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<p>Also, the “middle class” area in the video is actually close to the median household income in the US, not a six figure income “middle class” that seems to be frequently implied on these forums.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I’d call a dual Wal Mart income family “middle class” even if we define that as near the national median (Wal Mart 34 hour a week workers make around $15K a year unless they’re in management or something), but the video seems to consider them so.</p>
<p>He did one year at U Mass, she went to Harvard.</p>
<p>Of course being a long time CC’er, my first thought was that if he could have gotten into Harvard it would have been cheaper than U Mass, most likely, even with the scholarship he got, but part of the point of the video is that he had few advanced courses available in his HS.</p>
<p>The benefits of helping lower income youths to expand their horizons and gain access to colleges would be fabulous. I have seen lower income and first generation students struggle to fill out FAFSA forms, decide on colleges, go on college visits on their own because parents don’t speak the language, and have little guidance. They have no money for the incidentals that other kids do, like new computers, transportation, eating out, etc., that make fitting into college environments easier. It is truly a struggle.</p>
<p>I think the dilemma develops when lower income becomes a buzzword for race. Not to dismiss what the young Hispanic woman claimed, it would be more useful to focus on income and other disadvantages than just race. I have seen Asian kids struggle with no guidance at all, and conversely, I know of white upper middle class families with adopted Hispanic children who have gotten a boost in admissions because of their racial status, despite not coming from an impoverished background.</p>
<p>Cobrat–when you don’t have the backstop advantages of wealth and an informed family you better make sure you take advantage of the few breaks you do get in life.</p>
<p>YDS–I am Hispanic also but male, neither parent graduated HS nor spoke native English. I filled out the FAFSA myself. This was well before you could research such things so easily on a computer.</p>
<p>I live in a very diverse neighborhood in NYC. A lot of the poorest neighborhood succeed. I think they do in part because the neighborhood is diverse and so they meet families who assume their kids are going to college, insist they do their homework, and get them involved in activities. You can walk to Little League, Boy Scouts or Girls Scout, swim team, a children’s theatre group and the public library. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the local public school isn’t good, but it’s now fighting to turn around. It’s starting to attract more middle class families. That means the school will get more money in parental donations and be able to do more things. </p>
<p>I think one reason upward mobility has stalled is that too many of our poorest kids live in neighborhoods in which there are few people who have good steady jobs, of any kind. They have no role models.</p>
<p>High school is too late and the schools can’t do it themselves. We have to insist that low income housing be incorporated into socioeconomically diverse communities, that public schools offer art, music and dance, that every elementary school have a good library or access to a good public library nearby.</p>
<p>Typical mopey Times article. </p>
<p>For instance:
"Its becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder, said Sean Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford. "</p>
<p>In reality the statistics they cite say that nearly twice as many of the lowest quartile now graduate college and the same increase has occurred in enrollment. If anything, the trend is positive. </p>
<p>And all of these wounds are self inflicted- one kid left two hours after showing up on campus. The other doesnt send in forms, respond to emails, or talk to the professors at Emory that were trying to help her. </p>
<p>Even the choice is crazy- what are you going to do with a BA in Psychology. Even if things had gone fine and she graduated with a 3.0 she’d still be struggling to find a a job. </p>
<p>I think society sends too strong a message of “go to college go to college go to college” and these girls fell for it. College isnt an end to itself. If they had been more critical consumers, many of these problems would have been avoided. The story tells about about Angelica debating buying a $2 head of lettuce but how much time did she she take examining what she was getting for her $40,000? And four years of her life. </p>
<p>I get the impression that when these girl went off to college they gave a sigh of relief that they had met their goal. In reality this was the time for them to extra diligent and circumspect of what they heard.</p>
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<p>Yes, and she decided to major in a subject where her first grade was a D.
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<p>Reminds me of this old NYT joke headline. "Hard rain hits NYC, poor suffer most.</p>
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<p>The Reuters video is biased and likely inaccurate. At 1:56 it states</p>
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<p>Physics is not a math class, although is uses math. Gardner High School, which he attended, offers Honors Calculus and Advanced Placement Calculus AB, according to the [Program</a> of Studies](<a href=“School Website, CMS & Communications Platform | Finalsite”>School Website, CMS & Communications Platform | Finalsite) . Did Gardner add these math courses after Curtis graduated, or is the reporter just wrong? I suspect the latter, and I wonder what else he got wrong.</p>
<p>re. comment #48: that’s EXACTLY what happened in hurricane sandy, isn’t it? not sure i see the humor.</p>
<p>Agree with argbargy on most points. A society needs various skilled workers. Not everyone needs to go to a 4-year college. </p>
<p>For our state colleges, there are a lot of scholarships for good students (decent SAT and GPA). I think that some other state schools may have similar opportunities. As long as a good student has the determination and knows where to look for info, it is not that difficult to succeed and have happiness. There are many success stories from students who graduated from our local branch of the state college. Kids can go to counselors, college websites, and on-line forum for advice. </p>
<p>[Competitive</a> Scholarships : Honors College : IUPUI](<a href=“http://honorscollege.iupui.edu/scholarships/competitive/]Competitive”>http://honorscollege.iupui.edu/scholarships/competitive/)</p>
<p>There are some cases that a good student has to work to support the family. This will hinder his/her ability to take advantage of the opportunity. We as a society need to give them a chance to succeed.</p>
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<p>This post made me want to gag. These girls who graduated at the top of their class! Do you really think it was their “unfocused . . . no rules or deadlines ways” that got them there? They worked their tails off in high school to achieve what they did. What they lacked was the GC and family support that would have helped them to get a good start in college . . . support that upper class students take for granted!</p>
<p>But it’s good to know that wherever you live, barrons, these “unfocused . . . no rules or deadlines ways” don’t plague the upper class students . . . 'cause that certainly hasn’t been my experience. (Does anyone remember the San Francisco Bay Area student whose family sued the school because their slacker kid wasn’t allowed into the honors program?)</p>
<p>And then there’s argbargy’s comment:</p>
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<p>The first problem is, of course, your apparent lack of “focus.” Had you read beyond the first page of the article, you would have discovered that the student who panicked and wanted to go home within two hours of arriving on campus was also the only one of the three students profiled who actually succeeded in college!</p>
<p>As for not sending in forms, responding to emails, or talking to professors . . . well, that was the point of the article, wasn’t it? These less sophisticated, less self-assertive student lacked the tools that so many more successful students take for granted. The emails that went unanswered were delivered to a university account the student didn’t know existed. The FA forms that weren’t filled out were forms that many parents here on CC find challenging to complete!</p>
<p>A student whose parents are uneducated faces a challenge that upper-class students don’t. Going back to barrons’s comment about “designated handholders,” affluent students have these in spades, starting with parents and prep school guidance counselors! How often do you think more affluent kids are simply left on their own to sink or swim? (I rather doubt that the phrase “helicopter parent” was coined in Galveston!) And, yet, according to the article, that’s exactly what the students in the article had to contend with . . . even after they succeeded in high school, they still needed to be savvy enough to negotiate a complex university system that they (and their families) had no familiarity with, and that’s where at least one of them fell short.</p>
<p>The [url=<a href=“http://www.possefoundation.org/]Posse[/url”>http://www.possefoundation.org/]Posse[/url</a>] program recognizes this shortfall and tries to rectify it, for a select number of students, by providing the support network that other college students take for granted.</p>
<p>Angelica, who went to Emory, scored a 1240 on the math and reading portions of the SAT. According to [Emory</a> University Admissions: SAT Scores, Financial Aid & More](<a href=“http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/Emory.htm]Emory”>Emory University: Acceptance Rate, SAT/ACT Scores, GPA) the 25-75 percentile score ranges of Emory students are</p>
<p>SAT Math: 670 / 760
SAT Writing: 650 / 750</p>
<p>so her total was 80 points below the 25th percentile. The article wants readers to believe that her problems were mostly due to a lack of money and support, but she may not have had the scholastic aptitude to succeed at Emory, especially in her chosen major, psychology, where she was getting D’s (see post #47).</p>
<p>In general, to what extent is the lower graduation rate of low-income students due to finances or to scholastic aptitude? Probably both factors are involved, but the article only talks about the former.</p>
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<p>I dunno. Can we go back in time and give her another shot at it without the financial black hole that she found herself sucked into? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Your assumption that both factors were “probably” involved disregards the impact of having to work almost full-time (if I recall correctly) to support herself while in school.</p>
<p>And, more to the point, you are assuming that her SAT scores is in any way indicative of the limits of her scholastic aptitude. Given that many of her higher scoring peers would have had the dual advantages of extensive SAT prep plus multiple attempts at the test, dismissing her scores as sub-par seems more than a bit unfair. Given the same advantages, one can expect that she could have achieved much higher scores. With money comes privilege . . . and higher SAT scores are one of the privileges.</p>
<p>Interesting mix of opinions here. I agree that if a school is going to help a student financially, they should also help them a bit with understanding how to manage their finances in school. Maybe students getting over a certain threshold of FA from a school should be required to take a freshman orientation seminar on financial management. Actually, maybe it should be part of all freshman orientation at every school.</p>
<p>I haven’t read all the posts, but I think that Outward Bound and other programs referred to in articles are doing a disservice to students. Where I live, mostly upper middle class, guidance counselors are VERY concerned with ability to pay, and do encourage kids to go public. Taking kids to tour public Us should be a priority over private schools.</p>
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<p>It’s a myth that group differences in test scores are due to test prep, as explained in</p>
<p>[Why</a> Chris Hayes Fails – educationrealist](<a href=“http://educationrealist.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2012/06/19/why-chris-hayes-fails/]Why”>Why Chris Hayes Fails | educationrealist)</p>
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<p>[Outward</a> Bound?](<a href=“http://www.outwardbound.org/wilderness-expeditions/wilderness-courses/]Outward”>Programs | Outward Bound)</p>
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<p>And that’s probably appropriate for some families. For students who qualify for significant merit and/or need-based aid, however, and have the stat’s to get into some of the more competitive private schools (or OOS publics), it might not be the best strategy. </p>
<p>Beliavsky - I don’t want to start a debate on the merits of SAT testing. There’s clearly a difference of opinion, and documentation is abundant on both sides of the argument. This has been discussed at length elsewhere on CC. Let’s just agree to disagree.</p>
<p>It is really hard for me to feel sorry for people who sabotage their own success regardless of their socioeconomic status.</p>
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<p>Maybe? It should be applied to ALL freshmen at orientation. </p>
<p>As I’ve stated above, lack of financial management skills aren’t limited to the lower socio-economic classes. This has been amply demonstrated by some upper-east sider HS classmates and moreso, upper/upper-class suburbanite undergrad classmates at my LAC/ Harvard summer school and colleagues at a financial firm whose inability to differentiate between need and want went to ridiculous extremes. </p>
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<p>Depending on the private college and public colleges, the former sometimes not only offer a much better educational environment better matching the academic capabilities of some lower-income students, but also a much better financial deal when FA/merit scholarships are taken into account. I speak from some firsthand experience here as someone who came from a low income household who received a much better financial deal from several private colleges…including the LAC I attended than my state or moreso…local public colleges* were concerned. </p>
<p>And that’s before taking into the account that the academic level of many state/local colleges were such that many HS** classmates…including those with C/D GPAs in HS made a bee-line to transfer up to more challenging schools like Reed and Columbia. </p>
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<li>While the CUNYs have had a bit of a resurgence in the last decade, they were often regarded as schools of last resort in the '80s and early-mid '90s by most above-average college-bound HS students due to the heavy presence and prioritization of school resources towards remedial students. In many ways, they were viewed as plagued by the same LCD teaching and lack of resources…especially those geared toward above-average students as many NYC area and US public schools.</li>
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<p>** Granted, I attended one of the NYC Specialized High Schools so that may throw some things off. Unfortunately, some classmates suffered due to low income/lower-middle-class parents who were either stubbornly unsophisticated and/or of the mind that “all colleges are the same” who sent their bright kids off to local public colleges completely unsuited to their academic level.</p>