain about it. I believe the preceding post(s) that prompted mine made the claim that as a prosperous parent I can CHOOSE not to send my kid to a HYPS. Well, I was trying to make the point that we can all make choices, including those who are modest earners. This is kind of subtle but if you try hard I think you may grasp it.</p>
<p>And in all honesty, my husband and I frequently talk about how we should have gone into fire fighting. Way early pension. Health benefits. Very nice gig. Son would probably be attending Harvard for what he earns in the summers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And many parents who are full pays are really happy to know this is where some of their tuition money is going.</p>
<p>QuantMech – I was born in the same era as you. We lived in a modest house so that my parents could send me and my two siblings to private colleges without the benefit of financial aid for any of us. I don’t ever remember them wondering what kind of financial aid other families who lived in bigger houses were getting.</p>
<p>In fact, most everyone else went to state schools and so what? They loved college as much as I did and ended up with good careers. The only people I felt bad for were the daughters of parents who thought a college education was wasted on them because they would just get married anyways. Yes, I’m that old.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not only is that a perfectly legitimate complaint, it is one that I, also, have publicly supported on CC and elsewhere. I don’t know how anyone of any income level or FA need/lack of need could object to that. The tap-dancing and machinations that families have to do – far and above the efforts for admission itself – is absurd. Bad enough that there are is not a uniform system of disclosures, nor uniform terminology, nor uniform methodologies before the applications are due; after acceptances are in, the 30 days of pressure while one negotiates merit offers and need offers (if complex) is unreasonably inefficient in the 21st century.</p>
<p>I would like to see the colleges and U’s, both the strictly-need FA ones, and the ones offering merit or a combination, submit to some uniform information system, accessible to prospective students. Then some tech genius could develop some software to make it easy to compare, given student stats, family finances, and the U’s recent history of aid, what and from where the likely offers will be.</p>
<p>This is another thing I argued for on CC, way back when.</p>