<p>Obviously there are many ways to look at this issue. I am pleased with how the college admission results went for me - And probably that puts me in a good position to argue the “class profiling” issue. I continue to maintain that there is reverse discrimination going on regarding affluent students. DanAdmission@Tufts disagrees, which is fine. Tufts was too urban for me, but a first choice for a lot of people. I hope that those of you who are attending enjoy your time there.</p>
<p>There are inherent advantages that go long with high SES. Using the baseball analogy, low SES starts at home, high SES starts at first base, and George Bush started at third base.</p>
<p>Getting a 1950 with a stay at home english speaking parent and resources for enrichment in a Town with can afford spedning more on schools is one thing. Getting a 1800 with a stay at home grandmother who doesn’t speak english, parents who both work full time with little resources for enrichment in a Town that can afford to spend on education is another.</p>
<p>It’s a lie to pretend that these situations are equal.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>kei-o-lei - When I speak of high SAT’s, I mean scores above 2200. Some would argue that 2200 isn’t high. IT appears to me that the current trend gives preference to the student with the 1800, or even the 1950 over the student with the 2200+ if the students below 2000 are from poorer backgrounds - like the ones that you describe. This is my idea of reverse discrimination. It would never occur to me to think that 1950 was a high score. I am talking about super high scorers (2200 plus), great grades, great extracurriculars who are rejected from truly great schools, probably because they come from affluent backgrounds. Reverse Discrimination.</p>
<p>Newengland, I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting this. Unless you were sitting on the admissions committee, you’d really have no way of knowing which applicants got which scores and why they were or weren’t accepted.
There’s no evidence of students with good stats getting rejected from schools due simply to their affluence; not only does it not make sense, but it’s a fairly self-serving way to look at things. While I’m not on the admissions committee either and thus can’t say for sure what goes on, I have complete faith that they’re not doing ridiculous ***** like rejecting a strong applicant because he’s rich or accepting a student with an 1800 on their SATs solely because he’s poor and not due to other factors like his grades, essays, etc.
Either you know something I don’t or you’re vastly exaggerating the situation; there’s nothing that I’ve seen which would make it appear that way, and while I don’t know all of my classmates’ GPAs the few people I have met at Tufts who don’t seem to belong at Tufts didn’t get in due to their economic situation (although I don’t know why some of them did, but that’s another story).
Also, worth noting is that while Tufts has strived to be need-blind, there is incentive for schools to admit wealthier students who won’t need financial aid so that they can at least collect tuition from someone…</p>
<p>This post has rambled on a little bit, but there’s really no evidence that could lead you to claim that anyone was reverse discriminated against because of their affluence.</p>
<p>
Whoever said solely? I’m saying it (generational status) is a huge “boost” to an application that the applicant him/herself inherited by being born into, whether it was a hindrance or not. </p>
<p>@EffectiveMind: Your post is the reason why I orginally said “in some cases this is obviously true,” (like your case). But
This is what I’m referring to when students seem to benefit from, for lack of a better term, the best of both worlds. Here they gain a huge advantage on their application by being able to say: that their parents didn’t attend college, and they make under the average household income. However neither of these facts hindered the students’ parents enough to send their child to a decent private school. So the child benefits from the exceptional education, while ALSO gaining from HIS/HER PARENTS’ struggles. (Which is like my friend’s case).
Well, I see where NE8 is coming from. He, of course, doesn’t mean that a strong applicant, as described “super high scorers (2200 plus), great grades, great extracurriculars who are rejected from truly great schools,” was rejected just because their parents are affluent. He is saying that this affluent applicant has a harder time standing out in the eyes of the adcoms, than does a poorer(living in a bad area)/URM/first-gen applicant who only received mediocre scores/grades/etc, which leads to this stronger applicant being rejected. Now this is indisputable.</p>
<p>Acceptd - Yes, thank you. You phrased it much better than I. Regardless of the amount of work that we do, it is almost impossible to stand out when coming from an affluent background. I would like to know what percentage of unhooked affluent kids with sat’s of only 1950 have been admitted to Tufts. Perhaps DAN has the answer for this.</p>
<p>I dispute that there are few enough poorer/URM’s with scores in the 1800-2000 range that without either good grades or essays or ECs or something that they somehow can stand out more than the “super high scorers (2200 plus), great grades, great extracurriculars.”
My interpretation of what Dan is saying is that if you take two students with fairly similar grades, scores, etc and one of them is from a wealthy suburb and has two ivy league educated parents with advanced degrees and the other one is poorer and from the inner city and his parents are HS graduates then the poorer student is more likely to get admitted, even if his/her grades or scores are a little lower. I don’t think there’s this 300-400 point discrepancy that you guys seem to be describing, though. In my experience I haven’t heard of any of these extreme cases.
Also, I think you are downplaying the disadvantage of your parents having not gone to college. I know that I benefited while growing up, going to school, taking these tests, and applying to college from having two heavily-educated parents and am willing to admit it. There are a lot of things my parents wouldn’t have known or been able to help me with/do had they not had those experiences.</p>
<p>Edit: I just missed NE8’s last post, but in response: I have a feeling that the number of kids admitted to Tufts with a 1950 regardless of the situation is somewhat limited.</p>
<p>
I highly doubt this, because if it were true, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation/debate. I believe that if an applicant is poor/URM/first-gen, then they only require somewhat adequate EC’s - as opposed to the affluent, “super student” who would need STELLAR EC’s in order to stand out amongst the rest of the affluent herd.<br>
Again, obviously noone is debating this. It’s a lot easier to argue when you use both extremes like you did there. However, you have to assume this RARELY is the case. Most of the time you get a sort of, mix and match, of backgrounds AND stats (EC’s/scores/grades) and in this grey area, probably most URM/first-gens get the leg up on the rest of the applicant pool. I know that adcoms at every university try to “contextualize” scores and backgrounds and such, but I think it’s a flawed system. An adcom will never really know HOW MUCH being a first-gen/poor/URM applicant really has affected the life of that student, and thus does not have a good enough gauge in terms of how much “pull/hook” the first-gen/poor/URM status should actually have. I think that when adcoms see these labels on an application, it automatically boosts the strength of the application without it actually being a significant factor in the life of the applicant. Then again, I’m just assuming this, of course, but I think it’s relatively safe to say that the actual practice probably doesn’t deviate too much from this.
It depends. If they didn’t go to college, yet you are still raised in a good community with access to a decent public/priv. school and education, then I don’t think it is that big of a disadvantage.</p>