<p>"If these kids are in schools with poor counseling services, and their families know nothing of college, who exactly is telling them about free rides at HYP? "</p>
<p>Exactly. Some of you might be surprised, if you left the northeast every once in awhile, that a lot of these schools just simply aren’t on the radar screen. Not “oh, I wish I could go to HYP but it’s an impossible dream,” but “what’s a good school? My state school, I guess.” </p>
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<p>It has been said that the only group for whom it DOES matter, is the low income/first gen group. </p>
<p>fwiw, the student I mentioned at the beginning of the thread wouldn’t look at a big city school. So no to Chicago schools–too far anyway. The student does have a dream school–a selective private school (just a little more than his 3 hour drive limit.) The rest of his list is in-state public. He wants to study engineering, so that is a somewhat limiting factor. Though I think he could get better aid at, say, Princeton, he’s talking about ROTC if he doesn’t get enough aid at his preferred school. He’d rather do military payback than even consider going to the east coast. . .even with full aid. The distance/traveling just seems impossible, HYP is like going to a foreign country. Parents think ROTC is a good idea. It is like “free” doesn’t mean anything if it is 800 miles away from home. It’s not that folks from his hometown “never amount to anything,” but more “people from here don’t go there.” If you want to stay connected with people in your own state, it is better to go to state u.
The tippy-top prestigious schools are for those who have a particular type of ambition, and there are a lot of very smart, accomplished kids who, while you can’t call them “unambitious”–don’t really see themselves as leaders of it all. They don’t want to swim in that pool. I was discussing this kid’s prospects with his dad. After the dad (who was not a good student himself) saw the kid’s scores, he realized that kid might aim for more than local 2nd/3rd tier state u that his older brother went to. The really great dream school his dad thought of was Michigan. (I told him Michigan doesn’t give good aid to OOS kids).</p>
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<p>This is exactly it, and I could cut and paste this quote in every thread about “elite” schools. I don’t understand why some people can’t understand this.</p>
<p>I read the NYT article yesterday and bemoaned the lack of real progress by my alma mater despite what I’ve seen first hand real & sincere attempts to draw from a broader pool of applicants. I don’t quite understand how the discussion of the barriers faced by some top schools to want to open more opportunities to lower income students has veered into a discussion about “why” should people venerate those schools or “too many kids are focused on prestige” or the supposed weakness or strengths of certain swaths of applicants.</p>
<p>It’s about the (IMHO laudable) attempts by some schools to cast a wider net. In all the posts on this thread, has this been questioned? *Is there anyone against this effort?</p>
<p>@T26e4 I think everyone agrees that the top schools should make efforts to recruit low-income candidates, and they do seem to be trying. I just think people are discussing reasons that making progress has been difficult even with need-blind admissions, and expanded efforts to contact these students. I didn’t read any of the posts as being opposed to this effort. </p>
<p>Agree. Maybe the top schools need a multi-generational (or at least slightly longer) plan for drawing in these kids. If they want to be altruistic, find ways to help them to succeed in K-12 school and open their eyes to the possibility of ANY college, not just theirs. From there they can help them see what options they might have at the schools that are need-blind and really want them. </p>
<p>“The distance/traveling just seems impossible, HYP is like going to a foreign country.”</p>
<p>He’s going to go a lot farther away as a military officer, but I know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>@atomom:</p>
<p>OK, so he’s not in IL (where UIUC engineering is superb and IL publics would be tuition-free after one year in the IL National Guard, BTW). </p>
<p>Probably not IN, WI, or MN (or else Purdue/UW-Madison/UM-TC would be perfectly fine for engineering). </p>
<p>IA? NE?</p>
<p>Is StL too big? Of course, if he attends Northwestern, he’d actually be going to school in a suburb (not The Big City). . . .</p>
<p>I made a couple posts back on page 3, but I forgot to add that my rural southern high school of 1800 kids would go several years without having a single Ivy applicant. For most people, “college” meant our community college or the closest four-year institution. When I told one very smart friend (30 ACT) that I would choose the University of Pennsylvania over a scholarship at our flagship, she got angry with me and told me that I was being dumb: That was a prestigious scholarship I was offered. This mentality is why we hadn’t sent a kid to the Ivy League in twenty years.</p>
<p>I remember an exceptionally unusual collegiate success story from my sophomore year when one of our academically average football players signed onto Duke. All the athletes talked about for the next week was how the kid had made a terrible decision. After all, Duke’s football team isn’t as good as the state schools that he could have signed for.</p>
<p>Even I almost never looked past Vanderbilt. I think I was sixteen before I realized that better schools existed outside of Tennessee’s borders. Glad I had the wake-up moment.</p>
<p>OldNassau, didn’t your high school have a nerd table?</p>
<p>Great thoughts on this thread, here are mine…</p>
<p>High school teachers and guidance counselors need to be a major part of this. I know a woman who now has a Masters from Johns Hopkins, but did not go to college straight from high school because neither her parents NOR ANY HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER suggested that she apply to college. A full three years after graduation she realized that she would need a degree to get ahead, so began taking night classes and eventually got her bachelors (from a tier 4 college). What are High Schools doing when they let talented students simply graduate into an unknown future?</p>
<p>Every single talented student (but especially low income) needs to be encouraged to attend college and to apply to some colleges outside of their comfort zone. Teenagers might have lots of wild fantasies but few have any constructive imagination. They do need guidance and encouragement from those who know them best.</p>
<p>I agree that many, probably most, students (regardless of income) can hardly imagine going out of state to college. Clearly this is a major barrier to getting them into more elite universities. If you cannot imagine it, then you probably cannot accomplish it. High School teachers and counselors need to stretch these kids’ imaginations.</p>
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<p>Um, I’m familiar with their small size, but the article is talking about elite. My definition might go down to the top 25-30. below that, you’re into the pretty darn good category, but not the “elite” category. Others may have a different bucket definition. Did the study define their bucket of elite schools? </p>
<p>Old Nassau: Your stories illustrate precisely how difficult it is to extract potentially able students from places where the culture doesn’t value the high academic achiever. Ignorance and fear. And I’ll beat on my tom-tom a little more and say that one of the reasons that people fear the Ivy’s and other big time academic places is that they hear their own cultural drumbeat (mightily reinforced by the national hobby of success bashing) about the places being filled up with arrogant trust fund party guys and gals, and conclude that they won’t fit in. I have first hand knowledge of an athletic recruit who chose W&L over a top Ivy because he didn’t want to be that far from “home”. These stories aren’t as isolated as one might think. The question raised by the article is “what can you do about these decisions”, and the answer is “not very much”, I believe. </p>
<p>Well, if the problem is that they are choosing pretty good schools over elite schools, that is not much of a problem.</p>
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Nah, there are plenty of rich kids who aren’t smart, either. However, if you’re rich, you have resources to maximize the value of the talents you have. You can hire tutors to improve your grades, you can take test prep, you can afford to do expensive ECS (like music lessons and high quality musical instruments), and lots more. This is my point: entry into super-selective colleges requires more than being smart–it requires being accomplished in ways that are a lot harder for poor kids to access. And this is part of the problem for the super-selective schools–even if they want to enroll more low-income kids, they still want kids with those accomplishments, and there just may not be that many of them.</p>
<p>And that’s putting aside the issue raised by others–even if a low-income kid is very smart and very accomplished, he may have lots of reasons that he doesn’t want to go to a super-selective college.</p>
<p>PurpleTitan, Evanston is pretty urban as far as suburbs go. It abuts Chicago’s northern border and has a lot of urban attributes, including diversity, gangs, and some gritty areas. For a kid from a small town it would seem like a city. It has a population of 75,000!</p>
<p>@dadx:</p>
<p>Right, W&L isn’t exactly a tier 4 school. Their alums tend to do quite well, and you can certainly make the case for W&L over any top Ivy if you value certain aspects over others even if distance isn’t a factor.</p>
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<p>I say poppycock.</p>
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<p>Is that the vast majority of the poor, just like the vast majority of the wealthy, have no interest in going far away to college. (Most folks – even the wealthy – attend a college within a few hours drive from home. That does not happen by chance.) </p>
<p>It is only the academics – and the NYT – who care about this issue, and only those in the NE.</p>
<p>I am not at all against the effort to recruit diverse students (lower income, rural, etc.) to elite schools. If you are in the world where the names of those schools, the prestige, those types of opportunities/connections really mean something, it is hard to understand why a very smart kid (who is listening to his own “cultural drumbeat”) might not jump at that opportunity, might be very happy to choose something else. I think this is the biggest challenge in recruiting these students–selling them on something that they never really considered, something that might have some negative connotations. Most people want to fit in and be happy. The idea of being a stranger/outsider/novelty “diversity admit” might not be as appealing as being one of the gang at state u. You can’t say that the smart kid who loves his family farm/home-town and returns/spends his life there after going to state u. missed out or was “unsuccessful.” Just because it is not your view of “success”–if he is happy with this choice, that’s what matters.</p>
<p>It is hard for a 17yo applicant, who has never had an opportunity to travel, to imagine leaving home. He/she might be unsure how it will go. But that same student who wouldn’t consider going out of state might, 3 years later, spend the year studying abroad, and that might lead to further work abroad/travel–and a much more international outlook after college. </p>
<p>@becca17: Agree that more magnet HS’s would do more to help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds than more outreach from elite privates. By the time of college, if you don’t already have the foundation to build on, it’s hard to take advantage of all the opportunities that the elite privates have to offer.</p>
<p>I know a URM with such a background from my magnet who is currently pursuing a chemistry PhD. If she had stayed at her old HS, I daresay that the odds that she’s be on the path that she is on now even if she had gone to an elite private for college would be exceedingly low.*</p>
<p>However, the kids from such backgrounds who join magnets are not only bright but also <em>want</em> to join. They want to escape the environment that they grew up in.</p>
<p>*On the otherhand, my best friend in college was also URM from a similar background. It took him closer to a decade than the standard 4 years to graduate, so his transition from HS to an elite private seemed a bit rough. He stuck with CS, though, and as he’s bright and very personable, he’s done very well since graduation. However, he was also a military brat who had lived around the world, so he knew that he was getting out of KY. Being more worldly may be also why he persevered with his interest in CS rather than switching to an easier but likely less rewarding path.</p>