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Comment by IslaDeEncanta | Hacker News Reader

For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school.

Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.

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It's implied in the article that the opposite is true.

Certain elite schools cover tuition, room and board, and occasionally supplies for low-income students through merit-based scholarships [1] even for out-of-state students, while many state schools can only afford to grant fewer full-rides, and usually only covering the in-state price -- with out-of-state being significantly more expensive.

This doesn't mean that low-income students at elite schools still won't struggle with expenses [2] or fitting in [3]. But anecdotally, when I was a top-performing high school graduate from a well-ranked high school in the mid-2000s, this information was even harder to find, so I, and many of my peers opted for state schools instead, some with scholarships.

But much of this information asymmetry still exists today. This is what this effort is trying to rectify.

[1] https://www.collegeraptor.com/blog/affordable-colleges/these... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/for-the-poor-... [3] https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/04/09/what-like-po...

You are not necessarily in disagreement with IslaDeEncanta, as they said "lower middle class", not "low-income". What exactly constitutes "middle class", and even "lower middle class" is not clear. But, I think, most would agree "low income" means not middle class, so you're probably talking about different sets of people.

You're right. I wasn't really talking about people in poverty/near poverty. They can benefit from the network involved with an Ivy more than just about anyone, because they usually don't have a network at all.

Everyone talks about the networking but this can't possibly be true for everyone. What if you're just not good at networking? And do poor kids on scholarships get accepted by their yacht-class peers?

My friend had subsidized tuition at Columbia, and IIRC their cutoff at the time (2009-2013) for household income was $100k. If it's a similar figure at other schools, I guess you could decide on some sort of demarcation around there.

No. Someone from the lower middle class would have nearly all their room, board, and tuition taken care of, with maybe 10k in low interest federal loans.

It's folks in the area around ~$100k who get hosed.

If your family makes $100k, they'll pay, at most, $10k/year. That's about the average for in-state tuition so hardly what I'd call getting hosed.

Again, Harvard is not representative of all top private schools or event all Ivy League schools when it comes to cost of attendance.

I suggest reading Hillbilly Elegy (J.D. Vance) which offers a counterexample. It was cheaper for him to go to Yale law school than to Ohio State.

Law is a different story altogether though. I was talking about undergrad.

It was cheaper for me to attend both Columbia and Vanderbilt (transferred from latter to former) as undergrad than it would have been to attend any state school. No merit scholarships, purely needbased financial aid based on family income of ~$70k, and total cost for 4 years was about $20k in federal student loans.

I believe the situation for law school is substantially different but am not an export.

He notes this would have been true for his undergraduate education too, but he wouldn't have considered it for social/psychological reasons. He notes that his friends are stuck in the same bind, and it was a shock for him to even consider applying to Yale.

Harvard isn't a good example, they offer tremendous financial aid. If your household income is less than $65,000 (which could count as lower middle class), you pay nothing. By their figures 90% of households in America would pay less for Harvard than for a state school. [0]

There are many private colleges with a higher "sticker price" than Harvard but with a much lower discount rate (i.e. what the average student pays is much closer to that sticker price).

[0] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works/cost...

Harvard pays up to 90% of costs, which in my case was the full cost of the state school I got a scholarship to.

While it wasn't explicit in the article, it seems the focus here was much more on poor and working class communities with high performers. Students from those places able to get into top tier institutions are unlikely to be paying much if anything for their tuition.

Elite schools aren't about the education but the network. Thats the actual value.

Harvard is always worth it. There are innumerable advantaged with that paticular school. Having that name on a resume keeps it near the top of most any pile. The old boys (and girls) network radiating from that school is beyond statistics. Harvard opens doors.

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