<p>I agree that HYP are thoroughly ingrained in our pop culture, and long before Legally Blonde. Just this week I watched Judy Garland in Meet Me In St. Louis, a film from 1944. Her character’s brother & other midwestern boys were returning from the Ivy league colleges to celebrate Christmas in Missouri.</p>
<p>What does it mean to know about the existence of HYP? Does it mean to know what it takes to get there in terms of GPA, board scores, application procedures, affordability? </p>
<p>Nice to be disregarding the experience of people who have been working with high school students for many years, such as NSM and Sybbie or the adcoms at HYP who have decades of experience and and have concluded that they need to do more outreach. Nice also to think that low income students don’t need a leg up but that people making $180k per year deserve to pay only 10% of their income for their kids to attend top universities.</p>
<p>Marite, their experience is anecdotal, and that can be said for everyone else who has posted here. You don’t have to be disadvantaged to consider Harvard completely off of your radar. For most every family in my solidly middle class world, that is also the case. Of the few kids who could be serious candidates, some are completely unaware of financial help; others (before the new 10% announcement) know it is a financial impossibility; and others have no interest or have determined that HYP are not good fits for their kids. That’s very different than statements made here that it is disadvantaged kids have no clue what HYP are. For many of those disadvantaged kids, HYP are NOT good fits, or even remotely attainable, & it is not very charitable to encourage them in that direction. </p>
<p>A middle class kid is expected to have racked up patents, entered Intel, or performed a self composed concerto at Carnegie Hall if he is a viable candidate. Certainly a disadvantaged kid who would be a good HYP candidate could at least be expected to head to the library & scan a few college guides, or log onto some college websites, don’t you think? I don’t think the typical bright but disadvantaged kid’s problem is lack of HYP awareness. It is lack of HYP preparation.</p>
<p>^ and lack of HYP aspiration. Again, I say that for many in our society – at every income level – attending an Ivy school is simply not a big goal. It is most certainly not where I live. The most prosperous families I know – many with extremely talented kids – prefer to send them to state U or private schools in the region where there is often merit money. Why should every talented low-income kid aspire to the Ivy League? There are just many layers of misguided assumptions with that thinking.</p>
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<p>Why shouldn’t they?</p>
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<p>Oh…Yes, every single one of my students have seen Meet me in St. Louis- not. They aren’t lining up to see Legally Blonde either, won’t know Natalie Portman from a hole in the ground but may know her face from the Star War movies, not who she is as a person or where she went to school. </p>
<p>I would beg to differ that almost 20 years experience and a tens of thousands of students would be hardly considered antecdotal.</p>
<p>I am also willing to bet $ that you probably don’t know any students who have been shot or stabbed because they don’t want to become a Bllod, Crip, Latin King, DDP (just visited one who is currently in intensive care). How many students in your child’s school are coming to see the GC to get a letter for their parents to take to Face to Face or for housing? Not many, hey, I am willing to go out on a limb and say none. Having a big roll eye moment at the woe-is me family that makes $180,000+ yr, living in a 6 to 7 figure house, retirement funds and $$ in the bank for having to pay $18,000 when most of my student’s families don’t make $18,000 per year.</p>
<p>I could give a list as long as my arm of pop culture references to the Ivy league pulled from every generation’s cultural stockpile. Or stories of the poor but brilliant kid entering the elite world of the Ivy stratosphere – Good Will Hunting, The Corn Is Green, etc. </p>
<p>The truth is, most people of all classes couldn’t even name the schools that comprise the league. It is incorrectly used as a catch-all label for elite, selective, expensive schools. Sybbie, if you came to my middle class town, where homes are routinely sold for over a half million dollars, most students are not aspiring to the Ivy league. Is an outreach program needed? I don’t think so. Just as with the underprivleged kids, most would either not be prepared to keep up with the HYP students or not in the least bit interested in attending.</p>
<p>Isn’t this argument (“yes they know” “no they don’t” “should consider Ivies” “should not”) getting a bit silly?</p>
<p>This is not a search for truth, IMHO, but a search for differing experiences and opinions. </p>
<p>There is not need to shout someone down because their experience is different from yours. Maybe just listen and marvel at how different our individual experiences are…</p>
<p>I think that what Sybbie and Marite are saying is that poor kids may have heard of Harvard etc. but still be clueless about how to get there. Other people seem to suggest that if a kid is smart enough, then they’ll figure a way to make it. I lean toward the first view.</p>
<p>Here is yet another anecdote, so feel free to skip it. My parents were immigrants who left school at age 15 or 16. They moved to this country with 3 kids and one on the way (me). They had another kid three years later, so were raising 5 kids in a very low income area. Even in the low income area, we were poor!</p>
<p>All five kids were bright, and my parents valued education. They just didn’t have a clue about how things worked in this country. We attended a high school where most kids either got a job after HS (assuming they graduated) or attended the local CC. No one went to Harvard and the GC were just trying to keep kids in school. </p>
<p>My parents were so clueless that they exaggerated their income and education for my oldest siblings – they thought that would increase their odds of getting into a college, because that’s how it worked where they came from. I remember getting literature from east coast schools (based on SAT scores) but throwing it all away because I knew we’d never even be able to afford air fare to get to the colleges. </p>
<p>Flash forward – we’ve all been successful, multiple degrees, and our kids now have advantages that we never had. </p>
<p>But I can never forget what it felt like to know that there were possibilities I’d never be able to pursue, and that’s why I object to the idea that poor kids have a “hook.” No Way. They have a ton of obstacles, and it may take generations for kids to be able to even think about applying to selective schools. So if you are in a position where your kids have a chance – just a chance, mind you – AND you can afford it, it might be a good idea to just count your blessings.</p>
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Nice to know some of low income students already got the ‘leg up’.</p>
<p>Why not? ppl live in different area having different living expense. A $15k family lives in tokenadults community (Minnesota) has the equivalent $18k family lives in my community. I have a friend who had lived in Minnesota and one still lives there, a comparable size house/lot at Minnesota cost the half price as here. The friend lived in Minnesota(one income) could afford boat, grand piano, etc. while her sister family(double income) lives here with high income level couldn’t…if ppl think $15k family in tokenadult area deserves to pay 10% to top school, why shouldn’t me think $18k family in my area deserves too?..after all we are all biased.</p>
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Exactly! nice to hear voice of unbiase.</p>
<p>Did you read my post at all anotherNJmom? It doesn’t seem likely. Because if you did, you would see it has nothing to do with you being a first generation immigrant or ESL yourself. Or “the facts” of what is going on in your school. </p>
<p>I simply said that if this kid is not ESL (which has nothing to do with being hispanic, mind you), or unless you have some kind of cold, hard facts to show me about hispanic people doing poorly on the SAT, saying a kid doing well on the SAT despite being hispanic is BY DEFINITION flat-out racist. </p>
<p>And socioeconomically advantaged children are <em>not</em> punished. Not being helped does not equal being punished. Those at a “lower” level of access are given a leg up to be at the same level of access as those who are advantaged. </p>
<p>And don’t extend the experience of your high school to everyone. From my record of experience, I can say that advanced classes have little or no correlation to high SAT scores, and yes they were open to everyone. If you look on published literature on the subject, they concur. People who take score well on the SAT tend to take advanced classes. People who take advanced classes do not necessarily score well on the SAT. They are not related. </p>
<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>I agree with you here, but the point that you are missing is that a child from a family with a different value system should not have less of a chance to attend HYP than a child from a family with that value system, and the opportunities that value system presents. There’s nothing patronizing about “reaching out” to the “downtrodden.” Must one be a plumber because that’s what their family does? There’s nothing wrong with being a plumber. It’s just that Johnny shouldn’t have to think he has to be one because that’s what his family does. He should have choices.</p>
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There is unsaid reason why I can’t find admission statistics from those top college’s web site, where SAT score distributed through income/races/genders. …</p>
<p>There is also unsaid reason why our local HS dose not give ranking. Too many ‘hooks’ might triumph the ‘ranks’.</p>
<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.” - </p>
<p>I think this is perhaps the most preposterous statement I’ve seen on CC.</p>
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Like that middle class top student whose parents make $120K a year, but after income taxes, various insurance, property taxes, and the like would have no chance of attending if he was charged $50K a year? Because his parents value the ability to eat, and obey the law by having proper insurance, declaring all income, and being 100% self sufficient? That’s the whole point of this thread. Middle class kids were shut out. Harvard acknowledges it. They are seeking to make attendance possible for a broader range of kids. I say bravo.</p>
<p>"There is unsaid reason why I can’t find admission statistics from those top college’s web site, where SAT score distributed through income/races/genders. …</p>
<p>There is also unsaid reason why our local HS dose not give ranking. Too many ‘hooks’ might triumph the ‘ranks’."</p>
<p>What unsaid reasons? And what is this kid’s hook, anyways? Being Hispanic alone is NOT a hook</p>
<p>I was hook-city when I applied as senior, and got rejected almost everywhere. “Hooks” = overrated</p>
<p>From today’s New York Times:</p>
<p>Harvard’s Aid to Middle Class Pressures Rivals</p>
<p>Just days after Harvard University announced this month that it would significantly expand financial aid to students from families earning as much as $180,000 a year, William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., got a query from a student’s father, asking whether the college would follow Harvard’s lead.</p>
<p>William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College, said it did not have the money to match aid from Harvard, which has announced it will discount costs for all but the wealthiest students.
“He even said, ‘I know this costs a lot of money, but you should do it anyway,’ ” Dr. Durden said. The president replied that Dickinson, a small liberal arts college where the full annual cost of tuition, fees, room and board nears $45,000, did not have the money to match Harvard’s largess.</p>
<p>Because of Harvard, Dr. Durden said ruefully in recalling the exchange, “a lot of us are going to be under huge pressure to do these things that we just can’t do.”</p>
<p>By substantially discounting costs for all but the very wealthiest students, Harvard shook up the landscape of college pricing. Like Dr. Durden, officials of other colleges say its move will create intense pressure on them to give more aid to upper-middle-class students and will open the door to more parental price haggling.</p>
<p>Some colleges had already been moving to eliminate loans from all their financial aid packages and replace them with grants. In the weeks since Harvard’s announcement, a stampede of additional institutions — the University of Pennsylvania, Pomona, Swarthmore, Haverford — have taken the same step, which will help middle- and upper-middle-income families. </p>
<p>But Harvard, in adopting that practice, has also gone far beyond it: for families earning $120,000 to $180,000 a year, costs will now be limited to about 10 percent of income, meaning that students from such families will pay a maximum of $18,000, a deep discount from the university’s full annual cost of more than $45,600.</p>
<p>Officials at colleges without anything like Harvard’s $35 billion endowment say a rush to give tuition discounting to the middle and upper middle class at institutions like theirs could end up shifting financial aid from low-income students to wealthier, make pricing seem even more arbitrary and create pressure to raise full tuition to pay for all the assistance.</p>
<p>“Harvard has started to redefine the financial aid landscape, and it’s redefined it in a way that is quite beneficial to the wealthiest institutions,” said Jenny Rickard, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bryn Mawr. “It is just a handful of schools that can really respond this way, but it leaves others kind of pulling their hair.”</p>
<p>In the competitive scramble for prestige and rankings, numerous colleges already try to lure some top students away from the Ivy League by showering them with “merit aid” even if they are well off and can afford full tuition. The practice is controversial, with some college administrators scorning it as a way of “buying” a better incoming class, sometimes at the expense of lower-income students. </p>
<p>Some administrators say there will now be pressure to provide more merit aid to relatively wealthy high achievers, reducing the amount available to poorer students.</p>
<p>“It could lead to schools’ doing this sort of thing because they want to be part of the top group,” David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, said of Harvard’s move. If that meant those colleges had to reduce the number of their low-income students, Dr. Oxtoby said, “that would be terrible, exactly the wrong outcome.” (Pomona itself, where full costs are more than $45,000, does not provide merit aid.)</p>
<p>Some academics who study higher education predict that Harvard’s decision may even reduce economic diversity at Harvard itself, even though the university already allows any admitted student from a family earning $60,000 or less to attend virtually free of charge. </p>
<p>Donald E. Heller, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University, said that if Harvard’s new aid program encouraged more middle- and upper-middle-income students to apply, then the number of slots for low-income applicants in an entering class would probably decline. </p>
<p>“They’re just going to get crowded out,” Dr. Heller said.</p>
<p>William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, said that the university was committed to helping poorer students attend but that years of research had shown that students from families in the middle and upper-middle class were not even applying, most likely because they had decided that the price was simply unaffordable.</p>
<p>“People were voting with their feet,” Dean Fitzsimmons said. “It was pretty clear that we were missing out on some pretty exciting students.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/29tuition.html?hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/29tuition.html?hp</a></p>
<p>H and I read this, too, this morning. My H thinks they will all simply increase full freight for those deemed rich and we have a bad feeling we may be in that category. Fingers are crossed.</p>
<p>There are going to be huge guilt trips for siblings of Harvardians…Massachusetts family makes $150,000; kid1 gets into Harvard and family pays $15,000, kid2 can’t get into Harvard, gets into Tufts with no financial aid (about $50,000) and UMass (about $20,000). I bet kid2 feels massive shame and chooses UMass.</p>
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<p>It brings to mind that old Gershwin song … “Something’s Gotta Give.”</p>
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<p>wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of this???: [Harvard</a> University Gazette: Harvard expands financial aid for low- and middle-income families](<a href=“http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/03/30-finaid.html]Harvard”>http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/03/30-finaid.html)</p>
<p>Harvard has enough money for the middle- and upper-middle income students as well as the low-income applicants. This is an initiative that Harvard is ADDING to its initiative for for low-income applicants. I do not believe it will crowd the lower-income students out at all; Harvard actively recruits them.</p>
<p>As for full freight students, I doubt Harvard will raise its tuition any higher than comparable schools. In fact, Harvard’s full tuition right now is lower than my son’s LAC.</p>