I understand that for the grand majority of schools, being poor is seen as a negative, as schools tend to want to accept students who are able to pay for their schooling.
However, for the small subset of schools (ie. Ivy+, T20s) that have very good financial aid, is it advantageous to be poor (say, as opposed to being middle class)? For example, if two students have a similar profile, but one of the two is eligible for a pell grant while the other is middle class, would AOs look more favorably upon the poorer student?
Depends on the college. At some colleges, admissions readers may see that, between two students who show similar achievement levels, the one who started at a disadvantage due to coming from a poor family may actually have achieved more than the one who started from a more advantaged starting point. But that may not necessarily be the case at every college.
But note that many of the āIvy+, T20sā have admissions preferences that are less likely for students from poor families to get access to (e.g. legacy status, preppy / expensive sports).
As a rule, a highly qualified poor student has a slight advantage in admissions at āeliteā colleges over unhooked wealthier applicants. They generally fall under one of the titles that are included in the URM category, such as first gen, the only qualified applicant from the school or region in a long time or ever, etc. So being poor can come with a āhookā, albeit one that is not all that strong.
However, it is far far more difficult for a poor student to reach the position of being qualified than it is for a student from a wealthy family.
Furthermore, as @ucbalumnus points out, poor students are also extremely unlikely to have any of the serious hooks such as recruited athlete or legacy, and they are 100% not going to be the kids of faculty or of potential donors.
Well, Iām (hopefully) highly qualified, so I guess as of now, itās not necessarily the issue of whether a poor student can become just as competitive as wealthier students, but what will happen when I applyš.
Maybe itās just wishful thinking, but Iām hoping that all the work Iāve put in during somewhat substandard conditions will have some (if just a little) payoff. Itās been incredibly disheartening to see classmates just pay their way into interesting academic opportunities that Iād never in a million years have a chance to join.
D attends an āeliteā LAC that consistently ranks in the top 5 of having the most students from the 1% attending. The year she was applying, they were making a conscious effort to attract the less advantaged - not āpoorā, Pell Grant eligible students but āmiddle classā students from families that made under $100K. They replaced student loans with institutional grants. Over the last couple of years, they have been tweaking their FA policies to raise the no loan threshold to <$150K and using a sliding scale for tuition where it is free for those making <$85K and a certain percentage of AGI for those between $$85-$125K.
Each college is different and looking to accomplish certain internal goals. Their definition of āpoorā or āfinancial needā vary A LOT! Some big changes (like above) get press coverage but you have to research. There is still a fair amount of luck involved, too.
Itās easy to figure out if youāll receive any special consideration. Just take a look at what the colleges say in their announcements of new admitted classes. Almost invariably, theyād mention URM, First Gen, geographic diversity. Sometimes, Pell Grant (since it became a metric used by USNWR ranking methodology) is also mentioned. A few colleges apparently ask their FA offices to identify Pell recipients, even though theyāre technically need blind. However, Pell Grant recipients (or other students with high need that FA offices identify), who donāt belong to the other special categories, arenāt likely to receive close to the levels of special consideration that other special groups receive. In other words, being poor alone (especially if you arenāt a Pell recipient) isnāt likely to be much of an admission boost.
I read something a few years ago from a Harvard admissions officer, who said that given equal ability and qualifications, that an economically disadvantaged student would be accepted over a student at a private feeder boarding school. The reason given was that the former student would benefit more from the opportunity. It is also true that top colleges value overcoming obstacles, which , for instance, Harvard and others explicitly cite on their websites as a factor in admission.
The answer is āYes and No.ā I was an alumni interviewer for many years and part of my āterritoryā included the public high schools of Brooklyn NY. Very few of my āfavorablesā were ever admitted.
Generally speaking, however, students from low-income families donāt just appear out of nowhere and find themselves applying to Harvard and Wesleyan. Elite colleges, especially the ones in the northeast, have to go looking for them. And, having located them, it is unlikely the colleges are going to let them fall through the cracks; they are going to be tracked and flown in for meet-and-greets and be on the receiving end of a lot of attention not normally awarded every applicant, including alumni interviews. As a result, the adcoms have a very clear picture who these kids are by the time their files are read. For me, having a narrative I can construct easily is worth its weight in gold once the stats become indistinguishable.
EDIT: Sorry, @compmom, I thought I was replying to the thread, not you specifically.
Arenāt those events mostly for URMs? Thereāre simply too many students from poor families. Colleges donāt have to look very hard for them since they are everywhere.
How do students from poor backgrounds do in the hard to get in colleges and are those numbers tracked? I saw a news segment in the last few years on lower-income valedictorians in Philadephia or Boston or somewhere similar and what happened to those students. It was disheartening that the vast majority did not remain in the university system. Obviously well to do kids can also nosedive in college for a variety of reasons, but those students often have more resources at home to get the help he/she needs.
Itās not enough to be poor. You have to couple being FGLI (First-Gen, Low-Income) with something else: maybe itās URM, or maybe geographic diversity; Iām pretty sure my kids from Brooklyn were losing out to kids from South Carolina, Mississippi, Chicago and St. Louis.
Students from low income families are not rare. However, many of them are unable to get through the barriers to achievement that students from low income families tend to face many more of than students from high income families, so the number of students from low income families who have the high achievement needed for admission to elite colleges is small. That is likely part of why most elite colleges have under 20% of their students with Pell grants, even though probably around half of families would qualify their students for Pell grants.
I understand that is the trope (that poor kids āunderachieveā) but, I donāt agree with it entirely. Harvard could fill its first-year class with valedictorians from thousands of high schools located in poor districts across the United States, if they wanted to. But, for a variety of reasons, they and other elite colleges have chosen to make FGLI kids compete with each other for a limited number of spaces.
Itās not only the achievement barrier, itās familiarity with the entire system of applications to āeliteā colleges, itās seeing āeliteā colleges as viable options, academically and financially, itās being able to put together an application that is complete, not to mention set up in a way that wonāt get an automatic rejection.
Then there is the fact that a large percent of low income kids donāt even finish high school for economic and other family reasons, so they cannot even begin to compete. There are students who barely squeaked through because of those reasons, so they are not competitive for any colleges that is not open admissions.
Over 60% of the kids in the bottom 20% by income do not attend any college, even a fairly cheap open admissions two year college, because their lives donāt even allow application to college, much less admissions and attendance.
A kid from a public HS in Camden NJ with high scores on a standardized test- yes, the elite colleges are tracking zip codes and if the kid knows to check the right box when he/she signs up for the SAT, the college will āfindā that kid. But many disadvantaged kids take no standardized tests at all, besides the ones administered to everyone as part of state regulations. There is no central clearing house for these. Many disadvantaged kids donāt know that you can take a sample test ahead of time to familiarize yourself with the questions- let alone āprepā either through a class or a book. Many disadvantaged kids donāt plan to go to college at all- take a look at the stats on who is currently serving in our āall volunteerā armed forces. You donāt need an SAT score to enlist- and many kids who donāt see college as even a remote possibility donāt bother to take the test if theyāre heading off to an army recruiting office after graduation.
Etc. And covid has exacerbated all these issues, and some in Ed policy believe that the move towards test optional is going to widen the gap between the college attending population and everyone else- the tests served as an efficient way to identify high potential HS kids who might otherwise have flown under the radar.
Circuitrider- not every Val is going to be able to make it out of Harvard with a degree and we do ourselves a disservice by pretending otherwise. Harvard is not set up for remedial work. Fortunately, there are other institutions that are- and that can fill in that gap. What do you do with a HS kid who is reading at an 8th grade level- and yet has graduated as the Val at her HS- send her to Harvard and hope her Freshman seminar on Tolstoy doesnāt turn her off of education entirely?
To the OP- yes it helps. How much it helps, and it which institutions it helps with- thatās a different question. If you have applied through Questbridge and you are a viable candidate it will help a lot. If you havenāt, and have a savvy guidance counselor helping you, it will still help a lot. If you are going it all on your own, feel free to share your stats and your college list and perhaps we can all help you out with a few additional colleges where you may get a fee waiver AND some special attention.
Are you zero EFC/Pell eligible? Are your parents college graduates and who is helping you with applications???
