<p>$250,000 is a crapload. 
You could divide that multiple times and still not get my family’s income. That sum is NOT middle-class.</p>
<p>You are middle class if you have to work for the income. </p>
<p>If you are middle class, and save/invest over years and years, you may reach the point where you do not have to work to maintain your lifestyle. That is upper middle class. Many doctors and quite a few lawyers achieve this level of success.</p>
<p>Working class means not having enough income to accumulate any significant amount of money. You always have to work.</p>
<p>True upper class people can lose half of what they have and still not have to lay off servants.</p>
<p>i’m with you squaregirl.</p>
<p>well 250,000 with a mortgage on a house, and two kids in college costing 50,000 each, and taxes which for this income bracket are at like 35% - that takes a lot out of you. you will be scrimping, no big vacations, etc. people never factor in taxes.</p>
<p>^ Dear god. No big vacations? Maybe we should move the poverty line up to $300,000…</p>
<p>yeah seriously im not sure where youre from but for most people no big vacations doesnt exactly equate to scrimping.</p>
<p>are the decisions coming out by email or by the dartmouth portal?</p>
<p>I love how a thread posted about decision release dates has turned into a debate over the definition of social class. good stuff.</p>
<p>agreed pinkpineapple…there are many other considerations besides raw income…add in taxes and insurance and putting away money for retirement and mortgages and just paying the bills etc. leaves very little to put toward tuition w/o financial aid</p>
<p>yes thats what i mean soccer4921. and to whoever sniffed at that, 250,000 may seem like a lot. but taxes can be 80-90,000. 2 kids in college is 100,000. add in mortgage and insurance and there’s not really anything left. and by “big vacation” i did not mean asia or a cruise, i meant literally any vacation at all except maybe staying at a friends or familys shore house in the summer, free of charge except for gas to get there. a dollar goes a lot further in the midwest or south than it does in the nyc/boston metropolitan areas.</p>
<p>So… Is it confirmed that dartmouth will release decisions on march 31st? And will it be by email or the online account?</p>
<p>^yes, at 5 pm on dartmouth web access</p>
<p>I applied to cornell and I know that cornell is releasing at 5 on march 31, so if all the ivies are planning on doing it at the same time then that would make sense that its at 5 on march 31. where is it confirmed that they watn to do it all at the same time?</p>
<p>its just some sort of ivy league agreement they have</p>
<p>Actually at $250 you’re not quite at the highest tax bracket. You’re also forgetting that the total rate you pay is much lower than the highest rate you pay - about 10% on the first 10k, 15% on the next 20k, 25% on the next 50k etc.
Yes, people with higher incomes pay more in taxes than those with lower incomes, but it really isn’t that much more when you really consider it.</p>
<p>The thing with FA is that people with higher incomes are expected to have saved much more money for their childrens’ education (instead of going on “big vacations,” perhaps). They are not expected to take out 50k from yearly income.
The problem - I think - comes in when people have saved more than they were expected to for their income level (the Ivies’ initiatives “with $60k income and typical assets”). These people who saved more rather than spending more get screwed more by FA, because most material assets (TVs, clothes, entertainment, etc.) are not computed in “assets.”
Yes, I did just re-hijack this thread. Sorry.</p>
<p>Lol all the ivys release it at the same time. Its an agreement they all have so that its fair to everyone, though I’m sure dartmouth finishes reviewing apps well before cornell</p>