<p>Okay, so i have been worrying. But i have good reason to worry. Colleges seem to me very very elitist; what are really my chances?</p>
<p>I've been looking at the "good" sample college essays and what stands out to me is that many of the essays incorporate some form of world travel. Obviously if your someone like me who is middle class (household income between 40,000 to 100,000 family of 2-8) then that is hardly an option. I don't think my experiences can stack up against the experiences of a student from a rich family. My friend, from a wealthy Bangladeshi family, has been getting internships at places like citibank because (in her words) people like her aunt are managers, engineers, and doctors. One college (Sarah Lawrence College, go figure) even bragged about how one of their students had done filming in Antarctica during high school! </p>
<p>So all in all, it seems that the odds are stacked against the average earning joe for college admissions. [Not even taking into account affordability, because not even those scholarship boards are immune to classist methods].</p>
<p>What do I do? It seems that no matter how hard i try, the differences between me and a rich kid wont even out.</p>
<ol>
<li>There are plenty of study abroad opportunities that are free. Check out the State Department-sponsored NSLIY, CBYX, and YES. These are full scholarships to study languages abroad, meaning that EVERYTHING is paid for.</li>
<li>Study hard for standardized tests-- colleges often don’t look for the same scores across all income levels.</li>
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<p>Colleges are very elitist, and often times they are biased against lower income brackets. They’re businesses, after all. However, they do still accept a huge portion of people who aren’t “rich/preppy.”</p>
<p>As for test scores, don’t let the trend discourage you. There is absolutely no reason why lower income students can’t score just as high as higher income students. Maybe you can’t afford expensive test prep (my mom almost signed me up for one freshman year, but thank goodness my dad was firmly against it because I ended up saving both time, energy, and money and still scored a 2350+ from purely my own hard work and self-motivation), but you can probably afford practice books filled with useful practice tests. Don’t let money deter you.</p>
<p>If you Google tips on writing spectacular college essays, you’ll find a plethora of information from virtually every resource you’ll come across saying that colleges have gotten way too many essays about that trip to Africa or that internship abroad. And they do know that not every student will have the resources to obtain those things. The best essays tell about a very personal experience (it doesn’t have to be an extraordinary experience), and show that the student grew in a unique way from that experience. </p>
<p>You don’t need to be part of the elite to get accepted to elite/elitist colleges (if you’re URM, even better).</p>
<p>The first step is to stop viewing yourself as a victim of your family’s economic status. Sure rich kids have an easier time making themselves elite college material, but you can accomplish equally impressive things that don’t require several grand per project. Yes there are examples of rich kids who’ve accomplished feats that wouldn’t be possible without a large budget, but there are so many more examples of lower and middle class kids accomplishing awesome things as well through their dedication and passion towards something. I personally come from a solid middle/upper middle class family. My ECs were pretty impressive (national awards, wins, and recognition in multiple areas) and cost less than a couple grand a year (keep in mind this is for three dramatically different areas). They were unique, they were things I was genuinely passionate about, and they were things I made an impact in. I was accepted into a 8 schools I applied to including two top twenty schools. Due to my financial situation I will just be attending a local public, but even there I know I will find a way to do everything I wanted to do at any of the better colleges I was accepted to. </p>
<p>Colleges are looking for three things in ECs: dedication, leadership, and impact. If you hit those three key terms, have high academic stats, and are a person of character, you should be competitive at any college. Colleges are not elitist. They want a well-rounded student body, and this means students of all different socio-economic backgrounds and statuses. It’s not about your money, it’s about what you can contribute while you’re there, and your potential to make a difference and succeed once you’re out of college. Sure they have to admit a certain number of full pay students, but they also admit an equal or greater amount of lower and middle class students. Of course the essays about, say Antarctica, are going to stand out more. They are unique, but there are so many ways to be unique without having to spend thousands to get there. Find a passion, dedicate yourself to it, constantly strive to become better and better, constantly look for ways to lead and serve, say yes to as many opportunities as you can…pretty soon you should have accomplished something pretty impressive yourself. Personally I’m more impressed with essays showing character than I am about some kids’ travel diary. Character is free for all and will serve you will not just in college, but later on in life as well. Odds are a good thing, they provide you with obstacles to overcome and challenge you to aim higher. Focus on becoming the best you possible, and regardless where you go, you’ll have the tools to succeed.</p>
<p>Read How to be a High School Superstar by Cal Newport. Visit his blog, too. </p>
<p>By the way, a lot of those “successful” college essays out there serving as examples are really crappy. Don’t take them as gospel truth for what an excellent essay is. </p>
<p>"The first step is to stop viewing yourself as a victim of your family’s economic status. " This. Sorry, but your post reads like you are just looking for excuses. I’m not sure where you got the idea colleges are asking you to write about foreign travel. My daughter didn’t have any essays like that, and she had to write a lot of essays. Yes, rich kids score higher on SATs and guess what, 1. colleges expect higher scores from them and 2. if you look at the average score of kids even from the wealthiest families, it’s actually not even high enough to impress top colleges. Those kids have to work hard to stand out as well.</p>
<p>The correlation of scores and admits with income is more like a correlation with family emphasis on education. There are plenty of low income families in this country who value education, work hard, and whose kids are successful. You can choose to be one of them.</p>
<p>All I ever hear is that you shouldn’t write foreign travel essays because they make you look overprivileged and inauthentic (because a short trip doesn’t show any long-term commitment). </p>
<p>
I don’t think this will affect you very much if you’re well-informed enough to read up on it in the first place. Kids from poor families are likely to get lower scores at least partially because they aren’t taught to care about the SATs as much.</p>
<p>OP, there are so many fallacies in your original post, that I’ll begin, just to shoot them down for the benefit of everyone else who stumbles across this thread. But in the end, they’ll just crop up again, yet one must try…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. That accomplishes nothing and only tells you what you don’t have. End the jealous streak now, it’s not endearing. There is plenty of time to become a victim once you get to college and join the appropriate campus activist group.</p></li>
<li><p>Foreign travel is not impressive, unless you are going to visit your grandmother whos language you don’t speak and you want to write about how you’ve struggled to learn to communicate with her. That would be an impressive essay, not how someone spent their summer in the south of France or spent two weeks helping poor children in Africa. Boring!</p></li>
<li><p>The best essays come from real life. Like how you work after school every day taking care of siblings while both your parents work, or how you sweep up the shop floor in the family business after two hours of athletic practice. Internship in a bank? Yawn - there is absolutely no way making coffee for 10 bank VPs (and everyone is a VP in a bank) sound exciting. Trust me, anyone doing an internship in a bank in HS is getting nowhere near anything vital.</p></li>
<li><p>Test scores and income is correlation, not causation - although I can tell you exactly why it happens, as there is some causation, but not for the reason you think. Highly successful people tend to be highly intelligent, and they have highly intelligent kids. (Despite the protestations of many, genetics counts way more than most people think - sorry, but children aren’t blank slates.) People are successful BECAUSE they are intelligent, they are not intelligent because they are from successful families. Any highly successful person you meet is likely highly intelligent. But that doesn’t mean that if they are wealthy, they are highly successful or intelligent. If you are dad’s kid from the trophy wife who has the IQ of a spoon, odds are, you aren’t going to do as well IQ-wise as the kids from the first wife who graduated summa cum laude from Vassar or Yale.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, developmental admits are unfair, but they are few and far between. We who have kids who work their tails off in HS despise them every bit as much as we despise athletic admits to kids who can’t spell AP, yet get into elite schools. I got over it, you need to get over it. You can fix this problem later in life, you aren’t going to solve it before you apply to college.</p></li>
<li><p>You can only improve your test score so much via test prep. The ACT and SAT are closely correlated to IQ, all most test prep does is get you to your potential. No amount of studying in the world, regardless of how much you spend on test prep, will get an average student a 2400 SAT.</p></li>
<li><p>Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.</p></li>
<li><p>Elite schools love to find highly intelligent students from low income backgrounds. They scour the alleys and backroads looking for them .The fact is, in the US, such students are fairly rare except among immigrant groups. See #4.</p></li>
<li><p>Life will not end if you don’t get in HYPSM. There are plenty of great schools you can get in and afford if you manage your expectations and the admissions process properly. Step one is to get the chip off your shoulder.</p></li>
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<p>Thanks guys, I appreciate your input, and thank you for the resources. I agree that I have self-victimized. However I will not defend the unfairness or pretend it doesn’t exist. I don’t agree taking the “right path” will fix everything. I do agree that I should not admit defeat and use what I have. Thanks guys you rock.</p>
<p>@JoshSan95 Kuddos to you for being humble enough to admit it. We all do it sometimes, you just have to look at what you have and run with it. That’s fine that you won’t defend the unfairness, there’s no need to. But as your parents have probably told you since you were in diapers, “life’s not fair.” There will always be someone who has more, who seems to have an advantage, or who seems to have been handed a better hand of cards. You just can’t worry about them and must focus instead on the cards in your own hand. That’s what the American dream is about, if you play it smart and work hard, you have a very good shot at success. Everyone’s unique, learn to capitalize on that and become your own awesome. Get the book “How to Be a Highschool Superstar,” that will help you immensely. I wish you the best of luck OP!</p>
<p>My D got personal notes from admissions counselors at more than one college about one of her college essays. She wrote on how she chose the topic for her HS senior project. It was kind of a quirky topic and describing how she got there was an interesting essay that told the colleges something about the way she approaches learning and what kind of student she’d be. Focus on writing essays that tell a story about you…don’t worry about what others write.</p>
<p>A lot of adults on this forum, myself included, came from low income family. We went to colleges on financial aid, and a lot of us got into top tier colleges even though we didn’t come from wealthy background. We are able to afford full pay for our kids because of our hard work. </p>
<p>Both of our kids have traveled around the world, but our kids applied to competitive, free summer programs when they were in high school. Reason? Competitive, free programs are more impressive than paid, foreign volunteer programs. If you are a sophomore now, start look into state or national programs. A lot of them require to have applications in by fall of junior year with teacher’s recommendations, and interviews in spring.</p>
<p>You can be a victim or you can be the master of your destiny. College education is the biggest equalizer. If you work hard, you could get merit aid to top schools and get a good job upon graduation. It is how a lot of us moved from lower middle class to the 1%.</p>
<p>My kid attends what could be called a tough big-city urban high school. This year, 3 of her classmates got into Harvard (and the most amazing part is that only 3 applied). </p>
<p>Follow the advice above…don’t be a victim…be the great kid you know you are. </p>
<p>The correlation with the high test scores and other criteria and the annual income is merely a coincidence. If anything, having less money to waste has actually given me more time and determination to study. </p>
<p>@JoshSan95 - Great advice above. I always worry that the sage advice of adults can sometimes appear too harsh — kinda “tough love.” It’s all good, but please don’t feel bad about your post. Kids, as they awake to the larger world, start to see inequities and try to understand them in relation to their own life and dreams. Reactions, seeking info, learning, are all part of the process of working through them. It’s all part of the work of growing up, and the issues you mention above are ones you very well might be studying in their minutiae when you get to college. You’ll do well. Know that. </p>