@cobrat: That question with stuy’s name in it was rhetorical, arguing whether using a test based admission in HYP would yield a wealthier student body, as a poster claimed earlier in the thread. As for the composition of student body in prep schools, they are as varied as their bigger brothers (private colleges), but you are right that big portion of almost all of them are full pay, so certainly richer as a whole. Students from reputable prep schools should do just fine in LACs and the undergraduate programs in Research universities. No research has done regarding who would do bettte, an A student from a rigorous manager school or an A student from a rigorous prep school, but my guess is that both will do well and better than many of their peers from public schools and local charter/private of varied quality. After all, both should be considered privileged in terms of the secondary education they have received relative to the majority.
I think the wealthy simply do not apply to those magnets in NYC. But most everyone takes the SAT/ACT. Hard to compare.
Post # 281: Not necessarily. Of course we don’t have the numbers, but I do personally know a few well off families (bankers, doctors etc) have their kids apply to the NYC magnet schools. And according to these individuals, it’s pretty common among the high income families. They may also apply to the city’s highly prestigious prep schools at the same time. None is a garantee for admission since the admission is so competitive.
Yeah, been there done that many years ago. I knew some middle/upper middle class kids who took the tests but the very rich ones didn’t, they just went private.
I was not at all rich and so applied to 10 high schools, 5 were Stuy/BS/Tech and 2 were then then-separate PA and M&A - all public, and 5 were private day schools (with great financial aid). It was my experience that my wealthier friends didn’t do public school at any age and if a few did they almost all left after 6th grade.
The “very rich” is a small minority. Even in elite prep schools and elite colleges, most of the full pay families are of successful/well off professionals. I am not sure if things have changed since your days @OHMomof2, but I think nowadays many upper middle class families (and more middle class families) would pursue a spot in well known magnet schools such as Stuy and TJ.
We were full pay when our base year income was only slightly higher than $100K (say, about $110K). It was almost a decade ago though.
It is true that, in our experience, the “very rich” is a minority.
But in DS’s freshman year suite, our family’s income could be among the bottom two families out of 6 families – likely the very bottom one. Only one family is likely very rich. But the school still did not give us any break - likely due to the assets - mostly our 529 plan. I think they categorized the money in the 529 plan differently back then.
Very rich not such a small minority in NYC though.
Or rather, a small minority but there are more than 15k earning a million or more a year just in Manhattan.
Maybe many of those in Manhattan who make millions only have time to make money, but do not have much time to make babies (and more importantly, to properly raise them to college age.) LOL.
One of my colleagues once dated a surgeon for a brief period. When he had an opportunity in another city, he just took off and even did not bother to give her a call before he left the city. She complained he even had no time to tell her “let’s break up.” Safly, she said when he was dating in our city, he had his pick on which women to date without any difficulty, even though his personality is sub-standard: not only barely able to have a conversation, but also very self-centered. She actually has a theory about how such a person can get to that level of achievement: he is selfish all his life and whoever around him should put HIS interest first and this is how he could get so far. (It could be the case she is bitter after having been treated like this.)
"Whoa. I was just browsing in the “post actual results” thread in the What Are My Chances forum, on p. 130, this kid “Asiadude” first gen Chinese American with 2340 SAT, 36 ACT, 4.0 GPA from a magnet school, 9 APs incl. math, science, CS, history and English - all 5s, SAT II math and 800 Chemistry 790. He was also swim team captain for 4 years, pricipal clarinet at school orchestra, 250 volunteer hours at the hospital, crew, lifeguard, presidential scholar nominee.
Accepted: UWa (no direct CS admit), UCLA
Rejected: Stanford, Cornell, UPenn, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, UCB, Carnegie Mellon.
That is just outrageous!!! There is no doubt if he were a URM he would have gotten in everywhere!"
The missing piece is that we did not read his essays. The other missing piece is what schools/programs were applied to. If he applied to CS, why was he volunteering at a hospital instead of going to a coding camp? If he applied for finance, why was he volunteering at a hospital instead of working with a start-up?
And finally, I interview for Penn, and I can tell you the last few students accepted were Asian. Many URM were rejected, and in case anyone is keeping track, several Jewish kids were rejected too.
Oh, and here is what asiadude himself said:
“So unfortunately I was not accepted direct admit for CS, most likely because I didn’t even mention CS in my essay (yeah I know I’m dumb).”
regarding UW. Yes, colleges do want you to be interested in the major you choose! Or be undecided!
Also said he was applying to Wharton for finance.
Please do everyone a favor and think about what major you want to apply for, and justify it. PLEASE do everyone a favor and have many people read your essay, noting the prompt and thinking about whether your essay reflects your level of achievement.
The numbers will not get you in alone.
The surgeon that my brother knows is marrying to another surgeon so surgeon does not get to put on pedestal either, it’s more equal.
Please substitute “PhD physicist” for “surgeon” and you have one of my friend’s stories.
Oh, I got accepted to State U. seven states away, aren’t you happy for me?
Oh, I got accepted to do a special program in country halfway around the world, aren’t you happy for me?
Till the first question, she thought he was going to propose. He said “sure, maybe after we settled down there for a while, we should get engaged”.
Lots of people on their high horses “Mostly Dull” and “Piled Higher and Deeper”.
Here are two men who had a great achievement in what they did:
I read somewhere that Einstein is neither a good husband (at least to his first wife) nor a good father (at least to his only “illegimate” daughter who died young.) It is hard to tell what contributed to the failure of his first marriage – how much was due to the pressure from his parents and how much was due to himself.
It is rumored that Steve Jobs was not a good husband (or BF) to his GF who gave birth to a daughter called Lisa. Over a quite long period, the way he treated the daughter and her mother makes him almost look like a jerk.
I don’t want to pick on this particular kid, but this is a prime example of a kid who really shines in the local high school–but is not particularly unusual in terms of the admissions pool for the most elite schools. Sure, he has great grades and scores, but the other achievements are all local. As a musician, he’s in the pool with people who have all sorts of prizes, who have been on “From the Top,” etc. As a swimmer, he’s competing with people who are recruitable athletes. Presidential Scholar nominee is just another way of saying he got high SAT scores (in many states 2340 wouldn’t be enough to actually be a Presidential Scholar). This is not to criticize him at all–but just to point out that he’s not all that unusual, based on this information. But if he’s from a town that doesn’t send a lot of kids to top schools, many people will have told him that he’d “get in anywhere,” because he may well have been the most impressive kid they’ve ever seen–locally.
I know some such families/classmates from such families even back in HS myself.
However, they were a tiny minority compared with the vast majority of classmates from low income and lower-middle class families. Kind of like celebrity kids who attended like Chuck Schumer’s D or actress Angela Goethals.
Majority of student body when I attended were more likely to have parents waiting/bussing tables in restaurants or working in factories, etc rather than work as lawyers, bankers, or doctors though we had a few. The few from the latter group are much more likely to have siblings who attended private schools with some being regarded less highly by some parents because they failed to get into a SHS as opposed to their sibling and thus, the parents had to pay 20-30K/year for their private education.
Granted, such parental frustrations were nothing compared to what I heard from one older college classmate’s parents who felt they “wasted” the $30k/year private school tuition on him whenever the topic of his abysmal college academic record/academic suspension came up. A topic which kept coming up even years after we both graduated college.
@rhandco, I agree with your #289. We also do not have access to his interview.
I gather that applying to programs within selective colleges can add another level of selectivity. It is noticeable that he does not list any of the extracurriculars which tend to go hand in hand with interest in computer science. There is no mention of robotics, programming camps, nor any software-based activities.
Frankly, with the volunteering in hospitals, it seems to indicate a potential pre-med student. The premed pool is full of high-scoring students. He’s not competing with, say, a student who’s a budding nonprofit leader in the animal therapy area. He’s competing with premeds. (He might have gotten in, had he applied as a premed, rather than a computer science person, because his overall application might have made sense for a premed, whereas it did not compete well against the applicants with commitments to computer science in high school.)
A student with more lopsided scores, but showing strength and interest in computer science in courses taken, extracurriculars, in the essays and the interview, might have gotten in to the same programs. Admission is not an award for overall excellence; it’s a choice of the students who best fit their proposed program of study, and the college’s needs.
@cobrat: so is your point that there were many applicants from richer families but few got in and therefore you agree that a test based admission system as in Stuy is not favoring the rich? I can’t really tell. And Let’s drop the argument that how private school students are less capable. It’s irrevalent to the discussion ongoing in this thread. Don’t you agree?
Post #295: when you say “college’s needs”, that is essentially giving green lights to all what they are doing and what they will do, within the current law. Using a different set of admission standards to a subgroup can be what a college feels they need to do to meet their particular needs. And I think most posters are aware but are arguing whether certain needs are justifiable.
My 2 cents: Most of the immigrants especially India are usually well-educated and from upper-middle class or higher.
Thus, chances are these parents push their kids to achieve academically. Trust me when I say the competition is cut-throat. I play soccer and it is frowned upon. Other parents were advising my mom to pull me out of soccer and enroll me in academic tuition. They trying shaming my mom but she ignored them…
This trend of high achievement tend to ease out with the 2nd generation. Probably because they realize there’s more to life than getting that A and going to Ivy.
One must remember that most immigrants come here seeking a better life and thus push their kids towards it via education.
Planning to attend a high selective LAC and play soccer.
^Most very high achieving Asians are heavily involved with non-academic ECs. At least it is evident at the Med. School level when many are showing great talents and definite multi-year training in un-related areas, like music, performance, dance, art. While there are highly educated parents there, many do not belong in these category, having problem with English and some even do not drive. I am talking about Med. School class where non-Indian Asian students are vast majority.