Could we also stop with the crumbling public school trope? We are funding k12 schools at quite high levels, how they allocate that money is more likely the problem, along with the rules they implement. Based on funding alone, the District of Columbia schools should be producing geniuses. They are not. Catholic schools have produced better results with fewer resources for generations.
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Public school systems must take all students, including those with issues that make them expensive for the school. Catholic and other private schools can be selective in admission and can more easily expel students, so that they can leave the students with expensive issues to the public school systems.
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True that. And thatās why I donāt complain about school taxes even though I sent my kids to private school through middle school (then to a large public HS). I do, however, scratch my head as the public school funding per pupil actually exceeds our private middle school tuition.
Iām not following you, roycroftmom. Are you saying that my students have learning disabilities and terrible families, and that thatās why they show up at college in this condition educationally and in terms of competitive drive? Because if thatās what youāre asserting, youāve been carefully picking your way through what Iāve written and picking up only pieces you can assemble that story out of. It is not at all what Iāve been saying.
As a separate matter, public universities (like all universities) have many more students with diagnosed and supported learning disabilities than they used to. Itās an expensive proposition, but we do it, because (like public schools) we must. A LD by itself is not a determinant of success. You get LD students who drop out, LD students who get postdocs with Nobelists.
Once again, Iām hearing you say āforget those young people regardless of what they may actually be capable of, and move on to young people who have immediately better odds.ā If that is indeed your stance, then I donāt think we have anything else to talk about.
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Richard Brody is not a fan of what he spots as romanticization of itinerant peopleās lives, one that deprives them of their own voices: āNomadland,ā Reviewed: ChloĆ© Zhaoās Nostalgic Portrait of Itinerant America | The New Yorker. Iām not surprised to find that the directorās dad is a big finance honcho and that she want to Holyoke and Tisch.
The best film representations of poor peopleās lives in America that Iāve seen, apart from Frontline series that are extremely difficult to watch, remain Michael Mooreās movies, despite the obvious propaganda. Whatever tub heās thumping, heās still capturing the realities. Roger & Me remains the best and truest rust-belt documentary I know. Fishbowl was good, too (UK, not rust belt). Yeahā¦Iād look for the Frontline doc about the lives of poor children in America, which follows a family through homelessness, which in turn is common enough that itās routine for school districts to have programs for homeless students. We didnāt used to. But we have to now because the kids have to move around often, frequently across school catchment-area lines, which means they bounce around curriculumwise and have trouble making progress. Itās not so much a matter of hooking them up with social services as it is that the waiting lists for subsidized housing are often years long, and the parents have to remain in the area so that theyāre there when their number comes up. Itās not a straightforward waitlist, either, because family situations are weighted ā normally families with young children are up near the top, but if there are families with disabled children, for instance, those will cut in with priority.
Essentially, I say give those āglimpse across the tracksā movies the Schindlerās List test: if itās pretty, youāre getting a fairy tale. If a romantic fairy tale is persuading you thatā¦oh, dear, weāre back to Reagan, arenāt we. People are poor and homeless because they like it that way.
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It would not be surprising that a selective private school with higher achieving and academically motivated students without expensive issues and with supportive families had a basic cost of education that is lower on average than a public school that has to take everyone. Of course, the private school may have extra costs for extra services or whatever that it chooses to include, but for the same level of service, it could very well have lower costs.
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Smaller classes, teachers degreed in the topics they taught, better facilities, other than that the same 
Except my point was that perhaps we privileged elites shouldnāt be assuming we know what poor people want, let alone telling them what to do and how they ought to behave to meet the expectations of those with the āelite society-defining jobsā.
Itās particularly ironic when college professors suggest that the hoi polloi canāt cope with modern society unless theyāve gone to college. Instead Iād suggest that itās all a lot more complex than that, and there are no easy answers, certainly not just throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at subsidizing colleges for all.
I donāt think the OP mentioned she, her daughter, or students were Asian. However, I can see some similarities between several other threads in which some students have implied that being Asian was a key factor in not being accepted.
I think the issue is āeliteā privates use hook + holistic admission practice rather than emphasize stats, which hurts Asian students as a whole more than other races, rather than direct discrimination. For example, the lawsuit you reference did show that Asian students had a lower overall admit rate than White students. However, when you control for hook status such that unhooked White kids are compared to unhooked Asian kids, and hooked vs hooked; then Asian kids have a higher admit rate than White since ALDC hooks are far more common among White applicants than Asian applicants.
Similarly if you control for stats such as comparing White unhooked kids with a particular SAT score to Asian unhooked kids with a particular SAT score, then White kids have a higher admit rate. However, if you control for the rest of the application, gender, docket location, and rest of factors admission readers are likely to consider; then it is too close to call. Whether it reaches statistical significance depends on seemingly minor difference in controls, such as whether you use an interaction variable for SES and race. The conclusion also varies by subgroup of Asian students. I doubt it would reach statistical significance for Asian female applicants or Asian applicants from the CA docket area. But unhooked not-low-SES Asian males from certain areas outside of CA might, depending on controls.
In any case, whether the above type of direct discrimination reaches statistical or significance would have little impact on the vast majority of applicants and is not likely to cause a particular decision to change from rejected to accepted. What is more likely to have an influence and more relevant to this thread is the legally accepted criteria used in the admission decisions. I mentioned ALDC hooks (Athlete, Legacy, Dean/Director list, and Children of faculty/staff). These hooks tend to favor wealthy White students. Asian students are not well represented in any of these ALDC hook groups. Harvard also boosts admission chances for URMs and lower SES applicants, which does not favor wealthy or White kids as a whole, but also doesnāt favor Asian kids as a whole. Focusing on non-stat criteria rather than emphasizing SAT/ACT score(s) further hurts Asian students as a whole.
This doesnāt mean that itās impossible to be admitted if not ALDC, not URM, not lower SES, or not other hooked group. The majority of admitted students were White+Asian non-ALDC in the lawsuit sample. However, the odds may be longer for this group. In the recent class of 2025, Harvardās overall admit rate was only 3.43%. The unhooked admit rate was likely under 3%. With an admit rate this low, itās going to be long odds for the vast majority of well qualified applicants.
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Most of them? Because their odds of making an adult living otherwise are pretty tiny. (Search above for ācredentialsā for explanations of why.) Also, because these are public universities, even though the proportion of public funding is small in the context of university budgets, the stateās still forking over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to help run the place. The state generally insists that the university admit the stateās young people. If a state has a lot of wealth, it can afford to turn the university into what used to be called a public Ivy, and play the highly-competitive game even for state residents while reserving a lot of seats for OOS students. Thatās not most states, though, and their universities must admit whoever can pass some state-defined (low) bar.
Well - letās back up a sec. My point is not, and has never been in this thread, that everyone going to Average State U should be or wants to be seeking that kind of work. Or for that matter that everyone at Elite U does, either.
My point was, and remains, that if you are the sort of person who can do that work, and would want to if you knew about it, or maybe does know and does want to do it, your odds are far, far better coming out of Elite U than they are coming out of State U, in part because tax support of State U and K12 has receded to the point that it must concentrate on maintaining a pulse and serving seriously unprepared students (not prepping you for ESD jobs), and in part because Elite U has captured and monetized pipes to those sorts of jobs, from internships on. Evidenced in such things as āour go-to schools areā and less formal, but no less constricted, recruiting and networks.
My point is further that this is bad, because it becomes rarer and rarer for State U students to make it into those types of jobs, meaning that you have recirculating wealth and privilege at the top, and less and less mobility from below. Itās bad because America depends on that mobility both to maintain its democracy and to live as an idea. We are not supposed to have a ruling class continuously serving as the architects of this society: the idea is that people of any background can rise all the way, if they are as able as most others at that level. The American Dream requires hard work, but should not require being born on the planet Krypton.
Now letās go back to this sentence: āā¦if you are the sort of person who can do that work, and would want to if you knew about it, or maybe does know and does want to do it, your odds are far, far better coming out of Elite U than they are coming out of State Uā¦ā Several people here would say, āThen go to Elite U, and if you canāt get in, that means you arenāt fit.ā To which I say, āThatās incorrect, but letās look at who gets into Elite U and who doesnāt.ā For that you can look at my post at the top of this thread, but essentially thereās one admissions meeting point for State-U profile kids and Elite-U profile kids, and thatās EA. In order for a student whoās going on nothing but merit to get into Elite U, that kid has to (a) know about Elite U and want it and (b) be a spectacular worldbeater with credentials better than the majority of Elite-U admits. Thatās EAā¦to a point, since EA will likely require big fin aid. If the kid with no money/hooks is only as good as your average Elite-U type whose parents have high-six or seven digits flashing on the Profile, that kidās going to Average State U.
From there we go to the Ginger Rogers story: Although your average Elite-U kid has full access to the ESD jobs pipeline (and will then have to demonstrate that theyāre good candidates: the point is the mouth of the pipe is sitting there), State-U kid gets access to ESD jobs only if, in the course of their State-U ed, they transform themselves independently into an EA-worthy person who can dance with Fred, but backwards and in heels ā and can figure out on their own where a non-pipeline door is to bang on and say ālet me in, Iād like to speak with you please, yes I know Iām inconvenient but Iām totally worth your while,ā and do it successfully, which is one hell of a trick. Thatās blossomās State-U kid, the miracle who matters more than the school. If the State-U kid isnāt Ginger, isnāt Clark Kent, but does have the moxie/brights/etc. of average Elite-U kid? Too bad, what happens to a dream deferred, etc.
Next to that weāve got the problem of the kid whoās actually got Gingerās brains and spark and dance moves, but ā because no dough and a family of medical transcriptionists and electricians ā wonāt even hear about the existence of ESD jobs till they get to college. And itāll take a few years for them to notice that such jobs exist, like possibly into grad school, because nobody in their family or circle does any such thing. If that kid were at Elite U, theyād be handed a menu of ESD jobs and Eliza Doolittled right up for them. At State U, though, this wonāt happen because it canāt happen: the institutionās busy surviving month to month, not polishing up diamonds in the rough, brokering meetings, and pointing them in the right direction.
Again, once upon a time, this wasnāt a problem (for white men) in this country. If you had pretty terrific stuff upstairs, and drive, it didnāt matter if you didnāt know where to point it. Once you got to college, someone would collar you and shove you through a door, Average State U to ESD job. Elizabeth Warren saw those fellows streaming through and grabbed the door and went in that way before anyone could say āhey, a girl.ā I went in that way myself. Sure, I had a fancy school-sponsored internship that led to a Big 8 āso do you think youād be interestedā conversation, but I was a Congressional staffer because one undergraduate spring I just showed up uninvited, over and over, at the office, saying āput me to work, Iāll work for free,ā till they relented, and then maintained the relationship with the office manager. You canāt do that now, even if you can afford to work for free (and fewer kids can): they have formal programs and security. The reach of formal programs and other forms of gating is tremendous, because you can sell that exclusivity to rich and ambitious parents. Big business.
So itās about mobility, pipelines, whoās groomed for those ESD jobs, who has access to them, and what that winds up meaning ā for the kids, for the society. Obviously, not all students at either State U or Elite U are cut out for those jobs, or want them, whateverās in their essays. Thatās not at issue. But preferentially, that ESD-job Ouija pointerās moved well over to the Elite-U corner of the board. And thatās the problem Iām lighting up. āThe poors are happy anywayā is not an adequate response, though it sure has got history in this country.
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Incidentally, I donāt want to suggest that everyone at an Average State Flagship U is living in a motel or canāt read or canāt find a job on their own, etc. Itās certainly not the case. Iād say that in any group of students I work with, grad or undergrad, the majority are coming from getting-by families where the parents are employed and may or may not have gone to college. Maybe 20% will be from wealthy suburban families or have parents in professions. Now and then a student is homeless or has a crisis of similar magnitude. A few will already have had run-ins with the law; a few will have spent a year or more out of college. One or two will have kids. If undergrads, a handful will be immigrants or international students; if grads, more than a handful. Most will be there with parental approval, some with parental financial support, a few will have broken with their families in some sense to come to college. Itās not unusual to have one whoās transferred after running out of money or having a breakdown at a school with a much higher ranking. Depending on the class, a few might be athletes; about half of those are real students, and the others are being shepherded through. This is, as I say, the top end of average.
Many read, many seek self-improvement in various ways. Early marriage is common; so is refusal to date because the assumption is that their future lies somewhere else. What they lack is focus, because in general they havenāt seen the world they assume their educationās taking them to, so they donāt know what to want or where to look for it. The school itself is not introducing them to that future, or not doing it well ā you get stabs at networking events here and there, and for-credit internships, but itās not a pipeline situation. So the thinking is very short-term ā pay this bill, organize the credits, figure out how to go home in the middle of midterms because mom insists, get a campus job that pays a dollar an hour more ā and the goal becomes the degree, and everything beyond that is a haze. In days when opportunity was more open to these students, and they came in generally better prepared, that lack of focus mattered, but not so much. Now, from my pov, itās dangerous, esp when theyāre coming out with debt.
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You lost me on the EA connection. Why are state U and elite U profile kids only going to meet in EA rather than RD? Are you assuming that Elite-U profile kids do not apply during RD, so RD only includes State-U profile kids? Iāve never heard of a college like this. For example, legacies are probably the ultimate āElite Uā profile group. In the Harvard lawsuit sample, the REA pool had a 5% higher legacy rate than the RD pool. That 5% is indeed significant, but there were also plenty of legacies in RD. The non legacies and legacies meet in both pools.
If you only mean non-restricted EA, then MITās class of 2024 had the following admit rates for EA vs RD ā 7.4% admit rate EA vs 7.2% admit rate RD. If none of the āElite Uā profile kids apply RD, then why does RD have a nearly an identical admit rate to EA?
Having completed 3 degrees at Stanford and taken classes at SUNY, RPI, U Wyoming, and UCSD; that was not my experience of how students find jobs at the respective colleges. I found my first job at a career fair. A variety of companies attended, I met some representatives at their booth, handed out some resumes, and received some call backs. The next stage was interviews. These interviews often took the full day and involved answering a long series of technical questions.
Almost all of the companies I interviewed with also attended similar career fairs at in-state publics, and interviewed students from those in-state publics in a similar way. Many of the interview events I attended had kids from a variety of schools and far more often than not, in-state public kids were more represented than āeliteā private kids, even at companies that seem to considered particularly desirable on this forum. When I eventually accepted a job and began working, I shared an office with in state public kids who were hired at the same time for a near identical position. I continue to work side-by-side with in-state-public kids today, as well as quite a few who did their undergrad outside of the US. I even work with one guy who did his undergrad at University of Phoenix. In my field, few people care where you went to school after youāve been out a few years. Instead they care about your job performance, ability, skillset, how useful you are to the company, etc.
However, I donāt claim to have an āelite society defining job.ā Iām still not sure what this entails? I believe the main field in which āeliteā private U kids may have notable leg up is āeliteā consulting and banking. And a large portion of Ivy grads do have a first job in this field. I wouldnāt say itās exactly handed to them on platter. Itās competitive, involves extensive interviews, many/most Ivy applicants donāt make the cut, etc. I think this exclusivity is a significant portion of the appeal. However, attending an Ivy usually gives a strong advantage.
These types of jobs often arenāt exactly a cushy place where wealthy kids can relax and reap simple benefits of their āeliteā degree. There was a thread a few weeks ago about a survey in which junior analysts at Goldman Sachs reported an average of 98 hour weeks, with a median rating of 2 on a scale of 1-10 in job satisfaction and 1 in personal life satisfaction. Such jobs also donāt lead to what Iād consider āelite society definingā careers for the vast majority pursuing this path. This contributes to the salary stats I posted earlier, such as Colorado Mines kids reporting higher median salary than Harvard grads at age 34, and the other listed publics not being that far behind in portion of graduating lower SES kids who become wealthy adults.
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A menu? Good golly.
Itās hard to be helpful here since the goal posts keep moving. Itās not enough for a state U to try and educate the college-ready/qualified in its state, now they have to be prepared with a plethora of programs NOT just for a satisfying job leading to a career, but to anticipate EVERY type of outcome- the menu that points to Peace Corps, Med school, developing food/hunger policies at the UN, running for governor, running major corporations, concert-master at the Cleveland symphony, choreographer for the NYC ballet, etc.
First- this does not accurately describe what happens at elite Uās. Plenty of grads of these schools end up as third grade language arts teachers (a fine outcome btw) despite the perception that everyone that goes to Yale ends up on the Supreme Court some day.
Second- the OPās commentary is starting to pathologize the poor which strikes me as not helpful in trying to come up with fixes- or at least identifying what the problems are.
Third- what exactly is that menu and how the heck do I order from it???
We arenāt France where two or three elite institutions essentially run the country, run corporations, run the significant non-political institutions that matter. I get that the OP is discounting the impact that energy, drive, ambition and focus all have on outcomes- but if the OPās D isnāt interested in a college experience with that level of intensity (OP, please prove me wrong but you consistently push back on this) how does being handed a menu (even if one existed) help?
Re: drug addiction- the links between poverty and addiction have a storied academic history. Go cherry pick whatever statistics you like. Or just read JD Vance. But in most parts of the country- even in the hollowed out regions where jobs are scarce and opportunity is limited- it is still the case that the majority of adults are NOT addicts. Yes, the percentages are scary. But there are still moms and dads who go to work, take care of their kids, manage to put gas in the car, show up for parent-teacher conferences. The notion that the only on-ramp for THOSE kids is a sub-par public U experience if they are lucky enough to get there because heck- grandma is an addict, what do you expect?
Nah, not buying it. Even in a third rate public school kids see teachers, administrators who function as role models of sorts. No, not a pipeline. But for sure exposure to the lives you claim these kids canāt imitate because they donāt know about them.
Iād be happy to provide MY menu on how a non-elite college grad can- in fact- maximize their opportunities at college so they can have the best possible transition afterwards. I do it as a volunteer and the work is gratifying. But whether you are graduating from Columbia or CUNY, NOBODY can push you through that door. Youāve got to walk through it. There is no substitute for getting your hands dirty. A kid from a disadvantaged family doesnāt realize that the job helping a professor edit a book is a better resume builder than going back to the HS job serving fries? They only need to be told that once. And when they realize that āprestigious jobā pays $9/hour and fast food job pays $10/hour and that dollar is a meaningful loss- you only need to tell them once āGo tell the professor that if he can snag you $10/hour youāll take the job and knock the cover off the ballā. Kid didnāt know that research grants are not managed the same way as fast food jobs with thousands of employees in a region, all earning the same salary. Thatās ok. Tell them once. They donāt need their hand-held after that.
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My son saw the Frontline piece during health class and they were assigned a reflection piece about it. It really troubled him and we had lengthy discussions about it.
Agreed, OP has a very inaccurate view of what happens at and who attends elite universities.
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Regarding āpublic ivyā, that often has a lot to do with state size and geography. In states with highly concentrated populations (e.g. Arizona and Hawaii), the state flagship(s) can also function as the local broad-access commuter universities. Hence, a state may choose to make them large enough to fulfill both roles, and have them not be too selective. Since āpublic ivyā status is related to admission selectivity, that knocks such state flagships out of āpublic ivyā status.
A state with a larger number of smaller state universities may make more of a distinction between the flagship and other state universities, and students may do so as well, leading to a definite student preference order and increased admission selectivity at the flagship. If the state population is relatively large compared to the size of the state flagship (for example, California), then admission selectivity will be relatively high, increasing the likelihood of being seen as a āpublic ivyā.
Of course, state policy decisions do matter. For example, the overall quality of K-12 education in the state matters. So does in-state financial aid policy at the state universities, in terms of whether students from lower income families are financially able to attend them, including the flagship.
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@blossom, Iāve actually addressed what youāre saying here. I canāt help you if youāre going to insist on sailing past what Iām saying on a parallel track. Nobodyās saying that Elite U is magical for everyone who shows up, or that everyone who comes out of there is off to the Supreme Court. And nobodyās saying that State U is an unrelieved landscape of rotting Communist Polish concrete. Beyond that all I can do is refer you to how Iāve broken that down above. Iād suggest slowing down, being less prickly about a suggestion that someone else knows something youāre maybe not acquainted with, and considering the odds part of the conversation.
o/o
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āIf the local U were as good as it was 18 years ago, and if it had maintained a similar price given inflation, I doubt weād have put ourselves through all this. Years ago it was a bargain with excellent opportunities; after decades of state cuts itās definitely not. But since Iām a single mom with below-median HHI and her grades are good, sheās been offered enough aid to make it a decent deal. (Thereās no employee discount.) Since most of the aid is need-based, she wonāt have to panic about her grades in order to keep the scholarship, and will have freedom to roam around trying things, also enough money for a summer internship somewhere and a study-abroad summer, and unless things really go sideways sheāll come out without debt. Thereās an honors program and sheās in it, but itās pretty low-stress, too. Also, since sheās not interested in STEM, doesnāt want to be an academic, and almost certainly wonāt have $150K+ for grad school, thereās no reason for her to panic about grad school admissions. Sheāll probably be going BA ā work, and if she does go back for more school, the reason will probably be clearly vocational and possibly employer-funded.ā
Doesnāt look like thereās much consensus here, but from the original post, it seems like your daughter will have a good state U college education, no/little debt, no stress about grades, and study abroad opportunities. In most CC forums this is called a good outcome. So many issues have been raised in the discussions but there are no clear answers. Iāve been walking this planet for a few years and what has remained constant in D or R administrations is that teachers are never paid enough, schools are never funded enough, students are hungry, parents are unemployed/unmarried and incapable of helping their own kids. In the big picture, university pipelines to elite jobs are probs not the highest priority.
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True, most people are not chasing the elite jobs. However, there is a common perception that todayās young adults need more education to reach the same level of job and earnings that their parentsā generation had, and the needed education is also much more expensive to the student. Some in the parentsā generation may have āworked their way through collegeā (i.e. earned enough from a high school graduate job to live on their own while paying for tuition and books at a nearby in-state public university), a much steeper task to do these days without parental subsidy (including continuing to live with parents).
All true, and I agree. I wonder though, if college (or CC) was free to all, what, if anything (other than student debt) would change. Would the free college experience move the needle, would we enter a new golden age, or would the debate just turn to - āitās free but the education is not that good compared to the elites who, after all, own all the employment pipelinesā.