Elite schools may provide generous financial aid, but what this ignores is that typically students from lower income families go to secondary schools that are w

Elite schools may provide generous financial aid, but what this ignores is that typically students from lower income families go to secondary schools that are weaker than traditional schools upper middle class students attend. Some provide few AP courses, one where no one may explains/prep students for the SAT and only schools students are recommended to attend are local community college/nearby schools. Take a top student from this school and she may have 0 AP courses, 3.8 unweighted GPA, 0 ECs, average SAT score (after taking it blind) and from a low income family. Elite universities will not lower their admission requirements to accept her, nor would top public universities. Due to her background, she is forced to attend a lower ranked school. She failed at a game she never had a chance to win to begin with. Harvard and the like may offer great financial aid to those students, but those students are the very ones that aren't going to be accepted Harvard.