@Blossom, I do love those stories and I try to spend my free time adding stories just like that; it rarely comes to pass that way, if you must know, but when it does it is gold. In my book, it’s a success if some of these kids get into any college; the state flagship is a celebration; a Brown could get an inner city kid a story in the local paper.
Yes, I remain cynical. OTOH, I do acknowledge that the marketing will never end, and with the enormous variety of marketing means available (brochures, twitter, FB, etc.) it is naive to think that it will ever be completely forthright and absent of unnecessary puffery…in ANY industry (not just in the college biz).
Prospect- agree that the state flagship is a celebration, but in my state, the high need kid who can get into a “meets full need” college has a higher probability of making the numbers work than a public college (unless it’s in commuting distance where it is possible).
And btw- the physician I referenced came from a rural HS, not an inner city one. Very different set of challenges for the high schools. Many fewer positive role models for kids who live “off the grid” in terms of public transportation, access to libraries, etc. Not that the inner city is easy (I’m working with a program now which identifies high potential math students in middle schools in a particular city) but at least given the concentration of kids and teachers and administrators, SOMEONE is going to bump into someone at some point and light a fire. And for the price of a city bus ticket, the kid can be taking classes at a local college next summer.
Harder in rural areas.
I am not cynical vis-a-vis the colleges. I am cynical of the public school systems which fail disadvantaged kids on a daily basis.
Here, state flagships (there are several) can be very generous to extremely low income; yes, loans are part of it but they can be at even the most elite colleges.
The challenge with the inner city kids is that very often these are crime-and drug-infested areas with extremely poor role models and even communication barriers. For the good/potentially college bound kids, their very personal safety is often their number one priority and consumes a lot of their energy. It’s a real problem. People tend to want to sweep them under the carpet; they don’t realize this perpetuates and ultimately grows the problem.
I’m with blossom in that when you really see these applicants- and from the college’s perspective- it can be quite exciting. No excuses. No asking for an admit favor. No blaming. And there are good teachers out there who inspire, committed mentors who devote the time, over the years.
No, not every kid. Not every high school. Not every area. But many of these kids are a leap ahead of the Winnetka 650’s. In fact, many are ahead of the narrow perspective/formula oriented 750’s, too. Brown still publishes the detail and there’s a reason the admit rates for the top scorers aren’t higher. It’s not their financial need.
It’s ok to be cynical, but good to look from several perspectives, first. Understand how the top colleges actually evaluate, what the success markers are. It’s not always stats. Or many of the factors touted on CC by folks who think they see what it is.
And as more kids do get the right college or other opportunities for them, the number of role models expands.
@lookingforward, I think you hit the nail on the head re the concept of chipping away at the vicious cylcle of poverty through education. While most poverty-stricken kids will not find themselves at Brown, they might get that associates degree that lands them a job that lets them move into a better neighborhood. Other kids see what they have done and want the same for themselves. Some of them actually have the “goods” for much better colleges, they just lack the resources that some of us take for granted.
I am proud of my cynicism. I question everything, don’t just accept what’s fed to me, and I have taught my kids to do the same.
@lookingforward:
" But the elites know what it takes to succeed at their schools- and those are the traits they seek. The competition isn’t just for an admit, it’s also about the level of peer prep once you are there, the level of classes and the assumed knowledge a kid brings, and professor expectations."
This is something my husband said to me just a few nights ago, and for some reason, it was new (and news) to me. From this vantage point, all the criteria and aspects of admission consideration line up for the colleges, but it also makes me see the kind of permanent skew at work inside of the poorest communities whose “rough cuts” are lifted out.
It starts early, in elementary and middle school programs that identify and select for admission to private academies the bright, talented, polite kids who already shine in the classroom. Those kids grow up in an academic society which necessitates a possession of new social attitudes and behaviors in order to survive - to avoid a sort of cognitive dissonance which sends one to a mental hospital or onto a train track.
Those early polished gems, still the scions of the socioeconomic underclass, are still easily identified as ‘in need,’ when it comes to aid at the college level, and easily tapped to fill the ranks of the colleges’ tuition assistance population.
When the colleges have academies doing the scouting and training for them, there is really little work on the ground being done to find and place the rough cuts who made it all the way through a system, taking whatever were the top level courses offered at their school, who test as having the full capacity to handle more, but who still have the stamp of low rent sewn into the tags on their t-shirts.
Waiting- I agree with your observations but I need to add one of my own- it is very hard to assess the rough cuts and figure out which ones have the energy? fortitude? ability to focus? to make it through an academically demanding college program. I am involved in an early intervention HS program which has a mix of both the more highly polished and the rough cuts. And the metrics on the poor kids with highly involved parents (or one parent) who provide a stable home, make sure the kid shows up for school with pencils and signed permissions slips, etc. are very, very encouraging- these kids don’t have money, and don’t come from communities where high academic achievement is celebrated, but they’ve got everything else.
The metrics on the poor kids from iffy homes is also iffy. These aren’t adorable street urchins out of Dickens who just need a helping hand from a teacher, or a prod from a caring social worker. These are often very smart kids who are truant (a lot); don’t have a parent at home who cares if they go to school or not; aren’t being socialized to be academically oriented (school is for losers, the real money is in sports); etc. And once there is a criminal event (misdemeanor or felony) all bets are off. A really smart kid who gets into the criminal justice system early- boy, you’ve got a problem.
So I don’t blame the colleges for aiming for the low hanging fruit. Better minds than mine (sociologists, psychologists, educational theorists and experts) can’t quite crack the problem of the rough cuts.
It’s not even just the “academies.” Ordinary high schools out there can present some pretty compelling kids. You know, as adults, we meet these folks all the time- I mean, we can work alongside them, meet them in social contexts, etc. You just don’t realize where they started, the challenges in their earlier lives. What we see is the savvy, maybe the drives, the cooperative nature, successes to-date, etc. And that “succeedability” can also come through in a college app. But it has to show, it can’t just be claimed. And that’s more than stats superiority.
I wouldn’t necessarily call them low hanging fruit. These kids have worked hard in various ways, academically and outside school, in their communities, have the various skills we know matter, that add up in many ways. One of the markers we look for is the ability to ask for help and take the advice, put in the effort.
Yes- the ability to ask for help. A huge marker of the kind of social capital that theoretically shouldn’t skew towards one income group vs. the other. But visit the lunchroom of a prep school- kids are eating with their teachers, administrators are wandering around chatting with small groups of kids- students know there is no downside to having a relationship with an authority figure, and that it’s ok to stay late to ask for help or to get clarification on something you didn’t understand in the homework. At my local public HS- the only teachers in the cafeteria are there because they have lunch duty, and they sit at a staff/faculty table and their only communication with a kid is to reprimand for a behavioral issue. There’s a perceived stigma for a kid to ask for help from a teacher outside of the classroom.
Asking for help- I screen for it in the people I hire. The best professionals know when they are in over their head and they reach out to colleagues, supervisors, peers.
And yet the University of California system somehow manages to find, recruit, enroll, and graduate remarkable numbers of academically talented low-income students, with percentages of Pell grant recipients that put every elite private college to shame–23% at Berkeley, 28% at UCLA and UCSD, 31% at Davis and Santa Barbara, and 40% at UC Irvine. These aren’t small entering classes they’re filling up, either; UC Irvine alone has more Pell grant recipients than all 8 Ivies combined. Granted, UC Irvine isn’t Brown, but it’s not exactly chopped liver, either, and UC Berkeley and UCLA are pretty highly regarded, rigorous academic institutions.
How do they do it? An article in today’s NY Times suggests there’s no magic to it; it’s just a question of hard work, focus, and institutional priorities. And it further suggests that the handful of elite private schools that have truly made UC-like efforts to identify and recruit low-income students have found considerable success–as have the low-income students they’re recruiting, who do very well in rigorous colleges if given the chance, thank you. Vassar is now 22% Pell grant recipients, Amherst 20%, Pomona 18%–in each case, a dramatic increase over past years, because each of these schools decided that recruitment, retention, and graduation of low-income students would no longer be mere window-dressing, but instead would become a central and defining feature of the institution’s mission.
@bluebayou, agree that ivies (and many others, including many publics) could do better. As noted above, the UC system is wonderful to needy applicants; a roll model indeed.
And to add, at least NYU is honest and does not lure applicants with “meet need” promises and then apply a stingy definition of “need”. NYU will gap, and it is unabashedly upfront that it may do so. NYU will, can, and DOES meet full need for those applicants it wants.
^^agree about NYU, prospect. They make it clear that they do not meet full need, and do not apply ED if you need aid.
Yet, teenagers still cry and parents complain when they “can’t afford” to attend the school. (Heck, I wish i could afford to live in The Village for four years!)
But NYU is gapping those Pell Grantees too. Nothing about being Pell-eligible means that full need is met – and the ~$5000 more or less that a Pell recipient gets doesn’t go far at NYU. If anything, because they end up with maxed-out loan debt - and their parents are often signing on for Plus loans they don’t understand and can’t afford – and there is a very high likelihood that such students won’t finish college simply because they will run out of money well before they finished.
^^^^ Such students should not attend. I don’t buy that the parents don’t understand what a loan is. Students, yes; parents, no. They just can’t say no to their kids when they should.
NYU does not promise to meet full need. It actually does meet full need in some cases, but nobody is tricked into applying to NYU with hopes of a full ride. Nobody is tricked into attending, either.
The worse sin is getting all these Pell-eligible kids to apply based on promises of full need being met, only to later get offered packages not much better (or worse) than NYU’s. Those are the colleges that should be outed and exposed and criticized.
It bears pointing out that NYU has a very good retention rate, a very good graduation rate, and a very good federal loan repayment track record…not to mention average student debt better than many private colleges. So clearly kids aren’t dropping out too badly.
I just get tired of all the NYU bashing on CC. At least it opens its doors to Pell-eligible students (22% in the incoming 2015 class); it does not have the per-student endowment of many other colleges who can afford to be more generous to their Pell students when only 10% of the class is on a Pell grant (i.e. many ivies).
@bluebayou, funny enough, but I recall some brouhaha a few years back when NYU did exactly that. Supposedly NYU did contact some admitted students and warn them, perhaps even advise them, that the school would not be affordable for them. And people were up in arms about it!! Talk about being honest and getting punished for it.
NYU just can’t win. If NYU didn’t accept those kids at all, people would argue NYU is refusing to admit low income students (which, according to the Scorecard, is an accusation that can be leveled at many elite schools OTHER than NYU). But because NYU’s per student endowment is a fraction of those other elites and NYU does not have the $$ to meet everyone’s full need, NYU was accused of being “mean” to low income kids by giving them honest and good advice once their need-blind acceptances were made.
Some of the NYU’s Pell grant students may have come from the recently merged-in PINYU, which had significantly better financial aid than NYU did before the merger.
NYU also offers merit scholarships and probably does preferential packaging, so some of the Pell grant students may be those whom it offers much better than typical financial aid.
I don’t know why NYU gets held up as some paragon. Or why there is some insistence the colleges need to solve every problem out there. I certainly understand some spend a lot of time on CC straightening out others’ misconceptions about aid. Caveat Emptor is wise advice.
“Need” isn’t every dollar you wish you could be given. For a poor kid, the ride is better at a meet full need than a gapper. Or is this really about the middle class? Again? Families that assume?
