Missing The Middle Class From Ivy League Schools

Updated a long time ago.

In recent decades, Ivy League schools have adopted a policy of ensuring that applicants’ inability to pay tuition won’t stop a school from admitting them. More recently, a number of Ivies have offered full scholarships covering room, board and tuition for students coming from families with incomes below $65,000. The number of low-income students–and diversity among the students–is increasing, thanks to these programs.

But these well-intentioned initiatives have produced somewhat disappointing results. A recent study by researchers at the Equality of Opportunity Project based on anonymous tuition records and tax filings reveals that Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Penn and Brown have more students from the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from the bottom 60 percent.

We recently came across a study revealing that the number of middle-income students in these schools is decreasing as the upper- and lower-income ratios increase.

What do these trends mean for middle-class families? If your student isn’t applying to an Ivy League school, is there something to learn from this? Listen to our latest podcast episode to hear us discuss this topic!

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