<p>They don't give extra points for hand digging wells in Cambodia. Wow its astonishing the amount of misinformation that is being thrown around.</p>
<p>That's a weak argument, northstarmom, if it is true that 85% of Harvard applicants can "do the work".
My kids and I did take the elites at their word that they were interested in talented people from modest income backgrounds. My son made clear in his application that he needed financial aid. He was a Pell grant recipient at Dartmouth.
My daughter said that she needed a very large amount of assistance in her Princeton application. She will be starting in the fall.
I don't think either of them got an affirmative action (economic) boost. They both had the numbers. But we thought (and still think) that the wealthy schools at the very top are trying to run away from the image of being reserves of privilege for the very rich.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What blue collar family can afford a top boarding school
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A blue collar family whose child is admitted to a top boarding school can get a full ride. My son's private high school is not a boarding school, but it has a similar kind of financial aid policy, and he has a full ride.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If they're making a effort to admit more 'blue-collar' students I would assume the admissions staff is already allowing for the fact that fewer students from this group will be able to take advantage of the expensive ECs mentioned previously.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, that is what the cited article quoted William Fitzsimmons as saying. </p>
<p>
[quote]
"The idea that extracurricular activities are open to everybody is nonsense," Fitzsimmons said, noting that the ice hockey goaltending equipment now breaks the $2,500 range. "How many poor kids are top-flight musicians? It doesn't happen by itself - who gets lessons?" he said.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Let's see if I can beat the editing time limit to add that I know a student at Exeter with a parent who actually was a Walmart employee. The student received a full ride to go to Exeter--he couldn't have gone otherwise.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>They're dreaming. What blue collar family can afford a top boarding school, private music lessons, athletic summer camps, a year off to hand dig wells in Cambodia, private SAT tutors and/or college counselors, fees for multiple SATs and AP exams, and, oh yeah, their EFC?<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>You're dreaming. These things are nice, but they are by no means required to get into Harvard. Harvard is looking for high achievers, but they make it clear that they are looking for kids who took full andvantage of the opportunities they had, not the ones they had no access to. </p>
<p>My own daughter went to our local, mediocre public high school. No fancy prep school. No SAT prep courses or tutors. No year off. No athletic summer camps. She did take music lessons. We are middle class folk and her ECs mostly consisted of playing in the high school band and local youth orchestra.</p>
<p>In her House blocking the group the girls are one disadvantaged URM, two girls from blue collar families (one of which had never ridden on an airplane prior to Spring Break of her sophomore year) , and three from middle class, college-educated families - one of which is a legacy. None of them is rich. It's clearly a diverse group. But the one thing that all six girls have in common is that they are high achievers. Of those six girls, five were their high school vals and the other (D) was a sal.</p>
<p>So based on my experience of the school, I'd say Dean Fitzsimmons has done a decent job of bringing diversity and blue-collar students to the school.</p>
<p>danas:</p>
<p>I don't understand your post. Your children had the numbers and apparently got full rides at Dartmouth and Princeton. The idea is not to admit unqualified and poor students, but qualified yet poor students; in order to do so, admission officers like Fitzsimmons have to spend their time, energy and funds to beat the bush and spread the message that <em>qualified</em> low income students should not be deterred from applying because of financial concerns.
And no, they don't have to have taken tons of APs or dug wells in Cambodia to demonstrate their preparedness for schools such as Dartmouth, or Princeton, or Harvard.</p>
<p>marite...
I can see you misunderstood me. But I'm not sure what you were thinking I was trying to say.</p>
<p>What I was trying to say is that my kids and I think that the elites genuinely do want to take kids from modest income backgrounds. My kids went beyond the "advantage" of "need blind" admissions to actually state in their applications that they needed high levels of aid.
In effect, they were betting their chances on what people like Mr. F. at
Harvard says he believes. I think they were right.</p>
<p>If "qualified" means capable of "doing the work" at Harvard, the pool is enormous. The bottom of that qualified pool looks very different from the top of that pool. The phrases "qualified and "affirmative action" are forms of camouflage for admissions preferences that, as practiced, are difficult to defend with straightforward language.</p>
<p>Danas:</p>
<p>Got you. Thanks. I was thrown by your "weak argument" statement.
Your kids were aboslutely right, and D and P were absolutely right to admit them and make it possible for them to attend. </p>
<p>My S has been having several of his friends over for the last week or so, and I've enjoyed learning about the range of their backgrounds and experiences. Some are on financial aid, some have parents who pay full fare; none is a legacy.</p>
<p>"I don't think either of them got an affirmative action (economic) boost. They both had the numbers."</p>
<p>All of the Ivy admits have the numbers as do the overwhelming majority of the applicants at places like Harvard. What gets students in is something additional: extraordinary ECs or academics for the already extraordinary pool, legacy plus excellent ECs/academics; having large donor parents plus the numbers or being from an underrepresented region or state; URMs, first generation college, from a low income and/or blue collar/pink collar background.</p>
<p>Everyone who gets into a place like Harvard has to havethe required numbers plus some kind of extra factor to get in.</p>
<p>Danas and Marite:
Asking for aid on the applications is what confuses me. Danas, are you saying your children checked a box saying, "Yes, I will seek financial aid?" or are you saying your children wrote essays talking about financial status?</p>
<p>That's what I wrestle with, and I even joke with my child about it. I suggest she start her essays: "I was born a poor Southern child ...."</p>
<p>Christopher Buckley did a similar essay, in a satire that I can't find online anymore.</p>
<p>I can't imagine the pain of being an admissions officer having to read essay after essay about money and overcoming obstacles.</p>
<p>Seriously, it's difficult to suggest to a child that she write about how she is financially disadvantaged and "overcoming obstacles," when I've tried to keep her eyes open to a world in which many others are truly needy. I'm guessing there are other families, half or full "muggle," who struggle with the same point in terms of pride. We all would expect our children to be able to make it on their own merits, not because of their income level or "obstacles overcome."</p>
<p>Since we're paying full fare, I'll let danas answer as to what was checked on her children's applications.</p>
<p>Essays can give a sense of the financial situation of an applicant without being about it. For example, a student who writes about going on a trip to Cambodia to dig wells will come across very differently from a student who wrote about the kind of customers he met while working at a McDonald (one CC poster wrote an essay on this topic). I rather liked that essay, as it showed the author's powers of observation; An adcom would also probably conclude that such a student might be in need of financial aid, while the well-digging student probably would not.
I also read a very moving essay about coping with a parent in hospital. It was not in the least "whiny" not was it "about overcoming obstacles" and still managing to pull all As. It was about love and realizing how little time there was left to express it. Still, a low income student can write about a totally different topic, such as a school project that went wrong or succeeded, the joy of listening to or performing music. I believe adcoms pay attention to geographical background, including zipcodes, look at the school transcript, etc... even if they do not have the financial information while making admission decisions.</p>
<p>"We all would expect our children to be able to make it on their own merits, not because of their income level or "obstacles overcome."</p>
<p>A qualified person who gets an admissions tip due to povety or having overcome various major obstacles is getting in on their own merits. They have to be far smarter and more motivated than the norm in order to have achieved the stats to qualify them for admission to a place like Harvard.</p>
<p>Do you think that the students who get in after digging wells in Columbia or having thousands of dollars for years of music lessons from a top musician or being able to afford to go on expensive trips to compete in academic competitions feel that they are not getting in on their own merits? Yet, those students' affluence clearly did help them have opportunities that less affluent students can't experience.</p>
<p>Similarly students who had the advantage of highly educated parents who filled their house with books, encouraged them to go to college, used extensive vocabularies, made sure the kids were in excellent school systems, and provided close oversite of the students' academics had various advantages lacked by students from less educated homes. Yet, I doubt that Ivy accepted students whose parents are highly educated doubt their own merits of deserving an Ivy admission.</p>
<p>If Harvard wants to increase its number of blue collar kids, then they are doing exactly what they need to do to accomplish this--offering the kind of comprehensive financial aid that was once reserved for the low income kids that they want to attract.</p>
<p>It's not that blue collar/lower middle class kids haven't heard of Harvard...it's that the lower middle class kids are squeezed on financial aid. Their parents make too much money to qualify for great aid, but don't make enough to be able to afford Harvard. Make the financial aid more attractive, and Harvard will be innundated with high quality blue collar kids who can do the work.</p>
<p>purplexed...
My kids mentioned in a short answer question (something like "Why do you want to come to XXX) that one of the reasons was the strength of the financial aid program, from which they would need substantial assistance.
There was no mention of poverty or financial struggle anywhere in the application. Wouldn't have been true. We consider ourselves to be middle class. Middle quintile in family income with my son, second from the top now with my daughter.
I just think that at the 20 or so schools with the deepest pockets, coming from the middle class or below is considered at least a modest plus.</p>
<p>I read somewhere, and I searched for the link, but failed to find it (but am posting anyway, for better or ill) that a former Harvard president said that any student with a 600 or 650 on the Verbal SAT could do well at Harvard. So, I don't think "success at school" is the concern. The issue is dealing with all the applicants in a fair way, and providing the resources and outreach to students so they feel they belong. The $60,000 and under group are increasingly getting full rides, it, as mini has pointed out countless times, the next tier that is virtually disappearing (I believe his numbers show only 7% make up elite school enrollment). Blue collar folks whose combined income with overtime is $100,000 are the ones shut out.</p>
<p>I agree 100% that one reason why many blue collar kids don't apply to schools like Harvard is not lack of knowledge but concerns about being able to pay for it. My D attends a high school that could be characterized as blue collar, though there are many students there that don't fit that label. What I have seen is that while there are many bright kids, the ability to pay tops prestiege when many make their college choices. Hence many attend state schools. Quite a few of the top students in my Ds class, including my D received information about the financial aid initiative and we were invited to a presentation at Harvard where they pitched the school (obviously) but also talked about how they make it affordable. A second focus was on, how they wanted students who otherwise wouldn't think of Harvard because they thought they had no chance of being accepted, to realize that they did have a chance. This was certainly brought home to me when my D and her friends chatted after about the fact that none of them had any chance, and laughed about it. This is in spite of the fact that their grades and SATs were completely in the ball park. Long story short as fate would have it, several students from my Ds high school did apply and my D was admitted. The irony is that we don't qualify for any financial aid, but it was the financial aid intiative that put the school on my Ds radar and I'm grateful for that. I know that attending an elite prep school or a competitive high school gives students an edge because schools like Harvard know how good those schools are. It also puts smart hard working kids from 'blue collar' or non-competitive high schools at a disadvantage, so I'm glad Harvard is making an effort to reach out to qualified kids from these types of high schools as well.</p>
<p>idad:</p>
<p>I believe there are very few schools that are well enough endowed to give as many full rides as Harvard or Princeton, Yale and Stanford and a few others. But those that are can indeed give susbtantial financial aid to families that make over $100k. For example, while the HFAI gives full rides to students whose family income is below $60k, it is also very generous to families who make up to $80k. So one must conclude that some financial aid is given to families who make more than $100k. The Harvard webside states that, given some circumstances, it is possible for students whose family income is $150k to receive financial aid. I assume that the special circumstances include other siblings in college or medical expenses.</p>
<p>But families comparing financial aid packages may conclude that the merit aid given by some schools may be a better deal than the package offered by HYPS that contains a loan component; if I understand correctly, merit ait is generous with outright grants.</p>
<p>A link on how families respond to financial aid offers: </p>
<p><a href="http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/aidpaper.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/aidpaper.pdf</a> </p>
<p>I'm sure that college consultants have read this paper to advise colleges on how to influence family decision-making on where to enroll.</p>