Do some admission officers not like rich kids? I know that their approach is “hollistic” but do they feel as though wealthy children simply get handed everything on a silver platter…
For example in the Ivy League universities, are kids from a family with an income of $300,000 or $1,000,000 more likely to be accepted?
Unless your ancestor went to an IVY, you won’t get rejected.
^^ ??
Unless you are a DA- i.e.a building at the college has been named for your family- wealth has nothing to do with your chances of acceptance or rejection.
It all comes down to doing the most you can with what you’ve been given, and when what you’ve been given is extensive the effort put into your HS record should match.
IOW, a wealthy student who superscores a 2200 on the SAT will be assumed to have had test prep or at least some sort of support, while it may be thought that a kid who qualifies for a fee waiver might have been able to score higher had he or she had access to private prep or multiple passes at the test. A service trip abroad with an organization specializing in them will not particularly impress when it took little more than writing a check to arrange it, whereas a kid, regardless of income, who did their own footwork, planning and fundraising to do an independent trip will likely be seen in a more positive light.
On the other end, unless you are a development admit (from a family capable of making a huge donation) your income will not factor into you admissions chances at need blind schools. The need for financial aid can make a difference at schools which are not need blind in that a borderline student who can pay the full bill will have an advantage over a student with an otherwise similar record who needs full support.
Your post seems contradictory. Are you saying that the kids from families with incomes OVER $1 million are the rich ones?
At some schools, accepting a well-qualified full-pay student frees up more money to accept well-qualified students in need of a scholarship. So, generally speaking, I doubt there is a lot of discrimination against students from wealthy families. After all, students don’t get to pick their parents.
So should all kids who can afford to do so take standardized prep courses, because they will be assumed to have done so? I doubt that all who can afford it actually do so.
I agree that anything done completely independently is highly impressive. But most kids need help, whether parental or from an outside mentor.
What about kids who participate in expensive programs but who make the most of their opportunities? Fencing, for example, is a sport that is practiced almost exclusively through private clubs. It’s easy to spend $10K/year on club memberships, private instruction, equipment and travel to competitions. A kid can’t become a top fencer without tremendous parental support, and which is probably not an option for those with insufficient resources, but does that take away from the thousands of hours of practice and sustained effort involved to achieve excellence? Music is another area where private lessons are quite expensive, but the work required to achieve a high level of proficiency shows sustained effort and commitment.
I think this is the key. As long as a student takes advantage of the opportunities and resources that he/she has, colleges will view it favorably. Anything involving initiative, leadership, sustained effort, commitment and maturity is a huge plus.
A complex question. The answer will depend on how wealthy and what school. Harvard has published information on the family incomes of admitted / matriculating students. The percentage of students with family incomes above $500k/year is way higher than the overall U.S. Population. A similar trend is probably true at the other ivys. From reading books on admissions conventional wisdom is that wealth is okay but obvious wealth and entitlement offer a clear advantage to the applicant who’s been to summer college programs, has one on one essay and test prep tutoring and so on. To the extent possible downplay wealth. Your father is a doctor not chief surgeon of the mayo clinic, a lawyer not a principal at a major law firm. Being wealthy is not a disadvantage but it is assumed you’ve had some help that less well off students might not have. A state university might not care and welcome your out of state tuition, a college like Amherst will
I think ECs and scores are perceived in relation to income. A rich kid doing a mission trip to Guatemala, so what? A poor kid doing the same thing using a kickstarter campaign, more highly valued.
I think extremely wealthy kids have a higher chance as they are seen as potential donors in the future.
But for wealthy households of 300k to 500k, I think that they are expected to do more because of the opportunities available to them.
A wealthy kid playing the Trumpet at a high level, while very nice, is not that impressive as he probably had private lessons to help him.
A really poor kid who is equally good at the Trumpet will be more impressive as he probably did not have the money to afford a private teacher and needed twice the effort to produce the same results as the wealthy kid who had instruction from an experienced professional.
Same thing with the SAT. A wealthy kid who got a 2300 from SAT prep is good, but not extremely impressive, but a poor kid with a 2300 SAT (who probably self-studied) is spectacular.
I’ve had the fortunate experience of attending SAT prep and the difference between prep and self-studying is huge. It is extremely hard to self-study and get a very high score, at least for me.
How do you know that the so-called “wealthy kid” did an SAT prep?
A 2300 from anyone is extremely impressive from anyone considering the fact that only 1% of test takers per year get it.
A wealthy kid who does not need financial aid and still qualify academically is very rare. Nationally there are only 4,000 to 5,000 of these kids each year. Schools love them! Most kids need financial aid these days. In fact many private schools give preferences to these kids.
@CaliCash Maybe I should have reworded it better. A 2300 from a poor kid is more impressive than a 2300 from a wealthier kid.
@renaissancedad I can’t say it for all wealthy people, but from where I live, I’d say a good 3 quarters of people take SAT prep and they’re all fairly wealthy (200k+). It’s an opportunity that’s available to them if they ever need it, while poor people don’t have that option.
If I could afford standardized test prep I would jump on the opportunity so I think that they don’t necessarily assume the applicant DID the test prep, but they correctly assume the applicant had ACCESS to the test prep
@rdeng2614, @Jcannon1023, that may be true for many. The whole idea of paid SAT prep courses and college consultants is very foreign to me. I suspect that there are a number of exceptionally strong applicants who don’t bother, even if that kind of opportunity is available to them. I’m not talking about the kids who obsess about whether a 2300 will be good enough, but about the ones who are so busy doing extraordinary things that they realize that their SAT score is a small part of the picture, and they don’t want to spend their time obsessing over it. I don’t know of any data on this, but it’s a topic about which I would be interested to learn more.
The Admissions people can get a sense of poor/middleclass/affluent, but they often have no idea what the exact income the family has, unless the applicant wants to write about it in the essay. FA is generally reviewed by a different committee.
“Wealthy” kids aren’t just a bunch of dumb kids who are all propped up by SAT prepping. Because kids take multiple standardized tests (PSAT SAT SAT2 AP), it’s clear that some kids score CONSISTENTLY high on all of them.
^^". . . they realize that their SAT score is a small part of the picture . . ."
It’s actually a fairly major part of the picture.
You are so correct.
I know a lot of strong students and test prep is rare among them.
If you familiarize yourself with the test, do a few practice tests so you get acquainted with the length and feel of the session and review your errors to understand how you were thinking and how the test architects were thinking, you will get the scores you deserve.
That’s the case at need blind schools. I think at need aware schools they know a lot more since they can see the financial aid application.
Rich kids are over represented at the top schools so surely it doesn’t hurt too much to be rich. I think look down upon is too strong. As some others have said, it’s a matter of context. There are still plenty of impressive accomplishments you can have as a wealthy student.
With regard to test prep, of course you should be doing the best test prep that you can. The assumption isn’t purely “they took a fancy class” the assumption is that money did not limit them in their prep. For many people, classes or tutoring are better prep than self study. A rich student has greater choice in how they want to prep. The poor student who wants to do self prep may not even have as many hours to do so as the rich student since they have to work a job to provide money for the family.
SAT score is a big part of not being rejected, but at schools that practice holistic admissions, it’s a minor part of getting accepted.
@GMTplus7 So if somebody was poor and did not write about their struggles, their ‘advantage’ of being lower income would be diminished?
And I think it could just be my area, with a large Asian population, that everybody takes classes for SAT and ACT.