<p>@ milkyway; Yeah I think it is pretty common! I know people who are like me. I think for my situation… I can’t do anything about it. I’m forced to be around my mother who can’t even talk to me because she is disabled and she will never get any better =/… while my dad makes VERY little to support 5 people and only comes home once a week. He was never educated either and so some of the things he says are very ridiculous in my opinion. And since I am very poor, I don’t think I qualify to go to a extremely expensive schools or have good intensive tutoring services. Life sucks for me but I know I need to change that.</p>
<p>@lilmelonred- unrelated to the thread sort of, but there are lots of schools that are great but not that expensive- but it’s hard to feel like those schools are good when all the students on CC are like “yeah, my parents don’t mind paying 60,000 a year for college” -_-</p>
<p>I know right! Even if the school costs 30K-40K a year, I probably wont get enough money to go there and i’ll probably have to take loans etc… State university or college at a commutable distance is better for me considering the fact that tuition is cheap and i can always come home for housing and food. What else is disturbing to be is that since my parents said they are willing to provide me little amount of money only for books and transportation expenses, they can’t wait for me to finish my dream degree like PH.D because they are not willing to provide any help for me after 4 years of undergrad… Not sure if they make any sense but i do want to make my way up to where i want to be without their help is okay I think.</p>
<p>Collegebound, your family is not the typical situation. Money becomes an issue because a lot of the time, mom and dad can’t be home because they’re working multiple jobs and living paycheck to paycheck. If someone is working 60+ hours a week, going to the library may just not be an option. For many kids school is the only option they have. If you don’t have parents who are around theres not much you can do by the time you realize you may need help.</p>
<p>This may have already been mentioned, but low-income schools don’t pay their teachers enough to make them motivated and happy that they teach. They also don’t care that half the school is doing some sort of illegal thing (drugs, etc) or the fact that lots of the girls are pregnant. Lots of their parents also work blue collar so they don’t really see the point of doing well in school and how it helps them. Either that, or they’re in jail. I went from going to a school that was made of trailers (like the ones you live in) to a school that is full of rich, snobby kids.</p>
<p>That is ridiculous. You just illustrated what is wrong the educational system, people who believe that reasoning. Let me correct you on several things.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Low income- High poverty areas get more news coverage because no one wants to see a “good” school on the news- that’s how the media works. My school had a girl accepted full ride to Harvard and NO ONE knew, but they knew about the car that was broken into down the block. NO ONE knew how the HS 2 towns over was evacuated for bomb threats on separate occasions, or that a kid was caught was over 500,000$ worth of crack in his locker because the story was those little words that scroll on the bottom of the screen.</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers have contracts. Some states pay teachers close to nothing. However, in NYC starting teacher’s salary is 45,000$ without a masters, and it can go up to a 6 figure salary. In addition to having MORE pay than the suburbs, if you commit a certain number of years the BOE will pay part of your student loans.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I go to school in one of the poorest AND most dangerous cities in the country and I can tell you, the students do care. My school is VoTech and students are given the opportunity to become a registered CNA upon graduation along with a certified mechanic, plumber’s assistant, cosmetology assistant, culinary assistant, a certified security guard and so much more. In my school, there is an overabundance of caring teachers, the problem is that students have gotten lost in the system because of things like the common core and No Child Left Behind.</p>
<p>Low income kids sometimes lack the advantage of a two parent home.
You can’t afford plush ECs and you’re often confined to your immediate area for them (unless you’re sponsored I guess). Can’t afford to retake tests multiple times. Stressful home situations can cause studying for school and standardized tests to be put on the back-burner. Your parent(s) are stressed easily by the college app process. </p>
<p>Also, many times a school (usually prestigious, but yeah) will let you request a fee waiver yourself if you explain that you ran out of fee waivers. This is what I did because I don’t really qualify for CB and NACAC waivers being a gap year kid.
UPenn, Uchi, Williams, Amherst, Harvard and Yale are examples.</p>
<p>My parents make about 50-60K a year, which is too much to get fee waivers. But they are in so much debt from student loans, the house, the car, that there really isn’t any money to spare. I can’t really afford to play club sports year round so I can’t get as good as other people. It’s the same with violin (parents can’t afford private lessons.) I can’t take as many AP tests and SAT subject tests as I want. I got lucky and got a 2340 on my SAT but if I needed to take it again or needed a tutor my parents couldn’t really afford it. I also won’t be able to apply to many schools because the application fees are obnoxious. It really sucks that everything costs money.</p>
<p>College is a scam! period.</p>
<p>@Jazzii When you live in a town in the middle of no where, the kids don’t care. Their parents have spent their whole lives there, and they expect to do the same. The No Child Left Behind policy was pointless. Our school stressed out over it since many schools in the district had been ‘taken’ over by the government. Schools were forced longer hours, but the teachers didn’t get any extra pay. The year I left, NONE of the schools in my town passed the state mark.</p>
<p>I figured, and after I wrote that I did feel bad so I apologize; I am just constantly surrounded by narrow minded people who think the problem with education lies in “those kids don’t care, and they’ll all drop out, or be in jail anyway”. So again I do apologize, I also found this after having a SUPER heated debate about the same thing. I’m sorry- I realized it came off as a personal attack; I meant it in a more general way than it came out.</p>
<p>So I’m upperclass, but most of my friends are low income, they get free lunches. Anyway, our school doesn’t offer AP, so we take dual credit/college credit course from a local university, and if you don’t get a scholarship or financial aid, it gets expensive.</p>
<p>I’m fairly lower income, although I’m aware that my experience is not typical, because my family was solidly middle class and places a HUGE value on education, and things have only gotten tough in the past two years. But because of my family’s financial situation, I couldn’t afford an SAT prep course or tutor, or all the fancy extra classes and activities my friends did. I couldn’t afford to compete in my sport because even the cheapest tournaments cost like $50 for 2 5 minute matches (I do club sports but if my club wasn’t particularly generous I wouldn’t be able to afford it). I also couldn’t afford not to take advantage of the free SAT score reports, which meant I had to send scores before I knew what they were. I sent a really horrible Subject Test score to 2 top colleges. Even with a fee waiver, I had to limit the number of schools I applied to because $10 for each SAT score and $5 for each dual enrollment transcript adds up.</p>
<p>I think a huge reason why most lower income kids have trouble succeeding is because of lack of resources. I know there are many people on CC who did well despite these obstacles. But they probably worked harder than many higher-income students to get the same grades and test scores. Obviously, if your school has no AP courses, it will be harder to get into college. It is hard to even do well on SAT Subject Tests without an AP background. Students whose parents are willing to pay for private schools, SAT courses, tutors, coaches, and college admissions consultants have a much easier time. </p>
<p>Imagine if you didn’t go to preschool, then started kindergarten in an overcrowded public school, with an overworked, underpaid teacher and many kids who don’t even speak English. Imagine your parents don’t speak English and have no time to take you to the library. Even if you do everything right from that point forward, you will probably always be behind on reading, which will hold you back for life.</p>
<p>“Imagine your parents don’t speak English and have no time to take you to the library. Even if you do everything right from that point forward, you will probably always be behind on reading, which will hold you back for life.” - mmmgirl</p>
<p>I think that’s me. Both of my parents can not read or speak English at all. What’s worse… I had to try my best to learn the language and translate everything to them. My parents weren’t really there to help me much that I tried my best to learn my English through school. My English today isn’t that great honestly and it’s sorta holding me back… I’m even bad at my own home language because I didn’t communicate much with my parents as much as I should.</p>
<p>@Jazzii I understand what you’re saying, but my mom DID work. I live in what you would probably call a “bad” neighborhood, and I never blamed that for any academic failures. My parents never helped me with my homework, got me tutors when I was struggling in school, or paid for SAT classes (and literally everyone that I know has taken some). I didn’t have any older siblings and my parents didn’t speak English. </p>
<p>I know this is going to sound harsh but some people need to stop blaming their situation for how they turn out. I understand there are correlations in achievement related to income, but it’s not about money alone. The difference was that I had a lot of emotional support (when my parents were actually there). They set high expectations for me, and I set them for myself as well. </p>
<p>I know my situation may seem anomalous, but it’s really not. A family friend’s daughter was in a similar situation as me (parent/money wise) , and she went to UPenn a few years ago. Every year, my school (with almost 2/3 low income families) sends poor students to top schools around the country, and not just through Questbridge. Just last year, those schools included Columbia, Stanford, and Cornell, just to name a few.</p>
<p>A child without incentive isn’t going to succeed whether his parents make $20K or $20M.</p>
<p>@ collegebound: I think it also depends too on each person. I mean there are plenty of people who are poor and did not succeed but there are some people who are like you. Yes there are programs like quest bridge for people like low income but high achieving kids. Then there are programs like EOP/ HEOP/ SEEK for example in NY. These programs does are there to help people who must be both academically and financially disadvantaged considering the fact that low income correlates to lower grades. And they find that EOP/HEOP/ SEEK is very effective in helping kids to succeed college.</p>
<p>Low income people without a doubt face so many obstacles, and not just regarding school. But sooner or later people need to take responsibility for themselves. My mother came to the USA from Cuba; She had little support from her parents to become educated. Also, they barely spoke English so they were not too involved with her schooling. However, she ended up going to college, getting a masters. She also raised my 2 siblings and I alone, while working 2 jobs, but she took time out of her day to take us to the library and instill a love for reading/learning in us. Anyways, I’m not recounting my story to make it seem like any parent who doesn’t find time to “walk their kid to the library and read with them” is a bad parent. Rather, it’s up to the child to create their own fate. I was just plain lucky to have a mom that did help me.</p>
<p>Kids from low income family have fewer choices for ECs. With the budget cut, many sports and music classes offered at the school requires students to pay for their own equipments or instruments, which is, from what I’ve seen at my old school, always $100+. I knew a girl who wanted to join flags very badly but can’t because her family couldn’t afford to spend about a thousand (yes, it’s a little more than a thousand actually because it covered for money to go to competitions and the uniform). They may not be able to do certain ECs because of transportation problem. </p>
<p>Second, kids from family of higher income often start to learn or at least have the opportunity to play some instruments, sports, or whatever from an earlier age. It gives them a slight edge over the candidates who are as academically competent as they are.</p>
<p>Third, if a kid come from a low income family, it is very likely that the parents are either first generation immigrants or are from lower educational background. Even if the parents encourage their child to pursue a higher education, the child would have to find out many things about colleges and stuff by himself/herself.</p>
<p>Lastly, the kid may be living in a not-so-great neighborhood with bad schools. The schools may have good, motivated teachers, but what classes the school offers is not in their power. There may be fewer AP classes offered because there are not enough students who qualify or will take them. I know that colleges do take that into consideration, but the capable and intelligent students are denied the opportunity to take those rigorous courses. Yes, there are local community colleges, but no, the district does not always give students the money to attend those classes without fees. Ah, and summer school, with the budget cut, it is not free anymore and those capable but poor students can’t take the classes to let them get ahead, even if their current classes are clearly too easy and are boring them to death.</p>
<p>Yes, the EC cost is a problem. Even though we make a good income, it was tough to stomach $75 times three kids times three sports seasons = $675. The fee started in sixth grade!</p>
<p>Stuff that bothers me:</p>
<ul>
<li>High costs of most summer programs. Most of them are well over $2000, and the free ones are far too selective. </li>
<li>Lack of AP classes.</li>
<li>Lack of good colleges nearby for dual enrollment.</li>
<li>No one encourages anyone to apply to selective colleges. Information about out-of-state schools is never provided. Information given about college admissions is often highly inaccurate.</li>
</ul>
<p>I’m lower middle class. The median income where I live is $28,000. So I don’t know if it’s a terribly poor area but people aren’t rich either.</p>