<p>I ran across an article recently that found trends of discrimination against students applying to elite/prestigious universities on the basis of their non-academic background. Of course the entire adcom process is composed of discrimination in areas such as distinguishing students with higher test scores, GPAs, and an applicant's extracurricular activities. However, one irrelevant form of discrimination, the applicant's socioeconomic status, affected the acceptance pool in a substantial manner.</p>
<p>Students from higher income households (upper middle class) were more likely to be accepted than lower income households (mostly the working class and poor) with similar test scores, such as the SAT. The rejection of the lower income students occurred BEFORE any financial aid options could be discussed with the students, almost making it an "academic sin" to come from a working class/poor background while applying to elite institutions.</p>
<p>Is this now an issue that hardworking students from unprivileged backgrounds will have to educated about? Should there be efforts to inform students from less privileged backgrounds to consider that they may be discriminated against for simply being BORN INTO a less desirable social class?</p>
<p>They’re certinly not going to be discriminated against at the TOP universities (Ivy and same level), next teir down, maybe their chances decrease because they require financial aid but there’s certinly not discrimination beyond that. You claim facts with no evidence (atleast nothing posted), so there’s no way anyone can point out anything particularly wrong with what you’re saying, other than that it’s probably made up either by you or by whoever you got it from.</p>
<p>Your post is devoid of information, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Almost every school considers ability to pay in admissions decisions. The degree to which they want an applicant is often reflected in the amount of financial aid they award those who demonstrate financial need. If a school is willing, but not particularly eager, to admit a specific applicant, and that applicant that has great financial need, the school may opt to reject the applicant. Admitted applicants who don’t attend, for whatever reason, have a negative effect on a college’s yield, the rate at which admitted applicants accept their offers of admissions, and yield has an effect on selectivity rankings. If it is clear to admissions that an applicant they are considering admitting can’t attend with the aid they are willing to offer, then it makes good economic sense for the school to deny the applicant admission, to protect the school’s yield and selectivity ranking.</p>
<p>I’m leaving the source out for purposes of discussing this now as a hypothethical:</p>
<p>Do you believe that elite/prestigious universities have discriminated against students from less desirable socioeconomic backgrounds because of the alleged assumptions that students from said backgrounds are less of a “fit” than their higher income competition?</p>
<p>Is it possible that some adcoms (erroneously) equate a working class/poor background with some qualitative characteristics that can not be measured or defined by standardized testing or GPA?</p>
<p>theres a statistical correlation, but the causation is very simple to explain.</p>
<p>low income students do not have the kind of support that middle/upper class students have. because of their lesser opportunity, they do not have the kind of extracurricular/above and beyond resume that other students have.
its got nothing to do with elite schools not wanting people because they’re poor, but its got everything to do with the simple fact that the more money you have the more opportunities you have available to you, and thus wealthy students have a stronger background.</p>
<p>“This year, many of these colleges say they are more inclined to accept students who do not apply for aid, or whom they judge to be less needy based on other factors, like ZIP code or parents background.”</p>
<p>I’m sure some of you are forgetting but we’re in a recession. Universities, like any business operation, is currently hurting for revenue. It’s more appealing for them to accept students that do not need aid because it does not ping their budgets. This isn’t to say that you won’t be accepted if you do apply for aid but the fact of the matter is many people (even those that would not normally apply for aid) are applying for aid simply because the job market is unstable, people are taking pay cuts, and people are fearful of the economic future. The more people applying for aid the less aid there will be to go around thus giving affluent families the upper hand.</p>
<p>No. Schools, elite or otherwise, do not use socioeconomic “fit” as a reason to reject applicants; in fact, schools make a concerted effort to acknowledge socioeconomic disadvantage among applicants, in order to avoid penalizing students with applications that reflect limited resources.</p>
<p>If you think schools treat everyone equally then you’re ignorant.</p>
<p>On the surface, OF COURSE they need to make a ‘concerted effort to acknowledge socioeconomic disadvantage among applicants’. </p>
<p>But do you know what goes on behind closed doors? Schools are strapped for money. </p>
<p>If YOU were providing a service/product, wouldn’t you pick the individual who could pay full price (and not the guy who could only afford half)?</p>
<p>Just another reason why I didn’t check the box for financial aid.</p>
<p>I just spoke (via email) to an admissions counselor of a tier 1 school yesterday about this. He informed me that students from his school were admitted solely based on their academic merit and not on some alleged feasibility to pay tuition (with or without aid):</p>
<p>*"I’m not sure where you’re coming from with this message, and I’m not sure where
you received such info.</p>
<p>[university name] bases your admission decision solely on academic merits and not “ability to
pay”. How much you’d receive in federal aid or other need-based aid is
determined by the federal government and other entities, but it doesn’t affect
your admission decision.</p>
<p>Around 70% of [university name] students receive some form of financial aid or scholarships
(or a combo of the two)."*</p>