<p>The</a> Challenge Of Being Poor At America's Richest Colleges - Forbes</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, but I found the title of this article intriguing. I cannot say that I am surprised the most elite colleges have an overrepresentation of students that come from wealthy families. Many selective schools are need-blind, so it is not as though the wealthier students are just getting in because they can pay. This proves that there is a correlation between the intelligence of student and his/her family’s income. Not that wealthier students are naturally smarter than poorer students, just that wealthier students can afford additional resources to expand their learning that poorer students may not have the luxury to access (the classic example is SAT tutors, review books, etc).</p>
<p>I worry sometimes that the most selective colleges will end up with students with a lot of money, and students with no money, but nobody in between.</p>
<p>Scanned the article. Above post- no, it does NOT prove a wealth and intelligence correlation as stated. Check with many college professors and you will find they may be among the smartest but certainly not as well paid as many businessmen, hence they can’t afford the most expensive colleges. Also- the smartest do not need to pay for study guides to do well on the SAT or ACT. Plus, a National Merit Finalist may not be able to afford the most expensive colleges, even with some scholarships. </p>
<p>I still remember not bothering to apply to several elite colleges eons ago because even with a full scholarship (and schools were not need blind then as well) because I never could have afforded trips home for vacations, much less for entertainment. I also would not have been able to dress like the others. I was a NMS, Honors grad at a top ten in my major-Chemistry- flagship U and chose an MD over a PhD like my friends acquired. It was so frustrating when son wouldn’t bother to apply to most elite schools- ACT 35, SAT 2400 without studying- oh yeah, he graduated from HS at 16 1/2- and we could afford them. He used resources available to everyone in our excellent Wisconsin public schools. </p>
<p>I know PhDs who have economic problems. </p>
<p>The article shows how the concepts of academic and social fit are different. I had a roommate (instate) freshman year of college who stated her (higher end than I would have chosen, I’m not and never was, into clothes) winter coat was too good for UW- she was probably right in that Vietnam War protest era- and she fortunately was able to move into her first choice dorm soon after. </p>
<p>Many wealthy students have rich parents whose job is to make money. Some of us prefer the more academic pursuits.</p>
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Ha. Ok. </p>
<p>This article does not prove what you think it does.</p>
<p>^ Okay, I’ll admit that the article has actually nothing to do with what I have written. I was simply stating why I am not surprised wealthier students are overrepresented (THAT was written in the article). You may disagree with me in my reasoning, but even the brightest students (at least in my school, anyway) got an SAT tutor to get a 2150+.</p>
<p>Of course income and g are correlated.</p>
<p>I think what Latin4Life meant to say was not that “intelligence” was correlated with wealth, but rather, “achievement”, where there is some data that this poorly-written Forbes article did not reference. Only 25% of Hispanic students in our public high school will have completed the coursework to qualify for a University of California campus by the time they graduate, to cite one example.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t stop there. Many of our public schools do a poor job of educating lower-income students. That includes preparing them for–and steering them to—colleges that are in the.top echelon. Here in California, that often means that these top-performing lower income students do not apply to the Ivies and top 50 LAC’s, or the top three UC campuses. Instead, the few minutes they may spend with their high school counselor–who in my town has a 700 to 1 student to counselor ratio–are focused on applying to a community college or local state university.</p>
<p>While some lower income students may feel a sense of shame for being poor, as Forbes seems to imply, that is certainly not a universal attitude, nor is a sense of shame limited to poor students. Rich ones can and do feel socio-economic shame as well.</p>
<p>Students who show off their wealth often experience being ostracized as being self-centered asinine people, and over time they may also feel a sense of being excluded. </p>
<p>Given who reads Forbes, it would have been a more interesting and honest article if the author had investigated that side of the story. My son is friends with a young man from the top one half of one percent and this kid has his own set of significant insecurities that this article never mentions, which are directly connected to his family’s extreme wealth. He takes pains to cover up his upbringing so that he can fit into the campus social world.</p>
<p>And on the other hand, one of my college acquaintances came from a poor African American family in the Deep South and he grew up to become one of the nation’s top journalists. During our freshman orientation he told me that he had done a summer internship at a local radio station–a counselor had guided him.to that–and that he planned to become a broadcast journalist. He eventually found himself working as a White House correspondent.</p>
<p>I have come to take Forbes’ “analyses” of social issues with not just a grain of salt, but with a full salt shaker. Whether reading an article such as this one or studying the Forbes’ college rankings, their stuff always starts to smell fairly putrid after a closer examination. Surely it can’t be because of the ideology of its publisher. Caveat emptor.</p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6410LVW using CC</p>
<p>In my opinion none of it matters because it is the individual college vision and initiative to have a socio-economically diverse campus. Really not any great effort of socio engineering for the good of our nation. Nobody is lying to the kids or promising them everything accept free tuition, room and board or nearly free for something that costs $60,000 + or minus. Kids that “pick” the scholarship should have eyes wide open walking into that scenario. It absolutely is about tenacity as the author points out at the end. Kids learn about “have and have nots” in high school or they land at an Ivy after a heavily subsidized boarding school experience. If they lack the tenacity to tough through it in exchange for what they are being given then they are not in the right place, in my opinion.</p>
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<p>Many of the lower-income students do a poor job of shutting up and not disrupting class when teachers are attempting to educate them. </p>
<p>As a Forbes subscriber and former poverty level student I thought the article was pretty accurate. I was the kid who plotted which classes I didnt need the book for. And the ones I needed, I photocopied the book because it was cheaper. Yeah that can be pretty awkward at a study group when you explain you omitted the TOC and Intro and index, and all your books are on two sided legal paper. kind of a lol now. Having $300 text books is not a victimless crime.</p>
<p>I mentored a young man who attended a top LAC and an ivy, both on full need-based aid. He definitely struggled with being “the only one” who was not wealthy … not “well off,” but “wealthy.” It was tough to be in class with students who had amazing educational backgrounds K-12. It was hard to feel like he was the only one who didn’t have the connections to get a great summer internship at a top company, or the only one who didn’t go on awesome vacations over break. He went to school with the kids of Hollywood celebs and Wall Street icons. It was difficult. In the end, he got a great education in more ways than the classroom, and he is glad he chose those schools. But it definitely felt TO HIM that he was the only poor kid.</p>
<p>I was a full-pay student who always had a job in college. So did both of my Ds. My full-pay D was disappointed to find that the high-paying ($11 per hour) campus jobs were available only to those on work-study. She wanted one of those jobs. Also, according to her, the abroad summer programs were free to the FA students.</p>
<p>“Nobody is lying to the kids or promising them everything accept free tuition, room and board or nearly free for something that costs $60,000 + or minus.”</p>
<p>Lying, maybe not. Glossing over challenges, probably. Rose-colored marketing, definitely. Every brochure and web site of every elite school brags about community, inclusiveness, etc. That’s not a lie, but also not the whole picture for all students. I think a student on a scholarship has as much right to question/critique the culture and support services of the school as a full-pay student. Analyzing the flaws of the institutional status quo is part of what elite college students are supposed to be learning how to do.</p>
<p>“it is the individual college vision and initiative to have a socio-economically diverse campus.”</p>
<p>Well, exactly. The campuses are bringing these students to serve their own vision and initiative – NOT as a selfless act of charity. Every student (full-pay or not) is admitted to serve institutional goals. So it makes sense to think about how the institution is serving the student in return. If I’m Princeton, I want the scholarship students to graduate as satisfied as the full-pay students.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to feel sorry for kids who are receiving a free education plus room and board. They can do what millions of middle class kids to to pay for books. They can get a job.</p>
<p>Right, because poor kids going to e pensive private schools on financial aid don’t have jobs.</p>
<p>I worked two jobs at my elite LAC, having quit my first job after three weeks (serving food in a white waiter’s jacket to my classmates who were in jackets and ties.) That kept me in books (I got a discount 'cause I worked at one of the bookstores), but pizzas were beyond me. I did have classmates in similar position who sold marijuana to wealthy students to pay for their room and board. (That only worked until some wealthy students with greater access to “capital” pretty much cornered the market.) </p>
<p>There was one first-year student who was a state typing champion. He always had plenty of business, but never enough time to get his own work done, so he was gone after a semester. The Administration was “saddened” because he was one of their “projects”, but never bothered to figure out exactly what had happened.</p>
<p>I’m glad that at least on some campuses, there are now cross-class discussion groups organized by a wonderful organization - Class Action (founded by good friends of mine.) My solution at the time was to ghettoize (which was suggested at the end of the article) - find other low-income students and stick to them as friends and roommates. I did get a great education, for which I am grateful, but am saddened that 40 years later, so many elite colleges still haven’t figured it out.</p>
<p>I “should” have had my eyes wide open on going in, of course, but since I had never met ANYONE anywhere close to the social/economic class of more than half of the student body, opening my eyes would have taken a lot of work, to say the least. The only people I knew who had been to Europe had fought in World War II, the West was anywhere the other side of the George Washington Bridge (we had a Boy Scout Jamboree once in Palisades Park), and my ‘western’ relatives lived in Cranford, New Jersey (and I only saw them at weddings and funerals.)</p>
<p>And we never considered ourselves “poor” - we were “just like everyone else” (or so we thought).</p>
<p>wow ok, so let me get this straight, a kid overcomes significant challenges including poverty, lack of guidance, lousy inner-city public education, yet manages to score just as high as others who had the benefit of a privileged upbringing, but they aren’t allowed to verbalize their feelings of inadequacy without being called whiners? It’s no wonder they feel ostracized with such an elitist POV.</p>
<p>PP, you <em>do</em> realize that the “most generous” schools almost ALWAYS have a student contribution to them (WS, etc)? You don’t get that money beforehand. You don’t just have a few hundred extra laying around for books- it doesn’t work that way for truly low-income students. </p>
<p>I didn’t go to a super expensive school but I did qualify for a program for the first two years that was only available to those below 100% of poverty. It covered most everything except for a few thousand in loans (2-3k, I can’t remember) and 3k in WS (by my third year, my parents made just enough to not qualify for the program so I basically lost a good chunk of what the school was giving me- YIPPIE!). I ended up having to take out a temporary loan to cover books the first semester. I wonder if more generous schools offer that (I assume they do?). Oh, and PP, I did work full time in school. I worked in high school too but that money wasn’t available for books. </p>
<p>When I was in CTD at Northwestern, I was one of the only one in my class that was not well off. Yeah, you notice, and yeah, sometimes it sucks. You really just can’t help but get jealous sometimes. We did a weekend expedition to Michigan Ave for shopping when I was there and my friends were buying almost whatever they pleased. I didn’t buy anything. Little things like that can add up in stressing you out. OTOH, I’m pretty sure I could’ve found a group at any expensive college where they didn’t like spending money. I just had very limited options at CTD. </p>
<p>I think it’s hard to understand what it’s like to live in poverty if you’ve never been there, especially as a young person. I know I can’t wrap my mind around what it would come from a family with an income of 200k+ because it’s simply not really my experience.</p>
<p>To be fair, my wealthier classmates were as clueless as I was. Because I came from NYC and wasn’t wealthy, I automatically became “the expert” on “the ghetto” when we read the “Autobiography of Malcolm X”. (Yeah, and my high school was 90% Jewish, and most of the rest were Chinese.) But they only struggled around this in class, not when it was time to order pizza. And I don’t fault them for it - they were clueless, and we didn’t have a common language to talk about it.</p>
<p>I admit to having a hard time feeling sorry for any students who are lucky enough to spend 4 years on the campuses of America’s “richest colleges.” Those places are amazing, with every amenity and food variety a 20-something could want, pretty much all-inclusive. It is an embarrassment of riches to me, and we are a full pay family.</p>