<p>Why? Because you’re giving misinformation which can mislead applicants. You need to be clearer when you’re giving information as an opinion and then the reader knows to evaluate it further, but when you present things as you do, it’s not at all clear.</p>
<p>Why now? Because I’ve read enough of your posts on other threads where you seem to do a dance with what you say and what you meant to say and you’re doing it again. As I said, for me anyway, enough is enough. </p>
<p>FTR I didn’t get my information from Wikipedia. I got it directly from college admissions departments during the application process as our family is low income. I referenced Wiki for their explanation.</p>
<p>It’s doing this student and other students following this thread a disservice when you suggest that 99& of the time, with all other things being equal, colleges will admit the lower income student. This is false. You are taking the exceptional experience of one student, which may or may not even be accurately reported, and applying that to low income students as a whole. This is illogical. </p>
<p>I speak up because what you have written is wrong and misleading. I want to see this student, and others, make good choices about where to apply with more reasonable expectations and hopefully very good results. We already learned some hard lessons and I’ll gladly share if it might help others. That’s what I’ve done here.</p>
<p>Are the jail bars getting thicker? Or it is just my imagination?
Anyway, I agree misleading information should be banned. I suggest to close this thread as it has been thoroughly discussed.</p>
<p>I am not going to close the thread because the OP might still have questions and there may be other valuable suggestions still. In fact I might post a suggestion to them later.</p>
<p>But I will delete any posts that do not directly address the OP and their situation. It is my impression, having read through the posts once, that some posters are simply misunderstanding each other. If you think one poster has said something factually wrong, don’t address that poster personally with derogations. If you don’t think what they said is correct, you can either simply state what you think is the correct information with a source (hopefully), or you can ask them to back up and/or clarify their claim. Then the other readers can decide for themselves.</p>
<p>Let’s take a deep breath and make it less personal, OK?</p>
<p>I have read a lot of really good points here, and once we follow ^ “take a deep breath,” our positions are not really contradictory, they actually complement each other.</p>
<p>We learned at the Questbridge conference held at Princeton that there is a sharp gap when you analyze top achieving students and their applications to “top” (high-endowment, highly-ranked very selective) schools. Kids with the same stats create very different lists. Lower income kids do not typically even apply to selective schools, much less balance their list according to reach, match and safety categories. High income kids will apply to several selective schools, and will balance their lists. I am sorry to not produce stats but it was really a sharp drop purely based on income.</p>
<p>“Meets 100% need” is such an important phrase, even tho the actual numbers may not be as generous as you think (there are multiple threads on this).</p>
<p>I actually agree with both SoMuch2Learn and AnnieBeats. Generalization: “tippy top” schools look for high achieving low income kids. The Yale rep said that they consciously balance their incoming class by making the number of first generation college kids equal to the number of children of alum (legacies). These are places where there is money to spare. It is very different from schools where only a certain percentage of financial aid students are admitted. You had better be in the top of the applicant pool at these places. Or look for merit awards, which are competitive and cannot be guaranteed in your applicaiton process.</p>
<p>Our D was a 90 average-okay-but-not great-SATs student, maybe 2 APs. S is quite different. I can tell you that for D we had a very enlightening experience. Her stats were within range for one selective school, but not in the top 25% and she did not get in. They are not need blind but need “sensitive” (how do you like those semantics?) She got in everywhere else – 11 schools – but we could only afford 2 of them, one of them being a state school. But thank God she had a choice, and that it all worked out.</p>
<p>This is a great site and if it weren’t for CC we would never have been able to navigate her search.</p>
<p>So let’s continue to learn from each other and help answer OP’s original concerns.</p>
<p>Momcinco I don’t deny that top colleges and universities are looking for high achieving low-income students. And I agree with the research which shows that many lower income students don’t apply to the top schools at all. But, my point in helping students to see the reality is that only so many “free-ride” students can be admitted without taking too much out of the endowments. Take Yale for instance. Through QuestBridge they get a lot of low income students applying. The most current stats I could find show that of the Yale student population 12% receive federal aid (Pell Grants). You say that they say that they admit as many low income students as they do legacies. Both of these amounts must then be about 12%. So if more low income students apply than are already applying, I don’t think it will change the number of low income students admitted within a particular year, but it will likely make their admissions stats even more competitive. This is just my opinion.</p>
<p>So while it’s great that low income students are being encouraged to apply to great schools, as they should be, it’s also a reality that only so many will be admitted. Admissions are incredibly competitive for all students regardless of their financial situation as many of these schools are in the single digits or teens on acceptance rates. I’ve tried to search this in the past, but it would be interesting to know what percent of the QB finalists do attend one of the QB partner schools, either through matching or regular decision. This was a press release from QB
<a href=“http://www.questbridge.org/images/stories/pdfs-documents/cm13_press_release.pdf”>http://www.questbridge.org/images/stories/pdfs-documents/cm13_press_release.pdf</a> in which they said that of 4700 or so finalists 440 were matched and they expect the total number admitted through match and regular admissions to be about 1500 - or about a third. The number of QB applicants was over 12K It’s definitely worth all the work to try for this, but it’s not a guarantee. </p>