it has varied, but i believe at this point basically 1/3 of applicants for the lottery do not get in. i dont know the exact numbers for Fall 2012, for example, but it's on the order of 150 applying for 100 spots (minus faculty's kids and siblings of current students, which automatically get in).

I have a 3000 sq ft house in suburban Houston. While that may seem large to some, it's fairly modest by suburban Houston standards where you can buy a lot of house for not that much money. My electric bills in the extended and extreme summers down here run about 150$ per month (with modern insulation technology). My friends in the huge 4500 sq ft standard suburban homes in the area (that are slightly older) pay 500+ bucks per month from May through September. Just another reason not to have the biggest house on the block.

As our kids are 50% off to college, my wife and I find that we only live in about 2/3 the house and while we store a lot of stuff in the spare rooms, in the digital era, we find storage space less and less a requirement too.

In my case, we originally lived on Federal in KCK, but after moving back from Jakarta, my parents moved to Harrisonville for the school and to be relatively close to my dad's brother in Garden City. And a house was picked past the fringe part of the town as my dad liked the acreage to work in and as well as the relative isolation.
In retrospect, as the other option was the Shawnee Mission school district, I still personally think that it was a good choice (even with H'ville's borderline-obsessive football culture).

Me, I like trees and land to grow things. Indoor square footage isn't too much deal for me. And I'll take either a close proximity to amenities or a close proximity to nature. Thus I can see myself living in urban KC (again, if there was a space to make a garden, be it a rooftop or backyard), a pre-war suburb, or an extremely rural area (alternately, the urban part of a small town). There is no way in hell I see myself staying in a suburb in today's (or likely future) sense.

I'll have to say that most of the tech/engineering types I know are so far starting along the trend that your design-types, mostly to be in close proximity to booze. Though already a couple have gone from staying in the loop to moving to old Hyde Park, so we'll see how the trend goes along when they actually settle down, or how much longer they are willing to do a long commute to Olathe (Garmin) or 150th (Honeywell).
Incidentally, there is a recent graduate I know who is working for B&M and is currently holed up in an apartment around 146th and Metcalf. He is planning to do the opposite and move more into the city (probably buying) when more money comes up.

Grew up in various areas of urban kcmo. Hyde Park, South Plaza, Midtown, Swope Parkway but mostly South Plaza.

In high school, I lived in South KC near Bannister Mall. Went to school and lived in Warrensburg for a while, then St Louis, then moved back to KC and lived in a Platte County apartment complex along I-29. This was back (90's haha) when urban KC just was not in great shape and there was not much to choose from. We then moved to Willow Creek apartments near 435 and Wornall. Then we bought a home in Waldo.

Lived in Waldo for six years.

After trying to make Brookside work and we couldn't do it financially, we then moved to Blue Springs, near the border of Lee's Summit and Independence.

Something I regret to this day. I wish I would have done what ever it took to stay in the city. Suburbs are overrated and even while out in Blue Springs, I was in the city with my kids more often than we would do anything out east. Trolley Track Trail, Suicide Hill, Union Station, whatever. Didn't need much of a reason. I still remember my 6 year old having to direct his school bus driver on a field trip to downtown KC. She was lost and he helped her get where she wanted to go. (crown center I think).

We moved because we needed to get closer to my wife's parents and wanted better public schools and we got a nice home for cheap compared to Brookside.

But like I said, I would have stayed if I could do it again. Homes in Brookside doubled in value during the time I was in BS. I spent 8 years basically rebuilding a poorly constructed 1980's suburban home.

Then we moved to the DC area...

My wife and I just bought a house (yesterday!) in the 'burbs. The main reason like most people was for school options for our daughter. Secondly we both grew up in Platte county and know the area very well so we decided to move back when we needed to look for our little corner of sprawl. We lived downtown for a while in our younger years and wouldn't mind going back, but it's just not super practical with kids unless you're willing to pony up for private school - which we're still on the fence on.

Of course my mom and her mom also live within 15 minutes of where our new house is and our family friend babysitter is just down 152, so that's also a big plus for our location.

Downtown is opening up a new school this Fall, which is not affiliated with KCMO School District.

If you're talking about the Crossroads Academy, that's not totally true. It's a charter school that will be tied to the KCMO school district.

True, my wife and I do not live in the same house when our kids were growing up but we do live in another suburban style house - we just like this style of house. When we first considered moving our intention was to downsize but considering the price we would pay for a smaller home vs a similiar sized house to what we had it was a no-brainer to stay with a larger house. We had a four bedroom house and moved to a four bedroom house and all four bedrooms will be used for three nights this weekend much like two or three other times during the year.

Overall we kept our formal dining room, lost our first floor bedroom and separate living room but gained a more usable finished basement with more storage and a bigger kitchen, lost a two car basement garage but gained a three car garage just off the kitchen.

With regards to friends all but two couples still live in the same house they have lived in for the last 20 years or more. One couple moved to Bella Vista and the other to a smaller home in a maintenance provided community further out of town but closer to their son.

Curious, what about the status of the other two? Are they auto admissions into AL?

Automatic Admission.

boo ya! congrats on not having to move to the burbs!

I still don't get why, instead of fretting about schools, people don't just buy one of the hundreds of thousands of cheaper, nicer houses in the city and then PLAN ON PAYING TUITION. Like, if you have 1 kid, buy a house that costs 20K less. If you have 2, 40K less. Etc. It's not hard to work out how much money you will need for private schools.

Plus, and I say this as someone who grew up in a city then moved to the exurbs, kids hate the living in suburbs. It is a shitty, shitty way to grow up. Parents love it because it seems easier and safer (though it really isn't), but kids hate it. Then they grow up and become the kind of shaggy, shiftless douchebags you see living out their protracted childhood city-fantasies in Portland and Austin and West Brooklyn. Paying for decent schools in the city is part of the cost of providing a life for your children that they will not resent you for.

Wow. Bitter much?

Unfortunately, $20K isn't going to by 13 years of private school anywhere.

More puzzling: people who live in Kansas and send their kids to private schools.

Second.

It's more like $100k/kid.

or you could just buy a 20k dollar house on 31st and Jackson and send your kids to private school that way.

I don't understand the people in Lee's Summit that send their kids to private schools.

Given the older teens who work at the neighborhood pool that I know plus the teens and 20 year olds of children of friends of friends I know I would say that is not a very accurate statement.

Many do for religious reasons since most of the private schools have a religious background.