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<p>You can certainly earn enough to take AP tests…buy relatively inexpensive books to read on your own…write about academic stuff you enjoyed reading about in your essay, and how you’ll pursue it in college…try tutoring, like my friend did for instance! Something like that. I don’t like essay questions that ask things like “What’s something you’d like to tell your future roommate?” Keep it to a statement on what you want to get out of college, plus an additional info page to make AOs aware of special circumstances. No fluff!</p>
<p>My friend had to pay for food, rent, everything. You can certainly do a lot to embellish an application with not too much on it if you’re resourceful. </p>
<p>At the core, I agree wealth can create an advantage in terms of embellishing the record. All I’m saying is that we have to be careful that whoever we’re labeling to be exceptionally talented really is going to benefit from attending, say MIT, tremendously enough that it makes sense to admit them. I don’t think you have a clear answer on how to measure the talent of someone without tons of stuff on the record to support it. Neither did many on the MIT threads. If someone told me there’s an easy answer, I’d be skeptical, but would be willing to listen.</p>