<p>Dstark, that would be jumping from one extreme to another. </p>
<p>It is a given that the overwhelming majority of the close to 23,000 students who applied at Harvard ARE qualified and would graduate without too many issues. However, it is impossible to admit them all, and a large percentage falls in the HARVARD non-admissible category. They are non-admissible based on the selection criteria that are developed to help the school reduce the pool by 90%. </p>
<p>It would be impossible to create reasonable parameters to reject 90 to 95% of qualified applicants of a general pool and admit a vastly more subtantial percentage of a specific pool that comprises only lower-income students.</p>
<p>I don't understand vastly, either. Who said anything about vastly? Every year, are there really only a little more than 100 poor students qualified to go to Harvard?</p>
<p>Dstark, if 95% of the applicant pool is qualified, that means that 85 to 95% of the qualified pool is REJECTED. </p>
<p>Accordingly a good number of lower-income students HAVE to be rejected despite being qualified. They were qualified but that can't exclude the fact that some candidates were MORE qualified, even after making adjustments. </p>
<p>Harvard does not run out of qualified candidates from the various groups; they run out of spots and lower ranked candidates are turned away. The number of admissions is not overly elastic.</p>
<p>So, just wondering, when colleges say that financial aid and admssions are separate, is that completely untrue? </p>
<p>also, my parents only make about $20000 a year and I have found that the three schools I was just admitted to (Barnard, NYU, and Georgetown) have all been pretty generous with the amount of aid offered, esp. Gtown. And for NYU, the merit aid actually helped me.</p>
<p>IMO, in the city at least, there are definitely opportunities for the low-income student to excel and do well in school, tests, etc.</p>
<p>I think it's really the middle-class families that have hardest time paying for college. I actually feel bad for my middle-class friends.</p>
<p>Rich kids and poor kids go to the Ivy's. Middle and working class kids go to Rutgers. It has always been that way and will always be that way. The rich like to play Lady Bountiful to a handful of poor kids and clap themselves on the back for their broadmindedness and liberality.</p>
<p>The only question I have about the whole process is why is the public till being used to subsidize Harvard because that is who draws the benefit of the Pell grants and work study money not the student. If these poor kids are really an educational necessity then Harvard should foot the bill just like they foot the bill for the library and for classrooms.</p>
<p>Xiggi wrote:
[quote]
It would be impossible to create reasonable parameters to reject 90 to 95% of qualified applicants of a general pool
[/quote]
How about if the reasonable parameters were as little bit LESS based on criteria known to discriminate against lower income groups? In my opinion, no institution that requires and relies on the SAT can claim to be "need blind", because scores on the test correlate so strongly to family income. If you set your minimum cutoff at 1300, by definition you have just excluded a huge number of low-income students; set the minimum at 1400 and more poor kids fall off the scale. As far as I know, the correlation between family income and SAT score is more constant and bears a greater statistical significance than the correlation between SAT scores and first year college grades.</p>
<p>GPA correlates with family income too. In fact everything good you can measure correlates wiyth family income. And why should that surprise anyone? Homes that valure education, contain books, quite places to study, enriched extracurricular activities, you name it and the rich have it. So why don't we even things up and only admit poor kids to Harvard, Princeton and Yale? Well basically because if we did they wouldn't be Harvard, Princeton, and Yale anymore - they would be Slippery Rock State and Alcorn. The very thing that makes the schools the object of such desire is the one everyone professes to loathe - namely they are full of smart bright and fortuante rich kids.</p>
<p>Actually, Patuxent, I don't know of any studies saying that GPA correlates with family income -- if you know of one, please point to it. That doesn't really make sense, because there are straight A students at inner city high schools - they are not outside rich kids being bussed in. My son went to a public high school that was the type of school that would be shunned by most upper income families (one acquaintance expressed disdain at his high school choice and actually said that the school was undesireable because it had "too many students of color") -- and he wasn't even in the top 10%, though he probably had the highest SAT score (mid 1400's). The val and salutatorians had higher grades than him, lower SATs -- they were good students who were in his honors and AP classes with him, so it's not a matter of them taking easier courses.</p>
<p>You are doomed if you do, and you are doomed if you don't!</p>
<p>I am really neutral when it comes to Harvard. While I did not like it enough to apply at the Big H, I think that way too much criticism is sent the way of Cambridge. They do not seem to appease anyone! </p>
<p>They are criticized for failing to reward meritocracy all the while failing basic tests for diversity. They are accused of being stingy with financial aid by not accepting more lower-income candidates -despite surpassing $100 million in aid. On the one hand, some groups want them to accept more students based on pure academics, but on the other hand, other groups want them to relax certain admission requirements and use holistic approaches to reach to even lower. Nobody seems happy, except for the 2400 lucky students who were admitted.</p>
<p>Harvard did NOT create the great inequities in our education system, nor can they do much to change the K-12 system. It is their right and priviledge to interpret the SAT scores sent by TCB, and, at least to the eyes of an outsider, make the necessary adjustments for ethnic and socio-economic differences. </p>