Why an ordinary life is not good enough anymore

[Paper Chaser]

The problem isn't getting into a state school, it's getting accepted into your major. High school students around here spend all their time padding their resumes so they can get an automatic admit into a major as well as accepted to the high school. Many of the students at our local state uni drop out after a couple of years because they couldn't get accepted into a highly competitive major, or they spend 6 years getting a 4 year degree because it took them several years just to get accepted into the major (or to get a seat in the over-full class needed to graduate with said major).

College is big business. When your business model requires that you try to funnel everyone into university, whether that is the best choice for the individual or not, then you run out of seats and the mundane becomes overly competitive.

But do freshmen have to declare a major and get accepted into a program?

If you're not on a pretty clear path as a freshman, then you're pretty much just wasting money/racking up student loan debt. In-state tuition at a public college can be $300+/credit hr easily (My in-state, public, commuter school is up to $425/hr for engineering path, $445 for teaching, and $570 for physical therapy now). 15-20 credits/semester at a cheap $300/credit hr and they're paying $4500+ in tuition. $500/credit hr jumps to $7500 minimum. Then you get to add lab fees, books, parking passes, room/board, etc to take some basic classes that might not even be needed for the major they eventually declare. Kids that go to college to "find themselves" or hoping to get into a certain program down the line are taking big risks with real financial costs these days. And that's at a cheap school. This is a large reason why "gap years" are becoming more common.

[zolotiyeruki]

I agree that it’s getting harder and harder to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. I am old  and we got the Benjamins working for us decades ago.

But I want to circle back to my question: why is it so hard for middle-class kids to get into college? Is it hard? Can someone please put this science of  building a good college application into perspective for me? The two responses above were not US-based.

If we're counting the inflation to upper-class lifestyle that the middle-class now seem to expect, I'd agree it's harder to achieve. A 50s-style middle-class lifestyle isn't that hard though. A modest house, one car, decent clothing and food. What else? Labor saving appliances. Add in what would've been luxuries, like a large color television, long distance phone calls, central air conditioning, and things are pretty good. Add what they couldn't have had at any cost, like cell phones and the Internet, video chat, modern safety features in vehicles, and we're well beyond the middle-class lifestyle of the recent past. But no, middle-class somehow now means international trips, luxury cars, private tutors, and all sorts of things that were once reserved for the upper crust. Even though the middle-class still can't actually afford to have all of those things. And nevermind that the basic versions of things now are better than the luxury versions of things then.

This is exactly on-point, and even I'm guilty of it.  DW and I purchased a larger house at the age of 30/28 than my parents purchased at the age of 40/37.   On top of everything you mentioned, I'll add that the global supply chain and technology improvements have also made many things a whole lot cheaper than they used to be.

Just to illustrate the point: Median new home size in 1970 was a bit under 1,600 sq ft.  In 2015, it was nearly 2,500 sqft.  If that weren't enough, average household size has dropped from around 3.0 down to 2.5.  Which means that square footage per resident has nearly doubled.  That doesn't even cover the increasingly (read: expensive) building codes, more modern (efficient!) HVAC and building methods, etc.

[Auldtriangle8]

Depends on the school whether you have to declare a major. For example at the main state school for engineering in North Carolina, you can be admitted as undeclared. But, if you want to then go into a more competitive major such as engineering, you need to matriculate with a certain GPA level of your first semester or first year. Plus, you may not be eligible to take the engineering classes if you aren't an engineering major. So it's better to be admitted to the major itself if you know what you want to do. This is just for this one school, I don't know how it is at others. For context, in talking with friends it seems the average high school unweighted GPA was probably about 3.6-3.7 with pretty good SAT scores to make sure you are admitted to the engineering program, especially in the math portion. Obviously at a better school like MIT the requirements are much higher.