Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 (nytimes.com) 314
Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records. At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League -- Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown -- more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent. From a report on the NYTimes (alternate non-paywall link): Roughly one in four of the richest students attend an elite college -- universities that typically cluster toward the top of annual rankings (you can find more on our definition of "elite" at the bottom). In contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college; less than half attend any college at all. Colleges often promote their role in helping poorer students rise in life, and their commitments to affordability. But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income families than on expanding access. "Free tuition only helps if you can get in," said Danny Yagan, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of the study.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the gap has reduced on the tuition level, the cost of living at those schools is still very very high and the students know that.
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I survived just fine entirety on scholarship, pell grants, student loans, and internship money. At times I was a bit hungry, but not tooo bad. It can be done.
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Yes, one of those things is that people could learn to spell in primary school.
Or does it really cost all that much to make a piece of art that is assembled from a variety of different forms?
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A single child family MIGHT be able to pull that off if they started saving years in advance. 2 or 3 kids and no, $100k a year, and you can't afford the school.
Having multiple kids knocks you down the opulence ladder a few pegs. You may have average family income, but you're essentially upper lower class/lower middle class.
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It isn't. Because Harvard will give the kid from the family with 10K income a free ride (assuming he gets in at all).
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Princeton
Harvard
University of Chicago
Yale
Columbia
Stanford
MIT
Duke
...for after all, it's been shown that it's not the education which matters as much as the name on a diploma. As a bonus, it would reduce the amount of resources wasted on collegiate sports.
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly my point. How is Harvard any more affordable for a family 100k a year than 10k?
At Harvard, a family that makes $100K/year will only pay at most $10K/year (Harvard caps tuition at 10% for income under $150k). Generally it makes it cheaper than a public university.
or Common Sense and expected? (Score:3)
The top 1% own more mansions than the bottom 99% combined. The top 1% own more Ferrari cars than the bottom 99% combined. The top 1% go to the most expensive schools. Did you also know that the bottom 99% get more grants for education than the top 1% by 100%? How about the amount of "free" tuition from scholarships going to mostly the lower 90%? More assistance programs exist for the bottom 30% than the top 70%.
There is no equality of opportunity at any level when discussing higher education. I don't
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Did you also know that the bottom 99% get more grants for education than the top 1% by 100%?
Does that mean that the top 1% get 1/3 of all grants for education? Or did you do your math wrong?
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My comments on "Grants" are fact based, but perhaps a tiny bit of hyperbole. Tuition grants almost exclusively go to the bottom 99%. I could not find a case of a tuition grant going to someone someone wealthy. I mentioned the "tiny bit of hyperbole" here specifically because exceptions are quite possible. Me not being able to find a grant going to a wealthy kid indicates that they are rare, but not necessarily impossible.
My first post referenced Scholarships separately because those cover everything fro
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I always thought the elite schools attracted people not for their education but for the benefits of their social connections to a lot of rich and well-connected people.
What would Facebook be if Zuckerberg had instead gone to Purdue or Texas A&M instead of Harvard? How much of his success is due to the fact that he had access to a lot of rich and influential people?
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Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then things have changed. In the 90s, both my brother and I got a combination of grants and loans. Neither of us nor our parents had any savings to speak of - so we financed almost the entire amount. My parents were solidly middle class.
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I was in college about the same time, I have 5 different grants/scholarships, but because I went to an expensive private school (that at the time I thought meant a better education), I still had to work a 35hr/week job and me and my parents split the cost after grants/scholarships.
That was in the 90s. There is no way I could make up the cost by working a full-time job now. Cheap public schools charge as much as the crappy expensive private school I went to.
It has helped find jobs though. Employers are al
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Correct.
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If you are middle class you can't get financial aid.
If you are upper middle class, your aid options are very limited, regular old middle class can get some financial aid. Our family income was smack dab in the center of "middle" class for Chicago metro area, but I qualified for a few need-based financial aid programs.
I attended IIT, a moderately expensive private research/tech school, and I received a Federal Pell grant, a subsidized (Stafford) loan, and made up the rest from the Federal Work-Study program, and of course wiped out my personal savings accou
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when I learned it would be around $25k/semester the reality sunk in that I was limited to my state college.
And that doesn't include housing, which can also be $20k a semester.
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And that doesn't include housing, which can also be $20k a semester.
For that kind of money you could buy a VERY large house off campus.
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And that doesn't include housing, which can also be $20k a semester.
For that kind of money you could buy a VERY large house off campus.
The university I went to required you stay ON campus for the first two years. I think the going rate then was $7000 a year for lodging. That was 20 years ago, I can easily believe that's $20k today with the rate Universities have increased what they charge.
My third year I moved off campus, paid less and had a lot more space. The kids who came the year after me though had to sign up for four years living on campus. They did build some pretty slick on-campus housing for those in their third and fourth yea
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In 2008, UC was about $25000 per annum, including room and board.
By 2015, it was about $30000.
Thank the FSM both my wife and I had high paying jobs, because we were offered ZERO financial aid.
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For that kind of money you could buy a VERY large house off campus.
You couldn't buy a house for that price, at least not in the places most of these universities are.
The reason housing is that expensive is because universities require you to stay in university housing, for a few semesters at least. Is that a ripoff? Yes it is.
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math is always math even in the Ivy League & facts are facts
This is what one of my physics professors would always say (and she was a graduate of and former professor at MIT). The only difference is the competition between students, but the opportunities are the same. It's up to the students to take advantage of them.
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Cool story bro.
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put paper in the printer and spent the rest of her time studying
I had that exact same job in college.
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What you say is not universally true. Good U.S. universities do fail students out. And why not? There are plenty of qualified applicants to replace them, it's not like the university is going to miss any income.
I've also never head that European universities were "more strict and rigorous". All that I've ever heard about that system is that students tend to stay in it for a long time since it's so easy to sort of float through with a minimal courseload year after year. It doesn't cost anything so why n
Endowments (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Endowment is large enough they can give every student free tuition. If there is no endowment, everybody pays. In the middle, they need enough people paying full-boat to subsidize the kids who need a full ride. Look at the economics before you assume ill intent. There is no magic money and locking kids into thirty years of debt is no magnanimous gesture.
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Re:Endowments (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Endowment is large enough they can give every student free tuition. If there is no endowment, everybody pays. In the middle, they need enough people paying full-boat to subsidize the kids who need a full ride. Look at the economics before you assume ill intent. There is no magic money and locking kids into thirty years of debt is no magnanimous gesture.
The Endowment at most of these "elite" schools is enough to give every student free tuition. The reason they don't do it is that charging tuition (even if few pay the full amount) sets the "value" of the education in the minds of people. If say the local state university charges say $40K/year (e.g, UC-berkeley out-of state), a nearby university that want people to consider themselves "elite" will of course need to charge more (e.g., $47K/year Stanford), even though the "elite" university gives many people hefty discounts (e.g., Stanford waives 100% of tuition for students if their parents make less than $125K/year). Of course if *nobody* paid the full amount, then the tuition would be false advertising.
It's not about tuition, it's about connection (Score:2)
If the Endowment is large enough they can give every student free tuition.
Don't think you understand how the top universities work. Tuition doesn't matter at all; all that matters is f you are connected enough to get in. They are "diverse" in ways that do not matter, but shun true diversity such as economic or political diversity.
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the standard quote for the rate of return on diversified investments in the stock market is 7%
Yeah, but it's not true. Note that you will always hear that quote from people who want you to buy things.
The real question you want to ask a fund manager is, "If I give you all my money, and you in return give me a fixed percent every year, how much would you guarantee to give me?" In those cases you'll hear a more honest 1-3%.
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As we used to joke on Wall Street: Harvard is a hedge fund with a small academic charity on the side.
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for the next sixteen years
What happens after 16 years when there's no more money left?
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I don't think you have any idea what the people you are talking about are actually like. I don't either; I didn't go to Harvard. But you're making some serious assumptions about how students would treat each other and I suspect you actually have no clue.
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So? (Score:4, Funny)
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What's the point of making it to the 1% if you can't send your kids to schools that others can't.
The joy of using, abusing and generally shitting all over the 99%?
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More money? Better healthcare? Having everything you want? A butler named Jeeves.
Wrong kind of diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
The more relevant study. (Score:4, Interesting)
The far more relevant study would be to determine the earning potential after humans piss away four years and Ferrari money on an investment that isn't paying out these days.
Of course, the Education Mafia selling college degrees wouldn't ever allow that kind of study to happen...
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The far more relevant study would be to determine the earning potential after humans piss away four years and Ferrari money on an investment that isn't paying out these days.
If you're going to do that study you also need to check the other scenario. What's the earning potential of those without college degrees. Oh you want to flip burgers for a living? You'll need at least a Bachelor degree for that nowadays.
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But rejecting all these poor kids and accepting many of the rich children helps perpetuate the myth!
Think about it, the top 1% kids who go to Yale are going to be successful when they graduate.
You have to remember, that Yale (and all the other 'elite' schools) simply wants to only admit people that will be successful (since successful alumni donate money to the school). Sadly, one of the best a-priori indicators of a student's success today is how successful their parents are. Believe me, if they found a better criteria to predict success, you can bet they would use it in a heartbeat.
Not surprised....look where people start (Score:2)
hardly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Kids from families with high incomes have significantly higher test scores [nytimes.com]; highly competitive universities will therefore overwhelmingly select from high-income families even if they exclusively select based on test scores. So, there is nothing particularly surprising about this result, nor does it demonstrate any kind of discrimination of selective colleges against low income kids.
You can now debate about whether high income causes kids to have high test scores, i.e., if you only gave kids from poor families more money, they'd be doing just as well. That is true to some very limited degree: kids who lack essentials (food, clean water, etc.) are held back by that, but fixing those problems can't increase their intelligence beyond their potential.
Most of the correlation is likely primarily caused by the fact that smart parents tend to have smart kids [wikipedia.org] (through a combination of nature and nurture), and that high test scores and high incomes simply result from that.
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Well with the "elite" schools it is often not that (Score:5, Insightful)
For a regular school, particularly state school, then yes it gets stacked a lot by test scores and other academic indicators. The better you do academically, the more they are interested in you and the more money they'll try to give you to get you to attend.
However the "elite" schools have a whole bunch of good old boy shit going on. If you look at admissions in to places like Harvard you find that there are some legitimately top performers who come in, but a whole lot who are not and are instead connected some way. They are kids of alums, politically connected, rich, whatever. They are the "right kind of people" and so get the invite.
That's also the reason why parents want kids to go there is the connections. You don't get a better education at Harvard overall. Any university with a good program will do at least as well, and in plenty of disciplines there are schools ranked far better. However it further gets you in to the old boys club and gets you connections to people that gets your opportunities that would not otherwise be available later in life.
Even the elite are poor for financial aid... (Score:2)
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what does that even mean? can you share this story you read?
If you have $30,000+ in savings, it will count against you for financial aid because you have money in the bank. If you spend that $30,000+ on an expensive car and then applied for financial aid, you will qualify for financial aid because you have nothing in the bank. Financial aid officers don't take the value of a car into consideration. I think I read that story in "One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School" by Scott Turow.
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I started college with 30k in savings (in my late twenties).
If you're 25 or older, you're viewed as an adult student for financial aid purposes. The link below explains why parents and students shouldconvert cash into assets that won't count against financial aid for a non-adult student.
http://www.scholarshiphunter.com/getmorefinancialaid.html [scholarshiphunter.com]
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Even 25 years ago when I went, it was almost impossible to qualify for need-based aid if you had 2 parents working regular jobs.
I couldn't qualify for need-based aid because I lived with my parents and they contributed nothing to my college education in the 1990's. I spent my first year in college picking up bottles and cans to pay for classes and books. Later on I got a job at the bookstore warehouse and worked 30 hours a week to pay for my schooling and move into a frat house with 12 other guys.
Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're among the 1-percenters' offspring whose parents either went to these elite institutions or can afford to donate something substantial to get you in, why is it surprising that elite schools have more well-off students? There will always be efforts by the institutions in the form of scholarships and flexible admissions practices to diversify the student body, but the top colleges are definitely a pay-to-play operation.
There's basically 4 factors that determine where you end up in life -- how smart or successful your parents are, how wealthy they are, how much raw potential you have, and usually a whole lot of dumb luck. Smart or successful parents can afford to live in a good school district and provide a stable environment for their kids. Really rich parents can buy their way into the elite prep school track. Really smart students can often succeed enough to overcome a bad environment. Anyone can get lucky and just have things sort of work out for them. In my case, it was a combination of a good home life and a lot of right place/right time luck. I wasn't a good enough student to be in the scholarship bucket, and my parents weren't rich, but I did go to a decent K-12 school system and had involved parents who kicked my butt enough to do reasonably well. My dumb luck was getting a part time job doing tech support for the state university I went to, eventually doing it just short of full time, and using that to get my foot in the door at my first IT job.
The reason the elite schools will always have the lock on the 1% crowd is that once you're in, regardless of how you got there, you don't have to rely on luck. It starts with non-religious elite private schools. If your family can afford college level tuition for a K-12 education, there's a tacit agreement that one of the elite universities will have a spot for you. (Seriously, one school near us charges almost $40K for grade school tuition, but it's in the top 15 or so among elite boarding schools.) If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail. White-shoe management consulting firms exclusively hire from the elite universities, and that's probably one of the most lucrative jobs a new graduate can have. The same goes for investment banking -- going from being a broke college student to making $250K a year is a big change. People who work for investment banks, management consulting firms and other similar employees mysteriously tend to wind up in very lucrative positions at their clients eventually, and the old boys'/old girls' network perpetuates.
This is why I feel states need to invest in public universities. It's basically the only lever the non-elite among us have to get ourselves to a better situation. If you're not smart enough or have a unique enough situation to get a full scholarship to a private university, your best bet in most states is to go to a big public college and milk your time there for all it's worth. I'm socking away money for my kids' college education, but unless they turn out to be absolute geniuses this is going to be the advice I give them too. Life may be a matter of who you know or dumb luck sometimes, but it never hurts to increase your chances. If you work hard and have a good run of luck, it is still possible to at least be comfortable. We'll see what the future holds though.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
White-shoe management consulting firms exclusively hire from the elite universities, .... going from being a broke college student to making $250K a year is a big change.
What is this 'broke college student' you speak of? The elites are a bunch of drunken frat boys with daddy's American Express Centurion credit card.
It comes down to value for the hiring organization once you get out of school. Consultancies and investment banks value the networking connections that elite college graduates bring with them. Because these businesses add very little actual value to their product, other than the stamp of approval of their name on otherwise obvious advice. Businesses that are more value added tend not to hire from elite colleges as much. Because the cost of these graduates doesn't make up for the small (if any) increase in their productivity.
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It starts with non-religious elite private schools. If your family can afford college level tuition for a K-12 education, there's a tacit agreement that one of the elite universities will have a spot for you. (Seriously, one school near us charges almost $40K for grade school tuition, but it's in the top 15 or so among elite boarding schools.) If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail.
I've noticed something along this line as well having gotten to know one of my son's friends and his family over the last year or so. From outwards appearances he fits the stereotype of the black kid who is destine to fail. His mom, baby sister, himself, and a couple of cousins live at grandma's house, little sister has a different father than him, and neither dad is around. In actuality he is a really smart kid but hasn't been afforded many opportunities to learn anything other than what is taught at publi
In other news... (Score:2)
In other shocking news, it was reported that the top 1% own more Ferraris than the entire bottom 99% combined! How unfair!
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Top 1% must spend more time with their car in the shop then. Never understood why anyone would buy a car that is notorious for breaking down every few hundred miles.
The Myth of American Meritocracy (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
captcha: sonata
How is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
News flash: NOT EVERYONE DESERVES OR IS ENTITLED TO COLLEGE.
What's next, reporting that "Mercedes drivers are more likely to be from the 1% than the lowest 60%"
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I don't think anyone is saying everyone should go to college. What they're saying is, who your parents are, and how much money they have, should not decide whether you have the right to a quality education or not.
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
News flash: NOT EVERYONE DESERVES OR IS ENTITLED TO COLLEGE.
I hear what you're saying, but for all the wrong reasons. These days people entitled to college are those with money, not those with intelligence.
Conclusion of study not about rich applicants (Score:2)
What's the performance gap? (Score:3)
No one is surprised that kids from wealthier means do better in school. This is well documented. What's the performance gap between the bottom 60% and the top 1% kids? If the gap is sizable, let's look towards correcting that. If the gap in performance is negligible, then I'm going to get more interested in these findings.
Re:Um, duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The elite school I'm acquainted with is MIT as my wife has her degree from there and spent several years interviewing students that had applied as part of their evaluation process. They do not consider money or othewise having an ability to pay when students apply, but on the other hand most students do come from households with means. This happens because students from households with means do better in school than students from households without means.
A specific case I remember was a student that had applied but wasn't going to go higher in high school mathematics than Trigonometry. This student wasn't going to get any Calculus instruction in high school at all. In order to get to Calculus in the school system as a senior, one had to do well enough in mathematics in the fifth grade in order to end up in the Honors Math in the sixth grade, to then take Pre-Algebra as a seventh grader and the first-year Algebra class as an eighth grader, so one could take second-year Algebra, Geometry, and Trig/Pre-calculus in one's freshman, sophomore, and junior years, to have time left one one's academic schedule for Calculus as a senior. Otherwise one has to take one of these mathematics classes, typically Geometry as it ties-in the least with the rest, as a summer-school make-up class in order to get ahead.
So, decisions/involvement/circumstances for the parents and household when the student is ten years old ultimately impact if that student, eight years later, will have the prerequisites to compete at an elite college. Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Re:Um, duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK, schools like MIT (or my alma mater Caltech), are the exceptions that proves the rule. Single dimensional focus on academics (e.g., STEM) might be *one* way to get into an "elite" school that has a narrow focus, but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard, or Stanford.
Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Although "academic-basis" is one way to generalize and dismiss, there are so many more "poor" families that 1%-ers that doesn't fully explain the issue. I spent quite a bit of time working and researching college admissions (during and after my time in university) and perhaps one of the big problems qualified students from "poor" families have getting admitted to "elite" schools is that even if they are qualified, they don't actually apply (which makes it really, really hard to attend).
The reasons are numerous, but often are attributable to fear and low-expectations (e.g., of getting rejected, figuring out how to pay, distance from family and support systems, etc). Unfortunately, this behavior is ultimately self-defeating in many ways as it sets a lower internal "baseline" for themselves to judge their future success. Some of these were outlined in the infamous 1999 Dale-Kruger research report summarized below...
There are many estimates of the effect of college quality on students' subsequent earnings. One difficulty interpreting past estimates, however, is that elite colleges admit students, in part, based on characteristics that are related to their earnings capacity. Since some of these characteristics are unobserved by researchers who later estimate wage equations, it is difficult to parse out the effect of attending a selective college from the students' pre-college characteristics. This paper uses information on the set of colleges at which students were accepted and rejected to remove the effect of unobserved characteristics that influence college admission. Specifically, we match students in the newly colleted College and Beyond (C&B) Data Set who were admitted to and rejected from a similar set of institutions, and estimate fixed effects models. As another approach to adjust for selection bias, we control for the average SAT score of the schools to which students applied using both the C&B and National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972. We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges. However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students' subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.
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but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard,
Ok, but STEM people shouldn't want to go there. Or actually any of the Ivy leagues mentioned. If you want tech, the big recruited schools are MIT, UCIC, GA Tech, etc.
or Stanford.
Except maybe this one, although it's questionable.
d perhaps one of the big problems qualified students from "poor" families have getting admitted to "elite" schools is that even if they are qualified, they don't actually apply
As a father planni
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AFAIK, schools like MIT (or my alma mater Caltech), are the exceptions that proves the rule. Single dimensional focus on academics (e.g., STEM) might be *one* way to get into an "elite" school that has a narrow focus, but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard, or Stanford.
Except that MIT sees thousands more applicants than there are spaces - and all those applicants have 4.0s and all those applicants have won science fairs. The applicant that has that and has also written/acted/played an instrument/etc. is going to stand out.
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Thread.
Is it "fair" that people who don't apply to a college (or job) are underrepresented at that college/job? Yes, of course if fucking is! Why is this even an issue?
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The application alone is sometimes a barrier for kids who haven't been prepared for the demands of some top schools. It's been a while since I filled out college applications, but Harvard's was at least straightforward - common application, addendum, essay, recommendations, and alumni interview. Anyone can complete it and get rejected. Others were an endless maze of abstract essay questions seemingly designed to keep out anyone who didn't think the right way or have the right strengths and experiences. The further schools diverge from a common application format, the more kids, no matter how qualified, will pass them over.
FWIW, college applications are much more straightforward today. Most schools** use the common application platform [commonapp.org] with a generally few addendums like the dreaded essays. Today, it is easier than ever to apply to as many schools as you have the time and patience to do. Of course making a 1/2-assed application to a school is probably a waste of time and money, the historical hoops you are referring to are largely non-existent today.
**including all Ivy Leagues (e.g., Harvard), Stanford, etc (with the notab
Time AND MONEY (Score:2)
The application alone is sometimes a barrier for kids who haven't been prepared for the demands of some top schools...
FWIW, college applications are much more straightforward.... Today, it is easier than ever to apply to as many schools as you have the time and patience to do.
Time, patience, and money. Colleges have application fees. A student with, say, a ten percent chance of acceptance into an elite school who applies to ten will have good odds to make it in. If you're from a well-to-do family, paying ten seventy-five dollar application fees are the least important part of this. If you're not so well to do, however, you might apply to one elite school, but after that, your back-up application will be to the local State school. http://www.usnews.com/educatio... [usnews.com]
Also, th
Re:Um, duh? (Score:4)
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Not just that, but those with means have much more opportunity to do the exceptional things so-called elite colleges are looking for. Feeder schools with high rates of getting pupils into elite schools are a thing for a reason. An average kid with means is still much more likely to have an outstanding resume than an exceptional one student from a more modest background.
Apologists will say admissions at these places are money blind, but the reality is they just use proxies. It's the class equivalent of sa
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So, decisions/involvement/circumstances for the parents and household when the student is ten years old ultimately impact if that student, eight years later, will have the prerequisites to compete at an elite college. Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Excellant points. Parental involvement and understanding of the college entrance "game" will always be a big factor in who applies and who gets in, and that probably correlates better with income than say a students potential to succeed in college. Applying to college can be daunting, and if you don't have a parent who has been through the process and have a school that is geared to getting kids in college it will be much more difficult. Add in the perception that "college is so expensive that we can't affo
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Re: Positive feedback? (Score:2, Insightful)
Overly complicated explanation.
Poor people can't afford top colleges.
You don't even need a feedback loop to explain it.
Also, without education the poor will remain poor no matter how smart they are.
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Even the summary indicates that these schools bend over backwards to accommodate their poor students. Not only that, this isn't an article about poor students, but rather the entire lower 60% income bracket is compared. If you are in the 60th percentile for income, you are not poor.
Also, without education the poor will remain poor no matter how smart they are.
I think that is a large part of what the parent was saying.
Re: Positive feedback? (Score:2)
Given that it's known that genes play the biggest role in one's intelligence, it's possible and even likely that this is simply a matter of pedigree.
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Even the summary indicates that these schools bend over backwards to accommodate their poor students. ...
They do-- but there are barriers which have already filtered poorer students out long before the acceptance/rejection decision by the college.
Money is a form of resources that can be used to solve problems. If the problem addressed is "how do I get my kid accepted into an elite university?"-- having money helps a lot in trying to solve that problem.
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Overly complicated explanation. Poor people can't afford top colleges.
Not true. Top schools have huge endowments, and way more alumni donations, so they can offer more aid for poor students. Most do not consider ability to pay during the admissions process. If you are talented but poor, a top school is likely more affordable than a second tier school because of the more generous financial aid offered.
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You missed the part where they may have the money but they don't increase the number of seats. So even tho
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high schools with large numbers of low-income students tend to have under-staffed guidance offices
That was my situation last year when my daughter was applying to college. So I spent several thousand on an outside consultant who coached her on SAT techniques, helped her apply, and even co-authored her essays. She got into a very good university that was the best that we could have realistically hoped for. It was money well spent, but not many low income families could afford that.
Using my money to basically buy her way into a good school felt wrong, but when it is your own kid, you do what you gotta
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You're technically right, but the big factor at the crux of the matter is the if they get in part. Paying the way for 'one of the good ones' doesn't mean there is not still a huge classism problem in these schools.
Re:Positive feedback? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
Also, if your parents are wealthy:
1) They're more likely to be still together providing a more stable two-parent upbringing.
2) They're probably only working one job. They're home in the evening to help the kid with homework.
3) You're going to get a healthier diet. Your brain will develop properly because you have the nutrition you need.
4) Your parents are going to value you getting an education more, because they have one and know how important it is.
5) You live in a neighborhood with high home values- which means higher property tax, which means your school is better funded.
Re:Positive feedback? (Score:4, Insightful)
All true, and for the top 1%:
6) You had part-time tutors, learning specialists, etc come in to help as needed when you weren't getting As in a class
7) Your maid took care of doing the dishes and making your bed so you got to read, play, learn, etc in all your free time
8) You know how to behave around rich people and college professors because you were around them all the time
9) You've been to several foreign countries by age 10, often with an expert guide just for your family
10) You know how to navigate a white-table cloth restaurant, a cocktail party, an art gallery, a meet-and-greet
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Oh, I actually picked five things true of my own kids. But good to know they are in some book.
Re:Positive feedback? (Score:4, Insightful)
This just in - Humans with more resources are using those resources to make sure that they and their progeny have more resources. Story at 10!
There's nothing wrong with rich people wanting to give their own kids a leg-up in life and the best chance for future success that they can.
There's plenty wrong when society suppresses social mobility and makes success in life tied to how rich one's parents are.
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Smart parents --> high earnings
Smart parents --> smart kids (doesn't matter if you believe that's due to nature or nurture, both are at play)
This is a consequence of feminism. Two generations ago, lawyers were men and they married their secretaries. Doctors were men and they married nurses. Today, lawyers marry other lawyers, and doctors marry other doctors. Smart/rich people pair up, and dumb/poor people pair up. This is causing economic inequality, since it is not individual, but household income that is measured.
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An aristocracy has formed in this country. And when I see so many companies that recruit exclusively from top schools (BS MIT? Come right in! BS CS State, uh, housekeeping is looking for people.), it gets real discouraging. And aggravating.
I heard complaints from recruiters about how hard it is and the bidding wars for new CS grads. I was incredulous at this "shortage" so I asked what was so hard?
They and many other firms in the area ONLY recruit from GA Tech. If you to state - even if you do really well - you're SOL.
Kind of sucks for that poor white male kid who doesn't want the debt and can't live on campus for the costs decides to commute to say, Kennesaw State U from his parents northern GA home, busts his ass, does really well, only to be discounted because he went to the "wrong" school.
What those top schools have going for them is that they only accept the top students and legacies; which then enhances the reputation of the school even more.
Well, to be fair State doesn't really have the rep Tech does, and it's facilities are horrible. I'm glad I only went there for my Master's degree and went out of state for my undergrad. As for north metro, well, up until recently if you wanted to do tech but stay local you went to Southern Poly, but I guess that's changed now when KSU bought them out. But KSU is starting to get a bit of a pretty good rep around here too from what I can tell. Since I live in Woodstock I am considering doing KSU's project
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I think we fought a war in the 1940's against people with the ideology that their people were superior and so deserved better chances
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Big difference between the 1% and the .01%.
The 1% has a lot of doctors/dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers, educated people who are going to push their kids to get educated.
http://www.nytimes.com/package... [nytimes.com]
To put it a different way, the 1% value education because for the most part it's why they're the 1%. The values you pass to your kids matter far more than the money.
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I have given a grand total of $0 to my University since graduating. I had to work a full time job and gave almost every penny I earned to tuition or lodging for four years. I sure as heck am not going to pay them now! Especially when about 20 years ago when I was there their sports program LOST $6million a year (for a small university with under 3000 students that works out at about $2700 per student... I hate to think how much they lose now). They also wasted things like $20k to put in a small sign at
Re:New flash - Bugattis owned by rich not poor (Score:4, Interesting)
Except some poor and middle class kids get into Harvard -- in fact they get their expenses paid. That's not the case for Bugattis.
And it's for a good (or at least shrewd) reason: Letting the intellectual elite into your exclusive school lends the prestige of their academic accomplishments to the financial elite who attend.
Look at our president-elect, who likes to point to his attendance at Penn as proof that he has a very good brain. Well, I'm not one of those people who think he's actually stupid but he got into Penn because he was rich and had family connections in the admissions office. He's not in the same league as the kids who get into Penn on a scholarship.