<p>From the Boston Globe:
The</a> college admissions scam - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>That’s messed up. So a lot of the colleges have been lying to us, then.</p>
<p>This is most screwed up: “So here’s the bottom line for all those exceptional middle-class and lower-class high school seniors who will doubt their own worth when the near-inevitable rejection letters arrive: The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in you. The fault lies in the system, and the system isn’t going to change, because it benefits the people it is designed to benefit - people who understand how much a real meritocracy would threaten their power.” </p>
<p>There obviously are low-income students who get in and whatnot. Some college books even say that they WANT low-income students.</p>
<p>interesting; did not find this at all in our upper middle class community in terms of admissions to the top 20 schools over the last three admission cycles; minorities and those requesting FA were far more likely to be admitted than white females or males who did not request FA…even though the so-called “wealthy” student had higher stats…oh well, I guess there are exceptions to all rules…</p>
<p>and the rejections of double legacy candidates throughout the top 20 would curl your hair…fwiw</p>
<p>The deck is stacked heavily against the poor who frequently don’t have computers, know SAT deadlines, are not encouraged by their schools or parents to excel.</p>
<p>“Take early admissions. Early admissions account for 35 percent of the incoming class at Duke this year, 20 percent at Brown, 50 percent at Yale and 40 percent at Stanford. Under most programs, early admittees are obligated to attend that school should they be granted admission. But early admissions favor the wealthy - in part because they are able to forgo weighing options for financial aid.”</p>
<p>Unless you pick a selective school that DOES give out financial aid. Northwestern’s aid package for us was awesome - and pretty much every ED contract anyway says you can get out of it if the financial aid is not sufficient. So, there’s little risk in applying ED, and a lot to gain. Also, ED applicants generally show a huge amount of promise, as they are DEDICATED to the school they are applying to. Schools want a high level of ‘accepted and attended’ to look good on their stats pages, so of course ED will show a higher level of acceptance. Nevermind the fact that it’s a smaller pool to compete in, and students who are taking that advanced jump are more likely to be a “fit” for the school. Anyone who is on top of what they are doing and where they want to go in October/November is probably also someone who has been on top of what they’re doing when it comes to grades, EC’s, etc. That’s a misleading statistic.</p>
<p>“Nor does diversity extend to racial composition. Of course every college boasts about its efforts to enroll a more racially diverse student body. But here are the facts: A New York Times article in 2004 revealed that Harvard’s incoming freshman class was 9 percent black, but between one-half and two-thirds of those black students were actually West Indian or African immigrants or the children of immigrants, and many others were biracial. In short, they weren’t African-American. Another 2004 study, conducted by Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, also found that 41 percent of blacks at 28 selective colleges and universities identified themselves as immigrants, underscoring the West Indian and African component.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to take a statistic without some salt if you don’t know how how many African-Americans applied overall.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting article, but it also is twisting some statistics to suit its point. I think it probably holds an amount of truth, but as a white, middle-class student (attending private school on a fair amount of financial aid) who is not particularly exceptional at any extracurricular but just worked hard on her studies who got into Northwestern with a pretty good financial aid package on ED…I have to have a bit of skepticism.</p>
<p>From the small sampling of students that I’ve met at Harvard, the minorities (Black, Mexican, Chinese) on financial aid were all immigrants.</p>
<p>We were first generation immigrant 30 years ago. We had 4 kids in my family. My father was an engineer, but considering he didn’t have a real job in this country until after age 35, he didn’t have any money saved up for our college tuition. All four of us were accepted to top private schools with FA, some of those schools were Ivies. We all went on to become productive members of American society and are now paying full fare for our kids’ college tuition. </p>
<p>I don’t think colleges have been lying to the public. You could get into those schools even if you are not super rich, but college education is a privilege not an entitlement. It could happen if a student works hard, parents sacrifice, and school make FA available. My father took out 3 mortgages to pay for our education, we all graduated top 5% of our class, and our schools were very generous.</p>
<p>you know, I find it hilarious that I pretty much said the same thing on the “how need blind is need blind” thread and everyone just naively flamed at me.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as need blind, it’s always need aware.</p>
<p>'There is no such thing as need blind, it’s always need aware."</p>
<p>Except at the very few schools that are need-blind. Very few.</p>
<p>This article is unsubstantiated. It’s a sensationalist, unsourced opinion.</p>
<p>This column is labeled as an op-ed piece. No one said it was a news story.</p>
<p>Even at those very few schools, it’s still need aware, or they could never keep the percentage same year after year.</p>
<p>The Boston Globe has basically devolved into a tabloid. None of this information is backed up by any facts and is just straight up assumptions. I doubt any of its claims are true.</p>
<p>Some of the claims in the article are true. For example, there really is a college called Yale.</p>
<p>The existence of Yale is merely hearsay.</p>
<p>My family makes about $45,000 through a combination of two parents working full time and the wages I earn working about 35 hours a week at a restaurant. My scores were about average among accepted students for the college I applied to early decision. But, I got in and am getting the vast majority of my cost of attendance (in fact, all of my tuition, room, and board) covered by grant aid. It’s just anecdotal evidence, but I know for a fact that there are many others like me. Methinks a certain almost-went-bankrupt newspaper is trying to sell copies; between this oped and the very, very shady polling they did on the MA senate race that’s running beside this piece of sensationalist garbage this morning, the Boston Globe is not exactly a reliable source of information.</p>
<p>This is an op-ed piece so it doesn’t have to be factually relevant.</p>
<p>It’s an angry and bitter article to say the least–bordering on dogmatism. When I hear rants like these that do not even consider the opposite side of the argument, I tune out. I really hope this person was not trying to change anyone’s mind. It only serves to polarize the issue, which is unfortunate since people seem to be so prone to this kind of influence these days.</p>
<p>I think we will see more of this behavior as outlined in the article in this year’s admission cycles and the next few regarding need blind applicant. The reality is that school’s endowments are down, way down and many have lost billions in investments. When a school promises to cover the costs for needy students, they can only cover so many and with the growing financial losses, they need wealthy, full-paying applicants. Another thing that I don’t think a lot of future students and their parents think about is that the college determines the aid needed, not the family and a college might look at a couple of years of family income to determine need. For example, the economy has been very hard the last few years and a number of families have unusually low incomes, but in a year or two the family income might be strong again, but not strong enough to pay an Ivy price tag and not weak enough to warrant a lot of university aid. If the university doesn’t help come up with the extra money the student may have to drop out and no one wants drop outs. I realize that there are always going to be students like this, but currently there are a lot of students in this situation. If I was a university I would definitely look at that factor to determine admission.</p>
<p>The facts in the article are true for the most part, but the writer has a strange way of interpreting them. </p>
<p>First of all, most of the top schools have non-binding early action programs, not binding early decision like the author asserts. And I’ve never understood why getting into college early (assuming it’s non-binding) means that people can’t weigh different financial aid offers.</p>
<p>Legacies do get a boost. But are legacies rich? Seems like the author is making a false equivalence. </p>
<p>The author says that SAT correlates to income. Therefore the SAT is just a scam to get more rich people. Well, you could just as well say the SAT correlates to college-preparedness. </p>
<p>Most colleges may not be need-blind. But Princeton and other top, top places are, despite what the author’s counselor may have told him. </p>
<p>The author says that those that make donations get spots reserved (development admits.) He then concludes that this shows “the upper class” has an edge. This is true, but I think the donation has to be in the million-dollar range or higher, so it discriminates against everyone who cannot make a million dollar donation. I think plenty of people in the upper class don’t have a million dollars as expendable income. Frankly, I wonder how many people even know you can bribe your way in. I only found out about a couple of years ago.</p>
<p>The author asserts that most of the recruited athletes are rich preppies.</p>
<p>It seems like the author is forcing every piece of data to correlate to family income even when it doesn’t, and in general exagerrates and twists the facts. The author asserts that 1/2 to a 1/3 of the spots are taken up by “the priveleged.” I’d like to see the math behind that.</p>
<p>athletes + legacies + early action admits =? rich people</p>