crs1909

"Plus, there's no bragging rights to be had there about the number of Pell grant recipients they have."

I read in one of the Berkeley threads that Berekeley likes Pell Grant recepients and that like 30% of the kids that go there receive one.

aristotle1990

Private universities should be allowed to choose to admit whomever they please. They're not charities. They admit legacies because of the expected return on the "investment" (e.g., donation of a wing, establishment of a department, &c), and URMs because of the whole "diversity" thing.

Public universities, on the other hand, should be more strictly merit-based; i.e., neither affirmative action nor legacy preference should factor much in admissions decisions, and indeed they don't, at least not to the extent to which they do at private universities.

In general, though, I suspect that both very wealthy and very poor students are advantaged in the process; the former for the aforementioned monetary return to be accrued, and the latter for a desire to create "diversity."

ChadtheRTF

What if a student is black and middle class? Does his middle class status overrule his URM advantage because he is neither poor enough to be looked at as a charity case, but not rich enough to supply a substantial portion of his tuition?

In that case, I'm screwed.

aristotle1990

Our highly-competitive school had a smart, middle-class black kid sweep the Ivies. He literally got into every school (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, others) to which he applied. This was during a year in which nobody else got into Harvard, and perhaps one or two other students got into another Ivy.

Being middle-class isn't a disadvantage, but being very poor is an advantage. Being very rich is only an advantage when one's parents are connected in some way to the school of interest.

NewEngSocSciMan

Personally, I don't think that we should really focus on ethnicity, but rather on income and socioeconomic status. Unis should brag about how many first generation college students and low-income students they have, not the percentage of minority applicants. Our society has swung from being race-focused to income/socioeconomic status focused. We have less de jure discrimination than de facto, the latter primarily caused by income differentials.

tokenadult

I invite everyone reading this thread to give a very careful reading to one of the sources I linked to in the thread-opening post:

http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/carnrose.pdf

What is the recent reality in college admission? Is that the policy that you think is best for the country?

k&s

Otoh – there are a considerable no. of low income Asians (in particular, those of SE Asian origin) but they tend to be overlooked (due to generally being lumped in one big category).

No – the vast majority of black students at Ivy League and other elite universities are from middle/upper middle class backgrounds or immigrant families w/ parents who have higher education.

NewEngSocSciMan

TokenAdult – That's a heck of an article.

My question, generally (not in reference to the article), is:
Is an equivalent increase in 200 (or whatever) SAT I points merited by URM status?

200 points seems like a lot. I'm not sure how much it is in terms of a standard deviation, though...

Rileydog

TokenAdult - what year was that article published? It references data from 13 years ago?

mini

Michelle Hernandez is downright wrong. The Gordon Winston/Cappy Hill study of potential low-income applicants found there were three times as many low-income students who met current academic criteria for prestige private colleges - without standards being lowered in any way - than were actually being accepted at these schools.

No great loss, though: Princeton's loss is UCLA's gain.

Infinite_Truth

Think about it from an admission standpoint; Who would you admit?

1. Poor kid. Orphan. His life has sucked and he is exploited by the system and is in poverty. He has risen up and gotten 2300 on his SATs and a 3.9 GPA and is amazing.

2. Rich kid. Son of the CEO of some big Wall Street Bank. Got a 2100 on his SATs and a 3.6 GPA.

3. Middle Class Kid. Nice Life. 4.0 GPA 2300 SATs.

In order of being taken: 2, 1, 3.

The Middle class is hated and always expected to constantly be left out of the system.

apathy

Well, Infinite_Truth, you could also look at it this way:

percentage of super-poor kids: 20%
percentage of super-rich kids: 20%
percentage of middle-class kids: 60%

now those numbers are in no way supposed to be correlated to reality, but there are definitely far more middle-class kids than the other two economic brackets. thus, while middle-class children could potentially be valued less due to there being more of them, there are also probably more of them admitted than any of the other two economic brackets.

speedo

Private colleges certainly have a lot
to offer, but the real answer for
low income students is federal and
state support for low income families.
Currently in my state a low income
kid, say 36 grand fam income, would
get from 3 to 5 grand from the feds
and about 3 from the state. If that
student attends an oos then it's just
3 to 5 grand. The better state colleges in
my state have become subsidized ed
for middle class and rich. PSU main
campus has virtually no blacks and a
low income pop of around 10%. Until
that changes the other pa colleges are
not going to follow suit. Low income
kids generally stay close to home, when
the other colleges both state and private
are forced to compete then there'll be
change, until then, all this recent brouhaha
is only going to affect a very small
percentage of low income students. The
elites are whining because they like
to compete to show a broad range of
backgrounds, with their ridiculous admission
standards they have shut themselves out
of the low income game. victims of
their own success.

Ernie H.

One thing is for sure: The amount of people admitted because of legacy preference is much lower than the number of people admitted because of racial preference.

That's the real problem.

tokenadult

I see a lot of statements in this thread that "middle class" applicants fare worse in applying to college and being admitted than "low-income" applicants, but I don't see any citations to any evidence to back up those statements. Statements like that have been commonly believed since at least the 1970s, but the best evidence I have found shows consistently that poor applicants are still by far the worst off in even getting admitted to college, ability being equal or even better.