<p>I go to a competitive high school where you need to have high grades to be accepted. Some of my friends know about my dream to go to Harvard or Princeton or Stanford one day. However, one of my friends claims that just because I come from a comfortable middle class family, my chances of going to these colleges are greatly decreased. She says that students that come from poor families with great grades and tough course loads (but not necessarily a minority), are more impressive to these colleges than, say, someone like me who also has great grades with a tough course load but is more privileged. One of my own friends is a great example of someone who is poor but very hard working, but I dont see how being poorer than me gives her a better chance of getting accepted, because in reality my school gives equal opportunity to students regardless of their ability to pay . Can someone clear this up for me? Whats the truth? I do know that she has a better chance of getting scholarships but what about getting accepted into these colleges?</p>
<p>broad brush generalities – are meaningless in a school that admits under 7%. Who is going to be admitted? Those who stand out among 30000 applicants. </p>
<p>Is it a lower middle class kid who is a killer academic? Or the wealthy professor’s daughter who writes beautiful poetry? Who is to know.</p>
<p>Ignore the chatter and do the best you can about yourself. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>^This.</p>
<p>Plus there is nowhere near any evidence to back up a statement like “just because I come from a comfortable middle class family, my chances of going to these colleges are greatly decreased.”</p>
<p>Here’s a decent commentary (in the Crimson, shockingly) on the socioeconomic situation at Harvard: [Diversitas</a>? Take a Closer Look | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/diversity-lack-figures-evidence-harvard/]Diversitas”>Diversitas? Take a Closer Look | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>Notably:</p>
<p>“If we do assume that almost all students from families making less than $200,000 annually applied for financial aid…approximately 45.6 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200,000, placing them in the top 3.8 percent of American households. Even more shockingly, only about 4 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes and a mere 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles of U.S. incomes.”</p>
<p>Elite university admission officers tend to be holistic. When they review an application, they take your background into consideration. E.g. If a student that comes from a poor family and attends a school with a avg 18 ACT score has amazing stats, he will stick out more than someone with same stats but better opportunities. As for $, I’m not sure how that works out…</p>
<p>@DwightEisenhower</p>
<p>Yikes I find that kind of disturbing. I feel like this should be a really big deal. Like what the heck? ahh</p>
<p>These guys are all correct, but I think that your friend may have been repeating the “hook” talk. As a white middle class girl, or an Asian anything, you are competing against an enormous pool of applicants like you.</p>
<p>That makes it a bit harder to distinguish yourself from the pack. It all comes down to numbers. How many kids like you from your geographic area with similar stats apply? What makes you unique?</p>
<p>A middle class kid from North Dakota with the same grades as you might have a geographic advantage. A middle class kid like you could be a legacy, or an athlete.</p>
<p>Make sure that you highlight what makes you unique. And, in this economy, kids who can pay are very, very attractive, at least at many schools.</p>
<p>blankk wrote: Yikes I find that kind of disturbing. I feel like this should be a really big deal. Like what the heck? ahh"</p>
<p>Reality *is * disturbing.</p>
<p>My alma mater school district,one of the largest urban school districts of our esteemed country – has the lowest HS grad rate of all large school districts. It purports to graduate 23% of 9th graders in four years. Among these, approx 10% go onto any 2 or 4 year college. Among these, about half attain a bachelors in 4-5 years. Therefore, roughly one in one hundred 9th graders becomes a college grad in 8 or 9 years. What’s it like in your community?</p>
<p>That’s what poverty does, blankk. Is it any wonder why a school like H or Y would have such a small % of kids from the lower economic deciles? And they have mega $ to recruit and attract kids with their names. And yet only a miniscule number actually can ever get out and attend schools like HYPMS.</p>
<p>That’s reality — CC is not reality.</p>
<p>Since Harvard is need blind, the financial aid office is separate from the admissions office. The people reviewing applications have no idea what your financial background is unless you tell them in an essay or LOR or something. ‘Being poor’ is not a hook. Actual hooks that the admissions people do know, like URM and first generation college student, can be associated with modest financial backgrounds but are not the same thing.</p>
<p>“The people reviewing applications have no idea what your financial background is unless you tell them in an essay or LOR or something.”</p>
<p>enilor: That’s not correct. H and other holistic evaluation colleges do look carefully at the environs of the student. To say blanketly that the readers do not (or don’t want to) know the financial circumstances of the applicant is not what occurs. </p>
<p>They definitely would want to know the context of the 30ACT kid from a Camden NJ HS with 95% free/reduced lunch, raised by his grandmother versus the 32ACT kid from Shaker Hts whose mom drives her back and forth from lacrosse practice and dance.</p>
<p>Info like % of free/reduced lunch and HS grad rates and college attendance rates are included in every school report. In a 2 second glance, an admissions officer knows the financial climate (and relative amount of resources) of any US high school.</p>
<p>That is true, and the correlation between that type of hook and economics can be misleading. There is a big difference, though, between the typical middle-class, suburban application, and one that indicates other factors.</p>
<p>For example, I taught at a nationally-ranked (top 10) high school. We had an admissions process similar to the OP, and an acceptance rate that puts HYP to shame.</p>
<p>Over time, the school started looking very, very white. Sure, there were plenty of Asian kids, and a decent number of Indian kids, but in a city that was over 40% AA, our stats for other minorities did not match the stats for the community.</p>
<p>Many kids from LSE neighborhoods struggled, not because they were not academically able, but because they met resistance at home or with neighborhood peers.</p>
<p>Consequently, the GC recs typically referenced SES in a roundabout way, and other honors and awards also made that evident.</p>
<p>Is it unfair? In my opinion, no. Even though the OP rather naively states that, in school, all of the opportunities are equal, they are not.</p>
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<p>Of the high school but not necessarily of the student. Sure, most of the time they’re correlated, but it’s not a perfect science insofar as the US isn’t always neatly divided into rich areas and poor areas, especially outside of the big cities. </p>
<p>Though to be fair, one could argue that maybe the quality of the school is more determinative of socioeconomic (dis)advantage vis-a-vis college admissions than the income of the parents. I’d certainly say that was true in my case, coming from a very low income family but being the beneficiary of great Massachusetts schools.</p>
<p>The idea that the bottom fifth is not represented at Harvard (because only 4 percent of students belong to this bracket) is misleading. So is the ides for the 17.8 percent below the 60th percentile. Why? Because we don’t know what proportion of applicants were from the bottom 20 or 60 percent. If 4 percent or 5 percent of applicants were in the bottom quintile, then they are represented quite fairly in terms of the class that emerges. Same for those below the 60th percentile. Until further info is really known, any conclusions would be invalid and misleading.</p>
<p>To add, I do doubt a significant proportion of the applicants to Harvard are even in the bottom quintile (I personally am myself). And it probably is likely because of the conditions most people in that bracket go through that would make it 1) unlikely they would apply and 2) many are likely unable to be deemed competitive because they have lacked opportunities that students at higher brackets have had.</p>
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<p>No it’s not; it’s factual.</p>
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<p>That’s the point. I don’t think anyone is claiming that Harvard systematically seeks out students from the top four quintiles. Rather, the allegation is that either wealthy students are naturally smarter or Harvard is not doing a good enough job of taking economic advantage/disadvantage into account.</p>
<p>4 percent of Harvard students are in the bottom quintile, that is factual. But to say that Harvard necessarily doesn’t take economic disadvantage into account is not factual because we don’t know the percent of applicants in the bottom quintile. Naturally, wealthier applicants could be “smarter” or have greater developed critical thinking skills because they could afford the opportunity to do so. As far as Harvard not doing a good enough job on incorporating socioeconomic status as a factor, that is yet to be determined without further information.</p>
<p>^agreed. Wealthier applicants also have another advantage- our parents can afford paying for our pricey extracurriculars from an early age (competitive gymnastics costs in the thousands per year!), and as someone previously mentioned, they have time and the money to be able to drive their kids around all day from one activity to the next. After all, HYPS is looking for students who have depth and exemplary accomplishments in one or even multiple fields (thus making them “stand out” from the other applicants). I can see how meeting this expectation can be hard for a low income student- piano lessons since age 6 aren’t cheap, to say the least. The question is, however, does HYPS admissions office know this? Does one’s socioeconomic status really give one a significant advantage/disadvantage, when it comes to admission? I’ve heard it go both ways: “you’re not going to Harvard unless your parents donate a building or are filthy rich” or “you’re not going to Harvard unless you have a heart breaking story about being raised in a low class family in a largely crime-ridden city in America, but somehow managing to finish off high school with a 4.0 gpa and a 2300 sat score”
They’re polar opposites, but somehow both stories stand out to me… hm…</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don’t have a 2300 sat (32 act), but I do get your point. Maybe it’s convenient/wishful thinking, but I like to think Harvard likes to give a good eye to both cases.</p>
<p>What about kids who attend high ranking, competitive public schools and are still very poor? Below the poverty level even.</p>
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<p>It is true that we don’t know if 4% of Harvard students are in the bottom quintile because 4% of applicants are in the bottom quintile. But, as you said, there is another possible explanation:</p>
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<p>It is this, if true, that constitutes a failure on Harvard’s part. A holistic approach with respect to socioeconomic status would discount the effects of these extra opportunities brought about by a wealthy background. Yes, it’s a tad idealistic, and it requires a definition of “merit” that isn’t rigidly tied to score cutoffs. </p>
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<p>I am not sure if one can purchase greater critical thinking skills. Perhaps at the extremes of poverty, if we’re talking about students attending school rarely or not at all, at which point we’re no longer discussing feasible admission to schools like Harvard. But if we are talking about students who graduate high school, eighteen years of education, no matter how shoddy, is ample time to develop critical thinking skills.</p>
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<p>It is more difficult for them to present their financial situation in their application. However, it can be said that receiving a high-caliber high school education puts these poor students in a much better position than their equally poor peers elsewhere in the country, and so perhaps they shouldn’t benefit quite as much from any socioeconomic admissions advantages that may or may not exist.</p>
<p>I can attest to this position a bit. My family made less than $30,000 a year, which puts us in the bottom or second-from-the-bottom quintile, depending on the year. Yet I grew up in northern Massachusetts and benefited from the excellent public elementary school systems in the area and attended an excellent Catholic high school on full financial aid. It would be farcical to say I was at the same position as someone in my income bracket somewhere else in the country, at the risk of sounding like a Massachusetts snob.</p>