<p>dstark,
regarding the "getting to shop around" issue:</p>
<p>Here's a rather non-elite example.
I know closely a URM family definitely of lower SES, in an urban location with below-standard public elem. & high schools available. D was a B student in a local religious school which had substandard teaching, i.m.o. & in the opinion of the family. Mother looked at h.s. options for her D, & they did not look good. Mother, from a decidedly non-elite background herself, was sharp enough & determined enough to seek better for her D. So, from her outlying area with a barely functioning car, & from a run-down neighborhood, she sought & obtained admission for her D. to a fabulous private h.s., where the family also received FA. She was no better equipped & had no more resources than anyone else from that ethnic group living in that neighborhood, but apparently she had one thing that they may have lacked: motivation.</p>
<p>Because the D's middle-school curriculum poorly prepared her for that fabulous h.s., the D needed extra help from teachers at the high school & from the parents at home, who monitored, encouraged the girl & kept her on track. (The parents are not professionals: one does not work; the other barely graduated from a 4-yr state school on athletic scholarship.) No, the D did not graduate Cum Laude or something, but she did graduate from a more than respectable school, easily learned 3 times what she would have learned in a diff. kind of school, & because of that opportunity is attending this fall a local 4-yr liberal arts college with support for learning challenges & a special major geared toward her talents & which will provide her with far better than minimum-wage opportunities. It is a career track as well as a B.A. or B.S. (I forget.) Need-based FA is also available at this college; surely they received that.</p>
<p>Without the mother's smarts & guts, I would question whether the girl was even headed for community college at age 18. The mother has made it her business to become informed -- newspapers, books, libraries, internet, whatever she needed to learn how to work the educational opportunities that are available to much more than the "elite." The family also bought cheap tickets to fly to some other colleges during the search process -- just like the well-heeled classmates did. The D "got to" do this because the mother made it possible -- not with money, not with fancy education of her own -- but with determination, planning, and not "settling."</p>
<p>Now, it may be more logical, more a part of the "drill" for a well-educated family to take such a proactive & even aggressive part in a child's education & future plans, but the mother in question did not wait for someone to hand her a Permission Slip or a Club Membership card. She's a member of the club because she lives in this country & has an inborn right to seek the highest level of opportunity which she & any member of her family can reach.</p>
<p>On a less extreme & more universal level, all of the families in my D's h.s., many of whom are quite upper-crust, achieved any positive college admissions results by having to do it themselves. The college counselor was mostly useless in any student's particular efforts. This is a small school, mind you, but seems to be not much different from large Publics in the area of college counseling: bare minimum, generalized information that anyone can read in a book, a very "generic" & counseling-for-the-masses approach. No guidance on tailoring the application, visiting colleges, setting up an E.C. page, etc. Any family that wanted admission either to an upper-level Public, or to a private second-tier or above, was left to its own resources, from start to finish. Nothing "get to" about it. No road map, no individualized tour guide.</p>