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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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While that may well be true, the issue here is that the PARENTS (and all too often, the poor schools that such students attend) aren't aware of that fact.
In high school, all that I thought about such institutions was "out of my pay grade" quite frankly. They were for prep-school kids. ME? Well, my NMSF letter (which I still have in a box somewhere, probably) was something I considered a curiosity and a fluke. I had no real concept of what it meant.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,489
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We never even considered top-tier schools like MIT, Harvard, etc. though we'd both received invitations to apply based on SAT scores. Maybe you should have, because many top-tier schools have need-blind admissions and give large grants to students without the financial means to pay the tuition. Problem is many poorer districts don't expect as many of the students to go to university outside the local state school. Especially a top tier school and they don't have the resources like trained school counselors, informational meetings for parents, and colleges touring their schools. Poorer students (irregardless of race) often don't know the possibilities of what is out there or belief they even have a chance. The US system of applying for colleges, grants, scholarships, financial aid is complicated and often confusing.
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Joined: Mar 2014
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We never even considered top-tier schools like MIT, Harvard, etc. though we'd both received invitations to apply based on SAT scores. Maybe you should have, because many top-tier schools have need-blind admissions and give large grants to students without the financial means to pay the tuition. Problem is many poorer districts don't expect as many of the students to go to university outside the local state school. Especially a top tier school and they don't have the resources like trained school counselors, informational meetings for parents, and colleges touring their schools. Poorer students (irregardless of race) often don't know the possibilities of what is out there or belief they even have a chance. The US system of applying for colleges, grants, scholarships, financial aid is complicated and often confusing. You hit the nail on the head. We didn't know anything about needs-blind admission in our small town. The guidance counselor literally told me that he didn't have any information for me but "with that you'll be just fine". He suggested that if I was worried about paying for college, I go part time (which most people know is a drop-out trap).
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Joined: Jul 2012
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When I went, needs based was also to be propped up with student and parental loans (with parental loans requiring immediate payments.) I would've been able to get a free ride at a top state school but went top tier and my mom couldn't afford for me to stay after a year with needing to pay on the parent loan. So, ended up in a mediocre state school.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 312
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Problem is many poorer districts don't expect as many of the students to go to university outside the local state school. Especially a top tier school and they don't have the resources like trained school counselors, informational meetings for parents, and colleges touring their schools. Poorer students (irregardless of race) often don't know the possibilities of what is out there or belief they even have a chance. The US system of applying for colleges, grants, scholarships, financial aid is complicated and often confusing. You hit the nail on the head. We didn't know anything about needs-blind admission in our small town. The guidance counselor literally told me that he didn't have any information for me but "with that you'll be just fine". He suggested that if I was worried about paying for college, I go part time (which most people know is a drop-out trap). I honestly assumed that acceptance was NEVER based on ability to pay. That seemed to be a completely separate issue to me. Luckily, I had heard that you should always apply to a "stretch" school, so I did. Then my stretch school gave me a grant that was about the same as tuition. I don't think there was a cheaper option for me. I never consulted the school guidance counselor for anything. Maybe I would have received terrible, and soul crushing advice. Then again, I was confident that I was smarter than anyone working for the school, so I probably would have ignored anything they told me. Based on your experience, they don't know much about tailoring their advice for uncommon circumstances, so maybe I was right to avoid them. Having said that, guidance counselors ought to be reliable sources of appropriate information: especially for children with few other resources.
Last edited by DAD22; 03/19/14 04:21 PM.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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When I went, needs based was also to be propped up with student and parental loans (with parental loans requiring immediate payments.) I would've been able to get a free ride at a top state school but went top tier and my mom couldn't afford for me to stay after a year with needing to pay on the parent loan. So, ended up in a mediocre state school. I took one look at how much the Ivy wanted me to shell out and decided that free was better. Granted, I had no real interest in going to college at the time, so that certainly helped. I was trying to maximize revenue, not go into debt. If they didn't give me a free ride, I crossed them off my list.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,261 Likes: 8
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... don't have the resources like trained school counselors, informational meetings for parents, and colleges touring their schools. A supply of good books about college selection and application in a school's library, and announced in the school newsletter could help overcome the dearth of information. For further outreach to populations without internet access... a TV channel with a variety of programming on college selection and application may be helpful.
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Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 96
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Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 96 |
Problem is many poorer districts don't expect as many of the students to go to university outside the local state school. Especially a top tier school and they don't have the resources like trained school counselors, informational meetings for parents, and colleges touring their schools. Poorer students (irregardless of race) often don't know the possibilities of what is out there or belief they even have a chance. The US system of applying for colleges, grants, scholarships, financial aid is complicated and often confusing. You hit the nail on the head. We didn't know anything about needs-blind admission in our small town. The guidance counselor literally told me that he didn't have any information for me but "with that you'll be just fine". He suggested that if I was worried about paying for college, I go part time (which most people know is a drop-out trap). I honestly assumed that acceptance was NEVER based on ability to pay. That seemed to be a completely separate issue to me. Luckily, I had heard that you should always apply to a "stretch" school, so I did. Then my stretch school gave me a grant that was about the same as tuition. I don't think there was a cheaper option for me. I never consulted the school guidance counselor for anything. Maybe I would have received terrible, and soul crushing advice. Then again, I was confident that I was smarter than anyone working for the school, so I probably would have ignored anything they told me. Based on your experience, they don't know much about tailoring their advice for uncommon circumstances, so maybe I was right to avoid them. Having said that, guidance counselors ought to be reliable sources of appropriate information: especially for children with few other resources. I knew he wasn't a genius, but he was my only source of information. Ivies supposedly meet need upon acceptance but the reality of endowments means a limit to needy students being accepted. This was in 1994. We didn't have the Internet at home yet in our house.
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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Exactly-- and I was applying a decade before that. NO internet then. I had classmates that went to Brown, Columbia, Stanford, and Yale, etc. But they were well off.
Looking back, I realize that they were no more well-off than my own family is now, but I thought then that they were "rich kids."
Nobody from my side of the tracks had a thought in our heads about an ELITE college. That would have been.... I dunno-- uppity of us, or something. I was pretty daring in applying to several private colleges. RPI, for instance. (Not that they threw enough $ at me to make it matter, but they WERE quite keen to have me, I guess).
Even the respectable but not elite private college where I did decide to go-- when my financial aid fell through due to a huge SNAFU, that was that. Off I went to the local state college-- there was no way for MY family to generate that much tuition money without my grant aid. I struggled even to pay for the state college.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 Likes: 2
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A study has found that sending information packets to bright low-income students raises the chance they apply to the more selective colleges: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-way-to-send-poor-kids-to-top-colleges.htmlA Simple Way to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges By DAVID LEONHARDT New York Times March 29, 2013 Among a control group of low-income students with SAT scores good enough to attend top colleges — but who did not receive the information packets — only 30 percent gained admission to a college matching their academic qualifications. Among a similar group of students who did receive a packet, 54 percent gained admission, according to the researchers, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia.
David Coleman, the president of the College Board, told me that he considered the results powerful enough to require changes at his organization, which conducts the SAT. “We can’t stand by as students, particularly low-income students, go off track and don’t pursue the opportunities they have earned,” Mr. Coleman said. The group may soon begin sending its own version of the experiment’s information. Why not send information by email to all students with good-enough scores, not just low-income students? Parental knowledge of college admissions is not perfectly correlated with income.
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