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<p>I neither said nor implied any such thing. The silliness and ignorance–and rudeness-- is all yours.</p>
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Argh, the historian in me has to correct this somewhat garbled version of biography. True Nixon got into Harvard College and couldn’t afford to go. He went to Whittier College instead. He went to Duke for law school.</p>
<p>Consolation, please, of course you implied it.</p>
<p>Just chiming in about the article. I’m not sure where the author got his info, but I take exception to his comment about working at 7-11. Here in CA, my daughter’s GC specifically mentioned that colleges love kids that have jobs - actual real jobs (bringing snacks into Dad’s office does not count). A job that has to support family members? Golden!!</p>
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<p>The number of true “hereditary aristocracy” families in the US is vanishingly small and really not terribly important. It’s not as though people can’t get to quite nice, upper middle class lives without attending certain elite colleges. I don’t know if it’s different on the east coast – but please! Go down the street of any nice, upper middle class area – and <em>tons</em> of those people went “just” to state schools, <em>tons</em> of those people are able to pay full-pay for their kids. I think I’d worry about the aristocracy if we were dealing with a closed society, but that isn’t the case. So what if I never become one of the Kennedys or Bushes who can snap my fingers and send my kids wherever I want?</p>
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<p>I thought it was a local college in California, where he could afford to take a train?</p>
<p>Edit: Sorry, see I cross-posted.</p>
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<p>No, I did not. It never crossed my mind. And I highly resent your implied accusation of lying.</p>
<p>Schools gap kids of all colors, even many schools that claim to meet “full need.” Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Most of them have a limited amount of money to give out. The existence of “institutional methodology” enables them to redefine EFC as they wish–or as they must, if they are to keep the doors open. Inevitably, that leads to some kids being effectively “gapped.”</p>
<p>I also think that improvement of secondary education in urban areas would be a great first step to–at the very least–give low-income families a fighting chance for the kids to do well on the standardized tests & be in the ballgame for admittance to better colleges. The new mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, says this is job #1 for him.</p>
<p>At the same time, the fractionalization of the family unit in low-income areas is at a frighteningly high percentage & has been for a couple of generations, and that has been a big part of the urban schools’ decline. It’s time for the welfare system to be retooled by local, state & national candidates not worried about re-election. That’s even a bigger job, but one that would certainly help in the long run.</p>
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<p>Nobody knows what you intended in your post. Certainly I don’t see how it can be read as a statement that “no URM kids ever get gapped.”</p>
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<p>However, I certainly think it is a fair reading to assume from this sequence of posts that you believe that ORMs are at an additional disadvantage in the process, and that this disadvantage might more often manifest itself in insufficient financial aid. </p>
<p>Otherwise, why include the information about skin color at all? I don’t understand the point. Maybe you can explain.</p>
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<p>However, when the SAT I has less correlation to future academic performance in university than it does to socioeconomic background (as noted [here](<a href=“Publications | Center for Studies in Higher Education”>Publications | Center for Studies in Higher Education)</a>), it appears to not be doing its intended job as a means of helping a university find the best students (as opposed to the students from the highest socioeconomic backgrounds) that well.</p>
<p>Let’s not parse people’s words and back them into corners. We all write things, feel things that aren’t exactly what we mean to talk about.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I was talking about the notion that only the top group were worthy of elites. Of course, one can craft a life without them. But I still think fighting a two-tiered society is a fight worth taking up.</p>
<p>As for a missing aristocracy, when 400 people’s personal wealth equals the wealth or 50% of the rest of us, I don’t see it disappearing soon. And I certainly feel like a serf. Especially when those super wealthy folk influence politics and public policy.</p>
<p>Like you, I don’t need those extreme trappings of wealth. What I am concerned about is the increasing discussion of dismantling social programs. And this may nor may not eventually effect me or my own children. I am not speaking for my own personal situation.</p>
<p>ucb: i’ve read that study, it does not say that the SAT is not the most objective measurement. it only says that gpa has a less adverse effect on the poor in regards to admissions. Well, of course. An accurate question is who do you think does well at Cal, the 4.0 1800 SAT kid from Oakland Tech or the 3.9 2300 kid from Palo Alto High?</p>
<p>grade inflation and quality of high school teaching varies radically, however the SAT is consistent, flawed, sure, but still the best tool admissions has</p>
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<p>Part of the communication from NU to alumni and parents of entering freshmen had to do with the fact that they now had enrolled X number of local, promising, from-the-poor-part-of-town Chicago students and that was explicitly an institutional goal. </p>
<p>It may very well be that U of Chicago has a similar institutional goal; I just can’t say either way, but certainly there are plenty of poor kids not far from their neighborhood. I seem to recall Michelle Obama saying something to the effect that even though she grew up not all that far from U of Chicago, it never crossed her mind to go there and indeed it was Princeton that reached out to promising kids from poorer circumstances. </p>
<p>Yet another thing when people get all ****y that their kid didn’t get in where he “should” – I also believe Harvard has said something similar in terms of having an institutional goal of explicitly helping kids from poorer neighborhoods in Boston, and I would imagine Penn has that for Philly.</p>
<p>Agreed, Pizzagirl, and I’m all for kids from poorer neighborhoods having a shot at it. What I DON"T want is low-income kids getting admitted solely to fill up that quota & make the benefactors feel good about themselves. That’s why they have the standardized tests–so everyone is on the same playing field.</p>
<p>We all know that some schools, especially merit-money schools, give money to kids who bring certain things that the school thinks it needs: high stats, athletic prowess, diversity, and so forth. We read all the time about other schools “crafting a class.” Part of the process inevitably has to do with assumptions about the background and resources of applicants, based on race, zip code, activities, and so forth. There is simply no way that it doesn’t play into their thought processes, even if subconsciously. </p>
<p>I think that when a school looked at my kid’s application, they probably assumed that he had such advantages as an SAT prep class. I have read any number of times about how ALL kids in towns like ours do. He didn’t. (His friends did, though.) They didn’t realize that when he took part in a summer program that can provide FA for very few that he was on scholarship: they probably assumed we paid full freight for it. They could see that he had music lessons, they couldn’t see that I hadn’t been to the dentist in ten years. And so forth. </p>
<p>In the end, it turned out that the two schools where he was accepted that have the most $$ endowment per student were the only two that actually met his need, despite PR to the contrary by most of the others. It’s not surprising: they were the ones with the money. The other schools had institutional methodologies that resulted in effective gapping. </p>
<p>I am not saying that my S would NOT have been effectively gapped at those schools if he were an URM. I’m saying that the schools probably didn’t EXPECT to have to gap him because of his apparent socio-economic background as a resident of an upper-middle class, overwhelmingly white town. On the surface of it, he looked liked someone whose family would not need much FA. In our society, the fact that he is white is simply part of that picture.</p>
<p>Leaving my kid aside, are low-income white and ORM kids at even more of a disadvantage in admissions than similar-income URM kids with similar stats and attributes, as Dad<em>of</em>3 suggested? I think that at many private schools, at least, the answer is probably yes. Because the URM kids at least have one attribute the schools want. There’s plenty of information out there about how schools wield their merit money and FA allocations to maximize yield and desirable stats and avoid giving out more money than they can afford. </p>
<p>Let’s look at something else: I know for a fact that schools (including Dartmouth and Swarthmore, and I’m sure there are others) have extended application deadlines for URMs, and have mass-mailed recruiting letters to potential URM candidates AFTER the regular deadline had passed, urging them to apply. I think that the schools would probably explain this–which is, after all, at least as unfair to URM candidates who did apply on time as to anyone else–by saying that they are making an extra effort to reach out to students whose backgrounds may not have led them to feel comfortable applying to elite schools. A worthy goal. But where are the similar extensions and mailings to low-income white students who come from circumstances not conducive to elite school attendance? If they exist, I certainly haven’t heard students reporting getting those letters on CC. I’d be happy to stand corrected if anyone knows of them.</p>
<p>Cross-posted with the above stories about regional low-income outreach efforts. BTW, I am not at all opposed to affirmative action in admissions. I do tend to think that not enough attention is paid to economic disadvantage, though. (I’m not talking about my family. Comparatively temporary economic trouble is not the same thing at all.)</p>
<p>^^^
That’s basically what I thought you were saying. And I agree that’s different from implying that no URM would ever be gapped (a term I didn’t even know until this morning).</p>
<p>A poor kid and a rich kid with the same SAT score do not have the same chance at an elite college.That section for “Activities” is what spoils a poor kid’s chances.Writing that you worked at McDonald’s for 20 hours a week does not seem to impress as much as carrying out a malaria campaign in Africa(and we all know what type of student will be participating in the latter).</p>
<p>^^true.</p>
<p>but should the poor kid have the same chance? it took my family 5 generations to get to hyps. the first 2 generations didn’t go to college. then 2 at state schools.</p>
<p>IQ (test scores were high enough at gen 3) but the malaria campaign ec’s didn’t come until gen 5</p>
<p>The trickle down effect finally comes to the ivy league.If there is anything that makes America different from a banana republic,it is the belief that upward mobility is possible in ones own generation.I am not interested in hoping that the 3rd generation will get into Harvard when i was born in this one!Who knows by then the focus will be on getting into Tshinghua or Beijing University.</p>
<p>As stated upthread, private institutions can spend their endowments however they want, i.e. accepting URM’s at whatever rate & whatever criteria they choose. What bothers me is when publics think they can do the same thing. I highly doubt that ANY guidelines are etched in stone or even in any by-laws, private or public, because the year-to-year financials are so fluid. For some of the desirable state-run publics, however, there has been a shift to accept more OOS students lately, bringing extra tuition money into the coffers & adding to the ethnic diversity, in effect killing two birds with one stone.</p>
<p>Poor students beware.Do not even apply.They are just using you in order to report a lower acceptance rate and as a result a high ranking on USNews</p>