[chrisseaton]

Obviously I believe you if you're saying that, but I've heard that nobody really pays these full sticker-prices and everyone's really getting some kind of aid unless they're literally a billionaire - is that not the case?

[drfuchs]

Typically, in the Ivy League / Stanford, a one-child family with annual income of over $150k to $200k (depending on the school) will pay full tuition. Really. And incomes of less than $65k-ish get you a free ride. Details vary.

[mlthoughts2018]

This happened with my family. It was especially bad because earning $150k total for a household near an expensive urban area leads to purchasing power basically the same as a family with $65k household income in suburbia or small towns. Without adjusting parents income for cost of living (factors the kids in question have no control over), it’s totally unfair.

This has a lot to do with “last place aversion” - the people making $150k near SF having to pay full price for their kid (who probably worked their ass off) to barely scrape into Stanford are (rightly or wrongly) going to be totally NIMBY / selfish in terms of voting and policy when it comes to the $65k families from far away whose kids can pay much less than half for Stanford, say.

[mikem170]

I usually think of the opposite affect, someone making double money in San Fransisco pays the same price for what they order on amazon as someone working and living in a cheaper market. Also cars, airline tickets, vacations, etc. Cuts both ways, I guess.

My two cents: I'd blame San Fransisco, they are the ones with the weird housing market and shouldn't make others subsidize things around their propped up property prices.

[mlthoughts2018]

I don’t think you’re right about that. Groceries, supplies, movie tickets, restaurants, fuel, transit, medical & dental resources, rent, and so on are all much more expensive in the city. The fraction of things you get on Amazon or through other means that allows paying a low competitive nationwide price is pretty tiny and doesn’t really offer any meaningful advantage to city dwellers.

But on the flipside, state and federal taxes collected from city dwellers do heavily subsidize much more expensive infrastructure and operations costs in suburban and rural areas.

So rural residents get safe roads, remote snow removal, remote power lines, heavy freight supply shipping, equal prices for US mail shipping, school systems and so on, despite not having their own tax base capable of actually sustaining all the costs.

Basically, middle class and upper middle class urban workers subsidize pretty much everybody else. Any richer and you have access to tax avoidance resources and lobbying, and poorer and you consume much more in government resources than you pay in, especially in rural areas.

[snazz]

> I don’t think you’re right about that. Groceries, supplies, movie tickets, restaurants, fuel, transit, medical & dental resources, rent, and so on are all much more expensive in the city. The fraction of things you get on Amazon or through other means that allows paying a low competitive nationwide price is pretty tiny and doesn’t really offer any meaningful advantage to city dwellers.

It's primarily the discretionary, high-tech, and expensive items that are cheaper in a high-cost-of-living place. Want to buy an iPhone or a Tesla or an expensive camera or something like that? Those are all less expensive relative to your income in high-CoL places. Plus, interest rates from savings accounts and many retirement accounts are the same nationwide, meaning that having more total money is advantageous.

[mlthoughts2018]

Inflation is faster in some urban centers though, so fixed interest rates are disproportionately bad for those urban dwellers. While that interest rate might grow your larger starting pile of money faster than it grows someone’s money in rural Nebraska, the gains are eroded more quickly so they don’t translate to purchasing power.

In those cities, your money has to grow fast or the loss of purchasing power is huge.

So I wouldn’t say nationwide interest rates are definitely an advantage for people with bigger starting piles of money in urban areas. It’s complicated.

[scarface74]

Maybe go to a cheaper school?

[mlthoughts2018]

Whether it’s right or not, prestige and notoriety of a college count for a huge amount in employment and earnings. Why should my family not get that chance if they worked just as hard to earn it?

[scarface74]

Not really. Most studies show that what college you go to only matters for a few professions.

Way back when I graduated, 3 years in, I was making just as much as people that went to prestigious schools for my same area (computer science) and I paid less for one year of college than they paid for four - and no debt.

If I were graduating today and wanted to work in Big Tech, I would spend six months to a year preparing for white board interviews.

Especially in tech. What college you go to only makes a slight difference and that’s only for your first job. Being able to do algorithms and data structures is the great equalizer for Big Tech.

https://www.collegechoice.net/will-what-college-i-attend-mat...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-elite-colleges-lead-to-highe...

[mlthoughts2018]

It looks like you quickly copy/pasted some articles from a Google search, but unfortunately your linked articles don’t back up what you say, rather they only indicate it’s somewhat complicated.

For example from the first link:

> “ However, another expert, this one from The Atlantic, says that where you go to school does matter, and he also has a study that backs up his point of view. There are institutions, especially ivy league schools and those with name recognition, that can improve someone's earning and employment potential, especially in the cases of graduate work. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, both someone's grade point average and their school of choice are determining factors in their earnings.”

which includes embedded links to The Atlantic and NCES research on it.

You also are confusing the question of whether school choice at large is correlated to earnings vs whether specific schools produce graduates who earn more, which is a different statistical question.

Consider from here:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/14/how-much-mor...

> “ The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years out amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000.

But things get really interesting at the top end of the income spectrum. The top 10 percent of Ivy League grads are earning $200,000 or more by the time their 10-year college reunion rolls around. The top earners of other schools, on the other hand, are making just a hair under $70,000.”

It’s not too related but I also disagree hugely with you about algorithm hazing trivia in tech hiring. It’s not correlated with career success and it is used to play politics to do gatekeeping on the candidate pipeline (eg Steve Yegge’s classic on interview anti-loops).

I’ve been a senior architect and engineering manager for a while. I have never noticed any correlation between people who whiz through algorithm interviews and people who are effective at achieving business outcomes and project success once in the role.

[jbullock35]

It's not the case. It would be true to say that no one pays full price unless they have a lot of money. Harvard, not unrepresentative of other top U.S. schools in this regard, says that 55% of their students receive financial aid [1]. I infer that 45% are paying the full price of around $80,000 per year [2]. (Some of these 45% are doubtless funded partly by non-Harvard scholarships.)

Playing with Harvard's "Net Price Calculator" [3] makes clear that non-millionaires, let alone non-billionaires, may be asked to pay full price. A lot depends on the number of children, the number in college, and accumulated wealth (excluding retirement accounts and home equity).

Harvard students who receive federal financial aid pay (or their families pay) around $15,500 per year on average [4], which suggests that the distribution of payments may be bimodal: a lot of families pay $80,000 per year, and a lot pay a lot less.

[1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid

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

[3] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...

[4] https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-Unive...

[jacobolus]

> non-millionaires, let alone non-billionaires, may be asked to pay full price.

People with under $1 million in net worth are very unlikely to pay full price at the wealthiest US colleges. Unless they have huge income but no savings. By “millionaire” do you mean people who earn a million dollars of income per year?

To take the Harvard example you linked to, a family with $500,000 in assets (not including equity in their primary home; for many families home equity is a majority of their net worth) and $120,000/year income will get about 2/3 of college costs paid by financial aid.

A family with $1 million in non-primary-home-equity assets and a $150,000/year income will still get 1/4 of college costs from financial aid.

[HaloZero]

I don't think so? I did a lot of tax work for VITA and met a lot of parents. Mostly low income and low-middle income got full scholarships and grants but if you're middle class it highly depends on the institution. The larger schools with huge private endowment do cover a lot but a public school like any in the UC system? Nah. It's basically all loans which have to be paid back.

*My knowledge is limited to California in the United States. I know there exists programs in Georgia and other places that do cover full rides but I think they are anomalous and not the rule.