They enhance the experience just by being different, not by being the exemplary achievers despite their economic hardship.
I found otherwise. They don’t take all the smart but poor kids because they don’t need them. Down under, a less known school might need one to boost their academic profile maybe.
But all I am keep hearing from the boarding schools is that they are selecting “most fit” students for them and NOT the most qualified or the brightest.
“But all I am keep hearing from the boarding schools is that they are selecting “most fit” students for them and NOT the most qualified or the brightest.”
That’s just a smokescreen. “Fit” is just a placeholder word to obfuscate what is really going on. You can believe them if you choose. Perhaps we can agree that “fit” means “creating an environment that is attractive to full pay families”? After all, these administrators have a pretty good gig going!
Also, recognize that only a small number of schools have the luxury of turning away any minimally qualified full pay student - maybe 20 or 30 in all? And yet they all talk about “fit”…
Money, whether full pay or financial aid, is part of fit and they have never claimed otherwise. At least it seems they doing what they say they are doing, which is within their right.
^ With that I can wholeheartedly agree. And that brings us right back to the subject of this thread. Not many families can afford $60k+ per year for a boarding school or $50k for the San Francisco day school mentioned in the linked article. So, there is always going to be some inherent tension or struggle between the classes. My modest proposals are to 1) institute uniforms and 2) “arm” the less well off students with the knowledge that they are smarter. That is how it worked 30 years ago. I don’t think “talking it out” and employing the other various tools of the diversocrats will work. Life is not fair and kids can see that. Just have the financial aid kids be smarter than the full pay kids and it will all take care of itself. (Of course, I am only talking about averages. Some lucky kids will be born both rich and smart. And that’s ok too.)
Life is not fair and kids can see that, period. Artificially making FA kids smarter than general student body may be neither necessary nor beneficial for the school and its student body.
Also, most of the practical measures of “smartness” largely favors rich kids who had access to better education for the 13 years leading to high school admission. So rich and (apparently) smart kids are actually pretty common. Poor kids are less likely be high performing at age 13. So how would it be fair to not admit them? Not to mention how would it be beneficial for the schools to have a less diverse student body.
“So rich and (apparently) smart kids are actually pretty common.”
Of course. On average, rich people are smarter than poor people. They have higher IQs. It’s genetic. (On average smarter people accumulate more money and pass their genes on to their offspring, although of course there is always some regression to the mean, so that two very smart parents are likely to have children who are less smart than they are.) However, there are a lot more kids out there whose parents cannot afford $60K+ per year than those whose parents can. Probably by an order of magnitude. You won’t run out of less well off kids to admit who are smarter than the full pay cohort, that’s for sure.
BTW, the correlation between intelligence and income is positive and significant, but not enormous. Someone could correct me, but from memory I think it is roughly 0.25. (For reference, the correlation between intelligence of a parent and child is roughly 0.80 - again this is just from memory, so I welcome corrections.)
"Poor kids are less likely be high performing at age 13. So how would it be fair to not admit them? "
Well, first you need to identify them, It’s actually quite easy to do, although not palatable for political reasons. IQ tests or at least high g-loaded achievement tests will identify them. Remember, we are not looking to reinvent the wheel here or start from scratch. A high school student needs to have had some education previously. So each student has a record, and public schools have been free for over a hundred years in the US. One of the huge problems we have in education is that we refuse to structure elementary education in such a way as to identify talented students. Tracking, IQ testing, acceleration, grade skipping, etc. have all been under assault for the better part of 50 years. Grade inflation has now progressed to the point that a transcript is practically meaningless. But this is what we have, and we have to work within the system. Given what we have I would look at SSAT scores, particularly the analogies portion of the verbal section and the mathematics sections. Those should be most highly g-loaded (correlated with general intelligence), although I agree they are very imperfect measures.
Perhaps poor students should be offered the possibility of taking an IQ test when they interview. At least one extremely elite Boston day school does this for every applicant prior to the interview (they use a shortened test). Rich kids could offer IQ test results as well, although this would generate enormous backlash from parents for obvious reasons (they didn’t groom their bright but relatively average kid for elite admission only to be shown the evidence that the kid just isn’t that off the charts).
I see no need for elite schools to be “evangelists” looking to identify the small group of kids who are unprepared for rigorous secondary education but do in fact have the native intelligence to do it. That strikes me as an exercise in virtue signalling that is more appropriate for elite primary schools (since the public system refuses to do it).
Last, I argue that the financial aid kids should be smarter than the full pay contingent so that the kids are better able to deal with their unequal economic status. It’s also a good reality check for the full pay kids that life throws the dice and you can’t buy smarts.
@SatchelSF: You present a very limited view of schools and universities being only about academics.
We all know people who were excellent students but were unable to translate that into success in other areas (or stages) of life… and vice versa. So even if you are hoping to have successful alumni you can brag about (or whose donations can fund your growth) looking only at IQ and academic achievement won’t work. Persistence. Grit. The ability to overcome obstacles. Emotional intelligence. Resilience. Those are harder to measure but may be better predictors of greatness to come. (Certainly better than IQ tests and SSAT scores.)
Schools and universities are also communities. They need students who get along well with others and who can partake in other aspects of community life, including (but not limited to) athletics and the arts.
Finally, if schools have students at both extremes of the income pyramid, they especially need kids in the middle who are comfortable engaging with both rich and poor and can serve as a bridge. Those kids are rare (it is not enough to be middle class) but without them, the urge to self segregate by income bracket wins and the community loses. As far as I can tell, most boarding schools have not yet figured this last piece out …
My $.02. YMMV.
l think our different positions are clearly discussed. I will agree to disagree and leave it at that
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Let’s all agree to disagree. The 2 users who make up the majority of the discussion on this page have expressed their views at length, but nobody’s mind will change, so please move on.
No private school has any obligation to admit anyone who can’t pay. The main reasons they do so (IMO) are to make the school seem better to prospective applicants and the larger world and to make the school actually better in preparing its students for life. I don’t discount altruistic motives at all, whether on the part of school administration or philanthropic alumni, but those can only come into play when the bottom line is secure. The more financially secure a school is, the more it can admit students it wants in the school (not because they deserve it - there are too many who deserve it for them to deal with that larger issue - but because of how their presence might improve the school in public perception and in daily life). The first to be brought in might be the most talented few who can afford it the least. A wealthier school can help middle-class students and those with less extreme talents to attend, as long as their presence makes the school better for those who are paying full freight (which it does by exposing them to a wider slice of the world). This is a somewhat cynical position for someone whose children are reaping great benefit from others’ philanthropy. That’s the non-cynical part of the equation. Private schools survive and thrive based on the love their alumni bear them. My kids happen to go to a school that is beloved by its alumni and thus thriving, and I have told them to give back to the school (even if a small amount) every year of their lives, as I will also do.
And back to that article…there was some whining in it about the problems of wealthy people. No one doubts the wealthy have problems - some unique to them - or that they suffer. However, some of them fail to realize that the people lower down the money pyramid also have interpersonal problems, and that financial concerns add to the problems and their complexity. The people near the bottom of the pyramid have their interpersonal problems compounded by deep concerns about basic needs. They run into all kinds of difficulties that money - even comparatively small amounts of money - would solve (did anyone else read, as I did yesterday, about the young woman in Mississippi who was kept from her infant for 14 months for not being able to pay a court fee that I think was less than $500?). The people at the top often have absolutely no concept of that reality. I am lucky that I don’t have personal experience of it, but I have at least talked to people whose lives are that constrained by financial worries on the most basic level (food, housing, safety, child care, etc.). It is a very healthy thing that boarding schools make an attempt to include students from a range of income levels. The students undoubtedly come in with preconceived notions about people from other socioeconomic levels or of other races or from other countries or other parts of this country. Living together makes them realize that the actual differences between individuals have nothing to do with any of these artificial divisions.
While agreeing to move on, @twinsmama truly added value to this thread by so clearly explaining what I wanted but failed to, whether anyone will change mind or not.
Thanks, @SculptorDad
@twinsmama My kid have be fitted from generous donation from wealthy families. without someone paying 200k for four years, my kids would not have gone to attend prep school or good colleges, I agree whole heartedly with you that private school will do what they want to do unless taxpayers stops paying grants from different programs, but it is not gonna happen.
Some rich kids may not be bookish smart but they are business savvy as they have seen and heard from parental experience. I do not know about your school but Phillis benefitted a lot by admitting poor kids. Some of them became ver successful and donated tons of money as a gratitude.
Elitist institutions are elitist. They serve the elite. And themselves. It’s not altruism but the most naked self-interest that causes these elite educational institutions to screen for and admit certain individuals who don’t fit their traditional profile. They want the schools to rise above being warehouses for useless wealth and wasted privilege for their own reasons. This is understood to be beneficial to the school as a whole, relatively recently. They are selfish. Making their institutions more interesting, more intellectual, and more competitive in some respects is believed to be a net positive for their school first and the for the new classes of students second. So they do it. FA. Outreach. Diversity. Athletics. Selfish.
Economics theory explains that all choices are “selfish” economic choices that maximize the decision maker’s pleasure. Someone who donates 99% of his asset does it because effect of the donation on the world gives him the most pleasure for the money spent.
In this thinking, there is no room for pure benevolence and everybody are always selfish. However, such selfish act still is benevolent to the beneficiaries and the society as a whole. For that reason, while I fully agree with the details in your reply #33, I still see it positively.
@SculptorDad This point of view is also articulated by Ayn Rand in “The Virtue of Selfishness.” Benevolence is only worthwhile if the recipient of the largesse shows gratitude, rather than evince that he/she is “owed.”
I’m just glad today’s boarding schools and colleges are increasingly sensitive to matters of class and trying to do the right thing. Gone are the days of scholarship students being required to serve their wealthier colleagues at meals, for example.
^Ayn Rand lived in an era before widespread virtue signalling. Today, the elite institutions do not care whether the recipients of their largesse and massive admissions preferences are grateful or not. What they seek is external affirmation from the commanding heights of the diversitocracy. (Ironically, sometimes this means the institutions are simply patting each other on the backs.) Of course, this seeking of affirmation doesn’t negate the basic economic insight that these institutions are in fact seeking credit for their actions; it just clarifies from whom the credit is truly being sought.
Whether the scions who attend boarding school or Ivy colleges grow up to be leaders of industry or heads of government, they will benefit from interacting with people of other social classes. How do you create or market products for the working class if you’ve only ever met people in the top 1 percent? How do you govern and solve problems for people whose lives you can’t possibly understand?
^Fortunately, we really do not have to worry about those questions. If the scions in fact cannot figure out the answers they will fail. And that’s a good thing. Their failure clears the path for someone better to run the business or enter government. Creative destruction. We need more, not less, of it today.