arwarw
April 15, 2015, 10:56am
15
I just wanted to add that Brown is a leader in the recruitment of bright ‘first gen’ students, and this unfortunately works against them in the USNWR ranking game, because these students typically are not the groomed Ivy applicants who drive up standardized test score averages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/first-generation-students-unite.html?_r=0
The proportion of freshmen at elite campuses who are first generation — 11 percent at Dartmouth, 12 percent at Princeton, 14 percent at Yale, 15 percent at Amherst, 16 percent at Cornell, 17 percent at Brown — nearly matches that of their low-income Pell grant recipients.
By contrast, Washington University in St. Louis only has 8% Pell recipients.
Admissions offices have made efforts to find these students. Data compiled for the 1vyG conference by Dr. Mortenson shows that from 2000 to 2013, Amherst, Harvard, Brown and Princeton doubled or almost doubled Pell recipients. Yale’s growth was modest, while Cornell numbers declined slightly.
The bright children of janitors and nail salon workers, bus drivers and fast-food cooks may not have grown up with the edifying vacations, museum excursions, daily doses of NPR and prep schools that groom Ivy applicants, but they are coveted candidates for elite campuses.
As the nation’s racial and ethnic makeup has grown more mixed and socioeconomically varied, “first gen” has become a way to identify and talk about class diversity. The incentive for top colleges is obvious: Leaders come from these schools’ ranks. It matters that campuses reflect the nation, said Rakesh Khurana, dean of Harvard College. “We see our obligation as preparing citizens and citizen leaders.”