http://freudian-slip.org

I am currently putting in my applications and sending my test scores out.

I’m going to be a big jerk, and I’m putting all my numbers (as in cash money) down here to discuss exactly how prohibitive this system is. People talk all the time about loans, a 30k a year tuition in state but let’s just talk about getting into the door of a four year institution.

On average, people apply to ten colleges. The application fee runs from 50$ to 125$, so I’m going to charitable and say it averages at about 80$ each, as I’m finding the 50$ universities are few and far between (I’d like to right now give my props to Emory University, which waives fee if you apply before a certain date) and let’s count the postage to get your transcripts mailed.

800$ To send in the paper.

The GRE costs about 150$ and I had to pay that twice, for the general and subject test. The SAT is around 75$ but let’s assume you’re taking a subject test because three free college credits means you can spend a year doing silly things like eating, so 150$ for the SAT. You can send that score to four places, but oh, we’re applying to ten. So let’s add another 130$ onto that.

280$

You’re going to need a study guide, because I double dog dare anyone to take those tests cold. In fact, the computer based GRE doesn’t even list the instructions for questions anymore without asking the computer for them, because they figure you’ve been up the ass of the Princeton Review for nine months.

100$

And…hmm…you’re gonna need the gas to get to the test center. I live in a major area and the tests were always somewhere totally ass backwards. I drove to each place twice, once the night before to find it if I could. You’ll need index cards, too. I have a stack of index cards for these tests that is about as thick as my OED twice. You might want coffee, because those cards aren’t going to study themselves. You might want a hot pocket.

How about we say 50$ for incidental costs?

Let me add that. I’m sure I’ve got half the numbers wrong because I suck and fail, but whatever.

You are looking at about 1230$ just to get in the door. This doesn’t mean you got in. It means you sent a letter that said “Please?”

The current minimum wage, unless I’m mistaken, is 7.25/hr.

This is division. It’s hard for me.

About 170 hours at a minimum wage job just to apply to college. Of course, that 7.25 is before taxes…so let’s call it 200 hours at a minimum wage job to get in the door of a four year university.

Five weeks of paychecks to do nothing but ask for higher education. This is assuming, of course, that you don’t need any of that money for anything else, like food or shelter or clothing. This is also assuming that you work forty hours a week and don’t do other things, like go to high school.

To be fair, there is usually a way to waive fees. I know because, well…I don’t hide where I came from. Occasionally, the fee waiver is standard. You send bank statements, tax returns, swear up and down you don’t have a swiss bank account and are living in poverty for kicks and they say yes or no.

There’s a stack of tax math, too, to do before you can even fill out the form but I believe the poverty index is $10,830 for a single person household (if anyone knows how they actually come up with the number that makes you poor, please tell me. I’m dying to know). That works out to about 5.20 an hour for a forty hour a week job, so even if you are a single parent with a minimum wage job living just about in a box, you’re not quite poor enough.

Some of these waivers involve phone calls with financial counselors who would like to fiscally index your life for them, to make sure you’re not faking being poor (and don’t you come in here and Welfare Queen me to death, because I am too educated to buy that line and you ought to be, too). If you bought tampons, they want to know about it.

So you can also work for five weeks and be humiliated over the phone.

Have you ever looked around at the world and gone “What have we done?”

(As a funny side note, Princeton alone asked me for the fiscal status of my parents to help determine my PhD funding. I am twenty-nine years old. Really? You think my mommy buys my clothes, too? Then a friend of mine mentioned that lots of kids from money don’t actually have to work and are dependent on their parents and given the population of Princeton, it’s not that strange of a question. Except for the other 99% of us.

Furthermore, the only options they had for parents’ relationship to one another was Married, Divorced, Widowed. I literally had to call Princeton and tell them that my parents were never married, so what box do I tick? If they wish one another dead, is widowed close enough? I don’t want to guess and get thrown out of Princeton for falsifying my application.

They are divorced by the way. Which is news to all three of us.)