fighting the intellectual hegemony of the privileged in the admissions process

Applying to College
221

<p>You call them "elite" universities, I don't. Attending a school because it's "elite" is just about the worst reason to attend a school. You attend a school that best fits so you won't be stifled intellectually. How can you have any respect for those who want to attend a school to be elite? I have no problem with people who choose an Ivy if they are attracted to it for reasons other than prestige. (Especially entertaining are the threads by privileged CCers that effectively state, "omg omg, all my life privileged life I've been told by my culture to seek out the Ivies and now have one B on my transcript, what do I do, what do I do????")</p>

<p>
[quote]
Why do you think elite universities attract the best students?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I dunno, cultivation of the mind, perhaps? </p>

<p>
[quote]
whether you care for it or not, it is fundamental to our culture and the ideologies of the Founding Fathers)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No, that's social contract theory.</p>

<p>
[quote]
there wouldn't be any elite colleges, since everything would be run by the government and all people would be on "equal" grounds. Where do you think private universities get their money?

[/quote]
</p>

<p><em>sigh</em></p>

<p>Where did I say I supported a State? Where did I say I supported forced redistribution? I was arguing for a (left) libertarian solution. Why the bloody hell do you people think I want to infringe upon the fundamental rights of the privileged? I don't. Rather, I advocate to use our liberties to better organise our resources to oust them.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Somewhat. I was ignorant of how lucky we were, and it retrospect I think the divorce can almost be a fortunate event because otherwise I would have remained a shallow and privileged individual .... I wouldn't want to know what I would be otherwise. But even then, I was already disenchanted </p>

<p>
[quote]
making as little as $100k annually, which where I live, is purely middle class

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The family of my high school's valedictorian, who I consider to be quite privileged (as an observation, not a judgment), earns less than 76,000, (I know only because we were talking about the MIT tuition cap.) She already exhibits many traits of the middle class -- which btw I'm not passing judgment on, just observing. However, having traits of the middle class and having traits of the culture of privilege are quite different.</p>

222

<p>
[quote]
Rather, I advocate to use our liberties to better organise our resources to oust them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Good luck with that one...</p>

223

<p>OP, would you please list to the "traits of the priveledged?"
You keep referring to them but you have not enumerated them.</p>

<p>Also, did you have a job in high school? If so, how many hours a week did you spend at that job. Did you do it during school?</p>

224

<p>"I advocate to use our liberties to better organise our resources to oust them. "</p>

<p>So how exactly does this process work, ya think?</p>

225

<p>
[quote]
Where did I say I supported a State? Where did I say I supported forced redistribution? I was arguing for a (left) libertarian solution. Why the bloody hell do you people think I want to infringe upon the fundamental rights of the privileged? I don't. Rather, I advocate to use our liberties to better organise our resources to oust them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Your methods of success are no doubt the same I would use if i had such a goal as yours. What I am more concerned about is the VALUE of such a goal? Does it really matter what a group of people ignore/think about others went here are many more useful causes to go about (namely fixing your personal relationships and spreading a message of peace)?</p>

<p>And like collegealum314, I await a specific enumeration of why the "privileged culture" is bad.</p>

<p>That's not to say your vague goal is evil or immoral. I just think it is like trying to capture the Sun while you have not yet been able to capture its light. If that makes any sense...</p>

226

<p>Apologies if this point has been mentioned, but OP, you're not yet at UVA. Once you get there, you may yet find other capable students who have had tough socioeconomic struggles. Or, you might find other students who you resonate with, and only later find out that your dorm is named for their grandfathers. Or, you might forge a connection with professors or grad students who share your same intellectual interests. Or, there will be somone who initially assumes that everyone of course has the means to travel and buy big-screen tvs, and will be sobered and changed by becoming your friend. </p>

<p>Of course there will be rich jerks. There will also be poor jerks, and middle class jerks. </p>

<p>I can understand your frustration. I can't, however, understand why you're working yourself into a tizzy at this stage of the game. You're about to go off on a grand adventure that's going to change and influence the rest of your life; why not look forward to it with a little joy and optimism?</p>

227

<p>haven't you all seen the UC point-system?? Practically half of the points possible are things out of your control such as personal struggle, economic hardship, etc. Your potential for intelligence is genetic, but your actual demonstration of intelligence is based on your enviornment. simoply going to a foreign country, etc. does not increase your intelligence. unless dealing with where you live and what public school you go to, money doesn't really pay a factor in whether or not you do well in school, thatn depends on your own personal drive. they also take into account as well how well you do within your own class, and how your school is ranked. lots of qualified students were rejected over "non-wealthy" and less (intelligently?) qualified students because they got tons of points for being on the unfortunate side of life.</p>

228

<p>Sometimes being disadvantaged can be the best thing to getting into all of the top schools. I would've never gotten into the schools that I did if I was not disadvantaged, I know it's true.</p>

229

<p>I think you are right on, pinkpineapple.</p>

<p>$100,000 to $150,000 is middle income, definitely not rich, and this economic level does end up shouldering a relatively bigger burden for their children's college education costs.</p>

<p>As for the OP's premise that students from "wealthy" families earning $100,000 or more who send their kids to private prep schools have a leg up in getting into the Ivies, I think that is nonsense. College admission is supposedly income and race blind. But colleges do look for obstacles and challenges revealed in applicants' essays in an effort both to create diversity and to open doors for disadvantaged students. The big "obstacle" this year that my daughter's friends discuss is being a first generation college applicant. </p>

<p>So we know one girl admitted to an Ivy with lower GPA, far fewer APs, and fewer ECs than other classmates but who claimed to be a first generation college student. And maybe she is. But her parents dropped her off at school in a Mercedes until she got a BMW for her 18th birthday. The parents own a business and are very showy about their wealth. Maybe they struggled to get where they are, truly realizing the "American dream." They certainly have been able to provide a very good private, expensive prep-school education for their kids, not to mention a very nice home in a very tony neighborhood, etc. So in that sense, this girl is reaping the benefit of her parents' efforts and productivity. But she did not get into an Ivy because of her parents' wealth or her own superior wealth-related IQ (??) -- she got in as a first generation college applicant, and with lower grades and test scores and fewer ECs than many of her classmates who did not get into the same top tier school. This is probably not what the Ivies intended when they started giving extra admission points for first generation applicants. So, maybe the system is flawed... </p>

<p>But the system is apparently working just fine for OP, who as others have mentioned is attending a top tier school with FA. I don't see what he/she has to complain about!</p>

230

<p>Who has more money to throw around, a family making $200k with four kids and/or an elderly grandparent all in one house, or a family making $100k with only one child?</p>

231

<p>Also, there is a mistaken assumption that private schools = easier admissions. It's actually much harder, because the level of competition is extremely fierce and colleges simply will not take more than a few from each one. So there's a huge concentration of talent and desire but very few openings for them at the top universities. You really have to be the cream of the crop at these schools, which takes FAR more than money. So yes, if you're #3 at a top prep school you might have an "easy" admissions process, but that cheapens the huge amount of effort he or she needed to put in to become that #3.</p>

<p>Whereas it's far easier to become the valedictorian of a subpar HS (though still difficult obviously), and there are no quotas that truly affect you because there's probably very few people applying to the top colleges.</p>

232

<p>^^I agree, sort of. I went to one of these public elites where everyone had been the top-ranking student at their high school before they transferred. We had the top performance in the country in math team (AMC) and a slightly higher SAT score than Exeter or TJ (1400 before recentering.) (Plus, we had racked up awards in humanities competitions like Academic Decathlon, so it just wasn't math and science.) However, Harvard took like 4 people from our school while taking some ridiculous number like 25-40 from Exeter. I suspect it was because our school was only 10 years old, but I don't really know. Maybe they had a higher concentration of legacies and/or athletic recruits? There's no hidden flaw in our students either, because for some reason Stanford and MIT both took a lot more of our students (10-15 each) and I don't think Stanford is that much easier to get in than Harvard.</p>

<p>Things don't always make sense, but I strongly disagree with the sentiment that it is easier to get into colleges if you go to a place with a lot of opportunities for learning. At my school, you had to win really big awards like Intel finalist or MOSP for it to really help you to get into HYP. Joining a fancy gym like Gold's gym may increase your bench press by 50 pounds, but if you have to then bench 700 pounds to make the olympics whereas you had to only bench 400 pounds before to qualify, then it doesn't make it easier to qualify for the olympics.</p>

233

<p>To get in to to the public elites you don't have to really apply you just have to live in the district(at least I think so). While at Exeter you have to apply and the acceptance rate is below 25%. So basically students at Exeter are even more "cream of the crop" so to speak. Furthermore students at Exeter are far more diverse than the average public school excluding places like NY and other inner city schools and the applicant pool from places like Exeter are far more diverse and accomplished even compared to some of the public elites. In addition HYP has a very close relationship with the top prep schools and know for a fact that those graduating in the top 25% of their class at Exeter are truly the "creme of the crop". Why do you thing places like Exeter, Milton and Andover have such a long list of successful and famous alumni.</p>

234

<p>^^It varies. At the one I went to, you had to take the SAT, submit a grade transcript, a resume' of awards, essays, and you needed 3 teacher recs as well as a counselor rec. It was basically the same as applying to college. And the admission was around 25%-30%. It was only open to residents of my state, but otherwise it's pretty similar to Exeter.</p>

<p>We had enough major accomplishments that we should have been on their radar screen. In the 2 or three years before my graduating class applied, we had a guy on the U.S. math olympics traveling team, a couple on the U.S. physics traveling team (top 6), the overall winner of Intel, and a math team stacked with people with my high school won ARML nationals (most prestigious team math competition in high school), and also won chess nationals. Another guy won a national championship in the violin and was on PBS. We also won a couple of state competitions in Academic Decathlon, had a couple of entries into National History Fair every year, and won other lesser known humanities competitions.</p>

235

<p>yet everyone knows Phillips Exeter and no one really knows your school. While your school only draws from your state Exeter attracts excellent students from all across the world and puts them together in one place. Name some famous alumni in the last decade from your school and I'll name some famous ones from Exeter. The fact of the matter is colleges know Exeter and they know what kind of students they produce so they accept more students from Exeter.</p>

236

<p>It's clear that the OP is saying that "rich kids" are encouraged to pursue their passions. Which is (somehow) unfair. </p>

<p>I quiver when I think of how this OP will react to the student body at UVa. It brings to mind a popular UVa Facebook group, titled "Used Books are for Peasants"</p>

237

<p>Well, we had the co-founder of youtube. You guys had the founder of Facebook. I'd call it even. Our oldest alumni are in their late 30's, and we have people on the faculty of top 5 schools, but they aren't famous. </p>

<p>I looked at Exeter's wikipedia page, and it's clear that you have had a lot of great athletes. However, I think claims that Exeter has better students are dubious.</p>

238

<p>That's legitimate</p>

239

<p>I like how a thread dealing with the elitist nature of rich kids ends up turning into a prissy fight over which elite school is better. </p>

<p>But I guess I don't understand the backbreaking hard work and dedication it takes to be creme de la creme, since, you know...I go to a podunk public high school.</p>

240

<p>I went to a free public school. The only reason we were arguing about whether the strengths of the schools and the students were comparable was to say whether it was justified that HYP takes a ton of students from one high school and a handful from another.</p>