A Fair Path to College

katwkittens
Wed, 09 May 2007 10:40:20 +0000

I think there may be some validity to the article in the original post. Of course nothing based on research just personal experience. And recent.

Was out visiting sophomore daughter at her OOS uni (UNM) last week. One of the evenings we went to dinner with a group of her close firends. None of them are on her sport (so no teammates). All knew her through her classes and her honors program. 15 students in all. All were in-state residents but her. All including her on academic merit scholarships.

After an interesting discussion about their future plans it comes up that she was the only one of ALL of them to apply to an elite, ivy or 100% need met school. All of the 15 students were URMs, most hispanic, a few native americans and one Pacific Islander. Of the 15, 2 were vals, 1 sal, more than 50% had above a 1400 SAT (old SAT), top 5% of their class and were all in leadership positions in high school. And most were receiving Pell Grants and AC Grants.

Their stats, profiles and socio-economic status were really no different than my daughter’s or son’s (who is at an ivy) and not ONE was encouraged by parent nor GC to look elsewhere. Some were even encouraged to start at the local community college and discouraged from a 4-year due to finances. Daughter has 2 such friends where both are at the local CC in NM where both completed AP Calc BC and AP Physics C in their junior years of high school. Their parents saw no reason to look or encourage their children to look anywhere other than the CC. Most did not know that in some cases attending a private can be more affordable than the in-state uni for students such as themselves.

They were all under the impression that those schools were not for them, out-of-their-league, too expensive and they would not fit it. They applied this also to schools closer to home, Rice, USC, CalTech any and all western/southwest schools.

I thought of my son at P’ton and how he truly was no different than any of them. Not one besides my daughter had ever heard of College Confidential nor did any of them even glance at the Common App.

It was a reminder to me at just how much CC has changed my kiddos’ lives.

So it has been my most recent experience that there is some accuracy in the above article.

Kat