<p>Earlier Slate article based on the same source:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1472094-opportunity-inequalities-admissions.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1472094-opportunity-inequalities-admissions.html</a></p>
<p>The activity on CC is very far removed from the subject groups referred to in the 2 articles. Parents of high achieving but low income families are practically absent from this site-- especially non-college educated ones. Occasionally, a student might come aboard but again, it’s the rarity.</p>
<p>The CC community acts well to share and advise among its users – but has no method to attract communities and sub-groups who traditionally who do not consider the ‘elite’ colleges.</p>
<p>Having recruited in one of the nation’s poorest performing large school districts for +20 years, I find nothing surprising/new in the articles. In this district, 9th graders are graduating at a 22% rate in four years. Roughly 1 in 100 9th graders will have a Bachelors in 8 or 9 years. The local city colleges – perhaps the nearby public colleges – are mostly the upper echelon of what to attain. Ivies and LACs are for “rich white folks” and many counselors/principals feel the same. Plus, if helping their students avoid gunfire and gangs is the prime operating concern, I don’t chide them for not knowing that SAT II app deadline is approaching. What do you do? You try a few students at a time. And then you try again.</p>
<p>@marymac - the article at the start of this thread is a news article. The piece you are referencing is an editorial and therefore pushing a point of view. And even it speaks to the weakness of the evidence supporting it.</p>
<p>In moderating the Hispanic Students forum, I’ve occasionally seen members stumble upon CC via internet searches as there is relatively little information available for these students. I can only hope that we also reach additional people who lurk but never register/participate.</p>
<p>Moderator’s note: I have merged two threads but left the original posts from each thread alone. So if you find something might look like a duplicate, it is my fault for leaving original content in place.</p>
<p>T26E4, that’s exactly what I meant. CC activity parallels the problem as detailed in the article. From what I have seen, we have a lot of people of knowledge of the elite college world helping out and commenting to others from the same world (or with knowledge of the same world).</p>
<p>bclintock, LOVED your post. I mildly resonated to the critique about shortchanging kids with parents of means and/or elite college backgrounds, because I have my own kids who, though not coming from real wealth, have come from privilege and certainly very involved and aware parents, and I know how even with those advantages how hard the road was for my kids (and how hard they had to work) to get into very good (“elite”) colleges. So I would put this aspect of the argument another way. Given how hard it is for even advantaged kids to get where we want them to go, how much more difficult must the task/challenge be for these kids without the same advantages? Very, very hard indeed.</p>
<p>^knowledge is power. People with knowledge speaking to people who want it is wonderful.</p>
<p>You can’t give knowledge to people who don’t want it. I am not of the group referenced above but I was in need of knowledge. I stumbled upon cc looking for a good summer activity for my D who is extremely bright and gifted. And the funny thing is that I was specifically searching for free or low cost opportunities for gifted kids and found a great list another person put up.</p>
<p>I think that much of what a low income parent or student needs is somewhere in here, it’s just a matter of wanting it enough to look hard for it. That was a few years ago and I’ve been able to guide my D through the college admissions process into an Ivy. I think I can give a little credit to cc for helpful information. My D did all the work.</p>
<p>I will post my comment in the other thread</p>
<p>To add to the thread I was a student like that. </p>
<p>It happens. I was one of them. Graduated h.s. w/ a 4.1 weighted gpa and 13 college credits… I stayed local. I remember the admissions counselor telling me “You realize you can apply to anywhere in the country?” Even got an endorsement letter from my local congressman to apply to West Point. I think I balled it up and threw it away. I ended up dropping out because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do in college and enlisted in the military. </p>
<p>It’s easier now because of the internet but 1st gen minority students are not aware of the potential opportunities. The problem is exacerbated if it is a one parent household or if one or both parents did not attend college themselves. </p>
<p>I am out of the military and going back to school full time. I got hold of my h.s. transcript and looking over it kinda makes me sad. I just didn’t have the guidance to pursue goals that I clearly had an intellectual capacity to achieve. Plus I had to work to take care of my family at home.</p>
<p>I just don’t get it. Parents, especially poor uninformed ones, usually underestimate how hard it is to “get a full ride to Harvard”. I really doubt it’s just a matter of lack of information.</p>
<p>Regarding the participation of lower SES on CC, I think it is not as rare as some have expressed above. Check the numbers of students reporting zero EFC, or check the forums that discuss Questbridge and other financial aid. </p>
<p>This said, the issue of poor access to relevant information is real. But, if we accept that teenagers do not find the information or are overwhelmed by it, we should also question why the adults around them, and especially those mislabeled “counselors” remain oblivious to sites like this one. </p>
<p>All in all, it goes to the amazing disinterest displayed in our public schools. Are there any valid excuses for schools not to carve a tiny bit of their bloated and wasteful budgets to provide information that would be timely and relevant. </p>
<p>A good start would be to add a mandatory course on college admission in the national curriculum, and make sure the teachers and GCs in charge pass a minimum exam of knowledge and technical aptitude. For instance, GC who are not well versed in using a computer should be replaced.</p>
<p>Who is talking about a full ride to Harvard? How about the top 238 schools based on selectivity according to the original post. </p>
<p>The article is referring to applying to upper tier schools that are generous with financial aid that will make it worthwhile to attend. Prices of out of state private schools can match instate costs. This is what a lot of students and parents do not know. </p>
<p>This isn’t just about Harvard, Yale, Princeton…Brown or Amherst…neither Penn or Berkeley. It’s about students not even APPLYING to schools they have a chance at (in or out of state) when they have the stats and disadvantaged background that will allow them to do so. Schools with higher retention numbers, 4 year graduation rates, and far better employment outcomes.</p>
<p>lorelaigirl, this is a monumental insight.</p>
<p>How many colleges are talked about in guidebooks as needing to “increase diversity,” and almost always from the viewpoint of current students who want their school to have more diversity and to in general enhance impressions of the school from a marketing point of view. What you don’t see in the guidebooks are references to the colleges being good for these desired diverse persons.</p>
<p>^^^^^somehow I didn’t get your quote in there…</p>
<p>“I believe the top schools want a few kids from the lower classes for the benefit of the elite class at the school; so the elite can be “exposed” to diversity. I don’t think there’s any serious effort to let the lower class into the “club.””</p>
<p>It might be helpful to define top schools to validate the above comments. </p>
<p>What are the schools that do little more than lip service? Are such schools the CC darlings? The HYPS group? The rest of the Ivies? the Duke and Chicago group? Or the 50 schools listed on the first page of tge USNews? </p>
<p>Is the effort made by the top 20 schools better or worse than the following 100 or 200. Does the second group invest in superior financial aid or effective programs such as Questbridge? </p>
<p>Not so obvious for an answer! And perhaps surprising.</p>
<p>My daughter has zero efc and a college-grad mother. I am sure I’m not the only one.</p>
<p>Yes, many parents guide their kids to do the work, but they have some experience with college and know how to guide! For sure we have plenty of kids on CC who do their own research but there are plenty others who can’t.</p>
<p>Inner-city guidance counselors have a lot more than top-200 or top-238 to research and guide their students. And they have a lot more students. My daughter’s high school, an elite test-in school in NYC where almost everyone graduates in 4 years and goes to college, has 5500 students, 10 guidance counselors, and two college advisors. The college admissions process is very, very difficult for students whose parents can’t help them. And there are many parents who don’t speak English.</p>
<p>Actually, to bring up Charles Murray’s work is to inject a political angle that will abruptly bring this discussion to a quick and abrupt halt. Murray’s book, Coming Apart, is based on very weak research. One example was the way he used a Wesleyan Alumni Directory to make assertions about the results of the university’s efforts to diversify the student body over the past 40 years. Since I own the actual alumni directory he used, and since I knew most of the students in my class year, many of the addresses listed there were out of date and were in some cases their parents’ home addresses. Murray has a history of controversy and got in trouble earlier for his assertions, based on equally sketchy “research” about racial identity and IQ. Anyone who has bothered to study the literature about IQ tests knows that they are often invalid and unreliable because of their inherent cultural biases.</p>
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<p>I consider the statement I was responded to in post #15, </p>
<p>“Privilege begets privilege, and socioeconomic exclusion begets socioeconomic exclusion.”</p>
<p>to also be political. In general, if people are going to argue that the current admissions system is unjust and should be modified by socioeconomic preferences, people who oppose SES preferences have the right to respond.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that if you need a college which offers a full ride to a qualified student, I doubt that you will find 238 of them. From what I’ve seen and the lists I’ve seen here, the majority are highly selective schools, including ivies, some top tiers, and service academies. There are some with higher acceptance percentages, but they typically only offer the full ride scholarships to only a handful of applicants. When the acceptance rates for the extremely generous universities are in the single digits, there needs to be a Plan B. It’s hard to come up with a good one.</p>