Please stop with the Asian stereotypes. There are plenty of low-income Asians that don’t excel in school. Furthermore, many of the low-income Asians that do excel did not have many of the same barriers as others that do not. And what does mentioning one successful African-American prove?
My D’s childhood and my own are like night and day. She has never known a day of struggle in her life, thanks to being born into an upper middle class family. Even as a teen she recognizes that she is very privileged as compared to low income students. It’s sad that adults, and so-called educated adults at that, just don’t get it.
It’s worth noting that Amherst gives some financial aid to families earning up to about $230K a year even with only one in college.
My D just finished her first year at Amherst and her friends run the gamut from very low income to very, very wealthy with some “CC-definition-of-middle-class” (low 6 figure income) kids too. A couple of the comments made on the article stated that kids from different socio-economic groups wouldn’t hang out together once “socially engineered” to be there…that hasn’t been the case among her friend group AT ALL.
Or, more like Amherst is not exactly the paragon of access to all SES levels. Maybe it is better than most highly selective colleges on a relative basis, but it looks like the bottom 97-98% income-wealth are very underrepresented as only about half of the students, with the top 2-3% income-wealth extremely overrepresented as the other half of the students.
Among the bottom 97-98%, it does seem common for those in the upper half (non-Pell-grant students and their families) to complain about the financial aid for the bottom half (Pell grant students and their families). But is that really the elephant in the room as far as access to college goes?
Of course, money is probably behind it. Amherst supposedly spends $60,559 per student (not including room and board related costs), according to http://www.collegemeasures.org/4-year_colleges/institution/Amherst-College-MA/scorecard/cost-per-student/ . Amherst’s tuition is $49,730, so even those paying list price are getting a subsidy, presumably from endowment investment income and donations. But Amherst probably needs the tuition revenue from the large number of students paying list price to sustain its spending level.
Actually thinking about these numbers I cannot see how Amherst can be need-blind in admission. It should be a tremendous feat of admission engineering to achieve this income distribution among their admits in a need-blind fashion. They deserve a Nobel Prize.
ho-hum, another NYT article about a handful colleges – the only ones that it seems to care about.
I mean its great that Amherst is (supposedly) recruiting low SES kids, but Amherst is tiny and not even a rounding error in the big scheme of educating college kids. At ~500 per class, of which nearly half are full payers (top 5 %'ers?), it pales in size relative to its local neighbor, UMass, on educating kids. From a public policy perspective, why not focus our help on the publics?
btw: I’ve posted frequently that, IMO, its the ECs that peaks the interests of Adcoms make highly selective schools more middle/upper class than just bagging groceries at the local supermarket.
Being need-blind means that the admissions readers do not explicitly consider financial need. However, the admissions process and criteria can be designed so that it can be need-blind but yield a very SES-skewed admissions class. Criteria that can be used do have SES correlations that admissions offices are well aware of, and a process that involves a high level of support from teachers, counselors, and parents tends to advantage those from high SES families or who attend high schools populated mostly by students from high SES families.
For example, requiring the CSS Profile with non-custodial parent profile to apply for financial aid screens out lots of students with uncooperative divorced parents; these students are more likely to be in low SES environments than those whose parents are married. Amherst also considers legacy status in admissions; students with Amherst graduate parents are unlikely to be from low SES environments or educationally disadvantaged.
Yes, if a college changes its admissions criteria to favor specific types of ECs (e.g. ECs that cost money versus working to help support one’s family), that can tip the admissions toward higher or lower SES applicants.
We also have to remember that the incoming class is a self-selected group. As such, at a place like Amherst it makes sense that it’s heavy on the bookends. Students with very low income, although they’re likely to be a small group for the reasons @OldFashioned detailed in post #18, are likely to find Amherst’s strong financial aid policies an incentive to attend, while the top 1-2% in terms of income don’t need to make decisions based on the cost to attend. Everyone else in the middle is likely to be at least a bit cost conscious, even if they can technically afford to attend. Those middle majority students who have the academic chops to win admission to a place like Amherst are likely to be able to win substantial merit, and in some cases a full ride to their state flagship or another college. Faced with getting some FA but still paying 30 or 40 thou a year at Amherst or paying 5-10 to go the honors college at the University of Colorado or U of Alabama the latter schools are a pretty logical choice.
I grew up in the bottom 25% with a father in a social services job who had 2 Masters’ and worked for almost nothing because he felt it was his calling. We were poor but I never knew it until it was time to pay for college. My husband and I both worked and had loans during undergrad and graduate school and now we’re comfortable. D applied to Amherst and got waitlisted. After the athletes and legacies and URMs there just isn’t a lot of room in their class. Her comment was that she was ok if people who hadn’t had her opportunities got in rather than her. But that’s not the only factor, and that’s where people get angry. D’s friend applied with a hook and got into an amazing school with average stats well above what she achieved. Her parents paid for her to start a charity and she had two years of a tutor being flown in from NYC to help prepare for standardized tests and college apps. That’s an extreme example but it’s where the anger comes from. People naturally want a level playing field, but the gaming of the system these days makes that virtually impossible. Those who are under resourced deserve every opportunity they can get and we should be happy for them.
It’s actually “need-affirmative” (their words), meaning being low income is a plus in admissions. As far as I know it’s the only school with that policy.
We should, I absolutely agree. But this award is for colleges (and universities - Stanford was one of the finalists for the award) that use their own money to help. Maybe the Cooke foundation should consider a similar award for publics that educate the most low income students.
I would hope that admissions officers can see through that…
Honestly, nobody needs a tutor for standardized tests. We are full pay, and my D got nothing beyond 2 guide books for the SAT, and two more for the ACT. She did very well with just that.
Getting help with college apps might be a bigger deal.
Berea is a relatively well known example of such a college.
Some other colleges may also be technically need-blind, but their admission criteria and processes are chosen to favor those from lower income families, or at least reduce the disadvantage that such applicants face when applying to many other schools. This is the opposite of other technically need-blind colleges, whose admission criteria and processes favor characteristics most common among applicants from high income families (which presumably includes Amherst, since around half of the students come from no-financial-aid families).
@bluebayou “btw: I’ve posted frequently that, IMO, its the ECs that peaks the interests of Adcoms make highly selective schools more middle/upper class than just bagging groceries at the local supermarket.”
piques*
What do you mean by this? A savvy lower income student can take dual enrollment courses at a local college for free, can ask a professor there for a “research” opportunity, can approach a local church about a sponsored mission trip to Africa or South America, and on and on.
High-speed internet, iPhones and social media (inc. web forums) are the game-changers. They’ve put all college (and college prep) information in low and working class kids’ fingertips.
That student also has to have time to do those things. If they have a job they can’t just leave. Same if they have younger siblings or disabled family members to take care of.
In my town, none of the churches do full sponsorships. They will pay for some but not all. Your post also assumes that that student is religious and has a church to attend.
Depending on where you are, dual CC may not be entirely free. One of the reasons I stuck to AP was because I couldn’t afford the textbooks for CC.
That is if they know where to look and are encouraged to look.
In a typical high SES environment, a student’s counselor/teachers/peers/parents are likely talking about colleges/PSAT/SAT/ACT/recommendations in 11th grade, so a student will have some idea of what to do and look into. The high school may have a well-oiled college application process for students to follow. (Yes, a low SES student attending a high SES high school will benefit from this, but most low SES students do not attend high SES high schools.)
In a typical low SES environment, there may be much less talk about colleges/PSAT/SAT/ACT/recommendations when only a few graduates go to college, which usually means the local community college. A high achieving student may be on his/her own when figuring out how to apply to more selective colleges. Even if s/he does do so, some doors may be closed (“oh, I had to take SAT subject tests for this college?” after it is too late to sign up for the last possible date, or teachers and counselor may not be experienced in writing good recommendations).
So how do they know who is low-income and who is not? By address? You live in Manhattan. Now what? I know a family where father is a Super in a desirable Central Park West building and has an apartment in lieu of a salary there. Applied for finaid on CA? As per Amherst CDS 322 students applied for finaid but only 259 were considered to have need. Do they sort applicants into SES buckets during admission process based on the information in their application and assign points for SES? Or maybe they do not have a firewall between admission and financial aid office?If they do then how many people will try to milk their admission policy after this thread? You definitely want to look either very poor or very rich when applying to Amherst.
You can’t force students to care about “fancy” east coast colleges. I know many lower income and middle class students with great stats, amazing ECs (inc. lots of travel via the ECs) who simply do not care about going to a fancy college. Nearly all of them stay pretty close to home. One lower income senior that stands out, who also happens to be Hispanic, is going to the local commuter U for free this fall.
Reminds me of an inner-city college counselor I heard on NPR. He tried so hard to get this girl into (I think it was) Williams. He was so excited she got in and he convinced her to go. A year later she dropped out to transfer to local community college to become a nurse.
True, though they take it a step further and do not accept anyone who is not from a middle to low income family. (I just randomly put in $100K and that was too much, $50K was OK)
Say what? Perhaps in your state the poor have high speed internet at home, but ain’t so in a lot of California; we also have schools in our state without high speed internet.
Regardless, my point was more to the fact that: 1) highly selective schools, such as Amherst and Williams, have active sports programs, many of which are so-called country club sports. A high speed internet line will not be of much use when a yuuuuge proportion of A&W admits are varsity athletes, and the local pool is only open in the summer; 2) Siemens/Intel and math winners don’t come from research from the local juco; 3) fill in the blank. There are just a lot of things that highly selective school value that are just not open to inner city and/or rural kids. (Not saying that it is good or bad, just a fact.)
I think some misunderstand what sorts of ECs these schools are looking for, what balance. And misunderstand just how activated the best low SES kids actually are.
Change comes slowly, as each generation influences the next. JKC is not the only effort out there to support these promising kids. And look at the retention and grad rates at these colleges to see what they ARE doing right for them.