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<p>Of course it is. </p>
<p>But that is not the issue being discussed on this thread, which is whether the federal government, i.e., all U.S. taxpayers, should pay additional taxes so a poor, disadvantaged kid – and internationals, since $$ is fungible – can attend a tony, private college like Vassar. What is the great public benefit in that? How is that benefit that much better than if the same kid used attended the instate public Uni instead?</p>
<p>Blue, the Vassar president’s statement in the link is in response to the College Board’s initiative to get higher ranked schools on the radar of more high achieving low income students. That’s why the College Board is being mentioned. Click on the link at the beginning of the story linked to in the OP.</p>
<p>Dodgersmom: I overestimated the percentage of international students at Vassar who are dual citizens, because I was writing from memory and not citing data. When I cite data, I am careful to be accurate. I was also using Vassar’s definition of “international student”, which is different from that of the common data set. The freshman class at Vassar class includes 51 students who are foreign citizens and 35 who are dual citizens, and Vassar considers all of them to be “Internationals” on the college’s admissions page. To be more accurate, using Vassar’s definition of “international”, 40% of the “international” students at Vassar are dual citizens. I stand by my comment, but I agree with the other posters who argue that American citizens (dual or otherwise) should not be counted as internationals and are not counted as such in the common data set.</p>
<p>Dodgersmom, please look for other errors in my posts. Please review my analyses. I will gladly retract my conclusion that enrollment of wealthy kids at Vassar has been increasing and that enrollment of middle class students on financial aid who do not qualify for PG has been decreasing if you can show me that I am wrong. (I define middle class students on financial aid as those who do not qualify for PG but cannot afford to attend Vassar without financial assistance. Admittedly, this is a huge economic range and includes many kids who are upper middle class.)</p>
<p>Educators are also saying that they are getting the “low hanging fruit” when it comes to applications from students who qualify for Pell Grants. They use different words, but they say the same thing. The CB and educators are also saying that it is going to take a lot of work to reach those high-achieving Pell Grant students who have not been applying to elite colleges (the NOT low-hanging fruit). They have also been saying that they have long been receiving applications from Pell Grant students from urban areas (the low hanging fruit) but not from rural towns across the country.</p>
<p>Dodgersmom: I’d be happy to have you show me errors in my analyses, but so far no one has. Two people have cited other data as evidence that I am wrong, but their data has supported my conclusions that Vassar has been significantly increasing enrollment of wealthy students to the point that I find it hard to believe it is an accident. </p>
<p>Vassar became need-blind around 2006 or 2007 (I don’t know the exact year), at which point the percentage of wealthy students in the student body decreased. Judging from data someone posted to show me that Vassar’s enrollment of wealthy students has been declining for at least 10 years, it seems to me that the percentage of wealthy students in the student body has been slowly climbing back up, one year at a time. </p>
<p>And yes, Dodgersmom, my child was rejected from Vassar, as were 5 of the other 6 who applied last year from her high school. It was a stunningly bad year in college acceptances at the high school for kids who started preparing for college acceptances back when they were still in middle school. (Think summer enrichment programs. These kids don’t go to Europe or to summer camp.) </p>
<p>Dodgersmom, why do you have so much contempt for me? Your post drips with it.</p>
<p>The reason I focus on Vassar is because Vassar’s president has become a public face of programs to admit PG students. I feel almost as though a week doesn’t go by when I don’t come across an article or letter she has written or an article in which she has been quoted in the NYT, Washington Post, or the WSJ. She tries to shame other college presidents into following her lead. She likes to pretend that Vassar is need-blind, but the data show that the admission of wealthy students has increased (not decreased) despite enrollment of more PG students.</p>
<p>My daughter is enrolled at an excellent college, a top 20 school on US News & World Report, and she is reasonably happy and doing well. But she had my husband (her father) and me guiding her and encouraging her to apply to specific schools. She would be at a state school today, not an excellent LAC, if not for advice we gave her. (She now asks us for lots of advice more often than we’d like, as we’d prefer she find her own way. She has finally learned that sometimes we really do know what we are talking about!) </p>
<p>Many of the students at her high school did not get good advice on where to apply to college. They applied to Ivies (for which they were very qualified) and safeties, and nothing in between. Many wound up at UCs they were trying to avoid because of budget cuts. But colleges like Vassar seem to think that these kids get good college advice, and they don’t. </p>
<p>blue: The CB is part of the effort to increase applications from PG students. Like it or not, the CB is a relevant part of college discussions.</p>
<p>Actually, blue, the hooks I remember seeing did not list PG student specifically. They listed QuestBridge, a program that helps qualified PG students apply to elite colleges. But I’ve been so severely criticized for thinking that every PG student enrolled at an elite college is a QuestBridge student that I stopped using the term in my posts. </p>
<p>The admitted and rejected students list their statistics in these posts, and they also speculate about hooks and the strengths of their applications. One might say he had a terrific interview, another might say she thought her essays made the difference between an acceptance and a rejection, and another might say she is a Pell grant student at a college looking to admit PG students. Blue, what’s so terrible about that?</p>
<p>When I skimmed through the posts, I did not pay attention to which ones were URM. If we believe what the colleges are saying, being economically deprived is a bigger hook than being URM these days.</p>
<p>I have several adult friends and have known quite a few people over the years who would have been PG students had the program existed back when they were young. In all cases, they were driven and “knew” they were leaving home someday and would never return to live in the communities in which they were born. Two were raised by single Moms due to death in one case and divorce in the other, and another had a mother who was an alcoholic. My mother also would have been a PG student. She received an invitation in the mail to apply to Barnard College, but she threw it into the garbage without thinking about it and wound up at a CUNY school. I don’t have any trouble believing qualified PG students who are not applying to elite colleges are still out there.</p>
<p>Oldmom: My daughter’s Asian friends, all with immigrant parents and most of them middle class (some upper middle class), helped each other with college applications and pooled advice and information. </p>
<p>Also, Stuyvesant HS enrolls 70% Asian students. 30% of its student body is low-income. Many Asian parents provide strong encouragement to their kids, even if they don’t know English and are poor. I would not be surprised if groups of Asian students at Stuyvesant have also bonded together to form similar support groups. </p>
<p>The 20% of PG students enrolled at elite private high schools are also getting a lot of guidance and help. The problem is reaching those PG kids who don’t have an adult- not even a concerned teacher- guiding them.</p>
<p>As I said, the colleges are getting applications from the “low hanging fruit”. Getting kids without support groups to apply is going to be a lot tougher.</p>
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<p>Have you ever looked at the Questbridge application, nosering? I suspect not. Being a Pell grant applicant and being a Questbridge applicant is NOT the same thing. Yes, there is overlap, but that does not make the two sets identical.</p>
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<p>Congratulations on this - that’s quite a coup! I’d suggest that you accept the win . . . and back off from trying to convince the rest of us of your superior knowledge. No, I don’t have “contempt” for you, but find your obsession with Vassar to be more than a little bit excessive. Your criticism of Catherine Hill may be justified, but I reject the notion that either her views or the current trends you describe at Vassar are unique. I find it more likely that Hill is simply the only one with the balls (or poor judgment) to make her views public.</p>
<p>And, really, how outrageous is it for a college president to say that the school could accommodate more low income students if federal funding were increased? It may not be a popular view, but that doesn’t make it false. And how long would her tenure as president continue if she said, instead, that private colleges should NOT receive public funding?</p>
<p>Yes, it sucks to be a family in the middle - too “affluent” to be eligible for financial aid and not nearly affluent enough to be able to afford most private colleges. And perhaps this was a factor in your child’s denial from Vassar. But this issue has been discussed in this forum repeatedly and at length. The problem is not unique to Vassar.</p>
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<p>Not being eligible for financial aid anywhere puts one in the top few percent of the income scale in the US. That is the new definition of “middle class”?</p>
<p>Dodgersmom, please show me where I have complained that it is outrageous for a college president to say that the school could accommodate more low income students if federal funding were increased.</p>
<p>I have pointed out that studies show that low-income kids get more support (of the emotional and academic kind) at private colleges and are more likely to graduate. I am supportive of these programs.</p>
<p>I would have a lot more respect for Catharine Hill if she said that Vassar was returning to being need-aware, because that’s the only way the college can accommodate low income students. She could say that she thinks it’s more important to focus on educating low income kids, even if she has to give spots away to wealthy students that would have otherwise gone to middle class students in a need-blind system of admission. </p>
<p>I want her to acknowledge these findings in one of her articles and bring discussion of Vassar’s true choices out into the open without trying to fool the public. </p>
<p>I resent that she doesn’t even acknowledge what is happening and likes to claim she’s taking the high road and that there are no down-sides to her choices.</p>
<p>Vassar is unique in the sense that its president has taken center stage in this debate. She owes it to us to be honest with the facts.</p>
<p>TBF: Vassar is extremely active in attracting low income students; over a fifth of its matriculants are Pell Grantees, generally <$30k income. That number is 3x that of WashU, for example, and is higher % than HYPS.</p>
<p>Who is helping the kids whose parents don’t speak English, who didn’t go to college themselves and have no clue? Is this not a huge disadvantage?</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>And how would giving schools like Vassar more fed dollars solve this? ??? </p>
<p>that is an issue at the high school level. If high schools want to be more proactive in regards to this issue, go for it. That has nothing to do with taxpayers giving or not giving Elite U’s more money.</p>
<p>Oh, sure. And I bet that the ones that claim to be need blind aren’t really need blind. Or maybe they pull all kinds of tricks like boosting the rating of the prep schools.</p>
<p>MODERATOR NOTE: The member ‘admissionsrep’, who has posted on this thread is NOT a vetted employee of a college. Since their member name is a misrepresentation and they refuse to change it, they have been banned from this site. Their posts on this thread have not been deleted since that would require substantial editing of subsequent posts by other members. Please take this clarification into consideration when reading their posts.</p>
<p>Thank you for vetting those who purport to be “in the know,” very helpful.</p>