Consolidated: New financial aid policies Harvard and Yale

Parent Cafe
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<p>“I am low income and everything, but I still think harvard and princeton should have kept the early plans
and seriously who hasn’t heard of harvard…seriously”</p>

<p>A Harvard grad who’s in his early 30s told me that when he went to Harvard, his mother, a maid who was a high school drop-out, was glad that he was going to college, but didn’t know the difference between Harvard and the local community college.</p>

<p>A Harvard grad who was in my class --probably the oldest woman in my class, was in her mid 20s when she entered-- said she was first gen college, and decided to apply to Harvard because she lived in Boston, and her husband, who also was just a h.s. grad, suggested that she apply to colleges in Boston so she could live at home and raise her kids while being in college. When she applied to Harvard, she had no idea that it is one of the best colleges in the world. I learned that about her when I talked to her at a reunion.</p>

<p>When I was in college, one of my roommates over the summer hung out with some high school graduates from her hometown, Jersey City. She told them that she went to “Radcliffe College,” and they assumed it was a secretarial school. She let them continue thinking that.</p>

<p>Certainly people who end up on CC usually know about the reputations of Harvard and similar schools, but that’s far from the case when it comes to many people in this country. This includes some college-bound students.</p>

<p>Heck, I know college graduates in my college town who think that flagship state university offers the exact same education as occurs at a place like Harvard.</p>

<p>I also have represented Harvard at the college fair in my college town. Typically, some students and parents ask me where it’s located and how hard it is to get into. They appear to be students whose parents weren’t high school graduates, and they seem to be very seriously asking me those questions. The world is not like what you see at CC or in AP classes.</p>

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<p>Also, many low-income or first-generation applicants may not know of the SAT II subject test requirements and once deciding to apply, may have to scramble to meet those requirements.</p>

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<p>Being aware of HYP is not the same thing as being aware of what it takes to apply or be admitted. See post 283.</p>

<p>To add to NSM’s post, my kids were in school with a young woman who single-handedly raised three kids while attending Harvard. She was a URM and on limited income; it took her longer than for other students to graduate but she did. She also did a great job with her kids and became head of the school’s Council.</p>

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<p>yea but northstarmom you are talking about your generation adn the generation before that. for people my age, it is pretty rare to not know diff between community college, state, and ivys</p>

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<p>We live in a rural one high school community. I would say 70% of the students there do not know the difference between community college, state and ivys.</p>

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<p>well maybe just because I am applying for all the top schools right now and want myself to get accepted…but as of now I think it’s just has to depend on how hard you worked. just because I knew about the harvard, yale, or princeton growing up doesn’t mean that I didn’t work endlessly to get that goal. And it’s not like i had everything spoon feed to me. I had to do everything by myself too. I just don’t think it is fair some kid from some rural places get the harvard spot before me just because he is first generation to college or whatever. I work equally hard.</p>

<p>again…maybe I am just freaking out now because apps are due jan 1 :frowning: I should get off this website :P</p>

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<p>I am first-generation, have been low-income most of my life, and a URM but I definitely knew of places like HYP. But the main thing was that I never thought I would be eligible or “smart” enough to go to an “Ivy-caliber” school and neither did my parents, my GCs, or even my friends. They all viewed HYP as this sort of abstract, “hallowed” place where only Nobel Peace Prize winning geniuses are accepted. But after visiting both H & P during my sophomore year, I was brought back to reality and was pretty determined on getting in, regardless of what other people thought. I sent in my applications the other day and we’ll see, but to say that most low income/first-gen students haven’t heard of HYP is ridiculous. To say that most low income/first-gen students think that places like HYP are unattainable is not. Just my two cents!</p>

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<p>I concur 2007mom above said ‘disadvantage’ SES kids actually have ‘advantage’ in top ivies addmission. … In our school, there is this one hispanic kid got 2200+ in SAT(quite impressive for a hispanic kid, I’m going with stereotype here), gpa and such not among the tops in classes, however it is no secret among students, he is a ‘lock’ to HP. … while in the same school, students with no ‘hook’ (athletes, legacy, etc.) feel comfortable to apply HP only if their SAT > 2300++ which will qualify for ‘free ride’ to state flagship.

Now its your choice…</p>

<p>Heard last year they got > 20 acceptances into HP via Early. Very a few recruite athletes, not sure if there was any qualified hispanics, the rest were with ‘hooks’ except one, who according to students’ rumore he got in because took the ‘ride’ with the Early bunch, with the stats he probably would not get in at RD.</p>

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Yeah. More interesting are some professors kids “You don’t know how stupid/ignorance some ppl in some departments. Yet they look so pompous.” (is this the similar southen ppl’s comments I read from early posts in this thread?)…Result? Last year a few bests in the school (include a few professor’s kids) went to other top colleges, where they thought students weren’t so ‘pompous’ or more ‘intelectual’.</p>

<p>Personally, I think HP is heading to the right direction, if they drop the EA/ED with said or unsaid intentions. But still have to wait and see the final admission data.</p>

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<p>gg & ss, if you have the desire to prevail you will find means to success! Good luck in your applicaions.</p>

<p>Most schools provide the computer lab and internet access, right? The infomation is free these days on the web. If you have troubles to find HYPSMC’s web site, then I agree with an early poster, you don’t deserve Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.</p>

<p>btw, got FA xmas eve, ‘you are not qualified for need based finantial aid…’ — as expected. I’m still working. lol.</p>

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<p>“yea but northstarmom you are talking about your generation adn the generation before that. for people my age, it is pretty rare to not know diff between community college, state, and ivys”</p>

<p>It’s rare only if you’re hanging around CC or with students in schools in which a very high proportion of students go to college.</p>

<p>In the magnet school where my sons were in an IB program, it was a struggle for many of the nonIB students to graduate from high school. Many were first gen college, and I am very sure that their parents had little idea of the difference between Harvard and the local public colleges.</p>

<p>It was just 3 years ago that I represented Harvard at our local college fair. This is in a town where there is a public university. Several parents and students sincerely asked me questions that indicated they had absolutely no idea that Harvard is one of the world’s top universities. It was very clear that they knew very little about colleges at all, and had little if any knowledge about how to get accepted to any.</p>

<p>When it comes to low income , first gen college students, I’ve done a lot of volunteering with such students. I remember talking about careers at high schools in which very few students went on to college. Many students assumed that if you graduated from h.s., you’d get your pick of colleges and the government would pay your way.</p>

<p>I’ve seen schools where valedictorians felt successful if they went to their local community college because vals would get free tuition. </p>

<p>Even smart students would’t know about the importance of taking the SAT, and certainly wouldn’t have heard of the SAT IIs. Even in the IB program that my sons attended, the IB GC didn’t encourage students to take SAT IIs right after they finished the courses for those tests. The GC said that most students would be going to state publics anyway, so there was no need to bother with the SAT IIs.</p>

<p>By the time some very bright students learned about the SAT II requirements for places like Ivies, either it was too late to take the tests or the students were unlikely to do well on them because it had been so long since they’d taken the courses for the SAT IIs that matched their academic strengths.</p>

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<p>I’ll back up what Northstarmom says. I live in a working class enclave surrounded by the highest socioeconomic status area in the upper Midwest. Most Minnesota students who matriculate at Harvard come from within twenty minutes of where I live. But there are many, many local families in the income range mentioned in the recent Harvard announcement that is discussed in this thread who have NO idea what their actual out-of-pocket cost would be if their children applied to Harvard. The families I meet beside the soccer field in this large metropolitan area mostly tell their children to seek low-list-price colleges like state universities. They think a Big Ten university at out-of-state list price is a better deal than Harvard–probably because of what they guess but don’t know for sure about the academic quality and financial aid policies at each place. </p>

<p>Students in this area who are in the low-income category covered by previous Harvard announcements of its Financial Aid Initiative are even more poorly informed about Harvard’s accessiblity and cost. Many students here who take the initiative to show up for Ivy League regional information sessions have never been told by any of their teachers or counselors what an SAT Subject Test is, for instance. Just two years ago, the counseling staff at my school district’s high school didn’t KNOW that it is permitted to take the PSAT/NMSQT before eleventh grade–yet most PSAT-takers nationwide are below eleventh grade. Ignorance is hard to overcome, and Harvard could devote a huge chunk of its budget just attempting to overcome the ignorance that persists in well-informed circles such as here on CC.</p>

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Why GC would do this? It dose not make sense unless the school has to pay for the test.</p>

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<p>Some counselors are very clueless. That is the norm, nationally. High schools that hire counselors who actually know anything about selective college admission are a rare experience not enjoyed by most learners.</p>

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<p>“Why GC would do this? It dose not make sense unless the school has to pay for the test.”</p>

<p>The GC appeared to genuinely think she was being helpful. I believe that since most students at the school who went to college went to public universities that required no SAT IIs, the GC probably thought that by discouraging students from taking SAT IIs, she was saving them time and money.</p>

<p>The same GC discouraged my older S from taking the PSAT before junior year because she said that if he got a high score, it wouldn’t count and he might get too cocky. Fortunately, we ignored that well meant, but unhelpful advice.</p>

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<p>AnotherNJmom:</p>

<p>Several years ago, the NYT ran a series of articles about GCs at three different schools. One was an inner-city school, one was a suburban school and one was a private school. The inner-city school GC had a caseload of 400 students, many of whom had discipline problems; he was well versed about how financial issues at state schools but could hardly give well informed advice about elite schools. By contrast, the private school GC had a caseload of 25, knew what it would take to get into HYPSM but had little clue about finaid (probably because the students in his school did not need finaid). The suburban GC fell somewhere in the middle in terms of caseload and type of students.
Even in our school, I was taken aback by the discrepancy between the different GCs regarding their knowledge of the application process, and their willingness to tailor their advice to specific students. As an example, when S1 was a junior, his GC suggested a list of reaches, matches and safeties, taking into account his preference as to geography and size. The list was absolutely spot on. Another GC told a friend of my S that “she did not know the student enough to make recommendations” according to the friend’s mom. The family was left to learn about the college application process on its own.</p>

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<p>I see it everyday because I work in a NYC public school with a large low income Chapter I (free lunch) and Chapter III (bi-lingual education) popluation. The majority of my own peers who are GCs operate from the mind set that most of the students are going to attend a CUNY community college (they are not even remotely familiar with the NYS HEOP program) because this is all that they are used to dealing with. </p>

<p>I have sat in on meetings with GCs and their students to discuss SATs, Sat IIs, and have had parent meetings where we sat together to file the CSS profile (and I have meetings scheduled the first 3 days when we get back from vacation to do the FAFSA).</p>

<p>I recently did a staff development for GCs on SAT optional Schools, HEOP, need based FA including many of the current low income initiatives that are available.</p>

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<p>It may be true that Harvard is a household name. But many top notch colleges aren’t. What about Pomona? Tufts? Swarthmore? Mount Holyoke? Colby? Occidental? Etc. Most kids only know the names of colleges with good football and basketball teams, and that’s it. </p>

<p>One of the best students I ever interviewed for Brown didn’t take the SAT IIs – she went to her guidance counselor and specifically asked if she should take them, and the GC emphatically said no. She assumed this valedictorian would go to the local state college. I think this girl was the first in her HS ever to leave the state for college.</p>

<p>I confess that a year ago, I too argued against eliminating ED and EA. A year on CC, plus watching my daughter’s classmates approach to college, converted me. So many students are woefully ignorant about the college application process, and I think it’s wrong to assume that everyone has the same knowledge level that we parents have here on CC.</p>

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<p>AnotherNJMom
A few things:</p>

<p>" I concur 2007mom above said ‘disadvantage’ SES kids actually have ‘advantage’ in top ivies addmission." </p>

<p>The SES kids only have a so-called advantage in admissions to fight the inherent <em>disadvantage</em> they already have, like lack of access to SAT tutors/books/classes, experienced and educated GC or school college counselors, parents that emphasize and encourage applying to top colleges, etc. </p>

<p>" … In our school, there is this one hispanic kid got 2200+ in SAT(quite impressive for a hispanic kid, I’m going with stereotype here), gpa and such not among the tops in classes, however it is no secret among students, he is a ‘lock’ to HP. …"</p>

<p>What?!? Unless this kid is ESL, or you have some meaningful statistics to show me, that’s just flat-out racist. And you don’t even know if he’s a lock to HP…</p>

<p>I don’t live in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area. It’s generally middle class. My school actually had very good GC and even a “Beyond HS” College and Career Center (or at least they did, stingy bastards probably forced this program to be cut…) but even then, we were actively discouraged from applying to Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc. We’d never get in, we were told. I talked to our college counselor, and she asked me what schools I was interested in. Yale, I said. “Forget about it!” she said. Brown, I said “No way!” she said. Even my parents said I wasn’t smart enough to get into an Ivy. </p>

<p>I am now a sophomore at Brown University. </p>

<p>This happens all the time. But I bet it happens a heck of a lot less for kids who go to Exeter. </p>

<p>I have some very well off cousins who go to private school and the message they always recieve, all the time, while taking their SSAT’s and applying to high school, and all this stuff, is succeed succeed succeed – and you can do it. </p>

<p>And Sly_vt has a GREAT point. There are a BUNCH of great schools out there beyond HYPSM. But if no one tells you about them, or you don’t have the resources or mindset to find out about them, how are you supposed to know what’s what? Sure, you can go explore on your own, but why would you do that if you grow up thinking, and being told, you’re going to go to a community college or wak state u.</p>

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<p>Give me a break! How dare you call ‘flat-racist’. I myself is a first gen imigrant and ESL. No ivy background whatsever, a graduates degree from CUNY system. My belive of college addmission policy should be ‘need/gender/race blind’.</p>

<p>What I talked are facts going on in this HS. Every one take it granted. No one raise eye bow or whats ever. You don’t have to believe me. I live in where I live. My kid attend this HS. I see/heard what I seen/heard. You want statistics go read the stats in acceptance threads in CC’s ivy forum.</p>

<p>Don’t assume ALL SES kids has <em>inherited</em> disadvantages. Our local HS provide free special SAT prep classes for these kids. <em>socioeconomically advantaged</em> students can’t get in these classed even parents pay for you…</p>

<p>And don’t assume those get high SAT scores has to go through SAT prep courses. In this HS if you take advanced courses and follows the class progress, pretty much around 2200. And all advance course open to every one, hispanic or not.</p>

<p>There is no reason to punish kids from <em>socioeconomically disadvantaged</em> family.
There is also no reason to punish kids from <em>socioeconomically advantaged</em> family.</p>

<p>However seems to me most ppl blieve the former.</p>

<p>bottom line. ivy is not the only way to success or make it to upper-middle classs life. If ur parents have money or made it so they can give you some break (ie. live in a good school district with high property tax, send you to private school, private tutoring, etc.) good. If they don’t then make sure you do it for your kids…after all we are not in a socialist/comunist society. Every one should take their own finantial responsibility.</p>

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<p>Hmmm . . . got to say that I think it’s preposterous to imagine that ANY high school student or their parents or teachers are unaware of Ivy schools. HYP are ingrained in our popular culture at this point – Legally Blonde, Natalie Portman, etc. This issue of kids from certain incomes not bothering to apply is not about ignorance of opportunity. It’s about value systems. Harvard simply isn’t the goal for many of these kids and their families. Must everyone in our society covet the same thing? And the truth is that HYP does not always lead to wealth and success and happiness. Many in our society see that and simply don’t choose to pursue it.</p>

<p>There’s something a bit patronizing in the assumption that these poor ignorant downtrodden simply need to be “reached.”</p>