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I question the sincerity of a program that takes 50K from universities and colleges to serve as headhunters for students.
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<p>Why? There are other programs like it, like the Posse Program and Upward Bound. I guarantee you: QuestBridge is a 100% sincere organization, and the Match program is 100% legitimate.</p>
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With all of the financial aid initiatives available to moderate and lower income students; they should have the opportunity to not be bound to the schools that pay questbridge.
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<p>Uh, they do; they don't have to apply through QuestBridge. The organization just flags them as high-achieving, low-income students.</p>
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I also think that it should not be binding if you only have a minimal number of schools in the program, most of which are small liberal arts colleges.
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<p>Think of it like this: many schools have ED programs. That means you can apply only to their university. It doesn't logically make sense to apply to multiple schools ED; however, ranking the colleges adds a new dimension to the process. And that's what QuestBridge has done: it has taken ED programs and combined them. There are many advantages: you get to apply early and get the whole college application process over with, you get to apply to multiple schools early, and best of all, you get a guaranteed, four-year scholarship.</p>
<p>In addition, half of the partners are top-20 universities, including Princeton, Yale, MIT, Penn, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, and more. And the majority of the LACs are elite ones: Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Pomona, Wellesley, etc.</p>
<p>You can only have a certain number of colleges, and not many of them, since the requirements are many: the college must have the financial resources to give full scholarships; the college must desire to diversify the socioeconomic makeup of its student body; the college must pay money to support the organization and the program; the college must be willing to evaluate applicants early; and so on.</p>
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The logistics involved in planning their conferences at various colleges throughout the United States (and paying part of a lot of students' travel), paying their part-time and FULL-time employees a decent salary, and as you can possibly acknowledge, all the difficult processes involved in everything, do cost money. And a lot of it.
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<p>Exactly. It costs QuestBridge $1.6 million per year to run these programs.</p>
<p>In the past, they've given students laptops, free SAT prep courses, free college counseling, free college conferences with helpful workshops and college fairs, and more.</p>
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I just think if this was really a sincere effort they would not bind the students, but they have to because they need to justify the 50K they get from the universities, so they have to deliver diversity.
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<p>Believe me, that's not why. It's ED because that's the essential idea of it. ED has long made admissions very unfair for low-income students--and this program is essentially ED just for low-income students.</p>
<p>Not to mention the most popularly ranked schools aren't even binding! If your claim were true, QuestBridge wouldn't allow Stanford, Princeton, Yale, etc. to be partners, because it's non-binding for them.</p>
<p>Plus, QuestBridge "delivers" diversity by a) actively recruiting only low-income students, and b) connecting these students and the colleges.</p>
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If Questbridge was really sincere about alleviating social inequities their "delivery" of results would be that the student is going to college PERIOD not just xy and z college that pay off questbridge.
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<p>What? Are you suggesting the QuestBridge itself give the scholarships? That would be exorbitantly expensive, and impossible, for the organization; they already struggle to meet the $1.6 million budget, but giving the scholarships would require another $40 million.</p>
<p>It's either that, or QuestBridge become a partner with every college in the US.</p>
<p>Are either of these practical? Nope.</p>
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Hey does anyone know when the application for this year will be up on Questbridge?
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<p>It should be up mid-August (last year, it was August 15th).</p>