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    Joined: Mar 2013
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    To need-blind admissions...

    I would have zero problem with this if they demanded the same standards of academic merit and educability from the students that I will be one day subsidizing. That way my DD will have a reasonable chance of being able bounce ideas etc off of smart people and the academic merit of the institution would not be compromised.

    I fully understand that low SES people can be smart - I grew up as one but it galls me to see standards being applied unevenly across race so that better qualified applicants are missing scholarships because they are the wrong race/gender/colour/sexual orientation etc.

    I personally think that extra support staff needed for marginal students that shouldn't even be at university and self indulgent pseudo-intellectual fantasies like [insert trendy social hypochondria name du jour here] studies that have 3 students are also ramping up 'tuition' costs here.

    Last edited by madeinuk; 09/29/15 06:24 PM.

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    I really don't think there's such a thing as a sexual orientation scholarship, and girls are also pretty unlikely to receive scholarships based on gender these days.

    When you talk about extra support staff for "marginal" students, keep in mind that many of these students are just as bright but through no misdeed of their own have grown up in families where no one went to college and attended high schools where rigor was sadly lacking. They come to college with weak skills and poor comprehension of college culture--there is one. It seems you overcame this, but many cannot.

    I recently listened to this excellent This American Life podcast which gives a glimpse into the lives of excellent students at a poor high school and their struggles with attending college. If you listen, you may find it more difficult to dismiss support staff for these kids. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/three-miles

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    Originally Posted by ultramarina
    When you talk about extra support staff for "marginal" students, keep in mind that many of these students are just as bright but through no misdeed of their own have grown up in families where no one went to college and attended high schools where rigor was sadly lacking. They come to college with weak skills and poor comprehension of college culture--there is one.

    I recently listened to this excellent This American Life podcast which gives a glimpse into the lives of excellent students at a poor high school and their struggles with attending college.

    I agree that these kids need support and help, but I wonder about the best way to provide it and if tossing them in as full-time first semester freshmen who may also be far from home is the best approach. It's almost like setting them up for failure: everyone you trust and care about is hundreds of miles from here, everything is new, the workload may be geared toward tiger cubs, and you have no idea how to deal with situations that are second nature to your classmates. On top of that, you may also have no clue how to deal with financial aid requirements like renewing stuff or signing stuff that you may completely unaware even exists.

    IMO, a better way to help these kids might be to put them into a one-year gap program that helps them learn how to survive in college. If I was designing something like this, I'd give them a class on how to use a library, on how to deal with financial aid, on how to buy cheap books on the internet or borrow them at the library, and on how to manage time. I'd also enroll them in onsite classes that would require them to use the library to complete assignments. They might also have an onsite part-time job (10 hours a week-ish?) to help them learn to manage money and save for next year. Ideally, the program would be local but residential from Monday to Friday initially, so that they'd be away from home during the week, but not too far from home, and not for too long (maybe not residential the first week, either). Then later, they'd be required to stay for a weekend here and there.

    There would be field trips (e.g. museums) and community service days. Community service projects with seniors from private schools might help kids get to know each other.

    Okay, back to reality.

    Last edited by Val; 10/01/15 09:47 AM.
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    Originally Posted by Val
    IMO, a better way to help these kids might be to put them into a one-year gap program that helps them learn how to survive in college.

    I'm of the mind that these skills should be taught during high school, as part of the "college-readiness" they are trying to push so hard. A bright kid coming out of an under-challenging HS is itching for some challenge in college, not another year delayed through no fault of their own.

    Maybe a crash-course maybe in college, workshops of some kind. Or maybe that's what community college has to offer. Maybe first semester of four-year college could offer a balance that isn't a full-time traditional course load, with more support. I know a couple people who jumped from a small HS that had no rigor, no AP, no GT support, and non-college-educated parents, into a rigorous college and hit the wall that first semester, overwhelmed, only to figure it out by second semester and get back up to the top. Some drop out, though, so some sort of gap-filling seems prudent.

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    I'm sure there are other programs similar to this that I haven't heard about, but Brandeis has had a transitional year program since 1968: Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program

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    Originally Posted by bluemagic
    What about football teams. Football teams have little to do with academia.

    I agree. I think that football teams cost way more than lazy rivers and they are detrimental to other sports within the university.

    Nobody serious about academics, in a rigorously academic major is going to be busy training for football all year long at an elite level.

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    IMO, a better way to help these kids might be to put them into a one-year gap program that helps them learn how to survive in college. If I was designing something like this, I'd give them a class on how to use a library, on how to deal with financial aid, on how to buy cheap books on the internet or borrow them at the library, and on how to manage time. I'd also enroll them in onsite classes that would require them to use the library to complete assignments. They might also have an onsite part-time job (10 hours a week-ish?) to help them learn to manage money and save for next year. Ideally, the program would be local but residential from Monday to Friday initially, so that they'd be away from home during the week, but not too far from home, and not for too long (maybe not residential the first week, either). Then later, they'd be required to stay for a weekend

    I agree I think there should be a 'ramp course' to get people up to the required entry level of 1 to 2 years depending on needs with a rigorous exam at the end - only those that make the grade should move on.


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    Quite a lot of the high schoolers I work with do this through community college and dual enrollment experiences.


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    Originally Posted by aeh
    Quite a lot of the high schoolers I work with do this through community college and dual enrollment experiences.

    True, but going to a community college in a high school program is a far cry from, say, going to Middlebury when you're from the Bronx (i.e. Melanie in the podcast mentioned earlier). The CC allows some exposure to organizing your time, but isn't going to help deal with the culture shock of going from a low-income city neighborhood to a college in rural northern Vermont populated by upper middle class kids who have their own cars and summered in Italy last year.

    Our education leaders and politicians (among others) love to talk about helping low SES kids join the middle class/go to college/whatever, but there's a whole lot more to it than just handing them an acceptance letter to Middlebury or Williams and playing the my-dreams-are-being-realized music. The shock these kids experience as first semester freshmen must be huge, yet there's little in the way of meaningful support for them, and few other kids on campus who have similar experiences to them. They must feel pretty isolated during the fall semester.

    Then, on top of that, they may have no concept of stuff like having to buy textbooks (because they're free in public schools, unlike many private ones, and also because they don't have college-educated parents to guide them on this subject), let alone knowing ways to get them for less online. They also have no concept about what's required to maintain financial aid, because what 18-year-old does? I've read stories about kids who had to drop out because no one told them about having to renew their grants/loans, and they lost them. This stuff is accessible to a middle-class parent sees it as his/her job to deal with the paperwork, has been around the ed block, and who has an education, but what about some kid whose family doesn't speak English and/or has no education and is struggling to get by, working two jobs per parent?

    Then toss a low-quality high school education into the mix, and you can see why it's so much harder for these kids than it is for kids from the middle class and above.


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    Don't forget the for-profit college admissions "counsellors" who charge families for telling them about freely-available financial aid and free testing prep resources that mid/upper-mid class families learn about from their school guidance counselors. It's so bad that our guidance counselors are in a race every year to get to our students' families before the scam counselors out there do. They target first-time college aspirants, try to sell them on unaffordable college loans, charge them for worthless "advice".

    Not that there aren't good ones out there, but we've encountered an awful lot of slimy ones.


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