There’s also a very big piece of geographic mobility that enters into the picture. Like it or not, most people stay near where they grew up, and plan to stay there. Yes, educated upper middle class professionals may city-hop in their careers, but not everybody. Hanna’s Oklahoma example is a great one. How many of those kids even process the idea of Boston as a real place to live? Their knowledge, if at all, is that Matt Damon is from there and the team is the Red Sox. It might as well be another planet. Those are all a bunch of tiny states up in the map of the northeast.
It works the same way in reverse - how many kids from MA or NJ actively think of Oklahoma as a place to ever live, much less visit? From their vantage point, it’s just a big square state indistinguishable from the other big square states.
The “good” NJ/MA counselor is still talking about (mostly) places close to home. The “good” OK counselor has to learn about places far from home.
ClarinetDad16, the language is “some form of aid.” So yes this would include grants, I assume. The issue of this misleading figure of 70% has come up before, but the fact remains, Harvard’s financial aid is incredible. Any family with $150K or less gets substantial aid. Those with an income of $150K pay 10% or $15K, making Harvard more affordable than a state university or college. Those with incomes under $65K go for free.
I do think that GC’s should have more awareness of financial aid advantages at some elite schools- and also at other privates. I told a friend, whose daughter had applied to only one school, a state school, and she applied to a private school that is not well-known, just to feel that she had choices like her peers at the lunch table. She was surprised to receive a substantial aid package from the private. The GC never would have suggested applying there. I actually think it would be more helpful for smaller, less well-known privates to get more support in order to provide more aid.
My kids went to a “good” upper middle class suburban school district. And every year there are a handful of kids who go to elite schools. But the idea that a GC was personally sitting down with them to evaluate their hopes and dreams and coach them into applying to elite schools? What a joke. The workload simply prevents it. My kids could have said “we want to go to Northern Illinois” and she wouldn’t have said boo. There simply isn’t enough manpower to customize it all. She would have said ok, done, prepared the appropriate transcripts, moved on to the next kid. GCs are like bank tellers or ATM machines. They move the appropriate pieces of paper from here to there. It is only at supremely well financed schools or exclusive private schools (where you are paying for this privilege) where it’s different.
But please, go on believing that the GC in a small town in Oklahoma is like the GCs at, say, Exeter.
Since Harvard already wins most cross-admit situations, offering “free” instead of “very good need-based financial aid” to admitted students will probably make little difference in yield, and what difference that it does make will increase yield of those from high income families (since those from low income families are already getting “free” besides the small student contribution). So Harvard itself has no particular reason to make this switch from a yield perspective. If it did want to tip its student family income distribution higher, it could make small adjustments to its admission process and criteria instead, at much lower cost.
In our school, which is a mediocre school at best, it wasn’t so much that the GC didn’t have time to suggest selective schools, it was that he actively steered kids to state schools, telling them they would be cheaper, or even free. He definitely didn’t mention Ivies, of course.
If he had been like a bank teller, and not suggested anything, that would have been fine- neutral. But he didn’t even know about selective schools’ financial generosity in general, and actively worked against kids applying to them.
Think of it from the GC’s standpoint. He works in an environment with - mostly grads of that state’s state schools. Very few people from a different part of the country. And gosh, these people are “successful” - they have a pleasant life. No one in his circle is dreaming about or defining success as going into I banking or mgt consulting or heading up the neurosurgery dept at a major hospital. Sure, there are some fancy schools out east - but what’s the appeal?
And depending on the state - he may be right in that assessment. After all, in Chicago, there really aren’t too many doors that are closed to someone with a U of Illinois or U of Michigan or U of Wisconsin education.
I think those on the east coast don’t fully recognize that the differential between elite school and state school is a lot greater there than it is elsewhere. You don’t need elite school credentials for economic success the way you more often do out east.
Probably because few, if any, students have any chance of being admitted to super-selective colleges, and also have the interest in applying and attending. Better to concentrate the effort on colleges that students are actually willing to apply to, get admitted to, and attend.
There may also be some workload factors involved. Super-selective colleges require counselor recommendations and other work for the school like teacher recommendations. Overworked counselors and teachers may prefer to have most students apply to state universities that just need high school record, SAT or ACT scores, and FAFSA, rather than deal with recommendations and remind students about CSS Profile, SAT subject tests, and whatever else the super-selective colleges want.
Our daughters friend group at Harvard has been spending time discussing this and they ( who are mostly from upper middle class and affluent families) are opposed to it for many of the reasons already stated. I don’t disagree! But, it must be recognized that the cost of attendance is ridiculously high and as a full pay family that sacrifices significantly the thought of free is very appealing. I don’t complain, and am thankful to have her have the opportunity to attend.
The intellectual discussion takes on a bit of a different perspective when writing the check isn’t theoritcal.
I understand the greater good and am largely on board with that. There are days/times when even less expensive would be really appealing.
Having said all this I own our choice.
Our family has also been full-pay at two very expensive, very fine colleges. We saved for it, and are fine with the decision, and thankful we were able to give this gift to our kids. I also worked as a “college coach” with a first-generation, rather poor, kid whose stats are not enough to get him into that stratosphere of schools that have money to offer disadvantaged kids. His options were essentially nil; any school he could get into had little money to offer him (he got a half scholarship at a private-- that’s not going to help). I consider his needs rather more substantial than our desire to maybe pay less.
I’m sorry, but in the midst of this turn to “what GCs should do,” I take a more demanding view. If a kid thinks he/she is qualified for Harvard, then he or she should have the smarts to look up what Harvard has to say. Or any of the elites.
And they don’t.
It’s one thing to do roadshows and send mailings, another thing to expect reps to then sit with every hs top dawg and hold their hands. Or GCs to do the research for a kid and hand it to him- a kid who “seems” qualified for a tippy top.
As it is, kids and families who do have an elite on their radar are fixated on Johnny’s stats and then his status in his own hs, his own narrow selection of courses, expectations, awards, clubs, how that should make him a shoo-in for an elite. And then CC takes off on a tear about “standing out” (by which posters usually mean, “be unusual,” not be a better candidate or a better match.)
"GCs are like bank tellers or ATM machines. They move the appropriate pieces of paper from here to there. It is only at supremely well financed schools or exclusive private schools (where you are paying for this privilege) where it’s different.
But please, go on believing that the GC in a small town in Oklahoma is like the GCs at, say, Exeter."
Will think about this.
It takes nothing for the counselors to post to Naviance or a wall in the counseling office that there are vastly divergent forms of aid, from merit to need-based, for students who are viable candidates to desired schools. When they call parents in at public schools for the back-to-school/senior-family-information night, letting families know to be AWARE of these differences, particularly where the children in that family may have special talents, be high achieving, or just plain known to be a “different” kind of kid with wings wide enough to flee this burg/hood, is not a big deal. Takes no time at all.
The universities hunt for the athlete. The little local high schools and districts tout and support their athletic gifteds. There is a track for finding and further supporting those kids. Do the same for the very capable scholar.
No one is asking that the guidance counselor do more than the title suggests she can do: guide and counsel.
I understand what lookingforward has expressed and I don’t necessarily disagree, BUT, there are many kids that could use the assistance of involved and aware parents, a great guidance counselor or a trusted mentor. I would expect there are a lot of young people who don’t have any sense of what is possible for them as it relates to these things. I do believe it is the responsibility of a guidance counselor and other educators to recognize students who may be viable candidates and to mentor them. I understand the volume of work contention and I get it, but if you are in these positions, to identify the handful of kids who fit the criteria as eligible candidates should not be that hard. The GC’s are looking at their transcripts, kids who are crushing it should certainly stand out. If a GC doesn’t have that passion (if they can’t get rid of them and find someone who does) school boards should look to their communities for mentors, one person in a community who is coming from the right place can make an enormous difference.
The other hurdle is that even if the GC at the rural school in Oklahoma thinks that here is the kid who should be at HYP et al, there’s often a LOT of family convincing that needs to take place. It’s so far away. It’s not for people like us. Where will he be at Thanksgiving. We all went to U of Oklahoma and we did just fine. What if he decides he wants to stay in the northeast forever and we never see him again.
Those of us in the upper middle class bubble seem to assume that of course parents want their kids to go to elites, but they may be unaware of the great aid, so all the GC has to do is inform them of the great aid and they will eagerly apply. I think there are many parts of the country where that simply isn’t true - where even free Harvard isn’t “great! Where do I sign?” These schools and their milieu are big unknowns to some communities. They exist in a vague " out there" - like Hanna said, might as well be another planet.
Now, you and I can all cluck cluck at the provincialism, but it’s the same provincialism as the kids on the coasts who just “discovered” Grinnell or Carleton. Iowa and Minnesota are other planets for some families here on CC too.
Harvard is rejecting about 34000 kids annually. No one gives us statistics about the pool which was rejected.
My guess is that if Harvard wanted to admit a higher percentage of lower income kids, they could very easily do so without having to do a lot more selling to no name high schools. The current mix of admitted students (20% who pay nothing) is what it is because Harvard wants it that way.
“It takes nothing for the counselors to post to Naviance or a wall in the counseling office”
Naviance is a commercial product. Schools have to pay for it. There are 36,000 high schools in the United States, and Naviance claims fewer than 10,000 institutional customers in 100 countries. So most US high schools don’t have it.
Of course, there are other ways to communicate with students. But this is an illustration of the world we (CC) live in – Naviance is something we expect to find.
Hey, I’ll blame incompetent people in every profession for not knowing how to do their jobs well. Of course the counselors in Oklahoma SHOULD get on CC and learn all this stuff for free. But they don’t, and calling them out in our echo chamber won’t change that. If we want to create real change in access to elite schools, we’re going to have to meet them where they are.
In our good, reasonably affluent school district, the first call-in to parents was at a point where anyone applying to a school ED would have been out of luck. By the time it took place, we had done our dozen or so college visits, my kids had done all their testing and they were halfway through essays. That’s because I (thanks to CC) was on top of it. The school is just set up to shepherd kids to our state school (which is a perfectly fine one) and to help kids afford the directionals. The GCs are nice, hardworking people, but college advising is not all they have on their plates. That is reality. The big advantage that my kids had was that their father and I had an expansive, not regional, sense of top schools.
It was a source of frustration to me that as a smart girl in affluent St Louis suburbia, I was counseled to go to WashU. It was a source of frustration to me that my smart kids in affluent Chicago suburbia were counseled to go to Northwestern - even though that’s where one wound up! - because it was just the obvious backyard default.
I also bet enough GCs deal with parents who don’t want their kid to be outside driving distance that at one point it’s just not worth it to keep pushing farther-away / plane ride schools when parents will veto anyway.
This may be shocking to some of you, but a lot of kids who live in Oklahoma want to live there and work there. If they can qualify for an Ivy, they can get a full ride at Oklahoma and - wait for it- probably have BETTER connections in Oklahoma than the kid who left the state for four years.
“The GC’s are looking at their transcripts, kids who are crushing it should certainly stand out. If a GC doesn’t have that passion (if they can’t get rid of them and find someone who does) school boards should look to their communities for mentors, one person in a community who is coming from the right place can make an enormous difference.”
Again,I feel like you’re not listening - dedicated college-only guidance counselors are not the norm; these counselors are also dealing with the more- immediate-crisis situations such as kids on drugs, in trouble with the law, in abusive family situations, etc. College advising is PART of their job. They don’t have the bandwidth to comb through and identify the top students. It’s like whack-a-mole - they are dealing with all the moles that pop up for attention, not the “good kid” straight A student.
And it’s all well and good to think they should focus on putting one or two top kids into Harvard but in point of fact their time is often spent chasing down $$ so that a broader range of kids can attend any college. And frankly I suspect that is a better use of resources for the community - helping 50 kids afford any higher education versus ensuring one snowflake gets into HYP. THAT is the “enormous difference,” not one kid into HYP.
"It takes nothing for the counselors to post to Naviance or a wall in the counseling office "
They have to be able to AFFORD Navisnce in the first place! And how useful is Naviance in a milieu where most kids go to state / directional / local colleges? Not at all.