I personally think that the University of Michigan could do outreach to public schools in Michigan and help educate the students and the counselors. Help as to informing that they meet need and help filling out financial aid forms.
All too many kids have no one at home to navigate the very confusing process that can be a meet needs school.
When a smart kid is getting mailings that they have a full tuition scholarship at say Oakland University or SVSU, that’s what they see not that they can get money at Michigan.
This is all opinion from my very limited conversations with parents and students. They don’t have the wherewithal to figure everything out and the counselors are over worked and under utilized.
The UM counsellors are always out at the HSs! Some people will never bother to try tho. And for many there, a $2 or 3k difference in price is a huge thing. So they choose the cheaper after FA.
@HRSMom, I stand corrected. My kids had a great school college counselor. We were lucky and had visits from admissions but I don’t remember it being frequent. I also remember how difficult the CSS Profile was for me and how the school counselor was not much help. That wasn’t what he did, but it was an upper middle class school and there wasn’t that much said about FA. Except to apply to a variety of schools and see what happens.
I found that CC was invaluable in navigating the FA process. The school wasn’t.
But should state universities give an extra boost to characteristics associated with parental income and wealth (e.g. Michigan’s use of legacy in admissions), rather than letting the applicants stand on their own achievements?
Also, when parental income and middle/high school or test achievement are separated, parental income independently boosts a student’s chance of completing college, regardless of the student’s own achievement (which itself may be influenced by both genetics and advantages/disadvantages associated with parental income level).
What about the many high end students who do not get into HYP?
@DadTwoGirls
“I think that there is a very real risk that if top universities try too hard to squeeze out white students, then there could be an unfortunate backlash…”
Can you explain this to me? My first read was that minority students had better not strive for equality of access to education.
Trying to give you a chance to clarify.
No need to in Michigan, like California we are blessed with many good to great unis…there is one for every GPA/Test score. In Michigan, both MSU and GVSU have benefited in rising stats from the tightening and narrowing of admissions for high GPA and standardized test score in-state kids who fall right into their laps or spread out into the other colleges in the region, plus there are kids that get admitted to UofM and end up picking stronger programs (physics for one) at MSU than are available at UofM. And at least from what I’ve read and observed, UofM does a good job of out-reach to under-represented high schools in Michigan. And even then some of the kids targeted that actually end up applying end up getting deferred or rejected. Too much of the conversation has to do with OSS kids and frankly, if they want to pay the bucks to attend than so be it. If they happen to be primarily white Anglo-Saxon upper middle class kids defecting off the coasts so be it. I really don’t see UofM suddenly returning to a decade ago when a 3.7 unweighted GPA and a 27 ACT was a sure bet for UofM just to get “more diversity” on campus and a highly doubt it’s a major concern for the Board of Regents.
"Can you explain this to me? My first read was that minority students had better not strive for equality of access to education. Trying to give you a chance to clarify. "
The top relatively large universities that I have checked (I will admit that I have only checked the top 5 in the country, but someone else posted data on more like the top 15 or so) have reduced the number of white students to less than 50% of all students. A few have reduced the number of white students that they will accept to approximately 40%. The last data that I saw from one of the top universities had white students reduced to 36%. Given that white people make up somewhere around about 62% of the US population, arbitrarily limiting 62% of the US population to only 40% of the slots in top universities does not count as “equality of access”. We don’t need to limit 62% of Americans to 40% of the slots in our top universities in order to provide equality of access to minority students.
When asked, some people say “oh, white students can go to their state universities”. However, it appears that at least one state university does not agree with this, which I guess is sort of the point of this entire thread.
I will admit that a few very northern LACs have more than 50% white students. However, these are not large enough to add up to a significant percentage of all of the student slots that are available at top US universities.
If white students made up 70% of the strongest applicants, but were limited to 62% of the slots (since that is the percent of white people in the country) then very few people would be bothered by this. If white people were limited to 55% I still think that relatively few people would be bothered. However, there needs to be some limit in terms of how low a percentage universities will be willing to accept. 40% is going too far, and is upsetting a significant amount of people. Most people who are upset about this are not willing to talk about it, but they are willing to vote. If you were surprised this past November, then you have not been paying attention.
I don’t think that anyone is questioning the desire to have minority students represented at top universities. However, there is a need to leave a few slots for the rest of the population. Blatant discrimination against the majority of the population, in the long run, is not going to work out well. You don’t want angry people going in to the voting booth. The least bad long term result that might occur from this is a supreme court which declares affirmative action unconstitutional. This would be unfortunate since a small amount of affirmative action is clearly (IMHO) desirable. However, there are worse outcomes that could happen.
@Gator88NE , that is one interpretation. But California and Florida are much larger states than Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia, and by virtue of those numbers have more low SES students to choose from who meet their academic qualifications. Cal and UCLA’s LEG is Asian, and the CA population less white than other states, so that may reflect differing state demographics more than better aid.
Assuming Michigan resident student to enter as frosh with 3.7 HS GPA and 29 ACT and living on campus, married parents each earn $10,000 per year.
UMAA: "Scheduled Maintenance Notice; The Net Price Calculator System is currently unavailable. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. "
MSU: $10,595
GVSU: $12,033
MTU: $9,915
WSU: $13,595
CMU: $11,594
UMF: $13,669
However, several of the net price calculators are the ones that only ask for ranges of parental income and may be less accurate.
A comparison between UMAA and the others will have to wait until the “scheduled maintenance” is done.
“Given that white people make up somewhere around about 62% of the US population, arbitrarily limiting 62% of the US population to only 40% of the slots in top universities does not count as “equality of access”. We don’t need to limit 62% of Americans to 40% of the slots in our top universities in order to provide equality of access to minority students.”
I believe you are making an assumption that of the slots a top university has there will be 62% white students that are the best of the best.
AA is not making a massive difference for whites. It is the asians that are cutting into the percentage of whites at these top universities. If anything I believe asians would be the ones complaining about equality of access. I have yet to see someone not think that Asians are getting screwed. I feel so bad for Asian males looking to get into STEM majors at top universities.
@DadTwoGirls I think then your beef may be with the numbers of international students coming in. Earlier tonight I saw a nice graphic of which colleges had the highest % of international students but I cannot find it again.
Forbes magazine article titled diversity at top colleges. The graphic has a separate color for international students. The data is a couple of years old
It is important to consider the college age distribution of race/ethnicity rather than the overall distribution. In states like Michigan older people are overwhelmingly white or black. There are far more Hispanics , mixed race and Asians in younger groups. Arguably, every mixed race child is already ‘diverse’.