Broad swathes of the middle and upper-middle classes get no financial aid to these places.
And let's face it, with these places you're paying for the name. If you really wanted the best undergraduate experience, you'd be looking at Swarthmore or U of Chicago if you want to go the research-school route.
Not true that it's free if your family makes under 100k. What's the source?
yea but that means the student will still have to pay
Just as expensive to go to many lower quality private schools, and just as expensive to even attend many state schools if you are an out of state student. Ivy League schools give no athletic money and their running programs are not as good. If you are a top notch student-athlete, I can't really think of another program that offers an equal level of both academics and athletics.
looking through that website and using the calculator it is pretty ridiculous how good their financial aid program is.
How does the program pay for their month long training camp at manmouth lake. Do the kids have to pay for it? or does the university/athletic department?
stanford $$$ wrote:
looking through that website and using the calculator it is pretty ridiculous how good their financial aid program is.
How does the program pay for their month long training camp at manmouth lake. Do the kids have to pay for it? or does the university/athletic department?
Probably the kids, but between the athletic scholarships they're on, and the various academic scholarships that will get thrown their way to cover most of the rest, money for such a trip probably wouldn't be an issue.
Granted, like everyone else posting on letsrun, I base that off of uninformed assumptions and hearsay, so take that with a grain of salt...
all top schools do this wrote:
It's called need-based financial aid. Virtually every top academic school guarantees to provide financial aid that will accommodate the demonstrated financial need of all accepted students. A lot of them aren't on athletic scholarships, but I bet a good percentage are on some sort of need based aid because it's pretty tough for most families to pay 50k/year for an undergrad education. Rojo talked about this aid being a great asset for recruiting because Cornell could actually end up cheaper than a lot of other schools through their need based aid. Not many schools can supplement this kind of aid with athletic scholarships because very few top academic institutions with guarantees to meet the demonstrated need are competitive in Div. 1 and can give/have athletic scholarships.
That's pretty much correct except for the fact that you can't combine financial aid and athletic scholarship, you either get one or the other so most kids take their best deal.
Curious Chris wrote:
That's pretty much correct except for the fact that you can't combine financial aid and athletic scholarship, you either get one or the other so most kids take their best deal.
Exactly. For the vast majority of athletes, need based financial aid is a MUCH better deal than a partial (say <50%) scholarship. What Stanford has done is attracted kids who don't have to say that they are on scholarship to impress people.
stanford $$$ wrote:
looking through that website and using the calculator it is pretty ridiculous how good their financial aid program is.
How does the program pay for their month long training camp at manmouth lake. Do the kids have to pay for it? or does the university/athletic department?
Paid for by the athletic department (though its more like 16 days not a month). It used to be funded fully by revenue from the invites that they host (the high school invite raises a lot of dough) but then the athletic department decided to budget for it. With the money from the invites xc was actually a revenue sport last year.
The Machine wrote:
Paid for by the athletic department (though its more like 16 days not a month). It used to be funded fully by revenue from the invites that they host (the high school invite raises a lot of dough) but then the athletic department decided to budget for it. With the money from the invites xc was actually a revenue sport last year.
wow that is ridiculous. it would be sweet to go to stanford.
Curious Cardinal wrote:
I lived in three places in EV. The last was 144. My twin daughters went to EV elementary for their first 2 years of school but, alas, went to USC for college.
I agree that Stanford has a helluva lot to offer. I enjoyed doing the dish run and all the myriad trails around campus. I ran with the Angel Field Ancients (do they still exist?) and truly loved my time there.
Of course, my first year on campus, the total bill (tuition/R&B) was $8000. A few years ago when my daughters applied to college, they got into an Ivy league school. The financial aid package required us to cough up $23k the first year. Fortunately, USC was a better fit and offered them Trustee scholarships.
I give all this background because as a middle-class parent, I'd really struggle with coughing up the tariff that schools like Stanford etc. require when my child has the opportunity to go to a not-so-prestigious, but nonetheless, good school for free or much less.
what year were your daughters born. I went to my first 2 years of elementary school at EV elementary and lived in EV. we could have been class mates. small world.
stanford $$$ wrote:
How does the program pay for their month long training camp at manmouth lake. Do the kids have to pay for it? or does the university/athletic department?
The cross country team pays for it out of their budget--which comes mainly from the athletic department and their high school invite.
Hey
I just wanted to say hi. I'm new to this forum.
Mary
Barack "Karl Marx" Obama wrote:
yea but that means the student will still have to pay
You do not know very well from Karl Marx do you.
I toured Stanford this summer for law school. It is indeed true that for undergraduates, they make it work. If you for some reason are unable to contribute, they still let you go to their school. They find a way to make Stanford possible for you.
Having graduate from Stanford a few years back, I can clarify a couple rumors and start a few others:
1) Everyone at Stanford is rich? If only... Most of my circle of friends was middle class, maybe middle-upper. There were a lot of people at Stanford from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Usually somewhere between 10-15% of all students in a class are the first to go to college, and about 1/3 of those aren't coming from rags to riches (or even rags to middle-class) families.
2) $60k is the magic number to have everything paid for, including room and board, books, fees, etc. And that room and board part is expensive.
3) $100k only gets you tuition. Stanford estimates that it is $16.5k for things other than tuition. I can tell you that that is low. It's probably closer to $18-19k now.
4) Turns out in Stanford's system, the worst hit are upper-middle class families who won't borrow money or change their lifestyle to pay for their child's college. I graduated with $45k in student debt mostly because the parents gave me a fixed amount of money and I had to make the difference. Stanford doesn't help in cases like this - they just make you take out loans. But, that doesn't mean I wouldn't do it all over again.
So, it's not as simple cut-and-dry as some like to think it is. Stanford's large endowment certainly didn't help me much. And it didn't help some of my other friends much either with their individual cases. On the other hand, many of my friends who came from middle-class backgrounds were there only because of the endowment. So, you win some; you lose some.
The athletics programs are much the same. While there are athletic scholarships for some teams, most teams survive with "book scholarships," which basically means that books are paid for. Many of the athletes are on financial aid. I noticed that athletic scholarships in non-revenue sports were usually reserved for fifth year athletes when financial aid ran dry. Could be wrong about that, but I'd suspect that's how the department managed things.
It was often very difficult to be an athlete at Stanford. For example, Stanford counts on summer employment income from students. However, the athletes couldn't do anything related to their sport lest they be accused of accepting professional money and be banned by the NCAA. That's not a Stanford-only problem, but it has a pretty great impact on students who need summer income and are otherwise relegated to office work, waiting tables or, if they're lucky, an internship at a company that is flexible with their training schedule.
Take what you want from that ramble. Just trying to add a little insight, but only a little as I did not have a clear picture into the world of athletics financing.
I want to Duke a similar type of school and all the posters talking about the need based financial aid are correct. All of the elite schools now are starting to promise incredible financial aid packages but in reality it never costs the schools much since very few kids not from affluent backgrounds get in. I know Duke talks about how something like 40% of the student body gets some sort of aid but what they don't tell you is that that includes all the kids on merit, minority, and athletic scholarships. The actually percentage on need-based financial aid is probably between 10-20%. Basically only spoiled rich kids get into elite schools.