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<p>That is an interesting way to present it with the inclusion of … “fewer than.” Why would there be any expectations that the distribution of public versus private should follow the national distribution, if it is widely accepted that the racial and SES distributions are VERY far from it. </p>
<p>The fact remains that the majority of students at Harvard graduated from a public high school.</p>
<p>I haven’t read this thread at all so forgive me.</p>
<p>As someone who attended a public high school and later went to an Ivy (I was also a first-gen with top stats):</p>
<p>I place a lot of the burden in this context on the high school guidance counselors in public schools. Much of the time, they’re ignorant of the various nuances of the college application process (especially for selective schools) and don’t really know much else other than the local colleges that most of the kids will be attending. Their advice, for all intents and purposes, is going to be wrong, nonexistent, or incomplete at best – and so it can be hard to recognize that they cannot guide you unless you want to just settle for what everyone else is doing.</p>
<p>So public school students who want to shoot for the best, on top of needing to be stellar performers, also need to be extremely proactive at learning the entire process on their own: What top schools are out there, what programs they offer, how much they cost, how to apply to them, what tests/classes you need to take, what forms to fill out, etc – and it can get very complicated very quickly. All of this is even harder if your parents can’t offer guidance, either, or if you don’t know too many people who have gone through the process themselves. No reps from top schools are going to be trying to sell their uni to you when you attend Random High School. Back in the day, this site (CC) was pretty much my sole source of information.</p>
<p>Furthermore, unless you’re from a dirt-poor background where need-based aid would cover nearly 100% of your costs, top schools are going to be expensive for the middle class. Financial aid isn’t perfect and so in many cases, you’re going to be faced with large loans and you’ll likely need to work while attending school. It becomes an exponentially-difficult process to learn about, attend, and do well at a top school, even if you’re a great student from a disadvantaged background. The guidance simply isn’t there.</p>
<p>^Yes!!!</p>
<p>I tried to make this point. Anyone at an elite private school is going to have the guidance available for top school selection.</p>
<p>In public school, parents are the primary guidance counselor a to their kids. This gives college educated, middle class families an edge over poor families where parents are either non-existent or uneducated, unwilling or unable to guide kids through the labyrinthine application process.</p>
<p>Good guidance for elite school admissions begins in 7th grade. Most public school kids don’t start getting guidance until 11th grade if they aggressively seek it out.</p>
<p>^This. I was an extremely proactive student - I was lower-middle-class, but first-generation. I didn’t even realize that you had to apply to and be admitted to college until my junior year of HS. I could probably name two colleges off the top of my head when I was 16. I thought you just went if you had the money to pay full sticker price. The idea of actually going was not on my radar at all until I was convinced to apply in the second semester of my junior year by an English teacher I liked a lot. I had top test scores and good grades, and I was a National Achievement Scholar.</p>
<p>I knew about the full merit scholarships available to students of my standing but nothing about need-based aid. I knew that the Ivies didn’t offer merit scholarships, so I didn’t even bother applying, thinking that my family would never be able to afford the sticker price. I did end up going to a great LAC on a full merit scholarship, but looking back, given my family’s income I probably would’ve qualified for a small Pell if I had filled out my FAFSA correctly, and could’ve applied for Gates Millennium.</p>
<p>If you’re from a low-income school at which college isn’t even on your radar, just having an Internet-capable phone doesn’t make you magically able to know everything about college. If you don’t even start thinking about college until junior year because a teacher sees promise in you, you’re already years behind your affluent peers who have been coached since birth that they are going to go college. How do you know how to search for need-based aid if you don’t even know it exists? What would you search for? How would even start? Unless you explicitly request it on the SAT, colleges don’t send you mail, and even then - I was a high-scoring student and I never got mail from Grinnell, Kenyon, Reed, or Oberlin. How do you even know about that stuff? It’s not within your realm of possibility.</p>
<p>While colleges should aim to fix this problem and get the message out to qualified socioeconomically deprived students, the truth of the matter is that most colleges and universities do not have the resources to give out financial aid to everyone who deserves it. I know 2 students who received early writes to top 5 small LACs who will probably have to turn them down for a UC. Either they did not get or do not expect to get sufficient financial aid.</p>
<p>The best solution is a societal one. All top students, regardless of ability to pay, should have access to a place like Berkeley was in its hey day before all the budget cuts. If that were the case, would it matter that not all qualified students could afford Amherst?</p>
<p>There’s also a stigma of being poor (and black) and attending a top college. People automatically assume the rules were broken for you. Kids and parents are tired of being dismissed as affirmative action and nothing more.</p>
<p>GA2012Mom: Boston to Atlanta is cheap. The point was that kids from smaller cities and rural areas aren’t applying to big-name schools (including schools like Bowdoin in Maine). So why not try Portland, Maine, to Lander, Wyoming, as a more relevant travel issue for poor kids from small cities or rural areas?</p>
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Included in ‘households’ in America are 18-year-olds who work at college and whose parents don’t claim them as dependents, as well as newly minted graduates in entry-level jobs, unmarried people, the elderly, etc. </p>
<p>According to 2011 US Census data, the median weekly income for men who work full time is $854 per week, and for women who work full-time, $691 per week. Ergo, a married couple who both work full-time (not an unreasonable assumption if the kids are old enough to look at colleges) would earn, if both making a median income, $1,545 per week, or approximately $80,000 per year. </p>
<p>Of course, incomes change over time; hopefully, the 50-year-old man makes more than he did at age 25. So I’m not necessarily sure that a couple who is, say, fifty years old and pulls down $135k between the two of them is <em>not</em> middle-class, given that well over 10% of American households will earn that salary at some point in their careers.</p>
<p>/statistics nerdery</p>
<p>Median income of households headed by someone of age 45-54 (the peak income years, and the most likely age to have a high school senior or college age student) is about $70,000.</p>
<p>Great post juillet at #64. People don’t know what they don’t know. And that is why kids with parents having degrees from elite colleges really are born on third base. (Yes my son too, even though my heart bleeds for him as he sits at the dining room table 4-6 hours a night plowing through an absolute mountain of homework.)</p>
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<p>This is crap because it’s all a bunch of worthless data that says nothing. The peak earning years are also peak lay off years, peak career changing years and peak bills years. It’s a time of mortgages, big phone and electric bills, car payments and massive taxes. Kids want iPhones and Internet and video games and never ask what their parents can afford as well as cars, clothes and date money.</p>
<p>Stats say nothing from a public policy or financial aid standpoint. You can’t reduce a person’s personal situation down to a stat. I’ve never had a statistician come to my house to check out my situation or anyone else’s situation in my entire life so I don’t buy these arguments that ignore truth and reality to engage in purely academic discussions as if they have any meaning to real people.</p>
<p>Xiggi: I only know what happened around here the year my kids were applying. Like SteveMa said, the visits from the Ivies were either at a hotel ballroom 30 miles away or at the very expensive private schools. The Harvard-Westlakes, Marlborough, Viewpoints, etc. They did not come to our public high school even though its the best in the district.</p>
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<p>Actually much of the criticism leveled against Murray on his earlier IQ work has been found to be highly biased, and subsequently largely discredited. One particularly harsh critic, Stephen Jay Gould, has been found at a minimum to have significantly misrepresented much of his data, perhaps rising to the level of fraud.</p>
<p>My three sons had the benefit of a superb private school education, and excellent college counseling. I would not send them to our local public high school, which is supremely “unacademic” and underachieving. However, what I have done is spend this school year volunteering in that same local high school, specifically doing college counseling for the current senior class. (I picked up lots of knowledge from CC (check my “start date” ;)) and also got a certification in College Counseling from UCLA. There are 3 guidance counselors in the high school with a total senior class size of about 130 students. Seems like a really low ratio, but the counselors’ time is taken up with so many things not related to college counseling.</p>
<p>I have encountered a wide range of students, some who have applied to very competitive colleges and universities, and most of whom have applied to large state universities as well as colleges that no one on CC will have heard of. These latter students have heard about these schools “in the community.” There is so much misinformation and lack of information in the community that it is simply staggering. When I hear misstatements, I try to correct them. Unfortunately, starting this “mission” in late September and taking a good deal of the fall to meet and learn about the kids who wanted my help, it was too late to introduce them to new schools. I don’t think that there was one student who applied to Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Wellesley, Bowdoin, or any other LAC. There may be only one student who would be (almost) able to meet full EFC. They just don’t know that so many of these top LAC’s and universities would be thrilled to have these URM’s on campus and would provide FA packages which would make the cost of attendance less than our state university system.</p>
<p>I hope to start working with the junior class following spring break in an attempt to break down some of the walls and open their minds to new possibilities.</p>
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<p>Seems unlikely that a HS like that with 130 graduating students should have many if any students per year qualified to cope academically at a top college.</p>
<p>I would like to see the data with specific test scores and grades. I grew up in such schools, and I can tell you that though there might have been a kid or two in my huge graduating class that was selective college material and overlooked, those kids were overlooked a long time before they got into high school. I knew the few of us who were in the honors track and I knew who made National merit cuts, etc. That was a huge sampling too, as my high school class had about 600 kids, most of them from mid and low/mid incomes. Most of the kids maried , went military or found full time work after college. Of the 30% who did go directly into some college program, half went part time. Not many of us even went away to college, and fewer anywhere than our state publics of those who did.</p>
<p>My husband came from an economically disadvantaged area, so defined and given special admissions privilege for a number of programs. Probably a reason why he got into the college he did. He knew all the kids in his area too, and those who bothered to even take the SATs got devastatingly low scores. His scores were not so hot either, he found out when he got to college and he was embarrassed and shocked to find he was in the low end of that scale. But it’s not as though there were those higher up than he was at his school or in any of the schools in that backwater part of the country. </p>
<p>My brother graduated from a school where he was the only one to get into a top 25 private. No hidden gems there either. So I don’t know where all of these kids are that are scoring so high and doing so well and yet not applying to the top schools. Are they NMFs or commended students? Many of them give it a go for the top schools and find hat they are unaffordable to them and/or they can’t get accepted. </p>
<p>I am not saying these kids are not there. I’d be interested in hearing from those who are seeing scads of these kids. Heck, even at some of the private schools and school districts where the kids are test prepped and set up for these schools, there are not all that many with the type of SAT/ACT scores that are going to get them into those schools that are need blind and guarantee to meet full need. I find it hard to believe that there are very many of them in areas that are not as proactive. </p>
<p>I think the kids are out there but they are long lost before high school, and many don’t even take the SATs or ACTs, and when they do, they are already so far behind that they don’t have a prayer of doing well. I know a woman who was as smart as whip-- I was a top student all the way through k-12 and she was able as I was,but she was from a family of 7 kids, neither parents had gone to college, and, dad was an NCO. By the time she hit the high school years, her interest was on guys, popularity, being cool and her grades, courses were sunk. I have no doubt that IQ wise she was as way up there, but in terms of not being Ivy track, that ship done sailed in middle school. Probably a number of kids in that situation, too. But truly, but the time they were in high school, if they were taking the college bound honors classes and even thinking of going to college, I knew who they were and no one missed the ivy train in my class with grades and test scores due to poverty. Nor Dh’s school, nor my brother’s . All of them lower and middle income environments.</p>
<p>*DH was third in his graduating class as was I. #1 went to UVA and dropped out to marry after freshman year. #2 married directly out of high school, an older man and went to community college. Both females came from well to do families, by the way. In my class #1 went to a state teacher’s college and was an officer’s daughter. #2 went to a secretarial school. Neither took honors courses, but both were officers’ daughters. They were hardly low income.</p>
<p>Why would they want more “poorer strivers”? They’ve got more than they can handle (or want to handle) already!</p>
<p>Most of the so-called top colleges are irrelevant to the educational life of the nation in any case. They could disappear from the face of earth tomorrow, and it would hardly make any difference. (Full disclosure: I went to two of them.) Providing opportunities (including great honors colleges) at state universities, and making sure they are affordable to many, is much more important.</p>
<p>I thought the same thing when I first saw that mini. I think they mean poor students.</p>
<p>And why would they want more poor students? Berea already has way more than it can handle.</p>
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<p>Pure red herring. </p>
<p>Financial aid per capita is utterly meaningless when you’re starting from a sticker price that might be $30K per year higher at the private school. And the most affluent privates give a lot of FA to families with incomes in the $100K to $200K range. They might give generous FA packages to a few lower SES students, but if those students represent a small fraction of the total student body, it’s little more than window-dressing.</p>
<p>The proof is in the pudding, and the “pudding” in this case is Pell grant recipients. All colleges will steer their Pell-eligible students toward Pell grants; it’s free money as far as the college is concerned. Some publics and a few privates do a stellar job of attracting and educating Pell grant recipients. Some other schools, mostly private but also some public, do a poor job of recruiting and attracting Pell grant recipients. Here are some comparative statistics from the 2012 Washington Monthly rankings:</p>
<p>High percentage of Pell grant recipients + high overall graduation rate:</p>
<p>UCSD 44% Pell grant recipients / 86% grad rate
UC Davis 38% Pell / 82% grad
U Florida 28% Pell / 84% grad
UC Berkeley 26% Pell / 91% grad
UC Irvine 26% Pell / 83% grad
Syracuse 26% Pell / 82% grad
U Texas 25% Pell / 80% grad
Emory 21% Pell / 89% grad
U Rochester 21% Oell / 84% grad
Texas A&M 21% Pell / 80% grad
Case Western 20% Pell / 82% grad
Fordham 20% Pell / 80% grad
MIT 19% Pell / 93% grad
Brandeis 19% Pell / 91% grad
Chicago 18% Pell / 93% grad
UNC Chapel Hill 18% Pell / 88% grad</p>
<p>**
Low percentage of Pell grant recipients + high grad rate:**</p>
<p>Caltech 6% Pell /90% grad
WUSTL 7% Pell / 94% grad
Johns Hopkins 9% Pell / 90% grad
William & Mary 9% Pell / 90% grad
Tufts 10% Pell / 91% grad
Princeton 10% Pell / 96% grad
UVA 11% Pell / 93% grad
George Washington 12% Pell / 81% grad
Boston College 12% Pell, 91% grad
Vanderbilt 12% Pell / 91% grad
Georgetown 12% Pell / 93% grad
Northwestern 12% Pell / 94% grad
Notre Dame 12% Pell / 96% grad
Yale12% Pell / 96% grad
RPI 13% Pell / 82% grad
Brown 13% Pell / 96% grad</p>
<p>I find it just stunning that UCSD, a perennial top 50 research university, could have Pell grant recipients represented in its student body at roughly six times the percentage at WUSTL. And keep in mind, UCSD’s student body is much bigger, roughly three times the size of WUSTL’s, which means UCSD is in fact educating about 20 times as many Pell grant recipients as WUSTL, with a graduation rate that is pretty comparable.</p>
<p>To me this just speaks volumes about how much (or how little) a school like WUSTL cares about attracting and educating talented lower-SES students.</p>
<p>Well, we hear all the time how these colleges are “building a class” and “crafting their admissions policy”.</p>
<p>So just as they don’t want to be full of 2400 SAT Asians, they don’t want to be full of poor strivers.</p>