Student turned down all 8 Ivies to go to a state school, and we should celebrate it

Hotair ^ | 05/20/2015 | Mary Katherine Ham

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Dear x,

“According to the Crimson more than half of all Harvard parents make over $125,000 a year, so that may be quite a subset...”

Indeed. You're describing a small part of the phenomenon that educational attainment is tied to the educational attainment of parents, and that better-educated folks generally make more money. At HYP, this is true in spades. Although financial aid at HYP is very generous to the average American family, it is not so generous to the average HYP family. Nearly 40% of HYP families are full pay. That's about $65K per year. But the median income of Haarvard families is $200K per year, and a substantial number of folks make $500K per year or more, and that's not terribly meaningful to regular folks.

The deeper problem is that higher education is an industry, and the game of this industry is to soak folks as completely as possible, even to the point of impoverishment for the sake of the rent-seekers within the industry. The primary mechanism employed here is to take any income or asset that the school can uncover, leaving just enough to make sure the payer can make it to the next billing cycle, and pay that.

But the one general exception to this rule is that HYP provide adequate financial aid for typical American families. And for that small mercy, I'm grateful, since it applies to me and my two sons.

For ordinary families fortunate enough to have a child accepted to one of these three schools, college does not have to mean poverty.

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[sitetest]

Dear LOstPassword,

I don't know anything about UPenn’s financial aid, but Columbia doesn't have a great reputation for generosity. And then, the cost of living in NY,...Yikes. These factors were part of what dissuaded my younger son from applying to Columbia. Pennsylvania schools were verboten to start. My younger son applied to Brown, but was rejected there. If he hadn't gone to Harvard, it would have been Hopkins, which was quite a bit more expensive, and I would have had to borrow to send him there.

My older son could have gone to our state flagship for free. He received a special scholarship that included tuition, room, board, books, a thousand dollars extra cash, and $5K set aside for travel and research. But he chose Harvard, even though it was a few dollars out of pocket. He is leaving for two months in Asia in about 10 days. It's an internship through his department at school. He's a rising senior this year. He's had significant paid internships each summer, starting with the summer after high school, when Harvard paid for him to go to Rome, serving as an assistant faculty advisor to his old high school.

It cost me a few dollars to send him to Harvard, but he's received back a multiple in terms of opportunities for work, travel, and professional development.

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