Columbia Student Writes About How She Bought Her Way Into College

<p>It’s funny because PrezBo is a huuuuuge proponent for affirmative action. Went to the Supreme Court for it.</p>

<p>And we go back to arguing that AA should be based on socioeconomic status and not race…woe is the poor asian kid…</p>

<p>pwoods - thanks for the post. This story highlights real problems for poor students.</p>

<p>cause the only thing on the app is a SAT score, and no one gets high scores without a prep course.</p>

<p>this girl has a really flawed argument. not something I would expect from most Columbia students.</p>

<p>

work experience looks no worse than volunteering or ECs on an application. it actually shows a lot of responsibility.</p>

<p>money and background play huge roles in life, but there is still a good amount of hard work involved. especially now when everything is getting more competitive.</p>

<p>as someone that knows admissions quite well (take a guess why), poor carlene and many here somehow think that admissions officers live and die by the sat. it is always read contextualized based on someone’s background. it is for that reason that carlene’s test score is no more or less special than the next student. </p>

<p>next - i really think it is funny that people who repeat the moniker socioeconomic status concentrate on income alone. the term itself clearly suggests there is something social (i.e. race/class) involved. being poor and from a manufacturing background is different than being poor because parent’s lost their jobs. in any case, most admissions officers read students based on class. you may not know this, but alas it is true. that is why students are admitted that are poor, middle and upper class; they are read differently and expectations shift based on a someone’s background. so for argument’s sake, guess what, admissions officers do AA based on socioeconomic status, as they also do so based on other abilities (as the author somewhat hopes in the op-ed, including gender, sexual orientation).</p>

<p>however, the problem is that this is not done enough. still today the halls of the top schools are filled mostly with people who are in the top 5% of income earners in the country. that is because despite any admissions officer’s best effort, it is still easier to feel comfortable with a student that comes from a wealthy private school and read Sartre than the student that didn’t have an AP. it is the inherent problem in an elitist system is that it privileges elites. </p>

<p>the contrary idea is to make these ‘elite’ institutions non-elite (in academic expectations and in the way they engage with society). it is a provocative idea, but then again there are 3999 other higher education institutions besides columbia in the us. why do we obsess on just 1, 8 or 50? is there room in higher education for ugly elitist outliers?</p>

<p>pwoods - thanks for the link. An amazing article.</p>