Willl the admissions competition subside?

Parents Forum
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<p>"I can't get bent out of shape about how much aid Harvard gives vs. Princeton. Mini, I wish you'd vent your outrage on our Public U. systems, many of which can no longer get a kid out in under 6 years, many of which can't guarantee housing past Freshman year, many of which spend more on fancy basketball facilities than on Nano labs and funding biotech research, which is what will be required to stay competitive with private universities. I know you've got a bee in your bonnet about Pell grant recepients and their presence at elite campuses, but frankly, I'm much more bothered that low income and middle income kids can't complete their degree at all, than whether they do it at Williams or Wesleyan."</p>

<p>We don't disagree (I would say "yes, and both.") I noted in a different forum that the problem of degree completion is closely associated with family assets - the lower family assets, the more likely that a student will drop out (after freshman year). State schools with wealthier students have more students completing, independent of what the schools do in terms of making courses available.</p>

<p>As I've said before, I have no cause to complain about how HYPS spend their money. It's their money. And if they want to subsidize wealthy families to the tune of $92k over four years, more power to them! (Hey, I make my little alumni contribution every year to subsidize the millionaire's kids, and am happy to do so.) My concern is that HYSP folks -- especially those coming from "monied" families -- are often opinion leaders or government leaders, and that if they have so little ongoing exposure to folks they will eventually be serving, so little intimate understanding, their educations suffer greatly, and it is not something they will be able to make up for later. In other words, the fates of what happens to folks at those state colleges and universities are often tied, in ways that are difficult to tease out, with what is happening at leading, privately funded colleges and universities.</p>

<p>UChicago was founded by John D. Rockefeller, as was its school of ed., as was Columbia Teachers College. His goal was to ensure a population, educated at public expense, that would not rebel, and that serve his interests well. You can actually find this in UChicago's founding documents. And he was a really smart guy - he figured that the best way to ensure this was not to fund public education, but to produce educators at the best private institutions that were likely to defend his interests. </p>

<p>I do not hold wealth against students who come from it. It is a pure accident of birth. And much of their academic success comes from their own efforts, as well as from this happy accident. I do hold that we are all responsible to give back to the degree that our success is not a product of our own effort. Having a good education in an economically diverse setting can, I believe, be a good start toward getting there.</p>

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<p>Mini, great post.</p>

<p>I find it amazing that people who don't need social security one bit, are going to decide everyone else's social security. Maybe if these people were educated with people that live paycheck to paycheck, they might get some empathy and change their tunes.</p>

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<p>As an undergrad from a very reputed school in India, I had hard time getting any summer internships. Not a single company offered me a job even though I had worked for a fortune 500 conglomerates. I was puzzled at the outcome as I was looking for a summer internship. However, as my grad advisor saw my resume and instructed to put my grad college name on my resume. Suddenly within few days armed with new resume, I landed with multiple job interviews. I saw this happened to many students who were looking for internships. </p>

<p>Could I ask a simple question to parents “Why everyone despises elite colleges so much. Yet, most of the people in the nation would love the opportunity to accept an admission offers if they are not held back because of finances?” I thought we all want what is best in life and have desires to compete with the best and horn our skills. I thought that is what defines us as an Americans.</p>

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<p>I think HYP are fantastic schools with fantastic opportunities. The schools can be better with a more broad economic student body.</p>

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<p>dstark:</p>

<p>I like what you said. However, it would be even better that if we become one of the people who make those decisions.</p>

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<p>Some people wouldn't like my decisions. :)</p>

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<p>dstark, in my state, there are many majors where you just can't complete your degree in four years-- and I'm talking the kids who are full-time students residing either on campus or off, not managing fulltime jobs and babies and what-not. Comp Sci, Engineering, Business, Education-- you have to be a magician, or come in with so many AP credits that you've placed out of intro courses to cram everything into four years.</p>

<p>We've got athletic facilities that boggle the mind.... but can't add a section of Materials Science, so the Chem Eng kids can graduate in four years???? The Chancellor says no; we've got a hiring freeze on for faculty. I don't mean to minimize the efforts that kids make to graduate when they're working fulltime, but these are fulltime students who get shut out of required classes semester after semester and end up taking WAAAY too long to graduate.</p>

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<p>blossom, which state?</p>

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<p>nedad - No doubt there is world of difference between HYPS/AWM and your regional school. What digi and others are saying, and I strongly support, is that just under those frenzy schools are truly excellent schools which want your well-qualified kid, will court him/her and may offer pleasantly significant merit $$. Don't flame my list, but as examples: Tulane, CWR, Lehigh, Lafayette and on and on.</p>

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<p>of course I was just exaggerating for effect when I compared a 4th tier to an Ivy. What I really meant was </p>

<p>1)No, there are NOT 2,000 possible schools, but maybe 200 that have comparable quality;</p>

<p>2) at those, as the fountain overflows and runs down to lower ranked schools, the competition WILL increase (the OP's original question) - already, just to look up two you named, Lehigh and Lafayette are UNDER the 50% acceptance level (I am a year behind on my USNWR, but last year's says Lafayette is at 36%, where Yale was not long ago!).</p>

<p>3) Finally (what I didn't say) - of those 150-200 or so LACs and universities, many will NOT be suitable for a variety of reasons: for example, having a bad music department when someone wants to major in music; or not being on the ocean when someone wants an ocean (not lake) sailing team; or a thousand other reasons.</p>

<p>Therefore, to answer the OP's question - yes, competition will increase!</p>

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<p>Why is it a surprise to see the aid per student at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Princeton, clustered in the middle? Of course there are many students at these schools who need no aid whatsoever. Is it any surprise that for many for whom money is no object, the top universities would be desired? Doesn't mean they all get in, doesn't mean they all want to, doesn't mean there aren't lots of other great schools.</p>

<p>Sorry I am not familiar with the aid at all of the schools mentioned, but though painting a picture of 'upper crust and out of touch' may make for a good story, it may not be accurate. At Princeton about half of the students are on financial aid, indicating that kids who are not wealthy are certainly able to attend. Thousands of them, from all over the country and the world. All sorts of people to rub elbows with. And the president of Princeton spent her summer before college working, like my kid did. </p>

<p>Why flog the top private schools that offer top need-based aid? Why not put the energy into working for good elementary and high school educations for all kids, for example, so that there might be an even playing field going into college? So that all kids would have the education needed to do whatever they want to do, to go where they want to go? </p>

<p>Pell-grant kids, from the lowest economic group, as a group would not have had the best of elementary and high school educations. Improve their educations, then look for more of them at the top schools. The public education woes of our country, at all levels of education, are where the embarassment lies, I think. Blossom makes good points.</p>

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<p>I don't get it. Are improving public education, and thinking you can get a better education at a college where the students come from broad economic backgrounds, mutually exclusive?</p>

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<p>Nedad, DH teaches high school now, and his Dad taught at a regional uni much like the one you describe. My FIL retired in disgust a few years ago, mostly over the changes he had witnessed during his last 15 years of work.
The quality in American high schools has deteriorated tremendously over the last 20-30 years, my husband would argue, even noticeably over the last 13 years. By far his brightest student, came through 10 years ago, one of the brightest and hardest working graduated about 8 years ago. The cream of the crop may still be very good, but the more ordinary student, the type of child who typically fills the regional unis, is less and less well prepared. Why? That's another whole thread.</p>

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<p>my D applied and was accepted to U of O- ( where she was suggested to apply to honors track- she declined), Evergreen where she recieved $600, Central Washington, where she didn't recieve any merit aid, Western Washington where she didn't recieve any merit aid, and Reed College which doesn't offer merit aid, but who met 100% of need.
My point was that for students who academically would fit at Western or Central, ( my daughter was above their numbers) would not get any merit aid, and if they were lower middle income like we are, they wouldn't get need based aid either or if they did, it would consist of nonsubsidized loans.
Since we are going to pay out about $13,000 or our EFC anyway, it made more sense to give it to Reed, than to give it to Western Wa.
However I question whether she would be able to get into Reed now. It is getting much more competitive and students who I thought would be accepted ED, are waitlisted and having to apply regular decision.
Western is still a fairly safe bet for many students, and I think for some students it is a good school. Bellingham is a nice place, but it also has a rep as a "party" school,and some of the students I counsel won't even look there. Kids go soo much by "reputation" whether deserved or not.</p>

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<p>"Finally (what I didn't say) - of those 150-200 or so LACs and universities, many will NOT be suitable for a variety of reasons: for example, having a bad music department when someone wants to major in music."</p>

<p>Funny - that was the problem my d. ran into at some of the Ivies (not "bad" departments, just not ones that could compare with what was available elsewhere, or where the vaunted faculty only taught graduate students, or where offerings were extremely limited.)</p>

<p>"At Princeton about half of the students are on financial aid, indicating that kids who are not wealthy are certainly able to attend."</p>

<p>The real story is not in how many middle class students receive smaller amounts of aid to be able to attend. The real story is in how, at HYP, the percentages of students from the bottom 35% of the U.S. population (below $40k in income) are so incredibly small. For whatever reason, they are NOT able to attend (if they could, they'd be there.) Forget what possible service an HYP education could be to them (after all, there ARE state universities.) What I think it does is shortchange the education of those who do. </p>

<p>"Western is still a fairly safe bet for many students, and I think for some students it is a good school. Bellingham is a nice place, but it also has a rep as a "party" school,and some of the students I counsel won't even look there. Kids go soo much by "reputation" whether deserved or not."</p>

<p>What's likely is that the reputation of these places will change as the student bodies change. 25 years ago, Duke was pretty much a regional school (at least where I lived), and I don't think anyone would have looked to Georgetown (or Boston College or George Washington or a bunch of other places, you can name them yourself - when I was in high school in the dark ages, I remember NYU being thought of as a place for City College rejects) as offering "world-class educations". As the Princetons of the world end up rejecting entire classes of students as good as the ones they actually accept, those students will be going elsewhere, bringing their skills, talents, and, in the long-run, their fundraising capacities along with them. In fact, I think this trend is already well along.</p>

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<p>the biggest reason kids don't graduate in FOUR years from our public universities, is that they simply cannot get the required courses to complete their course of study in four years. There are not enough sections of many required courses. Kids get closed out of courses time and time again, and this affects their ability to take other courses in the sequence (as they don't have the prerequisites). Often if a course is offered in the fall...it will not be offered again until the FOLLOWING fall, putting some students a full year behind in being able to meet the requirements. Yes...some kids do have to stop and work to meet expenses. BUT our state universities should be doing a better job of HAVING ENOUGH sections of courses so that students will not need to wait and wait to get into required courses in their majors, and for general requirements.</p>

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<p>"Look at the differences in institutional aid per student, and you quickly see that (among these top 50 schools) there is no correlation between the size of the endowment and institutional aid per student. Note that Mount Holyoke provides almost 40% more aid per student than Harvard, and almost 55% more than Dartmouth, with an endowment that is a pittance of the others. Maclester's endowment is less than half of Mount Holyoke's!"</p>

<p>How does that really work? </p>

<p>I like round numbers, so I'll use them. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>MHC has about 2,100 students, and as best as I can tell, provides financial assistance for 27,000,000 per year. According to their data, students can expect to graduate with about $20,000 in loans.</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard has about 6,000 undergraduates and provides about 80,000,000 in financial aid to 48% of its students. Students graduate with an average of 8,000 in loans. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Should the real question not be how much does a family with an AGI of $40,000 pay at MHC for a four year education. How large is the gap figure? How large are the loans at graduation? How much does a student needs to contribute in earnings during the four years? Now let's compare that to the figure required at Harvard. </p>

<p>Unless one uses different definitions of lower income for Harvard and MHC, I can't see how MHC satisfies the criteria to serve the lower income families better than Harvard does. Could the fact that MHC has to spend a much larger percentage of its endowment towards financial aid be tracked to different marketing strategies? MHC is not a charitable institution; it is a business. Financial aid is one of their cost of staying in business. From my vantage point, having to "rebate" 45% of its tuition revenue is based more on its weaker market position than on altruistic motives. </p>

<p>So much for all the hooplah about social responsibility.</p>

38

<p>From Today's Yale Daily News:
"Study Finds Fewer Ivy Execs"</p>

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<p>The importance of an elite education for aspiring executives has "clearly fallen," according to the survey of the 100 largest revenue-grossing companies in the United States.<<</p>

<p><a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=28193%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=28193&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Read the whole thing...</p>

<p>"The Penn study reflects not that Yale graduates are having a harder time getting corporate jobs, Levin said, but that such jobs are open to more segments of society than once before."</p>

<p>" Because Ivy League admissions practices have become more meritocratic in the past 40 years, graduates from elite institutions should be better prepared than ever before to land top corporate jobs, Cappelli said.</p>

<p>"I still think it's quite remarkable that 10 percent of executives at these top businesses have degrees from eight schools when the total number of degrees has risen so much," he said."</p>

<p>"Corporate recruiting at Yale has not decreased in recent years, Undergraduate Career Services Director Philip Jones said."</p>

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<p>Yes, the cutthroat competition will subside and admissions criteria will be lowered within 5 or 6 years as the boomers' kids have pretty much grown up. My math teacher from 9th and 11th grade is a GenX-er and applied to Penn State--University Park in the early 90's when there was less competition. She had a 3.2 GPA and a 1000 on her SAT's , ** a 750 on math and a 250 on verbal ** :eek: ( holy fishsticks, that's awful! English isn't my first language, but I managed a 750 on verbal). A simlilar candidate today would really be pushing his/her luck to apply to PSU-U Park with those mediocre stats. I don't think an applicant with those stats could even get into Penn State Abington or any of the splinter campuses.</p>

<p>By the way, in freshman year she had to take a non-credit remedial English class at PSU.</p>