<p>I use to live in an area with many more affluent people than I. My house is filled with books, and I think reading contributed most to S's great reading/writing scores. He didn't do SAT prep nor pay for a "professioal" college adviser. The college he attends would not have been on anyone's radar in our area (first from his school to go there).</p>
<p>Having money and being smart are definitely not synonomous in my area.</p>
<p>The question I posed in the OP was obviously a "loaded question" Obviously, such a question would never be acceptable on a college application.</p>
<p>Just wanted to see how you would react, and perhaps get people to think about the advantages enjoyed by the wealthy. When it comes to "elite" college admission, I simply wish that a "more even playing field" existed for multitude of deserving young people who don't have the resources to compete with the wealthy.</p>
<p>Old but wise:</p>
<p>While there is a strong correlation between wealth and education it is not causation.</p>
<p>MIT and Harvard graduate students have kids who qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch in Cambridge, MA. Wealthy? of course not. Capable of giving the best possible home education for their kids? Of course. </p>
<p>That was the point of my questions in earlier posts, to which you never replied.</p>
<p>Marite: With all due respect, I think your 40 years around Harvard and Cambridge has caused you to lose sight of the reality that exists in our society. Take a look at the percentage of students at Harvard and MIT who qualify for NO financial aid. 70-80 percent of the students who go to those schools have NO financial need, which means that their Expected Family Contribution exceeds the cost of attendance ($45,000 per year). In other words, the vast majority of students parents at those schools can pay full tab.</p>
<p>Also, I sincerely hope that you are not comparing MIT and Harvard graduate students whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch with the children I'm referring to in my post. That's one of the most absurd comparison's I've ever seen!</p>
<p>"While there is a strong correlation between wealth and education, it is not causation." Again, you've been around Harvard and Cambridge much too long. Go out into the real world (coal mining towns of West Virginia, inner-city schools, etc.) and you'll see what I'm talking about.</p>
<p>Take a look at the how SAT scores relate to wealth and level of parents education, then tell me that the "playing field" is even when it comes to college admission.</p>
<p>If that question were added to applications, it would spell the end of test-prep companies and private tutors as they are. Instead, test prep would be incorporated into schools in districts where the parents lobby for it and in private schools (which are technically "fee-based services" to help students get into college, right?). It's not that the question is wrong or unfair to ask, it's just that it wouldn't be effective, because the benefits of wealth and well-educated parents are primarily received in forms other than test prep services.</p>
<p>Old but wise, I don't know where you got your numbers on the amount of students who have NO need at Harvard and MIT, but I find them hard to believe. A quick trip over to collegeboard.com yields that slightly more than 50% of Harvard's freshmen class was found to have need of some kind. The number at MIT is even higher--nearly 63% are found to have need. </p>
<p>Plus, I find the assumptions you are making about wealth and admissions are largely insulting to applicants such as myself. I will not deny that applicants from wealthy families are often advantaged (usually more by attending better schools (public or private) than poorer applicants--a problem, but not one that can be solved with a question like yours). That doesn't mean that a) those kids had all sort of extra advantages, like test prep, private counselors, and so forth, or that b) these applicants are even truly wealthy. My parents can afford to pay that tuition, but I can assure you that my above average but not elite public school is not giving me any special admissions boost, nor is my nonexistent private counselor crafting my applications or my lack of test prep inflating my scores. My advantage: being smart and having well-educated parents. Not things that money can buy--or that a lack of money can deny. </p>
<p>Again, I repeat: I'm not saying that there are no money issues with elite colleges--I'd find that hard to support. But not to the extent and/or in the ways that you are presenting here.</p>
<p>I can only speak from my own experience, but when I took a prep course to improve my math score, it dropped from 660 to 650. Afterwards, I improved my score to 760 by doing practice problems and studying on my own. Telling colleges that I took a course would be misleading, because that was not the reason for my higher score.</p>
<p>Only one of my essays was proofread before being submitted, and only by other students. Even though I'm a decent editor and managed to avoid glaring grammatical errors or typos, it's really not a method I'd recommend. :eek:</p>
<p>Thanks, advantagious.<br>
[quote]
My advantage: being smart and having well-educated parents. Not things that money can buy--or that a lack of money can deny.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That describes my kids to a T. They are the products of public education and had no prep test. But they had the advantage of highly educated parents. As I said earlier, this advantage was present the minute they came home from hospital. OBW's list just does not capture that advantage. </p>
<p>OBW, I did say that in general there is a correlation between wealth and education, just not causation. Post #23.</p>
<p>Your list, however, does not ask about parental level of education:</p>
<p>
[quote]
"In as much detail as possible, please tell us about your use of any of the following services FOR WHICH YOU OR YOUR PARENTS PAID A FEE: SAT or ACT preparation services, consultants to help you write or "fine tune" your essay, counselors to help you "package yourself" for admission, and any books or online services related to college admission. Please estimate, as accurately as possible, the amount of time and money spent on each of the aforementioned services. DO NOT INCLUDE ANY SERVICES FOR WHICH YOU DID NOT PAY A FEE."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I did read that carefully. Please do the same by other people's posts. Thank you,.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, I sincerely hope that you are not comparing MIT and Harvard graduate students whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch with the children I'm referring to in my post. That's one of the most absurd comparison's I've ever seen!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why shouldn't I? The question does not ask about level of education, does it? Only whether the applicant has had PAID assistance--which, I take, is a proxy for asking about wealth? I wanted to point out that there are individuals who can be poor and highly educated nonetheless. Some of them are even posters on CC.</p>
<p>If I read correctly betwen the lines of old-but-wise's thought experiment, it suggests that such questions (even assuming that they would be answered honestly) should result in a sort of "subtraction" from the academic rating of students who had access to such paid services. </p>
<p>I suspect, though, that--just like family income and going to a school with significant resources--access to such services would correlate positively with with academic achievement in college. In other words, such questions would provide virtually no additional predictive info. for the admissions process, but sure would make the process even more complicated and stressful.</p>
<p>No argument on the underlying idea: affluent kids have advantages that the less affluent don't. No news there.</p>
<p>Marathonman:</p>
<p>
[quote]
access to such services would correlate positively with with academic achievement in college.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Use of such services could correlate with wealth, with access (not everyone lives close to such services) or with need stemming from lack of preparation (however defined). My kids did not need any test prep or paid help with writing their essays or paid college counseling. So their not making use of such services could be seen as a predictor of college success. One can argue any which way. At any rate, the questions did not ask directly about family income and said nothing at all about parental education.</p>
<p>The original question is purely hypothetical with very little chance of actually happening, so it's basically not worth arguing about.</p>
<p>Since the OP is about adding a question to the application, it is not necessary to add a question about parental education since that question is already in most of the application forms already</p>
<p>bomgeedad:</p>
<p>Yes, it is. But it needs inference on the part of reader. And the question as posed makes certain assumptions that should and can be disproved. </p>
<p>As I pointed out, my Ss did not get paid test prep, did not get paid college counseling, or paid help with their essays. Why should they have when they could get all that for free?
At their school, students who want test prep can get it for free from both MIT and Harvard students--the same ones who probably work for Kaplan and Princeton Review for lots of money (for the companies, not themselves). One parent offered her free services to seniors with their application essays; and of course, there's CC. So even for students of limited means, it is possible to receive lots of free assistance. Some of the students who received help on CC from myself and other parent posters qualified for Questbridge--a sure sign that limited income and college-worthy preparation are compatible.</p>
<p>"At their school, students who want test prep can get it for free from both MIT and Harvard students--the same ones who probably work for Kaplan and Princeton Review for lots of money."</p>
<p>It's great to know that EVERYONE, including inner-city students, students from families whose parents never went to college, students from Appalachia, and STUDENTS WHO DO NOT HAVE COMPUTERS (yes, there are a few of them out there who can't access CC) etc. have free access to tutors from MIT and Harvard-type schools. That makes me feel much better. I thought that maybe there was still inequity in our society when it comes to "access to educational opportunity."</p>
<p>Old but wise:</p>
<p>Turn off the sarcasm and the self-righteousness.<br>
I am well aware that most students do not have access to Harvard and MIT tutoring or parents with Ph.D.s Your proposed question, however, does nothing to identify students from inner city or Appalachia. It does nothing to identify students who got tons of help for free, either. It is a badly worded question. </p>
<p>I'm done arguing with someone whose logic is so lacking.</p>
<p>I'm not sure that here's much disagreement on the basic issues: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>admissions help is available that's both paid-for and free</p></li>
<li><p>students with affluent and/or well educated parents will, across large populations, have far greater acess to both free and paid help</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If colleges asked questions like those in the OP (even if qualified to include unpaid help), it would still be pretty much like re-asking about income and parental education. It just wouldn't add much additional information to help make good admissions calls. (I'm thinking now about some sort of rating, call it "application help received " that would operate on the level at which most college metrics are used--averaged across large populations.)</p>
<p>If colleges began to really triangulate individual answers to such hypothetical questions against specific aspects of an individual application--(is this what you were thinking, Marite?)--then it might provide some marginal information. (Put in it's baldest form, an adcom would say something like, "ah . . . this student had no test prep, we'll give his SAT scores a bit more weight than those of the student who paid Kaplan. This student paid a counselor, so we can't put much stock in THAT essay.) But this, too, would be fraught with problems. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I don't think either way of looking at such data was crucial to old but wise's point. If I read it right, he was suggesting "let's think about what things would look like if there were means to neutralize some of the advantages that some students enjoy from test prep, admissions advice, admission-savvy parents, counselors who have cultivated contacts with elite admissions offices, etc." Now that's a question worth considering, IMO.</p>
<p>I think the question itself (and the idea that it should be put on college apps) is silly...but I'm willing to overlook that and evaluate the plan for its message. And ultimately I have to say I agree with that message (if not the idea of putting a question on college apps).
Some kids go to top-notch prep schools, and their apps and schedules are obviously well-directed by the savvy counselors at their schools. In a way, these kids DO declare their advantage on the application--by putting down the name of the private school (complete with one-on-one counseling) that they pay a fee to attend.
In the same way, kids ought to declare their outside-of-school private counselors. Colleges will be able to see the context of the service when the student puts down his/her high school on the application. A kid who goes to Gigantic Generic High School and hires a private counselor can be "excused"--it's understandable why she would hire someone to give her personal advice. A kid who goes to Super Prep School and hires a private counselor should raise eyebrows--he or she already had resources but sought out an extra competitive edge.</p>
<p>I think prep books, etc. are irrelevant. But I like the idea of declaring when you pay a fee for someone outside of your school to polish your application. Advice on a college website like this is fine...it doesn't count, because the student isn't forking over money to gain a competitive advantage. The fee (the price the student is willing to pay for a glossy application) is an integral part of the issue.</p>
<p>Mallomarcookie:</p>
<p>If my kids had attended a high school with 3,000 students and only two GCs, as I've read happens in quite a number of schools, I would have strongly considered hiring a college counselor, especially since H and I did not attend American high schools and thus did not go through the common college application experience. But our high school, although it is diverse and has 48% of students on F/R lunch, has 14 GCs for about 1,800 sudents.<br>
So, a family with income and educational levels similar to ours might have to hire a college counselor, whereas we did not have to. As for advice on a college site, I can be forgiven for thinking that my assistance, though free, is probably worth several hundred dollars. </p>
<p>I do agree that there are huge discrepancies and that we should think about how to reduce them. This is not a new topic on CC.</p>
<p>Yeah, exactly marite. Family income has nothing to do with it. That's why I said in my post: the kid's school is an indicator of their motivations for hiring private help. A kid hiring private help while attending Gigantic Generic High School is completely understandable.</p>