<p>yeah.. i totally agree with the fact that my parents understood the importance of my education.... financial circumstances is still a hindering fact....</p>
<p>Jamimom, do you really think poor people don't have talents, too? It's not like Harvard needs to accept untalented poor people for diversity's sake. . . they'll accept talented poor people like the other applicants they accept.</p>
<p>Of course they do. If you look at the number of kids they accept that are eligible for the Pell grant which is a good indicator for low income, however, you will see that they do not accept a large number of students from low income families. I do not like to use the term "poor" because that is not necessarily a good description of a family that does not have much money. I speak from experience because my husband was a post grad for a number of years and we lived in the "student ghettos" of a number of colleges. The families we knew who were in our situation did not have much in the way of money, but the kids were talented, cultured, and certainly not disadvantaged in terms of getting their talents recognized and cultivated. The parents were smart and very resourceful and found every free and low cost program around and being in a university community offered many opportunities. As a general rule, these kids had far more talents and resources than most kids in a middle class, average school district where the parents may earn a good income but have little time at home as they work quite a bit, and some of those suburbs do not have the cultural resources of a city or university environment. Also as university people, the emphasis was very much on academic pursuits, cultural events, unlike many of the suburb activities. We went to more cultural stuff in those days for free or very little money, than we do now when I can finally afford to pay full freight for things. So do I really think "poor people don't have talents, too"? What do you think?</p>
<p>I'm wondering what financial aid opportunities the OP has in Canada (his country of residence).</p>
<p>for all the ivies, they consider canadians with americans.. and hyp consider everyone equally in terms of aid.. at least they claim that.</p>
<p>What if someone's parents divorced or died, but still manages to maintain relatively high gpa and ec, does harvard look at that?</p>
<p>Not if they're well off. On a side not, I personally don't think divorce should be used to give kids a boost---it's just far too common to possible be unique among 20,000 others. Sorry.</p>
<p>that would be giving a boost to more than half the applicant pool, if 20,000 people is an accurate sampling of the American population.</p>