So when someone talks about how AOs consider a student’s ECs and accomplishments in the context of what is possible and reasonable for them given their circumstances either that is BS or the AOs have to know. Both cannot be true.
Either the AOs know the SES of the applicants and adjust their expectations and understanding accordingly or there is no confirmed SES info available so they’re guessing and cannot possibly know when to adjust.
If that is so and the AOs have no confirmed financial info that would explain a lot about how few low and middle SES students are admitted. The opportunities available to low and middle SES students generally are a world apart from what is available to students living in families with the money and connections to make opportunities available.
I think you are confusing the process of aggregation of data with individual file review. It’s the equivalent of the difference in science between quantitative research and case studies.
When an individual application file is reviewed, then the reader sees an array of information together, including LOR’s, essays, the students own listing of activities, school profile information from the GC. The reader might still draw some mistaken inferences, but is not likely to be too far off the mark given the level of information available about that particular applicant.
But a lot of the details that help flesh out an individual application are not going to be quantifiable or readily preserved in a way that can be used to derive meaningful data.
I also don’t think it’s an either/or thing. I think that both my daughter and her classmate who ended up at Harvard after being accepted at multiple Ivies both got the benefit of adjusted expectations for SAT/ACT scores based on general school demographic information. (The other kid had better scores than my daughter, but was actively being told on CC that his scores weren’t good enough for Ivies – but they were probably quite good for the particular school the students attended.) This was not anybody’s idea of a poor inner city high school – but it also was not elite prep level either, nor was the school population the same as the academic magnet in the same city.
Harvard readers give applicants a “disadvantaged” label, if they believe the applicant is from a “very modest economic background.” This includes consideration of whether the applicant had a fee waiver, parents’ background, and neighborhood.
In the 6-year lawsuit sample, 13% of unhooked (except URM related hooks) applicants were “disadvantaged”, and 24% of unhooked (expect URM) admits were “disadvantaged.”
But what do Harvard readers think a “very modest economic background” is?
Harvard currently says that they will provide full COA financial aid to students whose parents earn $65K or less. Good for Harvard— obviously they perceive those kids as needing substantial help to attend college. But in most parts of the country the child of the $65K earner is going to present as solidly middle class.
I’m not confusing anything, I’m applying common sense and basic observation to what the colleges are showing, not telling. If you would like to believe there is a good and reasonable explanation for some of this you are welcome to do so, but much of this doesn’t make sense unless you’re willing to suspend your disbelief.
The previously linked Harvard OIR Powerpoint showed that applicants with incomes (as reported on FA) of both $0 to $40k range and $40k to $80k range were getting a significant boost, with the actual admitted rate being substantially higher than the predicted admit rate without “disadvantaged” boost. However, above $80k, the effects were quite small, suggesting few with incomes above $80k are getting the “disadvantaged” label.
But the ques was how does H know the income? Even fee waivers can be excluded from the download.
All of us here know the common app, right? It lists the hs, parents’ work, education level, siblings and their education level. That’s often not enough. You’ll see kids where parents are unemployed or the job is a low paying sort, then sometimes that all the older sibs are educated, sometimes at impressive colleges. (That can indicate family drives.)
Kids can mention circumstances or GCs can. But again, that doesn’t tell the income level. Adcoms don’t tend to go looking up an address. For the caliber of kids they want, most often there’s a range of ECs.
The nature of many hs has changed, no one sort of lesser hs. But community or school demographic and other info often appears on the school profile (depends on how a district handles this.) It includes stats on how many graduate and go on to a 2 year or 4 year college, which is very telling. Still, you may see the hs offers AP. At some schools striving to educate, the kids fundraise for school trips and other enrichment, etc.
And lest you think the teaching quality is poor or AP is dumbed down, at lesser hs, LoRs can be impressive and informative, the quality of teaching reflected in those letters.
And a number of kids are getting mentored by local or national programs. There’s a spot for that on the CA, too.
It’s much more complex than many think. A variety of input to be weighed.
OK, that chart shows admit rates in those bands, but not the percentage of applicants. I guess my question is whether the 13% of applicants labeled “disadvantaged” would include those shown on the second band of “Exhibit 3” chart with incomes up to $80K. Because if only 13% overall of Harvard applicants are in that income range, and they are being admitted at a closer to 20% rate - that would be evidence of an applicant pool skewed very heavily towards wealth, and admission policies which already compensate for group economic differences.
But if the 13% is only the group in the 0-$40K range – then you still have the same overall pattern, but it is also possible that the demographics of the applicant pool are somewhat less dramatically skewed toward wealth. For example, it could be that 30% of applicants come from households with incomes of $80K and under, which might more closely represent the demographics of admitted students.
I imagine its very complex! Our district is in a mostly affluent ny suburb. However, there are kids on free lunch here as well. There are some small pockets of low income. The town next to us is a mix of very low and very high income. I doubt the college would know much simply by the school district. I can only guess that much has to come from the GC and from the ability of the applicant to detail their circumstances through essays and supplements.
There are some kids who will go into it in the essay, but that often robs from the space to show the assets, the truer point of the personal statement UC does want to know the challenges (there’s a prompt choice for that,) but not so much the private top colleges, not an essay focused on the challenges themselves. The idea is to show the strengths.
Adcoms travel not just to sell their college but to learn about their areas, the high schools and quality of GCs, unique aspects, etc. Yes, they can return often to the same hs they know are good bets to produce successful kids at their colleges. But they are also out there meeting new schools and checking those lesser hs that seem to be producing some quality kids. And to meet those kids. There’s background and ‘new development’ info adcoms have access to, that informs them as schools evolve.
Yes, top colleges will take a certain number from certain elite prep schools. But ime, the number is down a bit. It’s no longer the volume it used to be. And there’s a relationship with those GCs- they know th college’s goals and realities and only the best candidates get the uber rave GC LoR. It’s not one big broom and every elite boarder gets an admit. Plus, adcoms know the great resumes of those kids are often facilitated by those schools. Eg, you’ll see some great student research or vol work, but the school may be connecting those kids to those opps. It’s not the kid. Adcoms know that.
One can make some very rough estimations by combining the admit rate for different income levels in the OIR charts with the percent of the class in those income levels, as reported by the freshman survey. Some rough estimations are below: Note that 64% of families in the US earned less than $80k in the census, but only ~21% of families that apply to Harvard earn less than $80k. As stated, the Harvard applicant pool skews towards wealthy families.
$0-$40k income: ~9% of applicants, 11% admit rate, ~65% of applicants labeled “disadvantaged”
$40-$80k income: ~12% of applicants, 11% admit rate, ~50% of applicants labeled “disadvantaged”
Thanks. It’s interesting to me that only a 50-65% of students within each income band were labeled “disadvantaged” – which suggests that there are other factors to warrant that label beyond income category. So what else might go into that?
A Google search didn’t answer that question for me, but it did lead me to this article about the work of Tony Jack, which keys into the idea of the “privileged poor” and the “doubly disadvantaged”: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/17/05/poor-privileged
So knowing a kid is disadvantaged relies on not only the college AO being familiar with the school but the school GC being good, knowing that the kid is disadvantaged and writing about it in the LoR? That is a really terrible system for identifying which kids are disadvantaged. I’m not the only one who has written about the lack of good GC; heck at our GC meeting my son’s GC kept talking about how to get scholarship and fill out FAFSA - he obviously has no idea of our financial situation so maybe he assumed DS was disadvantaged and wrote that in his LoR?
Relying on guesses and signals to identify who is low SES is a ridiculously bad system and part of the problem if this is really how the process works.
The Harvard OIR low income admissions analysis was done by looking at the income reported on FA, so they knew the FA reported income of the applicants. The readers assigning the “disadvantaged” label did not know the income reported on FA and instead used a subjective process where they estimated who is likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged by various factors within their application that may include things like parent’s background, fee waiver, and neighborhood. It isn’t a precise formula and will not have ideal accuracy in identifying who is truly “disadvantaged,” so some of the low SES <$80k income applicants will not be flagged. Looking at officially reported income level alone is also not ideal in identifying who is truly socioeconomically “disadvantaged.” Some wealthy persons do not receive a standard paycheck compensation and/or live off savings. There are also widely varying cost of livings in different areas, as well widely varying costs of getting by day to day for different families. Some of the <$80k income applicants who were not flagged as disadvantaged, should not have been flagged. The listed numbers also were rough estimates, rather than precise values.
I think you have to decide how you stand on Need Blind, whether you want it or not. Can’t have it both ways. It isn’t helpful to decry it, call it bogus, while hoping for its help.
I also think that, while it’s true Harvard, in particular, is under scrutiny, focusing on one school and the way it might use certain labels, is risking a whole new set of assumptions about not just H, but also the practices of others. It seems to reflect the same rigid desire for formula. Eg, now trying to dissect “disadvantaged.”
In the end, yes, this process includes much that’s subjective, of course. They’re looking for types. You either show that or not. The earlier part of the conversation was about how to know what the type is, what traits. You don’t get in *because * you’re “disadvantaged” or not. It’s not that simple.
And all the while, plenty of applicants, of whatever $ class, aren’t able to put forth a good whole application. They may start with the stats and rigor, but go on to flub, one way or another. That is, by their own hand.
Some posters get that. Others can’t imagine it or how it impacts. I think some, like calmom, recognize the immense competition and what it means to be somewhat strategic.
Perhaps calmom will be more willing to provide some illustrations of the “it” that an applicant is supposed to get . . . although if “it” involves thinking, “I want to go to Harvard, where I will educate my professors. In physics!” then the comments are not likely to be helpful to a future physicist, actually. (I don’t know, maybe that would get them into Harvard–but it would probably not be helpful after they arrived on campus.)
Also, I note that it is often possible to tell if a student comes from a really wealthy family by consulting Forbes, or even wikipedia.
I don’t think that people are dissecting “disadvantaged” so much as they are pointing out that Harvard gives a boost for something that is not really possible for Harvard to discern accurately. Of course, they would be able to tell in some of the cases, but they would probably have a number of false positive and false negatives.
Watch out for circling us back to something we see as having different weight- or a different interpretation- than you think.
It’s not even the purpose of CC to try to translate for some H aspirant, what he or she should be looking for. Harvard? Be that smart. Have the energy to go looking-- not for after-the-fact stats (nor the CDS or marketing docs) and not out of fear. Rather, with an open mind, a willigness to understand it’s not going to be delivered to you, no matter how many times and ways one asks.
They show a lot in the WWLF. They do NOT say, you must prove you will teach the teachers. Let’s get off that one, be done with it. Can you see alt meanings to “educate?” Do you really need them to choose a synonym or explain in detail? For Harvard? Would you need to get locked up trying to dissect, “How open are you to new ideas and people,” work and re-work what “open” or “new ideas” mean?
Or rather, ponder how to show it and/or how your record speaks to that?
I also think many on this thread don’t even have kids getting ready to apply, which leads this thread in a somewhat abstract direction, the task of tryng to translate from legal and internal documents, parse catregories and pepper with some frustrations and accusations.
Anyone game for trying to figure out what the “type” is, without all the distractions and sidebars? It’s something an applicant should be willing to consider, in matching hmself.
“I think you have to decide how you stand on Need Blind, whether you want it or not. Can’t have it both ways. It isn’t helpful to decry it, call it bogus, while hoping for its help.”
Definitely. At the same time, the colleges need to also decide where they stand. If they truly are need blind, then they cannot be adjusting their expectations and reading of apps for low income students in a meaningful way because they simply don’t have the data to do that. Can’t have it both ways. Either they are need blind or they consider and adjust expectations for low and middle income SES.
“In the end, yes, this process includes much that’s subjective, of course. They’re looking for types. You either show that or not.”
Of course. The issue arises because the signals that show a student is a certain type are different for rich kids vs. poor and middle income kids. If the people reviewing the apps do not have accurate SES info, then that’s a huge handicap because the type they’re looking for will manifest differently at differing SES levels.
Although most of the awesome things my kid did for ECs that helped him get admitted to top 5 colleges were free, the reason he was able to participate in them to begin with was that he didn’t have to work to eat, he had parents who would and could drive him to things, he had the educational background from an early age to have a good foundation and he had the additional bonus of safety, security so his brainpower could be used for things other than avoiding an unsafe neighborhood or family situation. His ECs were “free” but he was free to do them because of the opportunities provided by a high SES, stable home. If he were plucked from our home at birth and raised like DH or I was, he’d still be the same kid with the same potential, the same drive, the same creativity, but his app wouldn’t have remotely the same ECs as his ECs would consist mainly of work - work to eat, work at home taking care of family, etc.
Colleges claim to be looking for low SES students and to adjust their reading of apps and expectations accordingly, but if they truly are need blind, this is impossible and how low SES students “fail to show” … because nobody knows to look. That’s a problem.