Poll finds that most say they spend less than $1,000. But even as some think that figure is too low, findings also show 20 percent of millionaires under 55 spent more than $50,000.
The recent admissions scandal has exposed a group of wealthy parents who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their children into college — through bribery and deceit.
A poll released last week tried to quantify how much wealthy parents pay (legally) for the same purpose of getting a child into college. CNBC released its poll of millionaires, defined not as those with a million dollars in net worth, but those with at least a million dollars in investable assets.
The poll has prompted some raised eyebrows on social media and elsewhere by sharing that the millionaires reported, on average, spending less than $1,000 to get a child into college. The items about which millionaires were asked included some of the obvious categories of spending (test tutors). But some of the larger potential expenses (such as paying for private schools, or paying to live in areas with strong public schools) were left out, in part because these expenses might have multiple goals, of which getting a child into a good college would be only one.