<p>funny thread. wildchild’s mom: i know how you feel about kentucky because i feel the same way about USC (even though coach carroll’s long gone). good riddance, and i won’t bash the school, but… LOL</p>
<p>last year watching Calipari and his thugs play Cornell all I could think is…</p>
<p>thugs,and their coach looked like a grease ball…</p>
<p>his THUGS? a little harsh, don’t u think?</p>
<p>no. …</p>
<p>wow,memphismom,I can’t even believe you would use an ethnic slur like that and I’m not even Italian.</p>
<p>OK- let’s call Calipari a slimeball. He was recently hawking PapaJohn’s pizza on Twitter. Someone wrote “That’s a little sleazy, even for him.”</p>
<p>His players weren’t as much thugs (the year before at Memphis some were…) as they were pro athletes and did not even pretend to be students. At Memphis he had someone else take a player’s SATs. Something similar happened last year with the Kentucky squad. Many of them were clear “one and dones” and, in fact, did go pro after 1 year.</p>
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<p>Your data from IPEDS does not include private loans. Although it is difficult to obtain this information, estimates are that 20%-25% of families who do not receive institutional financial aid take out private loans to pay tuition. IPEDS hopes to include private loan information next year. So, at Brown, for example, we can say that at least 80% do not have the financial resources to comfortably afford full tuition. If you recall, my comment was that my daughter has very few, indeed no, friends who don’t closely watch their finances:
Of the less than 10% who actually don’t receive financial aid, many are undoubtedly from families who have sacrificed and saved to afford full tuition, but who are not wealthy by most measures. The notion that the ivy league schools are bastions of the fabulously wealthy is just not true.</p>
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<p>Yes. AND he strips the players at his “new school” of their scholarships and leaves the players at his old school with a program that is being punished for HIS violations.</p>
<p>Of course that is an NCAA problem, imho. Instead of letting these coaches leave the program with the violations, they should be made to carry them with them where they go.</p>
<p>gourmet,</p>
<p>I think your analsyis is a little off. You add the % of kids getting private loans to those not getting any aid. Not the as kids only getting insitutional aid. If the kids getting any aid include unsbu stafford, that is just about anyone. I would suggest that many kids from wealthy or upper middle class families get unsub Stafford laons.</p>
<p>Kayf -</p>
<p>Your grammar is so poor that I cannot follow your reasoning. Is it your contention that many wealthy families take out loans they don’t need? What are you trying to say?</p>
<p>Sorry, gourmet re my grammer. </p>
<p>You are trying to analize many different types of aid. Yes, I think many well off people take unsub Stafford. They want their kids to have some skin in the game. </p>
<p>If you are trying to determine the % of kids who get some aid, I would suggest that your add the private loans % to institutional aid % (which I do not think you provide).</p>
<p>That is not what you are doing. You are adding all aid to private loan.</p>
<p>In short, I think you are duplicating kids with various aid. It would be nice if schools disclosed seperately how many kids with “aid” are only getting unsub stafford loans. </p>
<p>Could you explain to me why you add the “private loan” amounts to “institutional aid” yet do not provide any stats re any kids getting instituional aid?</p>
<p>Private student loans, i.e., Citibank, Wells Fargo, etc. are not included in the IPEDS data, although they are proposing a change to include that information as well next year. I suppose some very wealthy parents have their children take out loans so that there is “skin in the game,” but again, this is anecdotal and difficult to quantify. Many other families have saved and sacrificed to afford full pay tuition, but they would not consider themselves to be wealthy, nor do they live a “wealthy” lifestyle. Some posters have suggested that certain top tier schools are composed of 30%-50% students from extreme affluence who live lavishly. </p>
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<p>My contention is that this is just a preconceived notion - students from this type of background are few and far between at any college.</p>
<p>I actually disagree with that. I know for fact that internationals at Cornell are very wealthy. The school doesn’t give out much FA to internationals, most of them are full pay. They have their cars and they live in the best apartments in Collegetown. My daughter is subletting an apartment at one of those buildings(she knows how to live well and not pay full price), and they are mostly Asians. Those wealthy internationals often will not interact with Americans because we are too much of a working class. </p>
<p>Not that D1’s friends talk about if they are FA or not, but of her 3 best girlfriends, none of them are eligible for FA, and one of them is borrowing massive private loans. One friend has a Chanel bag in every color with unlimited allowance. In general D1’s private school friends are better off than her friends in college.</p>
<p>Gorumet, of couse private loans are not included in Ipeds. But you add the Ipeds % with the estimate of private loans to say that is the sum of instituional aid + private loans. I dont agree with that. </p>
<p>Add to that, the kids with wealth NCPs who get federal aid. </p>
<p>Gourmet, if the IPED data includes unsub stafford loan, there is no indication of those kids wealth.</p>
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<p>Depending on personality, though, I do think that a more serious student can indeed be disheartened / brought down / de-motivated if he or she is living amongst a group of students for whom college is merely frats / drinking / oh yeah, occasionally going to classes too. I know I personally would have found that incredibly demotivating, and I for one blossomed when I was finally among people who, like me, valued academic achievement and for whom studying wasn’t “uncool.” That, to me, is the disadvantage of a lot of the larger, less selective state schools.</p>
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I could give you a few reasons for this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There is much less emphasis on one’s research interests in undergrad. Realistically, most people won’t even have much of a clue of what those research interests are until late in their UG studies. So, there isn’t as much of a need to focus on a specific advisor who can help advance one’s research.</p></li>
<li><p>For engineering, undergrad curricula are strictly regulated by ABET accreditation standards. While there certainly are curricular differences between schools, there is much less flexibility and much more standardization than at the graduate level. Obviously it is much harder to standardize relatively independent graduate research.</p></li>
<li><p>The graduate degree represents a higher level of academic attainment. In terms of outcomes beyond graduation, the graduate degree will be the most immediate factor. So, any benefits related to the general undergrad school attended are to some extent nullified by a graduate degree.
Unless the money is specifically earmarked for educational expenditures, it could always be saved for the future.</p></li>
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<p>Then again, this is America, where it is a social norm to spend money one doesn’t have on things one can’t afford but not to hold assets in store to ensure financial stability 
I talked about this back in post #131:</p>
<p>"Let’s be very clear: arguing whether a school is “better” is futile and stupid. It is a waste of your time, my time, and everyone else’s time. The more constructive question is whether the ROI from the Ivy (or MIT) is worthwhile compared to a flagship. In some cases, there may not be a price difference. For utahengineer, the UofU was significantly cheaper. Therefore, his post is very relevant to the more important question.</p>
<p>BTW, trying to gauge the exact “point” of a thread from the title can be tough, especially given that the OP was very likely being satirical. The first post mostly addressed bball, which leads me to believe that this was not intended to seriously answer that question."
Let’s talk about these points:</p>
<p>Environment - I will concede that there is some research suggesting that one’s peer group is an important factor in educational attainment. However, I question whether we can determine the academic orientation of a prospective student’s future peer group based on average stats. The reason is fairly simple: at a school of 30k students, the only time they will all be together is perhaps at a football game. If there is a subset of that population focused on academic achievement, that might well be sufficient.</p>
<p>Recruiting - I have always taken the view that students interested in investment banking or management consulting would do well to attend a highly ranked school. I do not feel that this applies to the majority of qualified students.</p>
<p>Choices - Comparing UKy to Stanford, I will grant that the latter probably offers more choices. But comparing Utah to Stanford in STEM fields is a bit tougher. There are some very strong researchers working at the UofU. And comparing Texas A&M or Minnesota to Stanford is tougher again. Bottom line? It depends on the specific school. Many state flagships are very large and have major research presences, which combine to offer an almost unparalleled level of choice.</p>
<p>I grant that a student must be more self-motivated at the lower ranked school.
No, your comment was also that “she says that she has not met a single student who is not on financial aid”. I’m simply pointing out that this will not be true for the majority of students.</p>
<p>Is the 20-25% figure for schools nationwide, or specifically Ivies, or specifically Brown?
That’s a good strawman. My position is not that the Ivies are “bastions of the fabulously wealthy”. What I am saying is that elite private schools - as one might expect - are wealthier than the general US population to a significantly greater extent than most but certainly not all state schools.</p>
<p>I agree with kayf’s comments as well.</p>
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I think this, and a number of other comments in this thread, misconstrues what undergraduate education is, at least in a number of fields. There’s this idea that it’s about absorbing “content,” and that the “content” is the same at all sorts of schools. While this may be the case in some STEM fields (and even there I doubt it), it’s definitely not the case in humanities fields, and probably not in social science fields, either. In those fields, education is not so much about absorbing information, but in learning how to manipulate information. So, for example, a college literature class is not about learning Robert Frost’s life history or memorizing his work, but in learning how to analyze his work and write about it. You learn how to do that from good professors, and the presence of good students also helps, particularly in discussion-based classes. I also think that the opportunity for networking is important for undergrads, especially in fields related to the arts, and that is probably better at the more elite schools. I suppose a super, tip-top driven student can overcome these at less elite schools–and may even do better by getting the attention of the really top faculty.</p>
<p>My original comment was in response to Placedo’s assertion:</p>
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<p>My general point is valid even if one wants to slice and dice the finances and circumstances of the wealthiest 10%. These schools are no longer “bastions of the wealthy” and the notion that parents want to send their kids to privates so they can hobnob or hook up with other elites is ridiculous.</p>
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Okay, that’s fair. I guess I didn’t think anyone would actually bother to respond to Placedo’s absurd post. You have more patience than I do :)</p>