<p>
</p>
<p>Brilliant low-income students are often never afforded the chance to show their potential, so no, most don’t have the opportunity (there’s a reason that one study found that 75% of the students at the top 150 colleges come from the top economic quartile, while only 3% from the bottom quartile).</p>
<p>And the middle/upper-middle income students most definitely have a chance at attending top 10 schools. All these schools are very generous with financial aid and consider all family finances. But many of these families don’t want to pay even though they could do so without true difficulty. Your view of middle- and upper-middle income must be very skewed; consider that these top 10 universities judge a student to be low-income even if their family is making above the median household income in the US.</p>
<p>I’m sick of hearing middle-income students complain that they’re the ones being cheated at the top universities. I could see that point at private universities that are stingy with financial aid, but even then, to portray them as the worst off is just ludicrous. The poor students are the ones who are deprived of most opportunities considered “basic” to middle- and upper-income families, the ones who didn’t have health insurance growing up, who often come from broken homes and crime-ridden neighborhoods, who most often don’t even know that they could get a scholarship or even that higher education is in the realm of possibility for them, who usually have no one to help guide them through the admissions process if they’re aware they can go to college. No matter how you spin it, these poor kids are the losers, so it’s hard to feel real sympathy for middle- and upper-middle income students who have been offered very generous financial aid at top-10 universities. To imply they don’t have a chance is laughable.</p>