Why you can’t let sticker price scare you off

RJM

Apparently not only is price no obstacle - neither is the classroom!   

Sorry - couldn't resist.  

These tables are very misleading as it assume $0 in assets, home equity, capital gain income, etc.

CTbballDad posted:

These tables are very misleading as it assume $0 in assets, home equity, capital gain income, etc.

It’s not a set in stone table for everyone to use to determine what they pay at any private university. It’s an example of what the an income level range receives at this school. Regardless of whether a family owns, one two or three homes if their incomes is in the given range the table shows an “average” of what that range receives at this school. The title of the thread still applies. Very few students pay sticker price. Some people get scared off a school when they see the sticker price.

I think it's pretty clear given the last few days of scandals that a "high academic" is just fancy talk for "rich people go here".

A quarter of the top fifty universities are state universities.

https://www.usnews.com/best-co...ational-universities

What a wealthy parent may be able to do is buy the kid’s way in regardless of the cost to attend or stature of the school. It doesn’t have to be illegal,either. Jared Kushner was not a top student. His father donated 2.5M. The kid was accepted.

Who else gets preferential treatment getting into college? Athletes.

Money talks. I went to a private boarding school one year. All my rights were suspended for a month for concealing a car in a  neighborhood two miles away. We weren’t allowed to have cars. I was nearly kicked out of school. 

Another student got high and burned down the outdoor hockey rink. He was back in two days with no punishment after an anonymous (wink, wink) donor contributed a half million for a new indoor hockey rink. You would recognize the family name if I posted it.

One right was not taken away from me. I was allowed to continue to play on the basketball team. Winning talks. I averaged fifteen per game and led the team in assists for one of the top teams in the conference.

Everything in life has a productivity to bullshit ratio. A pitcher with a mid nineties fastball can get away with being a jerk. An 80 mph pusser who’s a jerk isn’t worth the hassle.

There are people at work who can be insufferable. But they save themselves by being invaluable to the company.

In college acceptance a college will let in a below the line student if the family will be big time annual givers for a generation. 

Life isn’t always fair. You work around it. Whining, complaining and making excuses doesn’t produce anything positive. It just holds you back from reaching your potential.

RJM

Now you are going to make me stop joking around.  I think there  are two strands in this and they are completely opposite from each other.

The first is the concept of merit - as you say superior skill at athletics or something else yielding preferential treatment.  I don't have any particular issue with this.  It is exactly this kind of thing that allows for people like Gates and Bezos to change the world and make 10's of billions of dollars.  It is the American way for genius and its application to be rewarded.  We should never ever ever ever  mess this up.  Equal outcomes is a foolish goal and leads to destruction of all that is good and great about our country.

Then there is the second piece and it is the problem.  We are aware money opens doors and parents relationships pave the way for children.  The problem in my view is the creation of a European style aristocracy where mediocrity is passed off as superior.  Our Revolution was all about stopping exactly this kind of thing.  But what is truly galling is the posturing that this population of people is somehow more enlightened in their entitlement.  When have reached that time where the hoi polloi that has suffered at the hands of 60 years of incompetence stemming from these people's mismanagement of institutions are now becoming more aware of the extent of the rigging and are actually trying to fight back.  

IMO whatever fault lines exist in America this is where they start.  Harvard is potentially on the hooks of a significant problem in the admissions case that I think is still pending for Asians.  I thought that was going to spread to other Schools before it was over.  I am hopeful that what will come of that and this latest revelation is more transparency in the process.  I do not think it can be resolved entirely with objective measures.  There are too many kids with perfect SAT's and GPA's for that at a number of places.  But I think there can be a point system published for things such as athletics, music and other extra-curricular's that allows institutions to publish scores for applicants and who was accepted and who was not.  No doubt there will be privacy concerns but given that everybody seems to air everything on Social Media anymore we ought to be able to sort that out.

In my view a public airing of the laundry is what makes it harder to run games as opposed to keeping the nonsense in the dark.  Still going to have special cases and quota's but if the number is very limited we get closer to the meritocracy we like to think we are and should be.  If that is the result of all of this it will be a step in the right direction.

RJM posted:

A quarter of the top fifty universities are state universities.

https://www.usnews.com/best-co...ational-universities

What a wealthy parent may be able to do is buy the kid’s way in regardless of the cost to attend or stature of the school. It doesn’t have to be illegal,either. Jared Kushner was not a top student. His father donated 2.5M. The kid was accepted.

Who else gets preferential treatment getting into college? Athletes.

Money talks. I went to a private boarding school one year. All my rights were suspended for a month for concealing a car in a  neighborhood two miles away. We weren’t allowed to have cars. I was nearly kicked out of school. 

Another student got high and burned down the outdoor hockey rink. He was back in two days with no punishment after an anonymous (wink, wink) donor contributed a half million for a new indoor hockey rink. You would recognize the family name if I posted it.

One right was not taken away from me. I was allowed to continue to play on the basketball team. Winning talks. I averaged fifteen per game and led the team in assists for one of the top teams in the conference.

Everything in life has a productivity to bullshit ratio. A pitcher with a mid nineties fastball can get away with being a jerk. An 80 mph pusser who’s a jerk isn’t worth the hassle.

There are people at work who can be insufferable. But they save themselves by being invaluable to the company.

In college acceptance a college will let in a below the line student if the family will be big time annual givers for a generation. 

Life isn’t always fair. You work around it. Whining, complaining and making excuses doesn’t produce anything positive. It just holds you back from reaching your potential.

 

Steve Springer said in his mental hitting CD, "if you are a jerk you better be raking".

True in mlb too. The crappy Detroit minor leaguer who was filmed beating up his wife got released immediately and never got a job in baseball again while Aroldis chapman got a 100m contract.

Seem to be two different threads going on here. In response to the OP, yes, COA is relative to endowment size(no jokes), and most well endowed schools are also HA schools. State schools can also be a relative bargain if you are a local. 

   Some more adventurous souls are finding that schools in Canada and Europe can be less expensive, especially for those in the dreaded "Upper MIddle" income bracket. Word is that the baseball team at St. Andrews is easy to make, also. 

Some of the universities near us (University of Mary Washington, UVA, etc) actually draw a fair amount of out of state students from the New England area.  Even with the higher fees charged to out of state students the overall cost to attend is cheaper than the in state rates back "home".  At least that's what I've heard over the years.

2019OF posted:

I think it's pretty clear given the last few days of scandals that a "high academic" is just fancy talk for "rich people go here".

This is just stupid. Probably not worthy of comment but whatever you got me. 

luv baseball posted:

RJM

Now you are going to make me stop joking around.  I think there  are two strands in this and they are completely opposite from each other.

The first is the concept of merit - as you say superior skill at athletics or something else yielding preferential treatment.  I don't have any particular issue with this.  It is exactly this kind of thing that allows for people like Gates and Bezos to change the world and make 10's of billions of dollars.  It is the American way for genius and its application to be rewarded.  We should never ever ever ever  mess this up.  Equal outcomes is a foolish goal and leads to destruction of all that is good and great about our country.

Then there is the second piece and it is the problem.  We are aware money opens doors and parents relationships pave the way for children.  The problem in my view is the creation of a European style aristocracy where mediocrity is passed off as superior.  Our Revolution was all about stopping exactly this kind of thing.  But what is truly galling is the posturing that this population of people is somehow more enlightened in their entitlement.  When have reached that time where the hoi polloi that has suffered at the hands of 60 years of incompetence stemming from these people's mismanagement of institutions are now becoming more aware of the extent of the rigging and are actually trying to fight back.  

IMO whatever fault lines exist in America this is where they start.  Harvard is potentially on the hooks of a significant problem in the admissions case that I think is still pending for Asians.  I thought that was going to spread to other Schools before it was over.  I am hopeful that what will come of that and this latest revelation is more transparency in the process.  I do not think it can be resolved entirely with objective measures.  There are too many kids with perfect SAT's and GPA's for that at a number of places.  But I think there can be a point system published for things such as athletics, music and other extra-curricular's that allows institutions to publish scores for applicants and who was accepted and who was not.  No doubt there will be privacy concerns but given that everybody seems to air everything on Social Media anymore we ought to be able to sort that out.

In my view a public airing of the laundry is what makes it harder to run games as opposed to keeping the nonsense in the dark.  Still going to have special cases and quota's but if the number is very limited we get closer to the meritocracy we like to think we are and should be.  If that is the result of all of this it will be a step in the right direction.

So you want to force private institutions to report private data to the pubic for the greater good...good luck with that.

old_school posted:

luv baseball posted:

RJM

Now you are going to make me stop joking around.  I think there  are two strands in this and they are completely opposite from each other.

The first is the concept of merit - as you say superior skill at athletics or something else yielding preferential treatment.  I don't have any particular issue with this.  It is exactly this kind of thing that allows for people like Gates and Bezos to change the world and make 10's of billions of dollars.  It is the American way for genius and its application to be rewarded.  We should never ever ever ever  mess this up.  Equal outcomes is a foolish goal and leads to destruction of all that is good and great about our country.

Then there is the second piece and it is the problem.  We are aware money opens doors and parents relationships pave the way for children.  The problem in my view is the creation of a European style aristocracy where mediocrity is passed off as superior.  Our Revolution was all about stopping exactly this kind of thing.  But what is truly galling is the posturing that this population of people is somehow more enlightened in their entitlement.  When have reached that time where the hoi polloi that has suffered at the hands of 60 years of incompetence stemming from these people's mismanagement of institutions are now becoming more aware of the extent of the rigging and are actually trying to fight back.  

IMO whatever fault lines exist in America this is where they start.  Harvard is potentially on the hooks of a significant problem in the admissions case that I think is still pending for Asians.  I thought that was going to spread to other Schools before it was over.  I am hopeful that what will come of that and this latest revelation is more transparency in the process.  I do not think it can be resolved entirely with objective measures.  There are too many kids with perfect SAT's and GPA's for that at a number of places.  But I think there can be a point system published for things such as athletics, music and other extra-curricular's that allows institutions to publish scores for applicants and who was accepted and who was not.  No doubt there will be privacy concerns but given that everybody seems to air everything on Social Media anymore we ought to be able to sort that out.

In my view a public airing of the laundry is what makes it harder to run games as opposed to keeping the nonsense in the dark.  Still going to have special cases and quota's but if the number is very limited we get closer to the meritocracy we like to think we are and should be.  If that is the result of all of this it will be a step in the right direction.

So you want to force private institutions to report private data to the pubic for the greater good...good luck with that.

 

If private institutions take government money (only Hillside doesn’t to the best of my knowledge) there’s a lot they are required to report to the government already. 

I'm curious whether folks here had financial aid experiences (need-based, not sports or academic scholarships) that tracked the table RJM posted above.  (Not challenging RJM; I just want to know.)  I have one kid in college now.  We didn't go through the aid process for her, so I don't have any experience. 

When I was in college, schools actually shared information to make sure no one offered more aid than anyone else.  (The Ivies and other northeastern schools did this, so did others--I don't know exactly how widespread the scheme was.)  That meant you couldn't play one school off against another, and it kept aid awards low.  Some years after I graduated, the Department of Justice forced colleges to stop this practice and some other types of collusion, and I hear the aid landscape does look different now.  When I applied in the early 1980s, I got a bunch of responses that said "congratulations--we will meet your family's full financial need" and then offered to let me borrow what was then the equivalent of a mortgage.  I know some of the schools I applied to now say they award all grants rather than loans--but those grants only cover whatever they decide you need.  In the early 1980s (at least in my case), my parents were supposed to essentially liquidate their assets and then cosign a bunch of loans as well--the aid process was a joke.  Has it really changed?     

As I mentioned earlier, that table only applies to your income, not assets, home equity, etc.  Most EFC calculators take those factors into account and are very accurate, so that's what one should use.

The table says my EFC should be high 40's, but I foolishly started 529 accounts for my kids when they were born, so I had a good amount saved.  As a result, my real EFC was around $70K and received no financial aide for my oldest.

Now that I have 3 kids in college, I am getting aide, but my EFC is no where close to $70K...almost double that!!  Of course, schools consider student loans as Financial Aide, which I do not.  This also skews their data.

The kicker is a guy like me, and so many more, are expected to pay $70K which is ridiculous, while families who are worth millions pay the same amount.  That's where the middle class (my definition may be different than others) get's totally hosed.

But, we had a choice.  I could have made my kids go to less expensive schools or to the ones who offered a high amount of merit.  But I caved....retirement is overrated anyhow...

CTBBALLDAD, it depends on the school. Some consider home equity as part of your assets; some do not. Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and others do not:

https://www.insidehighered.com...ations-family-wealth

https://blog.getintocollege.co...fects-financial-aid/

Most schools don't consider retirement funds (IRA, 401(k)) either . . . of course, other assets are considered (most schools have a 5% calculation, so if you have $500,000 in stocks, they'll expect $25,000 per year to go to an EFC), and can skew the results. 

An extreme example at one of the schools that doesn't consider home equity or retirement funds would be a retiree with a $3 million home fully paid off, and $3 million in retirement accounts -- and no assets in non-retirement accounts -- but very little current income. That person is a multi-millionaire and would get full financial aid. But those are corner cases.