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<p>Since you got into school X without money or connections, why don’t you think you kids will not?
Your kid is also a legacy kid.</p>
<p>@Readytoroll: Ivy League colleges are need-blind. They only select the best of the best, regardless of how much someone can pay. Unless your very wealthy family member is willing to donate a million or two to ensure his son will get in (and then it’ll be up to son to actually <em>graduate</em>) there’s no advantage to being rich.
On the other hand, your child is a legacy, and that will help him tremendously, even if, depending on the school, it doesn’t make anyone a slam dunk.
Finally, there are tons of schools where kids with Ivy League parents can go to, as this thread shows.</p>
<p>@Myos1364 - is it only the wealth that matters in those situations or is it fame too? Do famous people’s kids (or famous people themselves) only get in because presumably they are going to contribute a million or two, or is it because the schools want the prestige of having said kid on campus? I’m not really sure which category this person would fall into - but I do know that many years ago he tried to have his kid admitted to a fancy NYC preschool by donating money from his company and was accused (by them) of bribery. So he isn’t beyond doing that stuff although not sure if it was a million. His kids go to a fancy school in NYC now so they were able to get in somewhere, and the story is that he bought their way in. </p>
<p>Yes, my child will be a legacy. Even with that though, kids are doing amazing and special things and those things often cost money. I’m proud of my kid - she started a club in her high school which has 80 members and reflects a real passion of hers. She definitely didn’t do it for college prestige. But some of these kids are not just starting clubs, they are starting non-profits and interning with physicians and feeding the poor in Africa. The kids who are athletes have personal trainers and special equipment. My daughter is an amazing kid and would jump at doing some of these things, not because she wants to improve her college resume, but because she really cares. Some of these other kids also care very much and are good people and are also not doing these things just to get into college, but their families have the means to support their passions. It just isn’t a fair model and I get that. It’s just hard when you have a kid who you know may lose something because of it. </p>
<p>ReadyToRoll-
The flip side of the equation is that more will be expected of the kid from a privileged background. Admissions officers read applications in context, so the kid who flipped burgers at McDonald’s will be viewed just as positively, if not more so, as the kid who jetted off to Africa to feed starving orphans.</p>
<p>Another thing to remember is that although schools are eager to snag potential big donors, and honestly money can help with admissions, most admissions officers do not come from mega-wealthy families. They’re as turned off by the idea of the lazy privileged sliding into home on the strength of purchased credentials as you are.</p>
<p>I was at a college counseling session with admissions reps from a number of schools a couple of weeks ago. In a breakout session in which we parents acted as the admissions committee to a group of faux applicants the admissions rep from an Ivy League school pointed out that the kid with the amazing internships had a parent in the industry, and it was likely that he had acquired them through connections. He was “rejected” from both of the faux schools, unlike the kid with lower scores but a more humble background who seemed to have a better sense of who he was and who had made the best of what he had available to him.</p>
<p>I agree with ReadytoRoll. For those special B students who get into the name brand ivy because of their parents it is not about money. Well, unless it is the kind of money and legacy status that gets your name on a building or two. It is more about parents who are “celebrities” in the political, business, entertainment, and even academic worlds. It is not about money for the endowment, it is about having the bragging rights that kids at their school rub shoulders with a so and so. </p>
<p>My DD went to HS with lots of these kids at an elite BS. DD was top of her class, had excellent test scores, led organizations, was a four year athlete, etc. General well-rounded good kid with top grades from one of the toughest schools in the country. She was passed over by the HYPSM types for the kids in her class with substantially lower stats, less skills, fewer ECs - but familiar last names. There are not a ton of these kids each year, but they get a preference from the prestigious schools just like super-star football players get a preference in the Big 10. It is one of the ways these schools build their prestige. </p>
<p>And going back to the original article… the author is totally kidding herself if she thinks her help on essays made one bit of difference to whether a kid was admitted. Development admits are judged by the strength of their pedigree, not by the strength of their application.</p>
<p>BTW - DD is thrilled to be where she ended up, could not imagine being anywhere else, and is getting a superb education in a community of high achieving, engaged fellow students.</p>
<p>@1012mom will you message me and let me know where your daughter ended up? </p>
<p>^^
Shouldn’t you be a role model for your D instead of telling her that she may not have a chance because you don’t have money? If your D is a strong candidate as you’ve described, she would get into a great school. And why are you so fixated on school X since being a graduate has brought neither fame nor wealth for you according to your post and has caused you so much angst?</p>
<p>@cbreeze I think you have entirely misread every post I’ve made on this thread. Where does it say I told my daughter she may not have a chance? Where does it say I’m fixated on school X? As far as fame and wealth - I don’t really want to get into my personal circumstances but lets just say that school X, as do other schools of its ilk, helped me in an incredible way. </p>
<p>Moreover, not only are your assumptions patently incorrect, but your tone is rather critical. </p>
<p>@ReadyToRoll, I don’t think I’ve misread the tone of your post. Your D is a great student, a legacy at school X and you’ve posted that you worry she may not get in because she doesn’t have ECs that require costly expense to achieve. Plus you’ve just deleted “I’m very depressed” from your prior post.</p>
<p>Since you have more than 1K posts here,you should realize from reading other posts that most schools don’t care about fancy EC’s but would pay more consideration to students who have personal achievements without incurring high costs. In addition, there are many schools that your D( and thousands of other students)can have a good education that are not an Ivy.</p>
<p>Most Ivy league parents do not have straight A students. Most do NOT send all of their kids to ivy league or like schools. Just more than I guess the rest of the population, but certainly not the vast majority. I know a lot of ivy league and top 25 grads with college aged kids, and most of their kids are looking at a spread of schools.</p>
<p>However, because statistically, those who do get accepted to these top universities tend to make more money and have more interest in academia, their kids do tend to go to college and their kids tend to have more choices. Money does buy more choices as does having parents knowledgeable of the college process.</p>
<p>One of my DH’s associates, an Ivy grad, one year said right out, "Binghamton $15K a year, Brandeis $48K, easy decision. " And, fool I was, I thought the kid was going to Brandeis. Nope. He went to Binghamton. </p>
<p>I received a Christmas newsletter from a friend who graduated from an Ivy and was surprised to see that she had taken her daughter on five trips across the country to look at colleges by plane. We have been talking in our house about the amount of money people now invest in considering colleges, including the expensive travel to go somewhere where they give you a boost if you visit the campus, interview, etc. </p>
<p>This may explain the overrepresentation of certain economic groups, and the children of educated parents at LAC’s. Maybe it’s even a conscious strategy by admissions – if you give a boost to people who visit the campus, haven’t you automatically just given a boost to people who can afford to visit the campus, provided they’re not eligible for questbridge or some other program (where I understand visits are paid for by the college)?<br>
And, presumably, “I can afford to visit the campus” may also be a sort of code for “I can afford to pay the tuition”. </p>
<p>I believe the LACs, and some other schools, do clearly state that they give a boost for expressing interest. That does not have to be a campus visit, although if the school is close to home no visit may be taken as a lack of interest. Expressing interest can also be done by talking to schools at college fairs, contacting coaches, professors or admissions officers by email, requesting an alumni interview, applying for special scholarships, etc. Most schools that consider expressed interest explicitly state that does not necessarily mean a campus visit specifically for the reason you state.</p>
<p>What’s a “baby ivy”? </p>
<p>I haven’t read every post, but a generation ago, it wasn’t that hard to get into ivies. So, some of the parents who got in back then wouldn’t be getting in today. </p>
<p>“One of my daughters is applying to a “Baby Ivy.””</p>
<p>What is a “Baby Ivy”?</p>
<p>Little Ivy? Little lambs-ee-divey? <a href=“Little Ivies - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies</a></p>
<p>But wouldn’t one need more than a B average to get into one of these schools? </p>
<p>“received a Christmas newsletter from a friend who graduated from an Ivy and was surprised to see that she had taken her daughter on five trips across the country to look at colleges by plane. We have been talking in our house about the amount of money people now invest in considering colleges, including the expensive travel to go somewhere where they give you a boost if you visit the campus, interview, etc.”</p>
<p>I don’t think this is anything new. It depends where you live. If you live in the Northeast, it’s easy to visit a bunch of colleges on a day drive. If you live elsewhere, you need to fly. I went to high school in an upper-middle-class area in suburban St. Louis. Plenty of families took their kids on planes to visit colleges out east, and this was 30 years ago. People in certain socioeconomic circumstances always did those things, IMO. </p>
<p>For my twins, we took 3 plane trips (Colorado College, Phila/DC, and Boston area), 2 driving trips (Case & Kenyon in Ohio, Grinnell in Iowa), and would have had a 4th plane trip (Carleton & Macalester) had we had the energy. And they didn’t even have much interest in schools in the South or the West which would have necessitated plane trips. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I guess this is what I have found confusing. I recall your talking about your kids receiving financial aid in other threads. I’m not sure how one can simultaneously not be able to afford a school and yet have money for multiple cross-country plane trips, car rental and hotel, meals, etc. Did you declare the amount of money spent visiting schools somewhere on the FAFSA? This is what concerns me – if you spend five thousand dollars visiting schools, then what happens when the college assumes you still have that money to put towards tuition? (Or conversely, assumes that if you can afford multiple plane tickets and trips, then clearly you don’t need financial aid.)</p>
<p>I have struggled with the impulse to spend the money to see the school vs. the impulse to save the money to put towards tuition. Also, for what it’s worth, my dad was a doctor and a med school professor and we were comfortable. I went to private school. And yet when I applied to college 25 years ago, I went on one plane trip to look at one college and everyone we knew considered that wildly exorbitant. I certainly didn’t know anyone who considered multiple trips to be standard practice. </p>
<p>We did fly our kid out to see one school and he was offered a merit aid package worth 64,000 dollars – so I would consider that money well spent --Is that how people justify the expense? I just keep thinking that there are kids in our area living at home and paying five thousand dollars tuition for our state school for a year, and here we are contemplating spending that amount of money just on looking at colleges. It just feels wrong somehow.</p>
<p>I think you have me confused with someone else. My kids are full-pay and we have never applied for nor received any kind of financial aid. I know nothing about FAFSA or the financial aid process in general. </p>
<p>Back when I was applying I only flew to one - Middlebury. We took People Express (remember that???) and I think it was around $25 or something like that. </p>