The percent of alum giving (number giving) is what brings in corporate and foundations giving.
The issues with mobility are far more complex than tippy tops admitting legacies.
Of course, this opportunity isn’t entirely available to poor and middle class kids attending most of these schools. Wealthy kids attend Harvard to make connections with other wealthy kids. There is no benefit for the kid of a multi-millionaire to spend time and effort to interact with Joe Smith, the son of a school teacher from a suburb of Dallas, and even less of a benefit for that rich kid to spend time and effort on a Jack Jones, son of two unemployed former farm workers in rural Indiana. They’d much rather interact with Edward Smythe-Jones of the Arlington Smythe-Jones.
Influential legacies can have a lot impact on a university - they can hire interns for the summer, give jobs for graduating seniors etc. etc. , donate $$. We know a family that falls in that category- not at Dell level, but very successful. Children are “average excellent” - top test scores, grades etc . The children gained admission at the Top 5 university where parent is an influential legacy. You hear about this sort of stuff, but it is an eye opener when you see it firsthand.
The majority do not stay in the same quintile, but ~70% stay within 1 quintile of their parents. As I was getting at earlier, college degrees are highly correlated with upward mobility for lower SES groups. It’s not so much elite college vs non-elite college. It’s college vs no-college.
Among those growing up in families with the lowest income quinitile, 90% of those who completed a bachelor’s degree got out of the lowest quintile. Most increased by 2+ quintiles above their parents. Most of the those in the 2nd lowest qunitile who complete a college degree also increased by 2 quintiles, moving the majority of formerly low SES college grads to high income levels. However, few low income kids complete a college degree, so the vast majority remain within 1 quintile of their parents.
You can find numbers for specific colleges in the NYT college-mobility series. They found that the colleges with the greatest portion of students who moved up 2+ income qunitiles were as follows.
Most Upward Income Mobility Among Highly Selective Colleges
- UCLA
- RPI
- USC
- Cooper Union
- Caltech
Least Upward Income Mobility Among Highly Selective Colleges
- Notre Dame
- Princeton
- WUSTL
- Williams
- Brown
Most Upward Income Mobility Among All Colleges
- Vaughn Tech (NYC)
- CUNY System (NYC)
- Baruch College (NYC)
- TAMIU (~4 miles from Mexico)
- CSU, Los Angeles (LA)
Least Upward Income Mobility Among All 4-year Colleges
- Landmark College (learning disabilities)
- Lourdes
- Washington & Lee
- Sarah Lawrence
- Southern Virginia
This is certainly not the entire story, and perhaps not even the main story. My nephew and daughter both attend(ed) tippy top schools. Their friends range from Chinese princelings to kids on full financial aid. One of my daughter’s friends invited everyone in one of their classes for a fully paid trip to China. She didn’t attend, but one person who did was someone who a year earlier had barely been out of Arkansas.
My kids didn’t find social bars to hobnobbing with the uber wealthy, nor draw some artificial bar between themselves and those with less.
There used to be many comments on CC that rich kids are always jaunting off on expensive ski trips others can’t afford or shopping excursions to some big city. You believe that’s how they spend college years? Olivia Jade, maybe. But that leaves plenty of other kids to socialize with, learn from, and grow with, in post college years.
I think you have to “believe” in the wealthy class, get somewhat fixated on them and their lifestyles, to complain so vehemently about supposed privilege in college admissions. And not believe it’s possible for colleges to truly pick the class they feel is worthy. Comments that they reject kids with better stats are made with assumptions.
In other words, “trust us” is the rationale. Right.
Nope. No idea why you’d think that. I’d be perfectly fine with eliminating all athletic preference and going to just club teams like in Europe.
“Trust us?” Versus going around assuming it’s all a crapshoot and slanted against you?
How about something in the middle, actively learning more about these calleges and what they want, realistically assessing yourself, being willing to accept that more apply than there’s room for? And, that it’s not all about your stats, your ECs you think are the best ever, your essay about whatever, and “dreaming.”
The 1924-1965 US immigration system was hardly purely merit-based, in that it set national origin quotas (based on the 1890 US population) to prevent the ethnic mix of immigrants from changing the ethnic mix of the US toward what were then considered “undesirable” ethnicities (basically all non-whites, and southern and eastern Europeans). The 1952 revision set quotas of 100 per country for previously excluded Asian countries of origin, so reverting to that would exclude a very large pool of STEM PhD students and skilled workers from immigration.
Some state schools auto-admit non-athletes at the NCAA minimum academic standards (e.g. Mississippi public universities).
@Data10 the question becomes how many born in the lowest quintile earn a bachelor’s degree? When faced with a COA of $7-8K it might as well be $70K for some. Parents don’t have a nickel to contribute.
I didn’t get the memo that Harvard was supposed to be a strict socialist meritocracy. Who ever said low SES kids are so entitled to spots that they could be “stolen” from them? No one is entitled to a spot. Including rich kids. They might bring something (money) to the table that others can’t, but that doesn’t equate to stealing someone else’s spot.
Yes, Harvard is a non-profit. Yes, Harvard gets lots of public funding for research grants, public clinics, and other services. Yes there are (low SES ) Harvard students who receive Federal support (isn’t that a good thing?). But there are also very generous alums who contribute to that ginormous endowment that subsidizes tuition for everyone. I don’t begrudge Harvard its desire to admit legacies. So long as they strive to enhance their diversity with every new class, I am cool with it. It is part of what makes Harvard Harvard.
I find it ironic that people who champion public universities as the equals of elite privates (eg reminding us all that so many CEOs didn’t even go to elite schools) give a hoot about Harvard admitting rich kids who then go work for daddy.
And no, I didn’t go to Harvard. I was heartlessly rejected, and then went to great public schools for undergrad and grad. No hard feelings.
First, have checked the mobility rank of the college your kids went to? It ain’t pretty. Of course, that of the college my kid is going to is worse, but I’m not claiming that everything is all honky-dory for poor kids attending “elite” colleges.
I was being a bit facetious before, but in all honesty, making friends is not the same as making business connections. They may be happy going out for drinks with a poor kid, but will they actually provide any help to the poor kid in getting jobs?
The increased success of poor kids who get into “elite” colleges is due to A, the fact that anybody who manages to beat the odds that way is going to do well, and B, they learn how to navigate the world of wealth and privilege. It provides them with tools, not with connections. A degree from an “elite” school is one of those tools.
I really don’t deny that the rich kids who are accepted to “elite” colleges are, mostly, really good students or even excellent students. My point is that their GPAs and SAT scores are much higher than they would be if they were from low SES. That cuts out low SES kids who are just as smart, but whose parents couldn’t afford private tutors, SAT prep, and often a decent breakfast. Low and mid-range SES kids have to be a LOT better than high SES kids in order to be able to compete for a place at most “elite” colleges".
Basically, a high SES kid whose profile is that of a top contender is often no smarter than a low SES kid whose profile is what is called on CC “average brilliant”. That is usually smart enough to succeed in the “elite” colleges, especially since the benefits of wealth work here as well.
There is, undoubtedly, privilege in college admissions. To deny this, one would have to ignore piles of data and multiple studies. The effect of privilege on admission to “elite” colleges is even more marked.
However, all that being said, fighting it at the college level is kinda like locking the stable after the proverbial horse has gone on a tour of the neighboring roads. The solutions to this need to be enacted long before the kids are applying to college.
Moreover, trying to solve this by forcing a handful of elite private colleges to limit the number of rich kids who apply is also silly. The “elite” private colleges were established by the wealthy for their scions. This will not change no matter what anybody does. There are very smart and talented people who will find a way around any law that is passed to stop things like legacy. Moreover, their entire financial model is based on this. Take away the preference for the wealthy, and most will collapse. That would not help anybody, and would, in fact, be a Very Bad Idea.
BTW, MIT’s financial model has to do with A, a lot of money from patents and government contracts, and B, kids who do not come from old money and see no reason that their kids need to go to the same college that their parents. They are a different set of people than those who attend other “elite” colleges.
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My first post in the thread mentioned 11% of kids born in to the lowest quartile complete a bachelor’s degree (by age 24). I’d expect the lowest quintile to be smaller, so less than 11%.
Cost of college is obviously a major barrier, but it’s not the only one. For example, one of the lower cost options for high achieving low income students is colleges that offer near zero expected cost to parents after FA, such as HYPS… However, the study at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf found that low income high achieving students who apply to colleges generally choose more expensive college options than HYPS…, such as non-selective colleges near home. These colleges have a much larger percentage of students that are lower income than HYPS…, so it is not practical for them to have near zero cost to parents for a large portion of the student body.
There are also often non-financial barriers present well before college including educational quality, role models, family/community expectations, etc. For example, some of my family grew up in an area of the rural south where it was expected to work on the farm and not attend college. Few students from the HS applied to colleges, and those that did apply chose non-selective ones near home. One of my relatives was the first student in the history of her high school to apply to a selective college. She was accepted and attended. In the following years (likely after seeing the example), several others applied to selective colleges and attended.
In addition to graduating from 4 year college, major is also important for economic advancement… likely far more important than whether they get in to an elite college or well known non-elite college. This can be seen in the portion of low income students attending the college that increase 4 quintiles, from lowest to highest, as listed below (only included 4 year colleges). The top of the list is dominated by colleges where most choose vocationally oriented majors that are associated with a higher salary. Lower income students tend to have a higher rate of such majors than the overall average.
Largest Portion of Students From Lowest Quintile Income Families Becoming Highest Quintile Income After Graduating
- St. Louis Pharmacy – 92%
- Mass. Pharmacy – 91%
- Albany Pharmacy – 85%
- Cal Maritime – 85%
- Rose Hulman (Tech) – 78%
- Kettering (Nursing) – 75%
- Harvey Mudd – 74%
In my experience, the uber wealthy at these schools are not socializing much with the lower classes. I think it’s quite rare when such friendships form. Talk to the high financial aid kids at Harvard and ask if it’s happening and they’ll tell you it’s not. My D has had this conversation recently with a significant number of students at Harvard on significant financial aid at a conference. I went to school with a number of uber wealthy students — names many of you would recognize — and they did not socialize outside of their tight knit circle of the uber wealthy, which led to many rich kids jokes. The uber wealthy foreign students were more likely to make friends with students of much lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
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The low-SES kids, or even the middle class kids, don’t have the means to socialize with the uber wealthy, even if they were invited. The inclusion of some middle class kids and a few low-SES kids doesn’t make these institutions any less elitist. They’re in the business to perpetuate their influence. The artificial “diversity” is just a facade, an effort to shield them from such criticisms.
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“They may be happy going out for drinks with a poor kid…”
Tough comment and imo, not fair to kids.
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Of course they will happily help a talented friend if they can. That is what friends do.
And don’t forget that alumni help with career placement. When my D contacted alumni for help with summer internships, not a single person asked her “Where do you summer?” before offering to help.
LOL. I honestly believe you need a good sociological perspective here, not a lean on hard data, like what colleges provide the ‘most’ mobility. That’s a sort of tip of the iceberg.
Of course, the poorest kids out there have a larger jump to make. Not just because the wealthy are privileged, but because their environments and resources often (but not always) limit their vision and actual goals, the conditions of their context, social ties, and more. And their prep is one aspect, not the sole.
H and its sisters are not supposed to take them, for reasons of strict social mobility- not to make them neurologists or overpaid Google workers. H isn’t even solely about job prospects (despite CC.) Not all kids are headed for stem careers.
What higher education does is give all kids broader education and life choices. Many may become teachers, work in corporate, get involved with smaller businesses- and whatever. That’s their success, those may be their goals. This family desire to keep the Dell kid in a most lucrative career is not what applies to most kids out there. We want them “able.”
Many of the brightest low SES kids choose not to attend a fancier college, but their own best local or state. Yes, you need to include matriculation in a view of the stats. Not all kids who do qualify for H choose to go there. (Hence, the slant in wealth stats in the college community.) It’s a more “natural” for kids in higher classes, often a drive to get the most prestige (again, look at CC.)
The responsonsibility to increase any low SES kid’s chances starts locally, with K-12 and other programs to boost opportunity and resolve critical issues/barriers. Offer better college aid across the board to the best of them, without limiting it to elite colleges. And recognize that not each and every kid out there is ripe for a college education. They need alternatives.
Meanwhile, you still suspect the wealthy. Manipulating. A conspiracy to keep their own. And CC is full of middle class or upper middle class families doing the same manipulating- do I take this course, are my ECs in line, what looks better? What gets meinto med school? How do I get into the financial services industry?
Let’s add one thing about mobility. When you’re above the averages to begin with, there isn’t going to be a 2 quintile jump, you’re already near the top.
And when you start at the bottom, the goals may not be uber wealth or a 2 rung leap. These kids have their dreams, too, and they may not be big bucks, high prestige.
What we see is the trickle effect of more lower SES/first gen kids becoming college educated. The influence that spreads, over time. It takes time. It is not simply about how much more you earn than your parents. How many rungs studies show kids from certain colleges jump or not. You need this broader view. And I think, gentler.