Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion more on "Tiger Mom"...

Brown publishes acceptance rates conditional on SAT scores and class rank http://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/about/admission-facts . Comparing conditional acceptance rates over time at Brown and other schools would be informative.

more: http://hechingerreport.org/content/college-enrollment-shows-signs-of-slowing_8688/

I really don't know anything about this. Just throwing stuff to the wall.

Ultramarina's post illustrates that income taxes (and need-based financial aid is another income tax and wealth tax) discourage work. She thinks it's a problem if a college has too many rich kids. We are rich because my wife and I are full-time working professionals, and we do not like the prospect of paying tuition that is artificially high so that some students with non-working parents get an almost free ride.

I'm pretty sure that ultramarina's family isn't a prime example of welfare freeloading.

I think that what she's saying is that without programs like Questbridge and need-based aid at high $$ colleges, her kids would have ZERO chance at a high-priced college, and that with it, they almost certainly won't if she were adding her income to the household (because they wouldn't qualify, but would still be below the income level which would permit them to pay out of pocket).

Similarly, we have a bind like this in our household. We would be in the original article/study's higher group if I worked full time. But we don't for several very good reasons, and most of them have absolutely NOTHING to do with wanting a free ride for anything.

Unfortunately, that leaves us in the unenviable position of not being able to afford 30K a year in college costs (period) but well above an income level which could qualify DD for 'need-based' aid (at least according to many "college estimates"-- which, by the way, are NOT necessarily standardized, just so that everyone knows that, nor do they have to account for high medical expenses, etc. It's actually a sort of crazy formula that assumes that everyone has the same set of life-circumstances to work from).

So yes, I think that UM's assessment that she'd like to avoid being in the same bind is completely reasonable.

There is definitely a "sour spot" in the UMC in terms of earnings and college purchasing power. We're in it.

It is probably not coincidence that this is where massive push/tiger-parenting begins in earnest in the SES, either. Parents in similar circumstances know that ONLY merit aid is on the table, and they will do pretty much anything to distinguish their kids from everyone else in the fight for a share of that pie.

Hey Bostonian: I work (half-time, but I will probably go back to full-time eventually). I quit working in advertising because it was morally repugnant to me. I am now a writer employed by a university. I'm severely undercompensated and don't get any benefits, but my job is very rewarding and is also beneficial to the public. I don't want to explain exactly what I do because it's too identifying, but it's not fluff journalism.

Do you feel it's every person's moral responsibility to make as much money as they are capable of making?

ETA: I didn't see HK's reply. Yeah, so--my husband (who has an advanced degree) has also chosen a career path that is not well-compensated but serves the public. He still could go another, better-paid direction and we still consider it, but it would likely be very toxic to him personally. (My kids don't come by their sensitivity to justice and fairness out of nowhere.) There are a few other circumstances at work here as well. So even with my half-time salary, we're out of the sour spot, I think. If I were to go back to work FT in my original field, though, we would sure as hell be in it.

We also are consciously opting out of a lot of the consumption merry-go-round. We live in a small, efficient house, drive small, modest cars, and don't spend much on material goods. It's intentional and part of our moral code. However, the one thing I still rather want for the kids is the college education of their choice. This is a dilemma. Fortunately, they're very bright, but we also do have it in the back our minds that we are quite possibly limiting their options in a serious way. I hope they won't resent it one day. My one other concern is student debt. I will advise them to change college plans if their most desired school involves massive debt assumption.

The thing is, I just don't care that much about money. I grew up in a very wealthy environment (we were not very wealthy--UMC--but my town was). I was not impressed. I'm still not. Obviously I recognize that children need health insurance, good clothes and healthful food, feelings of income security, and some opportunities for this and that--and my kids have all this-- but I don't feel the need for us all to have the latest shiny.

Precisely. We are in the sour spot because of our sense of responsibility, thank-you-very-much. Because what we need out of a school system-- and what our daughter is ENTITLED TO under federal law, incidentally-- is unreasonable. Necessary, but unreasonable.

In other words, if I worked and she were the responsibility of the school system? That would be adding to the burden (financially) of that system. Significantly. It would also place her at grave risk daily, and-- significantly again-- require everyone else to make modifications to their daily lives for her. Parents with, er... how to put this... more "self-sufficiency-driven" worldviews tend to tell us to "just homeschool." You know, rather than "punishing/inconveniencing" the rest of them. So we have. Only to be told that not having an extra 200-300K to pay for college (money which-- recall-- we COULD have now if I had been working and not educating our child at home) is our "fault" for making "bad choices."

So I get kind of irritable when I'm told that we've just PLANNED POORLY. I guess that applies to a lot of 2e kids, then. We "planned" poorly when we had kids that required extraordinary or intensive parenting.

There are things more important than income, and the health and safety of my child are among them.

My spouse left a lower-paying job in the public sector for the simple reason that it allowed us to maintain an income level that pays for our necessities (and not a LOT more than that) with a significant margin for error/catastrophe, but it leaves him in a toxic environment. We are already paying pretty dearly for doing the right thing.

We're going to pay again come time to pay the Registrar's office. This does feel deeply unfair in some ways, yes-- but I still haven't seen how our choices would have been "better" had we done things differently.

I, too, just don't care that much about money, but wish that it weren't a factor in college decisions for our daughter. It is. I dread this conflict with my DH, whose parents were emphatically on the "you get in, we'll find a way" bandwagon. It's no longer a prudent or realistic attitude at anything below the top 1% in SES, and we're not in that group-- and otherwise have no desire to be. To be clear, we wouldn't (quite) be in that group even if I did work full time.

The point, though, is that it does make the opportunities to Tiger Parent highly seductive, this particular conundrum.

Yes. I agree. If you're in the sour spot (and especially, if you're in the sour spot and have been spending your money on the latest shiny because you are caught up in the mindset, and thus maybe you don't have all that much money, say, for retirement or what have you, even though your take-home is quite high), it's going to be easy to panic. I have a family member whose income is 3X what we make, but they are spending like mad on this and that. I don't see how it's going to work, really.

And actually, part of the reason we avoid the higher-paying options available to both of us is that I don't want to get on the treadmill. I'm familiar with the treadmill. Bleah.

No, for reasons already expounded on, so I won't beat the dead horse.

It does, however, illustrate how the distribution curves for wealth and IQ separate from each other at the very top ends. There are many other such stories on this site.

btw, Bostonian, I'm not concerned about my kids going to college with UMC, "regular rich" kids--like, moms is a doctor, dad is a lawyer-- but "richer than God" kids. You know what I mean. My kids will have no reference for that and it would be culturally shocking.

HowlerKarma... everything about your post (except for the daily risk of allergen exposure) rings true for us too. Even the part about my DH being in a toxic, high paying job environment so I can be home with the kids.

We're behind in the timeline (my kids are younger) and they're not as gifted, and they're both still in public school, but as far as my DS and his learning needs not fitting and placing a higher financial burden on the system... oh my.

I feel like we're at the edge of a cliff and mainstream society and the school district is getting ready to just SHOVE us over into an abyss.

One of our problems is that DH needs a change (from the toxic job) for the sake of his health and well being, so I need to contribute $$, which means our kids are staying in public school.