<p>Not, it's not. But filling half of an entering class with well-informed and often wealthier students gives less chance to the less well-informed to catch up. </p>
<p>Harvard is not alone in claiming that low income students are at a disadvantage in early admissions. A lot of this disadvantage is informational. A lot of students and parents don't realize that the application process must begin before senior year.</p>
<p>I don't have very much sympathy for the uninformed low income student in the way he is portrayed in our posts. Surely if he is able to qualify for admissions to one of the top 50 universities, and if he gives a hoot about it, he will be able to read about the differences between these plans. I think it is fair to say that if you only know what your guidance counselor (or anyone else) "tells" you, then you don't belong at any of those schools. </p>
<p>I do think, though, that Marite's last post hits the nail a "glancing blow" on the head. Harvard's and others' early applications have probably become more affluent as the idea spreads that one can't afford to apply early if ones plan is to maximize financial aid AND ones choices.</p>
<p>While Harvard could manage this by simply deferring more applicants, that is not very satisfactory. They already field Lord-knows-how-many phone calls from deferees (almost all of whom wiil be rejectees) inquiring anxiously about what they can do to improve their outcome. And when you have an early application program, people expect you to use it and admit a decent number of them. If the EA plan becomes something that now basically divides your well-off applicant pool into two groups, then its logical to think of ways to stop that. </p>
<p>Harvard and others are already bending over backwards to find adequate low income applicants. This change won't make any difference. It will slightly improve the chances of the full pay kids who applied regular decision, and it will make Harvard's staff's life easier. It will make Yale's staff's life more difficult. If they stay EA, they are going to get more than a 10-12% increase in early applicants next year.</p>
<p>I was an uninformed scholarship student who was qualified for admission to Harvard's graduate school but only learned rather late in the fall that I needed to take the GRE. Thank goodness I wasn't late. I only began to think of grad school late in my junior year.</p>
<p>So I'm sticking up for uniformed but qualified low income students who, because they are low income, did not begin thinking that HYP might be within their reach until they had proof of their abilities--some time late in junior year.</p>
<p>
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This change won't make any difference.
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</p>
<p>My guess is that the change will substantially increase the number of applications to Harvard.</p>
<p>As it stands now, the Harvard Early Action deferrel massacre stories hit the halls of top high schools two weeks before the RD application deadline. This probably dampens some applications. After all, if Jennifer with 800 SATs across the board got deferred, what chance do I have.</p>
<p>By eliminating EA (and the EA massacre) Harvard is able to preserve false hope in the minds of applicants long enough for them to mail their applications.</p>
<p>It's an easy change because Harvard wasn't really getting anything of value from the EA program. Maybe they kept a few kids from applying ED to other good schools, but if a kid is going to apply to Harvard, the kid is going to apply to Harvard, whether it's in October or December.</p>
<p>If Harvard can force Princeton off the binding ED dime, then so much the better.</p>
<p>The beneficiaries will be the next tiers of schools -- the Dartmouths, Browns, Williams, Amhersts -- who will probably pick up slightly stronger ED applicant pools. But, the number of kids Harvard would loose in that fashion isn't enough to worry about.</p>
<p>In certain high schools and communities, applying early somewhere seems to have become THE thing to do. It is almost more the norm than not. It was common in the Robbin's book (The Overachievers) at Whitman High in Bethesda. I see it on CC all the time. I just read someone's post who can't decide whether to apply early to Brown or to Dartmouth and I'm thinking, why does she have to apply early anywhere? Likely she lives in a community or school where everyone is applying early somewhere. </p>
<p>There was no pressure here for my kids to apply early. Neither opted to do ED. One did EA to one of her favorite choices but had no clear single first choice so would not consider ED but did EA due to the increased rate of admissions in the early round at that school, though as it turned out the number of applicants applying EA to that particular school soared that year (and has continued to since then, which was fall of 2003) and the early admit rate went way lower than the previous year. The school was Yale. My other D's schools mostly did not have an ED option but one of her two top choices, NYU, did and she grappled with what to do but decided to do RD and weigh all options. While she did end up at NYU, I'm glad she did the full exploration and came full circle back to one of her first choices, rather than applied ED. I will qualify that with the fact that she was an early graduate and so had not completed visits to all of her schools by that time when one decides to apply early. While she considered applying early to NYU, she first made a visit to another favorite school and after that visit, decided to wait on the ED thing and just do RD and go from there. </p>
<p>The frenzy to have to apply early to a school is prevalent, it seems, in certain circles but it really is not in my community and so it is more of an individual choice. I think ED only works for someone who has thoroughly explored all schools with visits and so on with a very very clear cut first choice. Obviously it also doesn't work if needing to compare financial aid packages. One of D's friends applied ED to a school and got in but didn't get enough aid so had to back out and she shoudn't have applied early, in my view, if that was the case. </p>
<p>Dadx, I do agree that for someone of the caliber who might apply to schools the likes of Harvard, it does behoove them to investigate all things college admissions. However, I do recognize that the information, and the frenzy to apply early is vastly different from one school/community to another. I don't say that guidance offices are the sole responsibility to disseminate information and clearly they do not here and we did it all ourselves and clearly not all families, for whatever reason, seem to do that. We have to realize, however, that so many students are at a disadvantage of knowing about the college admissions process because they don't learn it from school, their parents are not knowledgeable or as involved as CC parents, etc. A lot of the kids who apply ED are the ones who live in communities where everyone is applying to an ED school, have started talking colleges at a young age, etc. Yes, more students and parents need to do this but the atmosphere is different depending where you live, go to school, socio-economic background, parental involvement and support, etc. I'm not blaming anyone (the colleges, the GCs, the students, the parents) but simply saying this sort of phenomenom differs so widely place to place. Since I am reading the Robbins book right now, the community in that book, as well as let's say at Harvard-Westlake in the Gatekeepers, is vastly different than my community when it comes to college admissions strategies, processes, atmosphere, etc. I really do think at some of these prep schools and suburban publics, there is a much higher percentage of kids who do the ED thing. It seems like a big "must" in many of those communities. As well, if you read Robbins' book, there are families who are talking college plans at a very young age. There are people hiring Katherine Cohen in ninth grade to package the kid to be ready for ED at the likes of Harvard.</p>
<p>
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Surely if he is able to qualify for admissions to one of the top 50 universities, and if he gives a hoot about it, he will be able to read about the differences between these plans.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The question is--how will he know WHEN he needs to read about it, if he attends a high school where nobody else applies to such colleges.</p>
<p>I transferred high schools midway through junior year of high school. </p>
<p>If I had stayed at my old one, I likely would not have taken SATs until senior year. That's what everyone else did. Also, nobody else at my old high school took Subject Tests (then called Achievement Tests.) And nobody at my old high school applied ED.</p>
<p>The only reason I started taking tests in May of my junior year was that I had transferred to a new high school where everyone else was doing it. When the scores came in high, I didn't know what they really meant, but my savvy classmates encouraged me to start mailing away for college brochures and to sign up for the July subject tests.</p>
<p>In August, I started reading the fine print about application minutiae and realized that I was all set to apply ED, having already taken the tests. I was admitted ED to a top LAC and did very well there.</p>
<p>If I had stayed at my former high school, it would have been too late--because I would have "gone with the flow" and taken SATs along with the rest of my class in fall of senior year. And I didn't realize I was a serious candidate for such schools until I got my SATs back.</p>
<p>(Interestingly, I had taken PSATs at my old school and nobody had interpreted them for me in a way that clued me in to the possibility that I should consider top colleges.)</p>
<p>dadx, are you saying that if I had stayed at my old school and hadn't gotten clued in to test and read about ED early enough to apply, I wouldn't have belonged at the highly selective college I attended?</p>
<p>Like marite, by the way, I also didn't start thinking about GRE's until my senior year of college. I wound up taking them in December of my senior year, which was fortunately plenty of time--since at least in those days, there was no ED for grad school.</p>
<p>I didn't read up on stuff like that in junior year. Nobody else was doing it.</p>
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Surely if he is able to qualify for admissions to one of the top 50 universities, and if he gives a hoot about it, he will be able to read about the differences between these plans.
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</p>
<p>This quote from dadx really resonates for me, so I just want to add a few more thoughts.</p>
<p>The problem is that there are low-income candidates who would qualify for admission to top 50 universities who DON'T REALIZE that they would qualify. It was only a lucky accident of transferring schools that made me realize I would qualify.</p>
<p>The media likes to do stories on all the 1600-scoring valedictorians with a bazillion APs from snazzy suburban schools who don't get into top colleges.</p>
<p>A student in an inner-city high school where nobody even applies to such colleges, where there are no AP classes, and whose PSATs were less than perfect could quite understandably think that his chances were so hopeless that it's not even worth reading the fine print about admissions to such schools.</p>
<p>Kids in affluent suburban schools start taking the SATs or ACTs in middle school. A number have taken the tests several times before they even hit high school. As a result, by the time they hit junior year, they have a whole different comfort level and sophistication in interpreting what the tests mean and how to prepare for them. Their parents are well aware of the timeline. Some even start sending their kids to SAT prep classes in middle school!</p>
<p>A kid in an inner-city high school facing the test for the first time as a junior or senior is going to be understandably daunted by the prospect of competing against kids who've been cutting their teeth on it for years.</p>
<p>I truly think that such students really need personal support and encouragement to think of themselves as viable candidates before they will even bother to read the available information.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't have very much sympathy for the uninformed low income student in the way he is portrayed in our posts. Surely if he is able to qualify for admissions to one of the top 50 universities, and if he gives a hoot about it, he will be able to read about the differences between these plans. I think it is fair to say that if you only know what your guidance counselor (or anyone else) "tells" you, then you don't belong at any of those schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is definitely a culturally encapsulated mindset and it shows that you either have never been around or you don't know any one who is low income and has attended an underperforming school. </p>
<p>Do you even know that the college board has extended its registration dates because they could not get fee waivers out to all of the schools who had students that needed them (back log of 1500 schools)? But because this probably doesn't happen in the community where your kids attend school, it is a non-issue.</p>
<p>Over the past few weeks as part of my course work I observed a high school(regular zoned school non-magnet) that has the following demographics :</p>
<p>3.6% white, 26% black, 51% hispanic, 19% asian where the average make up for NYC high schools are 14% white, 34.7 % black, 36.7% hispanic and 14.3%asian.</p>
<p>the school also has:
75% students who are considered low income
64% who qualify for free lunch
30% are enrolled in an ELL (english language learners program) for bi-lingual students where english is not their first language. The 2 bilingual programs are spanish and chinese.
10% special education students
17% of their students scored 85% or more on the NYS English regents exam
11% of their students score 85% or more on the NYS Math regents exam
58% graduation rate
The overwhelming majority of the seniors are first generation college students.</p>
<p>The school does not have a dedicated college counselor so each GC is responsible for everything concerning their case load. Under NCLB, they are doing all they can to get their students to graduate. Getting a student to even apply to a 4 year college would be as stretch, no less getting a student to apply to an "elite' school under an EA/ED program. From what I observed the GCs are putting out fires and dealing with no-stop drama on a day to day basis (it was definitely eye opening for me and like night and day when I think about my kid's h.s. experience).</p>
<p>But in there I had the opportunity to meet a student who were "high performing" and would be considered "Harvard" material (first gen, low-income URM with a 95% and 1440 on CR + M) who did not even know that Harvard had a low income inititative. I began advising him while we were both waiting in the main office to attend our respective meetings. I also informed him about Questbridge, Gates, Posse and gave him a listing of other schools I knew off the top of my head with low income initiatives (he's hoping he could just get into get into the CUNY honors program, where he could go for free because he kept telling me his family could not afford private college). I went back just to meet with this student and his guidance counselor, and by the time we got finished talking she looked at me like I had grown another head when I began telling her, about programs that she wasn't aware of and she did not even know about fairtest and SAT optional schools proving Marite's point that a lot of this disadvantage is informational.</p>
<p>Wisteria:</p>
<p>I question a lot of your premises. My kids GO to an "inner city high school". It is a large public academic magnet, about 45% white (including lots and lots of Eastern European immigrants), 30% various varieties of Asian, 20% African-American, 5% Hispanic. Many of the kids are low income, over 50% free-lunch eligible. The school sends 45 or so kids per year to top 50 colleges. Kids are pretty sophisticated about application strategies, and talk about it a lot. Very few of them apply ED anywhere, and the school discourages it, because of the financial aid issue, but quite a number apply SCEA or EA. This school and a couple of other academic magnets, and one neighborhood school, basically supply 99% of the public school kids in Philadelphia who go to selective colleges other than in-state public universities. (In 2005, I think 77 Philadelphia public school kids matriculated at Ivy League schools. 75 of them came from four high schools.) The population of qualified kids at the remaining high schools is in single digits at best.</p>
<p>To give a specific example. A couple of years ago, there was an article in the paper about a kid at one of the "real" inner city neighborhood high schools. He was the best student anyone could remember there -- perfect grades, class president, leader of everything, even wore the mascot costume. He was going to go to Penn on a full ride. Great. My daughter happened to know him from a program they were in, and said everything written about him was true -- greatest kid ever, a real leader, everyone loved him. His SATs were 1050. His admission to Penn was conditioned on a TON of remedial work during the summer and after matriculation (which of course Penn supplied). He was one of the two kids from her cohort going to an Ivy League school not from the traditional feeders.</p>
<p>The point is that, yes, this kid should go to Penn, but he was not indicative of some unmined motherload of first-rate prospects. At his troubled school, he stood out enough to constitute news, but his academic preparation was marginal, and that's putting it charitably. </p>
<p>The large academic magnet here is not Stuyvesant or Bronx Science. Its average SATs -- and everyone takes SATs, so it's a true reflection of the school -- were barely above 1100 under the old system. This school has 100% of its 9th and 10th graders taking PSATs, by the way. The kids don't have tutors or prep courses, but they are given lots of exposure to the tests.</p>
<p>I don't know what other cities' systems are like, but I am pretty confident that here, at least in the public school system, low income kids who are capable of getting 600s on their SATs are not falling through the cracks in meaningful numbers. Or, more likely, they ARE falling through the cracks, but that's happing long before 12th grade. The kids who are considering college at all, and who could be viable candidates for selective colleges, are generally in places where college application strategies and requirements are known.</p>
<p>Sybbie's experience and JHS's experience are equally true of a lot of schools. And the question is which do you want to concentrate your efforts on?</p>
<p>I'm hoping that the 1440 student Sybbie met ends up at one of the top schools!</p>
<p>Part of the rationale for Harvard to drop its early admissions program is to free up its admissions officers to travel more widely and spread the word about its finiancial aid, application process, etc. to schools where these things are not routinely known (i.e, expanding the outreach and recruitment process). I think this is an excellent idea (although I don't know why they had to get rid of SCEA to afford this). And they could cut back on apparently unnecessary information sessions at the places described in the book The Overachievers.</p>
<p>JHS, there were no "academic magnet schools" in the city where I grew up. Schools were divided by geography. The school into which I transferred during my junior year had boundary lines that pretty much included all the middle-class and upper middle-class neighborhoods in the city along with SOME of the poor neighborhoods.</p>
<p>The school I had previously attended was a Catholic school run on a shoestring that attracted a number of students who ultimately attended colleges that were not very competitive. The strongest student in my class from that school went to the University of Dayton. Other typical colleges attended by classmates from my original school were ones you've likely never heard of--some of those colleges are now defunct. Our school didn't even have a guidance counselor. Some of our teachers didn't even have bachelor's degrees. There were no AP classes. Only about a third of my class went to a four-year college of any sort. Another third went to two-year college. There was also a third that went directly to work. </p>
<p>But I liked to read and there was a good public library in my neighborhood. And I learned a lot of algebra and geometry in the process of tutoring my struggling younger siblings, because none of us had very good teachers. </p>
<p>I had a boyfriend who attended the public high school. When he described what was available at his school, my eyes opened wide. I asked my parents if I could transfer and they agreed. Unfortunately, I was too far behind to take advantage of AP classes at my new school, according to the GC. But I did benefit from the info I picked up from my new schoolmates. I honestly hadn't realized that sophomore year PSATs in both math and verbal in the 70s (old scale before recentering) were a big deal until I got to my new school. My parents didn't realize it either. </p>
<p>And nobody at my old school had encouraged me to do anything different in terms of planning ahead. The school was in perpetual financial crisis. Administrators had trouble just meeting the payroll and paying the utiity bills. (It closed a few years after I transferred.)</p>
<p>In retrospect, my classmate from my old school who wound up at the U of Dayton might have done very well at some more demanding school if she too had been encouraged to set her sights higher.</p>
<p>
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This is definitely a culturally encapsulated mindset and it shows that you either have never been around or you don't know any one who is low income and has attended an underperforming school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The opposite is true. I just don't buy the notion that your parents having a lower-than-normal income means that you can't be ambitious, informed or smart. JHS's example might have "deserved" admission to Penn, but it shouldn't have been because his parents had low incomes.</p>
<p>"The kids who are considering college at all, and who could be viable candidates for selective colleges, are generally in places where college application strategies and requirements are known."</p>
<p>Appropo is Gordon Winston's work:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/DPs/DP-69.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/DPs/DP-69.pdf</a></p>
<p>odyssey, I assumed (maybe I'm wrong) that freed from obligations to review Early apps, H would be able to send some of those same people out to do the activity you describe? (spreading the word). I didn't assume it was a matter of affordability of $ but of time.</p>
<p>Sybbie, I loved your story and am so glad you met that kid. That is an example, particularly of many who are ill informed, who have very good stats, first generation, URM, but can't afford a very selective private school, not being aware that they may have some very good opportunities at such schools. Yes, kids must be savvy but clearly some kids do not have parents who are informed or involved and their HS's are not equipped to help to this degree. </p>
<p>I just know that my kids benefitted from my research and knowledge, their own investigations, and so on, as they did not find out what they needed to know from school. It was more US informing the HS. There is no way my kids would have found their schools, or gone about their admissions process in the manner that they did, if left solely to anything they found out from HS. Luckily, my kids also have educated and involved parents. Not all kids (or families) have a clue about any of this. Yes, many should investigate it all on their own. But they do live in a different "bubble" than students in other backgrounds and other school communities where a lot of this stuff is common knowledge. They have to initiate and explore even more than someone who has some basic information surrounding them.</p>
<p>It is even like other threads that we have had about Intel or other national competitions. At our school, nobody has ever heard of these opportunities. They are not common knowledge. I learned of a national competition in my D's field from.....where? CC! She entered and won. Other winners came from schools that had many winners, every year. My kid was the only winner in any category from her state. If my kid didn't have an involved parent who reads about such things, and if she herself wasn't savvy to find such opportunities, she surely would not have learned about any of it in our school or community! Same with her colleges. The kind of degree program and colleges she was applying to.....our school would know NOTHING about. If we hadn't educated ourselves about it, there was no way she'd be where she is now. Some kids do not have the parental help in the quotient and so in their case, there is no school help, no parental, no community.....just a harder row to hoe.</p>
<p>Because in so many educational studies, income is directly related to children's achievement in school, it is easy to state that various policies are unfavorable to low income families. Actually, when you are looking at college apps and school achievement, it is more accurate to define the disadvantaged group as those whoe have low family/school involvement rather than low income. I know a number of families who have little money for college, but their kids do very well. The parents are well educated, and well informed. They are capable and do help the kids go through the college labyrinth of financial aid, deadlines, etc. They are disadvantaged in that the kids do need financial aid to go to many of their choices, but they are not disadvantaged in the support they get from their family. The same goes for kids going to certain schools. EVen if they are in low income groups, if the school is one that pushes the bulk of their kids through the admissions process, and the parents are savvy enough to get their kids into such schools, they are not the truly disadvantaged. Though there is a relationship with income, there are notable exceptions when you examine families who are income poor but knowledge rich.</p>
<p>cpt, I agree that there are income poor but knowledge rich parents. I also think there are rich parents who are knowlege poor. I've seen both cases.</p>
<p>I could not agree more with post #317. I've been saying this for a long time. And (I can hear the retorts now): Should such <em>educationally</em> advantaged students be somehow punished or considered "privileged" because of it? No, I maintain, & also think that a college admissions committee would answer No. Those "in the know," but without income, continually make sacrifices for the educational advancement of their children. They do without that extra car, that new or expensive car, the upgraded cell phone, an optional vacation. Practically all resources (not just financial) are centered around education. It speaks volumes about the priorities of the parents, and I say, More power to 'em.</p>
<p>And I have to also say here, though it will not be popular, and sounds on the surface to contradict my otherwise vigorous advocacy of students in poverty: It's one thing to "spread the word" (H admissions committee), to have bridge & mentor programs, several college info nights, advocacy GC's, etc. But at some point it makes little sense to be arm-twisting. The college grades will not be gained by arm-twisting, regardless of how much tutoring & other support there is at the college, including an ivy. Sure, spread the word, invite those mentors & speakers in, no question. But the family also needs to pick up a phone, open an app., make the inquiries, etc.</p>
<p>In my city, children of graduate students often qualify for free or reduced lunch. Low income? yes. But not clueless about college.</p>
<p>I don't think the aim is to arm-twist. Just to give students with fewer resources a better chance to put together a strong application after collecting information.</p>