15 ms·

The Ivy League Was Another Planet

260 points by tokenadult 14y ago

JPKab 14y ago
Probably the best point made in this article is that universities aim for "surface" diversity: they take the easy route of pretending that picking enough students of enough different racial backgrounds is actually making their school diverse. Its not. You end up with a bunch of kids from the same upper middle class suburbs. They might not all have the same skin color, but they will have the same accent, culture, and their version of a summer job in high school was at a shopping mall. I felt like an alien at school. Rural communities have a much lower cost of living, but also a much lower income. A rural kid who makes it to a university will almost certainly have to work an almost full-time job just to cover their living expenses, books, tuition, rent...etc. This divide was apparent to me as a student at Virginia Tech. 80% of VT's students come from the wealth DC suburbs. Yet wherever I worked when I was a student, the vast majority of my coworkers were from rural parts of the state. The "NoVa" kids in general didn't have to get jobs at all due to their parent's earning power. For them, rent was a joke. For rural kids, rent for a room is half what their parent's pay on mortgage or rent. Take this single piece of difference, and then extrapolate it to every other aspect of culture.
- nayefc 14y ago
  I'm about to graduate from Virginia Tech. You're absolutely right. Also, I'm an international student; 7 others applied to Tech from my high school. All got accepted. Virginia Tech tries really hard to get international students and it used to pretty much accept just about any international student (as opposed to the close by University of Virginia which gets most international applications and thus picks the highest two performers out of each school). I'm starting to see more and more internationals this year. When I first came, there was barely any. I thought it's really unfair that we got automatic acceptances just to look more diverse. Well, you might have guessed it: as a result it attracted the wrong crowd.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    For many state schools, international students are a huge source of revenue. They mostly pay full freight.
    - nayefc 14y ago
      Yep, and then the US government makes it almost impossible for us to find jobs here.
      - jonemo 14y ago
        Would you mind elaborating on this? What's wrong with OPT?
        nayefc 14y ago
        Nothing. Just applied to mine in fact. But: 1- H1-B Is not guaranteed. It's a lottery (literally). and 2- You have 60 days after graduation on OPT to find a job. For many that I know (particularly not in the tech field), they are really searching for a job but can't find one at all. Even American citizens can't find a job that easily. The tech field is an exception. I talked to 35-40 startups & companies from AngelList and other websites in a 4 months period. Ended up with 4 offers.
        jonemo 14y ago
        I might be mistaken, but afaik H1-B is not a lottery, it's just simply capped which means you have to apply for it during the one week of the year when they are available (note: that's this week) [1]. And then it's not guaranteed but more or less certain as long as you meet the eligibility requirements. As for OPT: Aren't you allowed to work self-employed during that time [2,3]? So as long as you give yourself a job, you are fine? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly_numerical_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly... [2] http://blog.messersmithlaw.com/?p=720 http://blog.messersmithlaw.com/?p=720 [3] http://e3visa.info/tag/opt-self-employed/ http://e3visa.info/tag/opt-self-employed/
- notahacker 14y ago
  Going beyond "surface diversity" makes no economic sense for a profit-making institution. You need some kids from "tough backgrounds" and ethnic minorities to convince your sponsors that their financial support is breaking down barriers, but you wouldn't want to spend money traipsing across the country mopping up all the "rough diamonds" to replace the regular upper-middle-class kids that don't need scholarships and are probably more likely to complete the course and leave a lavish endowment afterwards.
  - spacemanaki 14y ago
    Aren't all the ivy league schools (and most if not all prestigious universities) non-profits? I assume they have a bit more to their mission than just investing in alumns who will generate returns in the form of endowments.
    - fennecfoxen 14y ago
      Just because it's a non-profit doesn't mean the institution isn't out for all the money it can get its hands on. It means that there aren't owners who are able to get the profits distributed to them in some form. But having more money rolling in means a lot to the careers of college leadership, even if they don't own the university - they can expect more prestige and power, distributing travel grants to faculty in the underwater basket-weaving department and whatnot... and generally buffing their resumé in case any other interesting college wants to hire them away.
    - bsenftner 14y ago
      Sorry, but "non-profit" does not mean altruistic. It's an exploited tax dodge a huge proportion of the time. Just look at the huge salaries in any successful non-profit, and you know they are not what they position themselves as.
      - binxbolling 14y ago
        This is not even slightly accurate and I hope most people can see your post as the trolling that it is.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Ivy league schools have need-blind admission and incredibly generous aid packages: they are free for low income students, so your comment is off topic for this post.
  - loganfrederick 14y ago
    His post does not cover the whole story, but it is certainly on topic. Where you're from and income level of your parents doesn't just affect your college experience once you're in college, but also earlier in the process. I'll provide my anecdote: I grew up in a decent suburb with a decent public school system. However, my high school never produced any Ivy League college students and the counselors and teachers there never presented it as an option. Most kids were only vaguely aware of what the Ivy League even was. It was even a running joke in my year about one student who did apply ("Oh, so and so thinks he's going to go to "Harvard"). Meanwhile, the neighboring school districts, which were slightly more upper-middle class, routinely produced dozens of Ivy League-bound seniors yearly. The main differences between my district and the neighboring ones was a 10 minute drive and a half century long history of old money in the other neighborhoods. The point is: Where you are from and your surroundings can greatly impact your knowledge and access to higher levels of education.
    - hkmurakami 14y ago
      I wonder if these need based aid package recipients tend to be from (1) lower income neighborhoods or (2) are from lower income families who strained financially in order to live in a higher income neighborhood so that their kids could go to the better schools.
      - mjmahone17 14y ago
        Truth be told, it's probably a mix. My family was a high-ish income family for my high school (which seemed to have a range of income levels), but I'm still on financial aid. It actually seems most students on financial aid at Ivy Leagues aren't from the bottom-fifth of the income bracket, but more the third-to-fourth fifths. And some in the bottom of the top fifth.
- davmre 14y ago
  No offense, but your comment is a symptom of the very problem the article is highlighting. You say: "A rural kid who makes it to a university will almost certainly have to work an almost full-time job just to cover their living expenses, books, tuition, rent...etc." The point of the article is that this is not true and almost no one knows it! If you go to Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc -- basically any of the Ivy League, top LACs, or a few other elite schools -- and your family makes under, say, $60k/year, your tuition/room/board/books will be absolutely free. All covered by the school. No crippling student loans, no expectation of you working a job while in school (except maybe 10hrs/wk of cushy work-study for spending money). Even if your family is a bit wealthier, it's still the case that for most middle-class families the cost of an Ivy League education works out to less than the cost of the local state school. Very few families know this. Is there culture shock? Sure, of course. That's part of the point -- for both the poor rural kids and the rich urban kids, and everyone in between. But at schools with the resources to do diversity right (which, sorry to hear, doesn't sound like it includes Virginia Tech), the shock is only cultural, not financial, so the full college experience really is accessible to students from any background.
  - rckrd 14y ago
    After my freshman year at my state university, I transferred to an Ivy League school. My financial aid now covers more than tuition (housing/dining plan/etc). I owe more money for my freshman year at a state university than my 3 remaining years combined at an Ivy League school.
  - andrewchoi 14y ago
    I know anecdotes != data, but I and a bunch of my friends at our Ivy League university applied through the QuestBridge program[0] and for the most part, davmre's comment is completely on point. I work more because I want to have more web dev on my resume before hitting the real world and also because I like being able to pay for some niceties that my mother wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, not because I need to to stay in school. [0] http://questbridge.org/ http://questbridge.org/
  - scarmig 14y ago
    This is totally true: I ended up going to one of those top tier universities just because the economics worked out much better than virtually every other opportunity I had. Depending on how you account for things, actually ended up making a profit without working either a full or a part time job. The culture shock issue was huge, though: half the people in my freshman dorm read the New Yorker (or, more accurately, subscribed to it and prominently displayed it as an affectation), while I hadn't even heard of it. Learning how to ape upper class cultural cues was probably the most valuable thing I got out of college.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  Holy crap. I went to high school in Kansas and undergrad at the Naval Academy. I just realized where and what "NoVa" is. I thought all those kids just had a year of community college before going to Canoe U. (There is a NoVa CC, but I'm pretty sure now that was not the usual context!)
ekm2 14y ago
While i understand how important writing skills are,one should admit that they are heavily culture loaded.The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays and instead just fill out the short objective application forms that most state schools provide.At my local college i usually try to find out high rich someone is by comparing the mathematics/critical reading scores vs the writing score.The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores,but very low writing aptitude test scores.
- griffordson 14y ago
  Do a quick s/poor/some minority/ and reread your post.
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "culture loaded," could you expand on that? For instance (this may come across as snide although I do not intend it that way), is typing the word "I" in lower case and omitting spaces after periods a cultural thing? I would assume that nobody would use such a "style" in an essay on a standardized test, but then again I would have assumed that nobody would use such informal technique while arguing for the equivalence of a different writing style, since one would presumably want to criticize from a position of mastery to avoid accusations of making self-serving arguments. It is true that spoken English contains many informalities that become inappropriate in the context of writing, but this observation holds regardless of ethnic influence on the spoken dialect. Everyone has to filter what they write to achieve the tone of formality. I certainly don't speak with the same formality I use in my writing, and I suspect you don't either. If you want to argue that the culture in middle/upper class suburbia gives its children an advantage with respect to writing English, I would agree. I would suggest that the problem should be addressed by raising standards in inner city / rural environments, rather than by lowering them at universities, which would only serve to fuel attitudes of resentment and entitlement. > The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays What does this necessarily have to do with being poor? I know plenty of "lazy" rich people that avoid the same applications for the same reasons. How do you propose that culturally induced hesitation be distinguished from laziness? How should admissions boards distinguish between cultural influence and poor technique in an applicant's writing? These questions aren't rhetorical, I would love to hear answers, since I can think of none. > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. I, myself tend towards this end of the score spectrum and I do not come from a poor family. Instead, my scores look like they do simply because I chose to focus my efforts in school on math and the sciences rather than on writing. Are you sure this is not the case with the people you were referring to?
rayiner 14y ago
Interesting article. My wife grew up in rural Iowa and told me the same story. Nobody even applied to the elite east and west coast schools. If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa. She also thinks that elite colleges undervalue the kind of extracirriculars common in rural areas: FFA, 4H, etc. When I was in HS, our extracirriculars were things like robotics club sponsored by the DOD. In a way, both are representative of their region (middle America versus inside the beltway). I think ultimately its bad for diversity to take ECs into account. Too much cultural and social bias inherent in that. Think about the kind of ECs elite colleges like to see: concert pianist, interning at a research lab, community service, etc. Unless you have a real sob story, "work" is not very high on that list. But by and large people who can spend all summer on community service projects are not people who have to work as teenagers to help support themselves.
- vwoolf 14y ago
  If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa. Which is a very good school. The other problem a small but important segment of our society has is believing in the magic of very well marketed schools. Really, there are lots of good universities, and I don't think many people's lives are going to be made or broken by whether they're at U of Iowa or some other school, especially for undergrad.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    University of Iowa is a very good school, no doubt. But depending on what you want to do with your life, it can close a lot of doors. Top-tier banks and management consulting companies don't recruit heavily from U of I, nor do top-tier tech companies for that matter (though the distinction is less marked). When you look at the fraction of the upper echelons of corporate America that come from those backgrounds, that's significant. I went to a state school for undergrad, but where I currently work most people have at least one Ivy on their resume. The difference in our undergraduate social networks is really quite dramatic in terms of peoples' career trajectories.
    - stephencanon 14y ago
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
One of the things that I've known for years but has become increasingly evident is that there's the social nature of academia and then there's academics. We live in the age of the net. Knowledge is out there for the taking. Communities of people? Different thing entirely. Physical communities of people have value. So when we say "college", we can either mean learning that knowledge and skill which will prepare you to begin really learning in the real world, or we can mean a place you go to appear smart, hang out with famous people, and make friends that can do you favors somewhere down the road. We use "college" to mean both things, but more and more these are vastly different concepts. As students, it's probably important to understand whether your goal is to position yourself to actively engage in a discipline, or position yourself to actively engage in a community. It's important to know that because most elite colleges are starting to look pretty generic in terms of politics, philosophy, and worldview. Either it's worth all of that money to hang out with the right people, or you're better off picking up classes at the community college for your undergrad and then taking a look again at where you are.
- uchi 14y ago
  It's also becoming increasingly more reasonable to go overseas to attain your graduates degree. Undergraduate programs in community collages are still reasonably priced in the states, and overseas it's not that much worse provided you enroll into a school that accepts financial aid (FAFSA). As long as you have your associate's degree, you're generally golden, provided you might encounter the possibility of running a few extra aptitude tests in certain countries. 36 grand for a single undergraduate school year? Thanks, but you can go fuck right off America. At the very least studying overseas does provide you with a genuinely different political and philosophical worldview.
- kenferry 14y ago
  Here's the interaction, though: A person _can_ get books from the library written by experts in any field, and a sufficiently motivated student can learn that way. A person _can_ also be a solo founder. But you know, that's kind of hard. Sticking through it every day is a lot easier if there's someone besides you who cares, and someone besides you who notices if you stop really working at it. To say that the social experience does not contribute to learning on a college campus is to miss that _determination_ is the thing that's most difficult, and that the external situation you set up as your learning environment can have a pretty big impact on that determination. Which of your classes did you learn from and remember the best? For me, it's those classes where I had great problem set sessions with my friends. That's what stuck. (My startup is working on this problem.)
ntomaino 14y ago
The problem lies in the information gap that exists between rural communities and wealthy communities. The wealthy communities have people that have gone to top colleges providing information and knowledge to young kids, and rural communities don't, plain and simple. Technology has the opportunity to change this, and although it hasn't drastically altered the information gap yet as it relates to college counseling, it is starting to. ConnectEDU is the most interesting technology company working on this problem that I'm aware of right now, but I'd love to hear about others as well.
- griffordson 14y ago
  What percentage of kids in those wealthy neighborhoods have their education subsidized by wealthy grandparents? Does a subsidized education (including private school, extracurricular activities, and private tutors) make it more likely that a child will get into a top college?
  - Vivtek 14y ago
    Yes.
llplp 14y ago
Most parents like mine, who had never gone to college, were either intimidated or oblivious (and sometimes outright hostile) to the intricacies of college admissions and financial aid. I had no idea what I was doing when I applied. Once, I’d heard a volleyball coach mention paying off her student loans, and this led me to assume that college was like a restaurant — you paid when you were done. When I realized I needed my mom’s and my stepfather’s income information and tax documents, they refused to give them to me. They were, I think, ashamed. Almost painful to read that. Hit close to home a little too much. Sometimes I wonder whether it's simply willful ignorance by the upper class to ignore the realities of the poor class.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Come on. At some point you have to expect some level of familial responsibility. You can't on the one hand blame rich people from enjoying handouts (grandpa's money) and on the other hand blame rich people because poor people refuse handouts. You can't fix stupid.
  - uchi 14y ago
    It's really sort of an interesting debacle. There's opportunities out there for both privileged and underprivileged families but often times the underprivileged are left completely oblivious while the privileged take full advantage. When you're rich, you're not just monetarily wealthy. You gain a lot of social and cultural capital that helps you maintain your wealth and assets, and that's something that frankly many poor people just don't get the opportunity to learn about. Believe it or not, most wealthy people who have been wealthy for a while are very good at knowing what helps them remain wealthy. In contrast, many underprivileged families don't know much about saving money at all. There's a great book that goes into a lot of detail about this. It's called the Meritocracy Myth. http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-J-McNamee/dp/0742561682 http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-J-McNamee/dp/...
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Don't confuse stupidity and ignorance. This is an example of the latter. There are a ton of built-in cultural assumptions to the college admissions process, and the culture in question is college. Expecting people with no college experience to know about it without educating them is no more sensible than expecting them to know calculus when nobody taught it to them. Sounds like a "how this stuff works" seminar or class could have been really valuable. I know I could have benefitted greatly when I was nearing my high school graduation, at least if I could have actually been convinced to pay attention and care.
jeremymims 14y ago
I know this phenomenon may sound like a bug, but it's probably a feature. It means that many smart kids go to schools close to home and are able to enrich their own communities by staying nearby. It means that those rural towns get great lawyers, doctors, and access to smart and talented people in dozens of other professions. If I'm from a rural state, I absolutely want my top state schools to compete with Harvard for talent. I don't want talented kids whisked away, never to return. In my home state of Connecticut (home to one of those Ivy League bastions and a short drive from the others), many of the top students at my high school went to UCONN, got great educations, got great jobs in Connecticut (since locals know how good the education can be), and continue to contribute to the fabric of the state. Because so many people have gotten quality education at an affordable price, they encourage other top students to attend UCONN, donate money locally after they graduate, and create jobs for future students. At first blush it feels unfair (certainly on an individual level). But it may actually result in a far better outcome for society. It certainly makes my home state a better place to live.
- ruswick 14y ago
  I don't think that systematic relegation of poor people to state colleges is ever preferable, even if it prevents brain drain. We should never artificially limit our nation's lower-class youth simply because it has collateral positive effects in the long term. Individuals deserve the ability to attain the highest level of success they are capable of, irrespective of any of any effects on society. Students are't public utilities, they're individuals with idiosyncratic aspirations and interests. Why is it ok for society of hold them back?
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Why should anyone in Utah have an desire for someone in NY hands a Utah kid a golden ticket to enjoy in NY? Those Utah individuals deserve the best outcomes they can obtain, and that includes great doctors if they choose to pay for those doctor's education and salaries. Society is a collection of individuals. Arbitrarily picking some of those individuals to be winners is certainly not any obligation of the rest of the individuals.
nhebb 14y ago
I read this article on the same day that the piece on Stanford acceptance rates hitting an all time low appeared on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464115). If tier 1 schools have a relatively stable student body size and an increasing number of applicants, I don't see anything happening to make them seek out even more applicants. Urban / rural geographic diversity is probably pretty low on their priority list compared to other diversity goals.
flexie 14y ago
There are more than 15,000 high schools in America and just 8 Ivy League schools and maybe 5-10 other universities in the absolute elite (Stanford etc.). How would these maybe 15 schools go about sending recruiters out to all 15,000 high schools, and then test the interested students? What good would it do? Why is it so important that talented rural kids go to Harvard?
- pcl 14y ago
  Why is it so important that talented rural kids go to Harvard? In the grand scheme of things, I think it's probably not. However, I do think it's important that those kids have an opportunity to try, and that starts with awareness and an understanding of the steps required to attempt.
  - flexie 14y ago
    Equal opportunity is nice :-) Here is the study, that the op-ed refers to: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013/2013a_hoxby.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013... The study suggests that around 4 percent of all US high school graduates are high-achievers so we are talking about somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 high school graduates yearly who fall in this category. It's clear that not all high-achievers can go to Harvard. Right now the qualified applicants are sorted based on extra curricular activities etc. If more of the 25-35,000 low income high-achievers, which the study suggests there are, applied to Harvard, most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities.
    - pcl 14y ago
      most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities That's possible, but that certainly doesn't seem like a good reason to disenfranchise 25% of our brightest students. Furthermore, I'd expect that if those students had help during their applications to the top-tier schools, they'd probably also apply to some other great schools along the way. More exposure to the system can only help. The interesting thing about this is that a huge chunk of the operating expenses for top universities are paid for by us taxpayers. It'd be interesting to replace military recruiters with "government recruiters", charged with representing all the post-high-school government-funded programs available.
btipling 14y ago
I'm looking forward to the day when attaining education happens though online courses and you learn as much you can and want to and achieve based on merit. No more artificial barriers keeping talented and ambitious people from getting a good education. Then we get to do away with all of this institution status business and people actually have to compete simply based on skill and competence. Not who your parent were, how much money they had or where they raised you or where you went to school.
Evbn 14y ago
This whole discussion is aabout misguided. You don't fix inequality by shuffling who is at the top of the pyramid. You fix inequality by flattering the top to a wider plateau, or by raising the level of the base. We don't need to repopulate the Ivy League, we need to deprecate it. /Ivy League grad.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  Damn straight. /talented rural poor.
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  Agreed. Now the hard part: how do we do it? /Ivy grad
  - bane 14y ago
    It's easy, build more schools or recognize already great ones, and start to educate people that most lists of school rankings (USNews in particular) are mostly gamed anyway and are more or less meaningless...(or actually start to rank schools correctly) and then stop discriminating hiring practices.
    - jjoonathan 14y ago
      > stop discriminating hiring practices There's the rub. You have powerful, entrenched players working to protect their own interests. Even more importantly, ignoring cues like an Ivy education reduces the SNR for hiring managers who are already overwhelmed by noise. Stopping discrimination will require them to do additional difficult, thankless vetting work. In the tech world, github makes this relatively painless, though not entirely effort-free. Perhaps such a system could be extended to legal and regulatory fields? A central platform for open source laws, regulations, and debates would do the trick. The difficult part would be getting people to use it. Maybe you could start by targeting law schools and debate clubs, giving them an easy way to visualize the back-and-forth of an argument, and then try to use that traction to move into the public sphere? I seem to recall hearing about a few sites trying to do this, but evidently none of them have reached critical mass yet.
Vivtek 14y ago
Why in the world would the Ivy League want to reach out to the talented rural poor? They're only accepting 5-7% of the people who apply now - does anybody think they lack applicants?
- mikeash 14y ago
  The top people from a larger pool will be, on average, better than the top people from a smaller pool.
  - Vivtek 14y ago
    And your touching belief that they accept "better" people is endearing.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      I'm addressing your hypothetical of why they would want to, not addressing the various strange ways they actually act.
trotsky 14y ago
Degrees from these schools serve as class signaling devices. They wouldn't be very effective if they recruited more than a token of poor or disadvantaged.
- thatthatis 14y ago
  Smart and connected is the new upper class. These universities select for smart and by their nature create the connections. There needs to be some number of smart and already connected students to maximize the value of the network, but the connection to alumni is on the average more valuable.
  - trotsky 14y ago
    I assure you that previous privileged generations didn't refer to themselves as "rich and the right ethnicity".
davidroberts 14y ago
The amazing thing is that excellent students from poor schools really should apply to the elite private universities, because the private schools will pretty much pay for their education through their huge endowments. It's a much better path than going through state universities, where even the poorest have a huge loan debt by the time they graduate. The OP is right about the recruiting efforts of the private universities. It's not just the rural schools they skip. My son went to a high school near San Diego that straddles the border between an middle class area built in the 50s and a low income area. The student body is about 40% suburban white, 25% Hispanic, 10% recently moved from Iraq (Chaldean), and the rest African American, Native American and other minorities. It has a 7 out of 10 California high school rating, so it's not that bad. There were no recruiters from "elite" private schools. The best students typically go to University of California, either USCD, UCLA, or Berkeley. The next level goes to the other UCs, especially Irvine or Riverside. Many go to San Diego State University, and the rest who continue their education go to community college. My son loves economics, and got it early in his head that he really wanted to go to University of Chicago. We were pretty poor at the time, as I was changing my career and working my way up in from the total bottom in a new field doing mainly freelance work. My son worked really hard to get to UChicago. He attended a recruiting event in a downtown hotel he found out about on the internet. I borrowed money and we flew to Chicago for an interview, staying in a sketchy hotel on the South Side. He applied for early admission and got accepted last year, the first student ever from his high school. They offered a financial package that pays almost everything. His friends who are still at the school said that this year, for the first time, a recruiter from UChicago showed up. It is like my son put the school on their radar. One thing we noticed as part of the process is that taking the PSAT is really important. It only costs about $20 and it's free in some schools. There might be something similar for the ACT. My son did well on the PSAT and he got multiple letters from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and other Ivies trying to lure him in. Also from elite private four-year colleges. So there is an outreach by those schools in this way. Often those letters would mention the possibility of almost full support for students that needed it. I think the Ivies are trying to reach out to poorer students. It's just that it's hard for them to think out of the box created by their own privileged backgrounds and understand how to reach that demographic. But our experience is that they are sincerely trying, and if a student makes the effort, he can definitely get in. I think one of the biggest barriers is that counselors in schools like my son's or the OP's don't even consider these schools for qualified students (are they uninformed? lazy? incompetent? complacent?). If they pushed harder, both to the Ivies and in guiding the students, it would help a lot.
newnewnew 14y ago
The Ivy League cares a lot about "PC" diversity (race, gender, sexual orientation). But not so much about regional or ideological diversity. In fact, leadership activities and accomplishments that scream "red state" actually reduce your chances of getting into Harvard - being a leader in the ROTC cuts your admissions odds in half ceteris paribus[1]. Poor rural white kids don't go to Harvard. [1] Ron Unz explores this and other Ivy League admission statistics in "The Myth of American Meritocracy" http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
- rainsford 14y ago
  I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology? I agree that regional and ideological diversity might be a problem for elite schools (or any school, for that matter). But I don't think the issues are necessarily political ones. In other words, are Harvard admissions people rejecting 4-H club members because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving conservatives, or because the Harvard admissions people didn't participate in 4-H clubs and don't know much about them?
  - jjoonathan 14y ago
    > I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology? I tend to agree, but I haven't read the source cited by the article. If anyone here has easy access to Epenshade's book, I'd love to hear how rigorous the "4H,ROTC decreased P(admission) by 65%" result was. 87 Espenshade (2009) p. 126. > In other words, are Harvard admissions people rejecting 4-H club members because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving conservatives, or because the Harvard admissions people didn't participate in 4-H clubs and don't know much about them? A third possibility: admissions people don't believe that generic "leadership" clubs are worthwhile, leading to a perceived bias towards clubs with more specific purposes than being line-items on college applications. We could test this hypothesis by looking for differential performance between 4H and ROTC and between 4H and NHS (Natl. Honor Society, the prevalent line-item club at my high school, which was not rural).
auctiontheory 14y ago
I accept the reality of the author's experience, but I have to wonder why internet access isn't making more of a difference in equalizing the access to information about choices.
- andrewchoi 14y ago
  For me at least, the only reason that I knew that I was good enough to apply to (and thankfully to get accepted into) Ivy League schools was because I had friends in high school that thought that they were going to do the same, and I thought I was smarter than them. Ego aside, the main way that I heard about colleges in high school was from the people that were around me in high school. I didn't simply Google "top tier universities" (and I find it hard to believe that others did).
- Mvandenbergh 14y ago
  The internet is great for finding the answers to questions - once you're able to formulate them correctly.
tokenadult 14y ago
Thanks for the many interesting comments. Some of the comments asked why anyone should care if the most elite colleges cast a wide net in seeking students. (Christopher Avery of Harvard, and his colleague Caroline Hoxby, once of Harvard but now at Stanford, have done research on how the most elite colleges can find more one-off students from rare backgrounds that other colleges miss.) http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/cavery/ http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/cavery/ http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho46.html http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho46.html My answer about why someone looking in from the outside might care about what kinds of students are admitted by elite colleges is the observation that elite colleges can be highly influential on public policy (as several other comments have already pointed out). If we are to have the graduates of Harvard and the other seven Ivy League colleges, along with graduates of Stanford and the other several "Ivy plus" colleges, making many of the policy decisions for our country, I hope they are informed by direct knowledge about the life of the rural and urban poor, the life of students with a disabled parent, the life of first-generation college students, the life of students who attended especially lousy high schools, and so on. I'm sure every graduate of an elite college knows how to take care of "his people," but it might be better for all of us if those graduates, in the aggregate, include most of the subgroups of people that include those of us who never attended such a college. That, to me, is a possible broad social benefit of genuine diversity in college admission.
redwood 14y ago
This is one of the reasons public schools have brilliant minds
crazygringo 14y ago
You don't have to be as far away as Nevada. Heck, I grew up in rural upstate New York. It never even occurred to me to think of a place like Harvard/Yale/Princeton, despite being only a few hours' drives away. In my high school, those places might as well have been Mars -- they just didn't exist on anyone's radar. They were from the movies, or something. But after taking my SAT's, I got tons of unsolicited college mailings, including a brochure from Yale. I sent back the card to receive an application packet, decided to apply early-admission (what did I have to lose?), and was shocked when I discovered I got in. Literally, the only reason I wound up going to an Ivy League school was because they sent me an unsolicited brochure. (And Yale was the only one which did, strangely enough -- it still never occurred to me to research Harvard or Princeton or anything, since the whole thing seemed so implausible in the first place.) But except for that brochure, I probably would have gone to the University of Rochester, which, for whatever reason, seemed to be the default option at the time. Nothing against it, of course! :) But it is funny how the smallest piece of information can change someone's life so much.
- stevenleeg 14y ago
  U of R student (and former resident of rural upstate NY) here, we would have been glad to have you!
ktugi 14y ago
I fail to see why the "Ivy League" matters. The same information can be obtained from reading the best textbooks in one's field of study. If one insists on classroom education, the solution is to do it using video streaming, thus making it possible to enroll an arbitrary number of people in the same course. As for the "social environment", just applying won't necessarily make you buddies with co-students, and anyway this model is not scalable.
thatthatis 14y ago
I was a high achieving rural student, and ended up going to Harvard. Why? Because at one college fair there was a guy from Harvard, not a recruiting team, but one random alum who cared and brought a bunch of pamphlets. I asked him "do they ever even admit students from Idaho?" His answer, not only do they admit them but they want to admit more. Had it not been for that conversation, it's not clear if I ever would have applied. I think it is hard for most people who grow up in an affluent area to understand how little information rural students get about college options. I never took the PSAT because my school's guidance counselors didn't think enough students were going to go to college for it to be worth their time. Hell, I applied to Harvard after the deadline because my guidance counselors told me college applications were due February 1st (which is true only of schools in the intermountain west) when applications we're actually due January 1st. My only hope is that in the modern world rural students are better informed due to the ubiquity of the Internet. But in my experience, everything in this article rings 100% true.
andrewchoi 14y ago
As a current Ivy League student that's on full financial aid, I do agree somewhat with the analysis presented in the article. However, there are a lot of great programs that are out there that are trying to rectify this situation. I applied to college through the QuestBridge[0] program, and in addition to providing tools and guidance for me in the application process, I've been fortunate enough to find a network of people in similar situations at school. They also do outreach, especially through alumni of the program. [0] http://questbridge.org/ http://questbridge.org/
pasbesoin 14y ago
I agree with a lot of the observation and sentiment, here. And, I'm one who is more reluctant to embrace "the Internet" as some sort of default, "magical" solution. But... most everyone has at least some level of access, now. And so it seems to me that this particular... "information divide" is crying out for online redress. Not some super fancy example of "design". Not a marketing opportunity to be "leveraged". Some straight, to the point text (ok, maybe some pictures, even a few videos -- but to serve the purpose, not become it). From real people. Who know about this shit. Brainiacs. And parents of future brainiacs who'd had to learn to negotiate this. Anyone can view web pages. Consider it a "contribution" to volunteer some time to putting a good, concise, thorough, authoritative, and... I guess also collaborative, site together. (There are always new strategies and answers to be shared, and it helps not to feel one is in this all alone.) Maybe also, or distinctly, this is something Sal and his Khan Academy should take on. A "meta" of the educational experience. How to negotiate school and its bureaucracy. (I realize this becomes daunting when looking across states, countries, systems. At a minimum, it would have to be broken down into regional efforts/teams.) A half hour or hour's "WTF" video about the financial aid aspect, might be one good starting point for parents, per some of the description in the OP article. P.S. Couldn't Khan Academy seek out good resources from dedicated career guidance professionals? I've run across some who are really dedicated to their field (and who are not mere marketing droids focusing solely on their institution). It strikes me this might be a good mechanism for finding appropriate materials and then getting them to the students and parents who need them.
- mjmahone17 14y ago
  That site exists. It's called College Confidential: http://www.collegeconfidential.com http://www.collegeconfidential.com Especially interesting is the forum. Unfortunately, it may not feel "at home" for all types of students, as most the participants are planning on going to top-tier schools, and have been all their lives. But if you post "I'm a rural student from X. Here is what I could pay to go to college, and here are my current stats (such as class rank, etc.). Does anyone have suggestions on where I should apply?" you'll get a whole bunch of people trying to help you out, pointing out schools that "match" your statistics, and schools that are "reach" schools, and explaining that you don't need a bunch of money to attend the reach schools, as they offer need-based financial aid. While I don't support spending ridiculous amounts of time on the site trying to figure out whether or not you'll be accepted, I think it's a reasonable place to learn about college admissions, especially if you have no background.
balloot 14y ago
This article only scratches the surface of why most brilliant lower-middle class kids can't get into an Ivy. Just look at what's expected: - lots of extracurriculars Rich kid: spent the summer spoon feeding starving children in Honduras Poor kid: works during the summer at the mall to make some money, and has never left the country. Rich kid: joined a dance troupe, plays two sports at varsity level Poor kid: Doesn't live within 50 miles of a dance studio and can't afford the extensive travel/coaching/equipment needed to excel in a bunch of sports Rich kid: Fluent in Spanish due to private language tutor and aforementioned trip to Honduras Poor kid: Never was even formally taught English grammar (most public schools don't anymore) - lots of AP classes Rich kid: Got a 5 on 7 different AP tests. Poor kid: Goes to a school that doesn't offer AP classes at all. - testing Rich kid: Took an extensive SAT prep class, then took SAT 3 times and ACT 2 times and uses the best score Poor kid: Didn't take a prep class and just took the SAT once - connections Rich kid: has a parent who went to an Ivy League school, or has a family friend who is an alum/Important Person who can write a letter of rec Poor kid: Doesn't know a single person who went to an Ivy League school. Gets letters of rec from teachers Pretty much every step in the admission process is designed to favor the haves over the have nots. There's a lot of things selective schools could do to make the process fairer without too much effort, but it's reasonable to assume that the deck isn't stacked by accident.
- stephencanon 14y ago
  Speaking as a one-time rural white kid, ivy league grad, and now alumni interviewer who was interviewed kids in both rich suburbs (palo alto) and poor rural northern new hampshire and vermont: neither one of the kids you described is getting in. What matters isn’t what you do; it's what you do with the opportunities that are available to you. Your hypothetical rich kid didn’t do anything more than what was put in front of her. Your hypothetical poor kid didn’t try to find ways to challenge himself either. The rich kids from Palo Alto who got in were the ones who weren’t loading up on AP classes, they were the ones who had gone across the road to Stanford and kept walking into bio labs until they found one that would let them do grunt work. The poor kids in rural New England who get in go down to the library or online and teach themselves grammar, then go on to learn a couple years worth of college-level linguistics and philosophy of language (which even rich kids don’t get to take in high school) because the books were there and they were interesting. I wouldn’t pretend for a moment that the deck isn’t stacked. But it’s not stacked in this particular manner.
desireco42 14y ago
I read with great interest all that is written. My kids are small, preschool level, still Montessori and will continue for few years of elementary school for now. I am immigrant in US and still can't figure out everything about how things work. From what I could understand, it is almost that your pick of elementary school selects you for high school which in turn greatly determines university. On the other hand, depending on their interests, I don't think it is a must to go to university, both my wife and me have Master level degrees, yet, we spent a lot of time getting them. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer (shudder) you need to get university degree, but not if you want to be a programmer like me. I kind of love my work and would love my kids to follow my footsteps, but you never know what they might choose. Please feel free to give me any hints and advice because I need a lot of those. What are your experiences and what would you do if you were in my place. I did start college fund for them, as I understand this will not be wasted even if they don't go to collage.
- eru 14y ago
  As an aside, your kids do not have to go to university in America.
jbhernan 14y ago
related piece in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-way-to-send-poor-kids-to-top-colleges.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-wa...
- kaitai 14y ago
  To elaborate on your too-short post, this article is the reply to so many comments above: it answers the questions "Does more information change behavior?" and "How can we change this lack of information?" The researchers in this randomized trial sent packages of information to high-scoring poor kids and their families, while keeping track of the college choices of a control group as well. Of the control group, 30 percent gained admission to one of these fancy colleges. In the intervention group 54 percent gained admission. The simple act of sending these kids a bunch of pieces of paper that outlined the steps necessary for application and financial aid -- and gave some cost comparisons -- had an enormous effect. This did not involve improving the educational experience of these kids in a single way. Everyone above who says, "Why don't these kids just Google Harvard and figure out it's cheap?" or, "Why don't they use CollegeConfidential?" is missing the point. The worst position to be in is when you don't even know what questions to ask. These kids don't even realize what questions they could be asking. It's not so hard to tell them.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
That is a very clever writing. It reads like there is a problem and then finishes with a punchline that there isn't. She and her other friend from Pahrump, with the "standard" free public school education, she ends up an assistant professor and her buddy ends up with a Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Purdue (which is pretty darn employable). That she didn't even "imagine" or think about the Ivy League schools made no difference to either of them. They were smart, the worked hard, and boom they are both "successful." The comment about the military and its recruitment was also interesting. Because having been a military brat (the child of a military officer) it was clear that the military got their leadership from a wide swath of participants, not "just" folks from the military academies, one of my friend's dad was a general (1 star) and he always let us know he enlisted as an airman because his Mom couldn't afford to feed him as a teenager. So the conclusion is that there isn't really a problem here. People who have the talent and motivation can get a good graduate degree from a good school. They need only finish their undergraduate degree at a state school. All the angst about Google or Facebook only hiring if you went to one of "these" 21 schools, is moot if you can get a masters degree there after you graduate from your "loser" school. So I see the argument that the Ivy League won't even see you if you don't come through the right schools as an undergraduate, and that doesn't matter for anyone who gets an advanced degree. So if you have the talent get an advanced degree, it doesn't matter. That said, it implies that if you are a loser and by the luck of having a wealthy family who shepherds you through the process so that you end up in an Ivy League school, you may find it easier to get hired as an undergraduate. But you are also just as easy to fire so that benefit is fleeting if you don't know your stuff. Anyway, I read it thinking the author was trying to point out a problem only to discover that there wasn't a problem. I found that to be pretty clever.
- mtdewcmu 14y ago
  I noticed that, too. I guess the point was that she had an unequal shot at Harvard or Princeton. But it looks like the system worked reasonably well in her case. It could have done worse. It's also sort of heartening that the military is a kind of leveler. No one looks down on military service, at least, I think most people consider it a plus (it's hard to start a sentence with "no one..." that doesn't have some exception, somewhere). So the military could potentially be a step stone to better things. The problem with societal ills like inequality is that most of them can't ever really be solved. Can you imagine a perfectly equal society? I can't. But liberalism requires some suspension of disbelief. Too much realism breeds cynicism, and cynicism allows intractable problems to get even more intractable.
forgotAgain 14y ago
Want to know why Harvard made the NCAA basketball tournament this year? Athletes are getting wiser about the choice between a full ride athletic scholarship at a sports factory versus a full financial aid package at an Ivy.
forgotAgain 14y ago
What disappointed me about this article was the total lack of accountability for those local to the writer. If the writer's parents, extended-family, and school faculty were all unable to provide any insight for the writer then they were willfully ignorant. People do have a responsibility to educate themselves. Especially when they are in a position of responsibility. The writer self-filtered himself from the opportunities available by not seeking out opportunities. Universities two thousand miles away should (and do) try to make themselves known to students. But that doesn't relieve a person of responsibility. If you don't have the motivation to find out about them, then you probably wouldn't succeed at the school anyway.
mayneack 14y ago
This isn't all about the Ivy's recruitment. I am from a small (10k population) town in Mid Missouri and currently an MIT student. In my graduating class of 150 there were maybe 6 that went out of state and only a couple that didn't go to a neighboring state. I was always gunning for "top tier" because my parents were professors and had gone to top tier colleges as well, but the high school counselors were absolutely useless to me. They didn't know how to deal with the common app and none of the scholarships that they could point me to apply to were eligible for anything out of state. I got the same amount of advertisements from out of state schools as in-state after taking the ACT, but there was a feeling at my high school of anti-elite schools.
pagekicker 14y ago
not exactly new news.
pagekicker 14y ago
not exactly new news.

260 points by tokenadult 14y ago

JPKab 14y ago

Probably the best point made in this article is that universities aim for "surface" diversity: they take the easy route of pretending that picking enough students of enough different racial backgrounds is actually making their school diverse. Its not. You end up with a bunch of kids from the same upper middle class suburbs. They might not all have the same skin color, but they will have the same accent, culture, and their version of a summer job in high school was at a shopping mall. I felt like an alien at school. Rural communities have a much lower cost of living, but also a much lower income. A rural kid who makes it to a university will almost certainly have to work an almost full-time job just to cover their living expenses, books, tuition, rent...etc. This divide was apparent to me as a student at Virginia Tech. 80% of VT's students come from the wealth DC suburbs. Yet wherever I worked when I was a student, the vast majority of my coworkers were from rural parts of the state. The "NoVa" kids in general didn't have to get jobs at all due to their parent's earning power. For them, rent was a joke. For rural kids, rent for a room is half what their parent's pay on mortgage or rent. Take this single piece of difference, and then extrapolate it to every other aspect of culture.

nayefc 14y ago
I'm about to graduate from Virginia Tech. You're absolutely right. Also, I'm an international student; 7 others applied to Tech from my high school. All got accepted. Virginia Tech tries really hard to get international students and it used to pretty much accept just about any international student (as opposed to the close by University of Virginia which gets most international applications and thus picks the highest two performers out of each school). I'm starting to see more and more internationals this year. When I first came, there was barely any. I thought it's really unfair that we got automatic acceptances just to look more diverse. Well, you might have guessed it: as a result it attracted the wrong crowd.
- ams6110 14y ago
  For many state schools, international students are a huge source of revenue. They mostly pay full freight.
  - nayefc 14y ago
    Yep, and then the US government makes it almost impossible for us to find jobs here.
    - jonemo 14y ago
      Would you mind elaborating on this? What's wrong with OPT?
      - nayefc 14y ago
        Nothing. Just applied to mine in fact. But: 1- H1-B Is not guaranteed. It's a lottery (literally). and 2- You have 60 days after graduation on OPT to find a job. For many that I know (particularly not in the tech field), they are really searching for a job but can't find one at all. Even American citizens can't find a job that easily. The tech field is an exception. I talked to 35-40 startups & companies from AngelList and other websites in a 4 months period. Ended up with 4 offers.
        jonemo 14y ago
        I might be mistaken, but afaik H1-B is not a lottery, it's just simply capped which means you have to apply for it during the one week of the year when they are available (note: that's this week) [1]. And then it's not guaranteed but more or less certain as long as you meet the eligibility requirements. As for OPT: Aren't you allowed to work self-employed during that time [2,3]? So as long as you give yourself a job, you are fine? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly_numerical_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly... [2] http://blog.messersmithlaw.com/?p=720 http://blog.messersmithlaw.com/?p=720 [3] http://e3visa.info/tag/opt-self-employed/ http://e3visa.info/tag/opt-self-employed/
notahacker 14y ago
Going beyond "surface diversity" makes no economic sense for a profit-making institution. You need some kids from "tough backgrounds" and ethnic minorities to convince your sponsors that their financial support is breaking down barriers, but you wouldn't want to spend money traipsing across the country mopping up all the "rough diamonds" to replace the regular upper-middle-class kids that don't need scholarships and are probably more likely to complete the course and leave a lavish endowment afterwards.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  Aren't all the ivy league schools (and most if not all prestigious universities) non-profits? I assume they have a bit more to their mission than just investing in alumns who will generate returns in the form of endowments.
  - fennecfoxen 14y ago
    Just because it's a non-profit doesn't mean the institution isn't out for all the money it can get its hands on. It means that there aren't owners who are able to get the profits distributed to them in some form. But having more money rolling in means a lot to the careers of college leadership, even if they don't own the university - they can expect more prestige and power, distributing travel grants to faculty in the underwater basket-weaving department and whatnot... and generally buffing their resumé in case any other interesting college wants to hire them away.
  - bsenftner 14y ago
    Sorry, but "non-profit" does not mean altruistic. It's an exploited tax dodge a huge proportion of the time. Just look at the huge salaries in any successful non-profit, and you know they are not what they position themselves as.
    - binxbolling 14y ago
      This is not even slightly accurate and I hope most people can see your post as the trolling that it is.
Evbn 14y ago
Ivy league schools have need-blind admission and incredibly generous aid packages: they are free for low income students, so your comment is off topic for this post.
- loganfrederick 14y ago
  His post does not cover the whole story, but it is certainly on topic. Where you're from and income level of your parents doesn't just affect your college experience once you're in college, but also earlier in the process. I'll provide my anecdote: I grew up in a decent suburb with a decent public school system. However, my high school never produced any Ivy League college students and the counselors and teachers there never presented it as an option. Most kids were only vaguely aware of what the Ivy League even was. It was even a running joke in my year about one student who did apply ("Oh, so and so thinks he's going to go to "Harvard"). Meanwhile, the neighboring school districts, which were slightly more upper-middle class, routinely produced dozens of Ivy League-bound seniors yearly. The main differences between my district and the neighboring ones was a 10 minute drive and a half century long history of old money in the other neighborhoods. The point is: Where you are from and your surroundings can greatly impact your knowledge and access to higher levels of education.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    I wonder if these need based aid package recipients tend to be from (1) lower income neighborhoods or (2) are from lower income families who strained financially in order to live in a higher income neighborhood so that their kids could go to the better schools.
    - mjmahone17 14y ago
      Truth be told, it's probably a mix. My family was a high-ish income family for my high school (which seemed to have a range of income levels), but I'm still on financial aid. It actually seems most students on financial aid at Ivy Leagues aren't from the bottom-fifth of the income bracket, but more the third-to-fourth fifths. And some in the bottom of the top fifth.
davmre 14y ago
No offense, but your comment is a symptom of the very problem the article is highlighting. You say: "A rural kid who makes it to a university will almost certainly have to work an almost full-time job just to cover their living expenses, books, tuition, rent...etc." The point of the article is that this is not true and almost no one knows it! If you go to Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc -- basically any of the Ivy League, top LACs, or a few other elite schools -- and your family makes under, say, $60k/year, your tuition/room/board/books will be absolutely free. All covered by the school. No crippling student loans, no expectation of you working a job while in school (except maybe 10hrs/wk of cushy work-study for spending money). Even if your family is a bit wealthier, it's still the case that for most middle-class families the cost of an Ivy League education works out to less than the cost of the local state school. Very few families know this. Is there culture shock? Sure, of course. That's part of the point -- for both the poor rural kids and the rich urban kids, and everyone in between. But at schools with the resources to do diversity right (which, sorry to hear, doesn't sound like it includes Virginia Tech), the shock is only cultural, not financial, so the full college experience really is accessible to students from any background.
- rckrd 14y ago
  After my freshman year at my state university, I transferred to an Ivy League school. My financial aid now covers more than tuition (housing/dining plan/etc). I owe more money for my freshman year at a state university than my 3 remaining years combined at an Ivy League school.
- andrewchoi 14y ago
  I know anecdotes != data, but I and a bunch of my friends at our Ivy League university applied through the QuestBridge program[0] and for the most part, davmre's comment is completely on point. I work more because I want to have more web dev on my resume before hitting the real world and also because I like being able to pay for some niceties that my mother wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, not because I need to to stay in school. [0] http://questbridge.org/ http://questbridge.org/
- scarmig 14y ago
  This is totally true: I ended up going to one of those top tier universities just because the economics worked out much better than virtually every other opportunity I had. Depending on how you account for things, actually ended up making a profit without working either a full or a part time job. The culture shock issue was huge, though: half the people in my freshman dorm read the New Yorker (or, more accurately, subscribed to it and prominently displayed it as an affectation), while I hadn't even heard of it. Learning how to ape upper class cultural cues was probably the most valuable thing I got out of college.
niels_olson 14y ago
Holy crap. I went to high school in Kansas and undergrad at the Naval Academy. I just realized where and what "NoVa" is. I thought all those kids just had a year of community college before going to Canoe U. (There is a NoVa CC, but I'm pretty sure now that was not the usual context!)

ekm2 14y ago

While i understand how important writing skills are,one should admit that they are heavily culture loaded.The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays and instead just fill out the short objective application forms that most state schools provide.At my local college i usually try to find out high rich someone is by comparing the mathematics/critical reading scores vs the writing score.The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores,but very low writing aptitude test scores.

griffordson 14y ago
Do a quick s/poor/some minority/ and reread your post.
jjoonathan 14y ago
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "culture loaded," could you expand on that? For instance (this may come across as snide although I do not intend it that way), is typing the word "I" in lower case and omitting spaces after periods a cultural thing? I would assume that nobody would use such a "style" in an essay on a standardized test, but then again I would have assumed that nobody would use such informal technique while arguing for the equivalence of a different writing style, since one would presumably want to criticize from a position of mastery to avoid accusations of making self-serving arguments. It is true that spoken English contains many informalities that become inappropriate in the context of writing, but this observation holds regardless of ethnic influence on the spoken dialect. Everyone has to filter what they write to achieve the tone of formality. I certainly don't speak with the same formality I use in my writing, and I suspect you don't either. If you want to argue that the culture in middle/upper class suburbia gives its children an advantage with respect to writing English, I would agree. I would suggest that the problem should be addressed by raising standards in inner city / rural environments, rather than by lowering them at universities, which would only serve to fuel attitudes of resentment and entitlement. > The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays What does this necessarily have to do with being poor? I know plenty of "lazy" rich people that avoid the same applications for the same reasons. How do you propose that culturally induced hesitation be distinguished from laziness? How should admissions boards distinguish between cultural influence and poor technique in an applicant's writing? These questions aren't rhetorical, I would love to hear answers, since I can think of none. > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. I, myself tend towards this end of the score spectrum and I do not come from a poor family. Instead, my scores look like they do simply because I chose to focus my efforts in school on math and the sciences rather than on writing. Are you sure this is not the case with the people you were referring to?

rayiner 14y ago

Interesting article. My wife grew up in rural Iowa and told me the same story. Nobody even applied to the elite east and west coast schools. If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa. She also thinks that elite colleges undervalue the kind of extracirriculars common in rural areas: FFA, 4H, etc. When I was in HS, our extracirriculars were things like robotics club sponsored by the DOD. In a way, both are representative of their region (middle America versus inside the beltway). I think ultimately its bad for diversity to take ECs into account. Too much cultural and social bias inherent in that. Think about the kind of ECs elite colleges like to see: concert pianist, interning at a research lab, community service, etc. Unless you have a real sob story, "work" is not very high on that list. But by and large people who can spend all summer on community service projects are not people who have to work as teenagers to help support themselves.

vwoolf 14y ago
If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa. Which is a very good school. The other problem a small but important segment of our society has is believing in the magic of very well marketed schools. Really, there are lots of good universities, and I don't think many people's lives are going to be made or broken by whether they're at U of Iowa or some other school, especially for undergrad.
- rayiner 14y ago
  University of Iowa is a very good school, no doubt. But depending on what you want to do with your life, it can close a lot of doors. Top-tier banks and management consulting companies don't recruit heavily from U of I, nor do top-tier tech companies for that matter (though the distinction is less marked). When you look at the fraction of the upper echelons of corporate America that come from those backgrounds, that's significant. I went to a state school for undergrad, but where I currently work most people have at least one Ivy on their resume. The difference in our undergraduate social networks is really quite dramatic in terms of peoples' career trajectories.
  - stephencanon 14y ago

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

One of the things that I've known for years but has become increasingly evident is that there's the social nature of academia and then there's academics. We live in the age of the net. Knowledge is out there for the taking. Communities of people? Different thing entirely. Physical communities of people have value. So when we say "college", we can either mean learning that knowledge and skill which will prepare you to begin really learning in the real world, or we can mean a place you go to appear smart, hang out with famous people, and make friends that can do you favors somewhere down the road. We use "college" to mean both things, but more and more these are vastly different concepts. As students, it's probably important to understand whether your goal is to position yourself to actively engage in a discipline, or position yourself to actively engage in a community. It's important to know that because most elite colleges are starting to look pretty generic in terms of politics, philosophy, and worldview. Either it's worth all of that money to hang out with the right people, or you're better off picking up classes at the community college for your undergrad and then taking a look again at where you are.

uchi 14y ago
It's also becoming increasingly more reasonable to go overseas to attain your graduates degree. Undergraduate programs in community collages are still reasonably priced in the states, and overseas it's not that much worse provided you enroll into a school that accepts financial aid (FAFSA). As long as you have your associate's degree, you're generally golden, provided you might encounter the possibility of running a few extra aptitude tests in certain countries. 36 grand for a single undergraduate school year? Thanks, but you can go fuck right off America. At the very least studying overseas does provide you with a genuinely different political and philosophical worldview.
kenferry 14y ago
Here's the interaction, though: A person _can_ get books from the library written by experts in any field, and a sufficiently motivated student can learn that way. A person _can_ also be a solo founder. But you know, that's kind of hard. Sticking through it every day is a lot easier if there's someone besides you who cares, and someone besides you who notices if you stop really working at it. To say that the social experience does not contribute to learning on a college campus is to miss that _determination_ is the thing that's most difficult, and that the external situation you set up as your learning environment can have a pretty big impact on that determination. Which of your classes did you learn from and remember the best? For me, it's those classes where I had great problem set sessions with my friends. That's what stuck. (My startup is working on this problem.)

ntomaino 14y ago

The problem lies in the information gap that exists between rural communities and wealthy communities. The wealthy communities have people that have gone to top colleges providing information and knowledge to young kids, and rural communities don't, plain and simple. Technology has the opportunity to change this, and although it hasn't drastically altered the information gap yet as it relates to college counseling, it is starting to. ConnectEDU is the most interesting technology company working on this problem that I'm aware of right now, but I'd love to hear about others as well.

griffordson 14y ago
What percentage of kids in those wealthy neighborhoods have their education subsidized by wealthy grandparents? Does a subsidized education (including private school, extracurricular activities, and private tutors) make it more likely that a child will get into a top college?
- Vivtek 14y ago
  Yes.

llplp 14y ago

Most parents like mine, who had never gone to college, were either intimidated or oblivious (and sometimes outright hostile) to the intricacies of college admissions and financial aid. I had no idea what I was doing when I applied. Once, I’d heard a volleyball coach mention paying off her student loans, and this led me to assume that college was like a restaurant — you paid when you were done. When I realized I needed my mom’s and my stepfather’s income information and tax documents, they refused to give them to me. They were, I think, ashamed. Almost painful to read that. Hit close to home a little too much. Sometimes I wonder whether it's simply willful ignorance by the upper class to ignore the realities of the poor class.

Evbn 14y ago
Come on. At some point you have to expect some level of familial responsibility. You can't on the one hand blame rich people from enjoying handouts (grandpa's money) and on the other hand blame rich people because poor people refuse handouts. You can't fix stupid.
- uchi 14y ago
  It's really sort of an interesting debacle. There's opportunities out there for both privileged and underprivileged families but often times the underprivileged are left completely oblivious while the privileged take full advantage. When you're rich, you're not just monetarily wealthy. You gain a lot of social and cultural capital that helps you maintain your wealth and assets, and that's something that frankly many poor people just don't get the opportunity to learn about. Believe it or not, most wealthy people who have been wealthy for a while are very good at knowing what helps them remain wealthy. In contrast, many underprivileged families don't know much about saving money at all. There's a great book that goes into a lot of detail about this. It's called the Meritocracy Myth. http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-J-McNamee/dp/0742561682 http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-J-McNamee/dp/...
- mikeash 14y ago
  Don't confuse stupidity and ignorance. This is an example of the latter. There are a ton of built-in cultural assumptions to the college admissions process, and the culture in question is college. Expecting people with no college experience to know about it without educating them is no more sensible than expecting them to know calculus when nobody taught it to them. Sounds like a "how this stuff works" seminar or class could have been really valuable. I know I could have benefitted greatly when I was nearing my high school graduation, at least if I could have actually been convinced to pay attention and care.

jeremymims 14y ago

I know this phenomenon may sound like a bug, but it's probably a feature. It means that many smart kids go to schools close to home and are able to enrich their own communities by staying nearby. It means that those rural towns get great lawyers, doctors, and access to smart and talented people in dozens of other professions. If I'm from a rural state, I absolutely want my top state schools to compete with Harvard for talent. I don't want talented kids whisked away, never to return. In my home state of Connecticut (home to one of those Ivy League bastions and a short drive from the others), many of the top students at my high school went to UCONN, got great educations, got great jobs in Connecticut (since locals know how good the education can be), and continue to contribute to the fabric of the state. Because so many people have gotten quality education at an affordable price, they encourage other top students to attend UCONN, donate money locally after they graduate, and create jobs for future students. At first blush it feels unfair (certainly on an individual level). But it may actually result in a far better outcome for society. It certainly makes my home state a better place to live.

ruswick 14y ago
I don't think that systematic relegation of poor people to state colleges is ever preferable, even if it prevents brain drain. We should never artificially limit our nation's lower-class youth simply because it has collateral positive effects in the long term. Individuals deserve the ability to attain the highest level of success they are capable of, irrespective of any of any effects on society. Students are't public utilities, they're individuals with idiosyncratic aspirations and interests. Why is it ok for society of hold them back?
- Evbn 14y ago
  Why should anyone in Utah have an desire for someone in NY hands a Utah kid a golden ticket to enjoy in NY? Those Utah individuals deserve the best outcomes they can obtain, and that includes great doctors if they choose to pay for those doctor's education and salaries. Society is a collection of individuals. Arbitrarily picking some of those individuals to be winners is certainly not any obligation of the rest of the individuals.

nhebb 14y ago

I read this article on the same day that the piece on Stanford acceptance rates hitting an all time low appeared on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464115). If tier 1 schools have a relatively stable student body size and an increasing number of applicants, I don't see anything happening to make them seek out even more applicants. Urban / rural geographic diversity is probably pretty low on their priority list compared to other diversity goals.

flexie 14y ago

There are more than 15,000 high schools in America and just 8 Ivy League schools and maybe 5-10 other universities in the absolute elite (Stanford etc.). How would these maybe 15 schools go about sending recruiters out to all 15,000 high schools, and then test the interested students? What good would it do? Why is it so important that talented rural kids go to Harvard?

pcl 14y ago
Why is it so important that talented rural kids go to Harvard? In the grand scheme of things, I think it's probably not. However, I do think it's important that those kids have an opportunity to try, and that starts with awareness and an understanding of the steps required to attempt.
- flexie 14y ago
  Equal opportunity is nice :-) Here is the study, that the op-ed refers to: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013/2013a_hoxby.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013... The study suggests that around 4 percent of all US high school graduates are high-achievers so we are talking about somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 high school graduates yearly who fall in this category. It's clear that not all high-achievers can go to Harvard. Right now the qualified applicants are sorted based on extra curricular activities etc. If more of the 25-35,000 low income high-achievers, which the study suggests there are, applied to Harvard, most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities.
  - pcl 14y ago
    most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities That's possible, but that certainly doesn't seem like a good reason to disenfranchise 25% of our brightest students. Furthermore, I'd expect that if those students had help during their applications to the top-tier schools, they'd probably also apply to some other great schools along the way. More exposure to the system can only help. The interesting thing about this is that a huge chunk of the operating expenses for top universities are paid for by us taxpayers. It'd be interesting to replace military recruiters with "government recruiters", charged with representing all the post-high-school government-funded programs available.

btipling 14y ago

I'm looking forward to the day when attaining education happens though online courses and you learn as much you can and want to and achieve based on merit. No more artificial barriers keeping talented and ambitious people from getting a good education. Then we get to do away with all of this institution status business and people actually have to compete simply based on skill and competence. Not who your parent were, how much money they had or where they raised you or where you went to school.

Evbn 14y ago

This whole discussion is aabout misguided. You don't fix inequality by shuffling who is at the top of the pyramid. You fix inequality by flattering the top to a wider plateau, or by raising the level of the base. We don't need to repopulate the Ivy League, we need to deprecate it. /Ivy League grad.

Vivtek 14y ago
Damn straight. /talented rural poor.
jjoonathan 14y ago
Agreed. Now the hard part: how do we do it? /Ivy grad
- bane 14y ago
  It's easy, build more schools or recognize already great ones, and start to educate people that most lists of school rankings (USNews in particular) are mostly gamed anyway and are more or less meaningless...(or actually start to rank schools correctly) and then stop discriminating hiring practices.
  - jjoonathan 14y ago
    > stop discriminating hiring practices There's the rub. You have powerful, entrenched players working to protect their own interests. Even more importantly, ignoring cues like an Ivy education reduces the SNR for hiring managers who are already overwhelmed by noise. Stopping discrimination will require them to do additional difficult, thankless vetting work. In the tech world, github makes this relatively painless, though not entirely effort-free. Perhaps such a system could be extended to legal and regulatory fields? A central platform for open source laws, regulations, and debates would do the trick. The difficult part would be getting people to use it. Maybe you could start by targeting law schools and debate clubs, giving them an easy way to visualize the back-and-forth of an argument, and then try to use that traction to move into the public sphere? I seem to recall hearing about a few sites trying to do this, but evidently none of them have reached critical mass yet.

Vivtek 14y ago

Why in the world would the Ivy League want to reach out to the talented rural poor? They're only accepting 5-7% of the people who apply now - does anybody think they lack applicants?

mikeash 14y ago
The top people from a larger pool will be, on average, better than the top people from a smaller pool.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  And your touching belief that they accept "better" people is endearing.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I'm addressing your hypothetical of why they would want to, not addressing the various strange ways they actually act.

trotsky 14y ago

Degrees from these schools serve as class signaling devices. They wouldn't be very effective if they recruited more than a token of poor or disadvantaged.

thatthatis 14y ago
Smart and connected is the new upper class. These universities select for smart and by their nature create the connections. There needs to be some number of smart and already connected students to maximize the value of the network, but the connection to alumni is on the average more valuable.
- trotsky 14y ago
  I assure you that previous privileged generations didn't refer to themselves as "rich and the right ethnicity".

davidroberts 14y ago

The amazing thing is that excellent students from poor schools really should apply to the elite private universities, because the private schools will pretty much pay for their education through their huge endowments. It's a much better path than going through state universities, where even the poorest have a huge loan debt by the time they graduate. The OP is right about the recruiting efforts of the private universities. It's not just the rural schools they skip. My son went to a high school near San Diego that straddles the border between an middle class area built in the 50s and a low income area. The student body is about 40% suburban white, 25% Hispanic, 10% recently moved from Iraq (Chaldean), and the rest African American, Native American and other minorities. It has a 7 out of 10 California high school rating, so it's not that bad. There were no recruiters from "elite" private schools. The best students typically go to University of California, either USCD, UCLA, or Berkeley. The next level goes to the other UCs, especially Irvine or Riverside. Many go to San Diego State University, and the rest who continue their education go to community college. My son loves economics, and got it early in his head that he really wanted to go to University of Chicago. We were pretty poor at the time, as I was changing my career and working my way up in from the total bottom in a new field doing mainly freelance work. My son worked really hard to get to UChicago. He attended a recruiting event in a downtown hotel he found out about on the internet. I borrowed money and we flew to Chicago for an interview, staying in a sketchy hotel on the South Side. He applied for early admission and got accepted last year, the first student ever from his high school. They offered a financial package that pays almost everything. His friends who are still at the school said that this year, for the first time, a recruiter from UChicago showed up. It is like my son put the school on their radar. One thing we noticed as part of the process is that taking the PSAT is really important. It only costs about $20 and it's free in some schools. There might be something similar for the ACT. My son did well on the PSAT and he got multiple letters from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and other Ivies trying to lure him in. Also from elite private four-year colleges. So there is an outreach by those schools in this way. Often those letters would mention the possibility of almost full support for students that needed it. I think the Ivies are trying to reach out to poorer students. It's just that it's hard for them to think out of the box created by their own privileged backgrounds and understand how to reach that demographic. But our experience is that they are sincerely trying, and if a student makes the effort, he can definitely get in. I think one of the biggest barriers is that counselors in schools like my son's or the OP's don't even consider these schools for qualified students (are they uninformed? lazy? incompetent? complacent?). If they pushed harder, both to the Ivies and in guiding the students, it would help a lot.

newnewnew 14y ago

The Ivy League cares a lot about "PC" diversity (race, gender, sexual orientation). But not so much about regional or ideological diversity. In fact, leadership activities and accomplishments that scream "red state" actually reduce your chances of getting into Harvard - being a leader in the ROTC cuts your admissions odds in half ceteris paribus[1]. Poor rural white kids don't go to Harvard. [1] Ron Unz explores this and other Ivy League admission statistics in "The Myth of American Meritocracy" http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...

rainsford 14y ago
I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology? I agree that regional and ideological diversity might be a problem for elite schools (or any school, for that matter). But I don't think the issues are necessarily political ones. In other words, are Harvard admissions people rejecting 4-H club members because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving conservatives, or because the Harvard admissions people didn't participate in 4-H clubs and don't know much about them?
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  > I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology? I tend to agree, but I haven't read the source cited by the article. If anyone here has easy access to Epenshade's book, I'd love to hear how rigorous the "4H,ROTC decreased P(admission) by 65%" result was. 87 Espenshade (2009) p. 126. > In other words, are Harvard admissions people rejecting 4-H club members because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving conservatives, or because the Harvard admissions people didn't participate in 4-H clubs and don't know much about them? A third possibility: admissions people don't believe that generic "leadership" clubs are worthwhile, leading to a perceived bias towards clubs with more specific purposes than being line-items on college applications. We could test this hypothesis by looking for differential performance between 4H and ROTC and between 4H and NHS (Natl. Honor Society, the prevalent line-item club at my high school, which was not rural).

auctiontheory 14y ago

I accept the reality of the author's experience, but I have to wonder why internet access isn't making more of a difference in equalizing the access to information about choices.

andrewchoi 14y ago
For me at least, the only reason that I knew that I was good enough to apply to (and thankfully to get accepted into) Ivy League schools was because I had friends in high school that thought that they were going to do the same, and I thought I was smarter than them. Ego aside, the main way that I heard about colleges in high school was from the people that were around me in high school. I didn't simply Google "top tier universities" (and I find it hard to believe that others did).
Mvandenbergh 14y ago
The internet is great for finding the answers to questions - once you're able to formulate them correctly.

tokenadult 14y ago

Thanks for the many interesting comments. Some of the comments asked why anyone should care if the most elite colleges cast a wide net in seeking students. (Christopher Avery of Harvard, and his colleague Caroline Hoxby, once of Harvard but now at Stanford, have done research on how the most elite colleges can find more one-off students from rare backgrounds that other colleges miss.) http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/cavery/ http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/cavery/ http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho46.html http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho46.html My answer about why someone looking in from the outside might care about what kinds of students are admitted by elite colleges is the observation that elite colleges can be highly influential on public policy (as several other comments have already pointed out). If we are to have the graduates of Harvard and the other seven Ivy League colleges, along with graduates of Stanford and the other several "Ivy plus" colleges, making many of the policy decisions for our country, I hope they are informed by direct knowledge about the life of the rural and urban poor, the life of students with a disabled parent, the life of first-generation college students, the life of students who attended especially lousy high schools, and so on. I'm sure every graduate of an elite college knows how to take care of "his people," but it might be better for all of us if those graduates, in the aggregate, include most of the subgroups of people that include those of us who never attended such a college. That, to me, is a possible broad social benefit of genuine diversity in college admission.

redwood 14y ago

This is one of the reasons public schools have brilliant minds

crazygringo 14y ago

You don't have to be as far away as Nevada. Heck, I grew up in rural upstate New York. It never even occurred to me to think of a place like Harvard/Yale/Princeton, despite being only a few hours' drives away. In my high school, those places might as well have been Mars -- they just didn't exist on anyone's radar. They were from the movies, or something. But after taking my SAT's, I got tons of unsolicited college mailings, including a brochure from Yale. I sent back the card to receive an application packet, decided to apply early-admission (what did I have to lose?), and was shocked when I discovered I got in. Literally, the only reason I wound up going to an Ivy League school was because they sent me an unsolicited brochure. (And Yale was the only one which did, strangely enough -- it still never occurred to me to research Harvard or Princeton or anything, since the whole thing seemed so implausible in the first place.) But except for that brochure, I probably would have gone to the University of Rochester, which, for whatever reason, seemed to be the default option at the time. Nothing against it, of course! :) But it is funny how the smallest piece of information can change someone's life so much.

stevenleeg 14y ago
U of R student (and former resident of rural upstate NY) here, we would have been glad to have you!

ktugi 14y ago

I fail to see why the "Ivy League" matters. The same information can be obtained from reading the best textbooks in one's field of study. If one insists on classroom education, the solution is to do it using video streaming, thus making it possible to enroll an arbitrary number of people in the same course. As for the "social environment", just applying won't necessarily make you buddies with co-students, and anyway this model is not scalable.

thatthatis 14y ago

I was a high achieving rural student, and ended up going to Harvard. Why? Because at one college fair there was a guy from Harvard, not a recruiting team, but one random alum who cared and brought a bunch of pamphlets. I asked him "do they ever even admit students from Idaho?" His answer, not only do they admit them but they want to admit more. Had it not been for that conversation, it's not clear if I ever would have applied. I think it is hard for most people who grow up in an affluent area to understand how little information rural students get about college options. I never took the PSAT because my school's guidance counselors didn't think enough students were going to go to college for it to be worth their time. Hell, I applied to Harvard after the deadline because my guidance counselors told me college applications were due February 1st (which is true only of schools in the intermountain west) when applications we're actually due January 1st. My only hope is that in the modern world rural students are better informed due to the ubiquity of the Internet. But in my experience, everything in this article rings 100% true.

andrewchoi 14y ago

As a current Ivy League student that's on full financial aid, I do agree somewhat with the analysis presented in the article. However, there are a lot of great programs that are out there that are trying to rectify this situation. I applied to college through the QuestBridge[0] program, and in addition to providing tools and guidance for me in the application process, I've been fortunate enough to find a network of people in similar situations at school. They also do outreach, especially through alumni of the program. [0] http://questbridge.org/ http://questbridge.org/

pasbesoin 14y ago

I agree with a lot of the observation and sentiment, here. And, I'm one who is more reluctant to embrace "the Internet" as some sort of default, "magical" solution. But... most everyone has at least some level of access, now. And so it seems to me that this particular... "information divide" is crying out for online redress. Not some super fancy example of "design". Not a marketing opportunity to be "leveraged". Some straight, to the point text (ok, maybe some pictures, even a few videos -- but to serve the purpose, not become it). From real people. Who know about this shit. Brainiacs. And parents of future brainiacs who'd had to learn to negotiate this. Anyone can view web pages. Consider it a "contribution" to volunteer some time to putting a good, concise, thorough, authoritative, and... I guess also collaborative, site together. (There are always new strategies and answers to be shared, and it helps not to feel one is in this all alone.) Maybe also, or distinctly, this is something Sal and his Khan Academy should take on. A "meta" of the educational experience. How to negotiate school and its bureaucracy. (I realize this becomes daunting when looking across states, countries, systems. At a minimum, it would have to be broken down into regional efforts/teams.) A half hour or hour's "WTF" video about the financial aid aspect, might be one good starting point for parents, per some of the description in the OP article. P.S. Couldn't Khan Academy seek out good resources from dedicated career guidance professionals? I've run across some who are really dedicated to their field (and who are not mere marketing droids focusing solely on their institution). It strikes me this might be a good mechanism for finding appropriate materials and then getting them to the students and parents who need them.

mjmahone17 14y ago
That site exists. It's called College Confidential: http://www.collegeconfidential.com http://www.collegeconfidential.com Especially interesting is the forum. Unfortunately, it may not feel "at home" for all types of students, as most the participants are planning on going to top-tier schools, and have been all their lives. But if you post "I'm a rural student from X. Here is what I could pay to go to college, and here are my current stats (such as class rank, etc.). Does anyone have suggestions on where I should apply?" you'll get a whole bunch of people trying to help you out, pointing out schools that "match" your statistics, and schools that are "reach" schools, and explaining that you don't need a bunch of money to attend the reach schools, as they offer need-based financial aid. While I don't support spending ridiculous amounts of time on the site trying to figure out whether or not you'll be accepted, I think it's a reasonable place to learn about college admissions, especially if you have no background.

balloot 14y ago

This article only scratches the surface of why most brilliant lower-middle class kids can't get into an Ivy. Just look at what's expected: - lots of extracurriculars Rich kid: spent the summer spoon feeding starving children in Honduras Poor kid: works during the summer at the mall to make some money, and has never left the country. Rich kid: joined a dance troupe, plays two sports at varsity level Poor kid: Doesn't live within 50 miles of a dance studio and can't afford the extensive travel/coaching/equipment needed to excel in a bunch of sports Rich kid: Fluent in Spanish due to private language tutor and aforementioned trip to Honduras Poor kid: Never was even formally taught English grammar (most public schools don't anymore) - lots of AP classes Rich kid: Got a 5 on 7 different AP tests. Poor kid: Goes to a school that doesn't offer AP classes at all. - testing Rich kid: Took an extensive SAT prep class, then took SAT 3 times and ACT 2 times and uses the best score Poor kid: Didn't take a prep class and just took the SAT once - connections Rich kid: has a parent who went to an Ivy League school, or has a family friend who is an alum/Important Person who can write a letter of rec Poor kid: Doesn't know a single person who went to an Ivy League school. Gets letters of rec from teachers Pretty much every step in the admission process is designed to favor the haves over the have nots. There's a lot of things selective schools could do to make the process fairer without too much effort, but it's reasonable to assume that the deck isn't stacked by accident.

stephencanon 14y ago
Speaking as a one-time rural white kid, ivy league grad, and now alumni interviewer who was interviewed kids in both rich suburbs (palo alto) and poor rural northern new hampshire and vermont: neither one of the kids you described is getting in. What matters isn’t what you do; it's what you do with the opportunities that are available to you. Your hypothetical rich kid didn’t do anything more than what was put in front of her. Your hypothetical poor kid didn’t try to find ways to challenge himself either. The rich kids from Palo Alto who got in were the ones who weren’t loading up on AP classes, they were the ones who had gone across the road to Stanford and kept walking into bio labs until they found one that would let them do grunt work. The poor kids in rural New England who get in go down to the library or online and teach themselves grammar, then go on to learn a couple years worth of college-level linguistics and philosophy of language (which even rich kids don’t get to take in high school) because the books were there and they were interesting. I wouldn’t pretend for a moment that the deck isn’t stacked. But it’s not stacked in this particular manner.

desireco42 14y ago

I read with great interest all that is written. My kids are small, preschool level, still Montessori and will continue for few years of elementary school for now. I am immigrant in US and still can't figure out everything about how things work. From what I could understand, it is almost that your pick of elementary school selects you for high school which in turn greatly determines university. On the other hand, depending on their interests, I don't think it is a must to go to university, both my wife and me have Master level degrees, yet, we spent a lot of time getting them. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer (shudder) you need to get university degree, but not if you want to be a programmer like me. I kind of love my work and would love my kids to follow my footsteps, but you never know what they might choose. Please feel free to give me any hints and advice because I need a lot of those. What are your experiences and what would you do if you were in my place. I did start college fund for them, as I understand this will not be wasted even if they don't go to collage.

eru 14y ago
As an aside, your kids do not have to go to university in America.

jbhernan 14y ago

related piece in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-way-to-send-poor-kids-to-top-colleges.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-wa...

kaitai 14y ago
To elaborate on your too-short post, this article is the reply to so many comments above: it answers the questions "Does more information change behavior?" and "How can we change this lack of information?" The researchers in this randomized trial sent packages of information to high-scoring poor kids and their families, while keeping track of the college choices of a control group as well. Of the control group, 30 percent gained admission to one of these fancy colleges. In the intervention group 54 percent gained admission. The simple act of sending these kids a bunch of pieces of paper that outlined the steps necessary for application and financial aid -- and gave some cost comparisons -- had an enormous effect. This did not involve improving the educational experience of these kids in a single way. Everyone above who says, "Why don't these kids just Google Harvard and figure out it's cheap?" or, "Why don't they use CollegeConfidential?" is missing the point. The worst position to be in is when you don't even know what questions to ask. These kids don't even realize what questions they could be asking. It's not so hard to tell them.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

That is a very clever writing. It reads like there is a problem and then finishes with a punchline that there isn't. She and her other friend from Pahrump, with the "standard" free public school education, she ends up an assistant professor and her buddy ends up with a Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Purdue (which is pretty darn employable). That she didn't even "imagine" or think about the Ivy League schools made no difference to either of them. They were smart, the worked hard, and boom they are both "successful." The comment about the military and its recruitment was also interesting. Because having been a military brat (the child of a military officer) it was clear that the military got their leadership from a wide swath of participants, not "just" folks from the military academies, one of my friend's dad was a general (1 star) and he always let us know he enlisted as an airman because his Mom couldn't afford to feed him as a teenager. So the conclusion is that there isn't really a problem here. People who have the talent and motivation can get a good graduate degree from a good school. They need only finish their undergraduate degree at a state school. All the angst about Google or Facebook only hiring if you went to one of "these" 21 schools, is moot if you can get a masters degree there after you graduate from your "loser" school. So I see the argument that the Ivy League won't even see you if you don't come through the right schools as an undergraduate, and that doesn't matter for anyone who gets an advanced degree. So if you have the talent get an advanced degree, it doesn't matter. That said, it implies that if you are a loser and by the luck of having a wealthy family who shepherds you through the process so that you end up in an Ivy League school, you may find it easier to get hired as an undergraduate. But you are also just as easy to fire so that benefit is fleeting if you don't know your stuff. Anyway, I read it thinking the author was trying to point out a problem only to discover that there wasn't a problem. I found that to be pretty clever.

mtdewcmu 14y ago
I noticed that, too. I guess the point was that she had an unequal shot at Harvard or Princeton. But it looks like the system worked reasonably well in her case. It could have done worse. It's also sort of heartening that the military is a kind of leveler. No one looks down on military service, at least, I think most people consider it a plus (it's hard to start a sentence with "no one..." that doesn't have some exception, somewhere). So the military could potentially be a step stone to better things. The problem with societal ills like inequality is that most of them can't ever really be solved. Can you imagine a perfectly equal society? I can't. But liberalism requires some suspension of disbelief. Too much realism breeds cynicism, and cynicism allows intractable problems to get even more intractable.

forgotAgain 14y ago

Want to know why Harvard made the NCAA basketball tournament this year? Athletes are getting wiser about the choice between a full ride athletic scholarship at a sports factory versus a full financial aid package at an Ivy.

forgotAgain 14y ago

What disappointed me about this article was the total lack of accountability for those local to the writer. If the writer's parents, extended-family, and school faculty were all unable to provide any insight for the writer then they were willfully ignorant. People do have a responsibility to educate themselves. Especially when they are in a position of responsibility. The writer self-filtered himself from the opportunities available by not seeking out opportunities. Universities two thousand miles away should (and do) try to make themselves known to students. But that doesn't relieve a person of responsibility. If you don't have the motivation to find out about them, then you probably wouldn't succeed at the school anyway.

mayneack 14y ago

This isn't all about the Ivy's recruitment. I am from a small (10k population) town in Mid Missouri and currently an MIT student. In my graduating class of 150 there were maybe 6 that went out of state and only a couple that didn't go to a neighboring state. I was always gunning for "top tier" because my parents were professors and had gone to top tier colleges as well, but the high school counselors were absolutely useless to me. They didn't know how to deal with the common app and none of the scholarships that they could point me to apply to were eligible for anything out of state. I got the same amount of advertisements from out of state schools as in-state after taking the ACT, but there was a feeling at my high school of anti-elite schools.

pagekicker 14y ago

not exactly new news.

pagekicker 14y ago

not exactly new news.