They certainly do care about meeting an FA budget, but that is done at the policy level, rather than at the admission reading level. Policy level means deciding before the admission cycle (among other things) whether to require subject tests or CSS Non-custodial Profile that affect how many FA-needy applicants and admits occur. This allows them to manipulate the expected FA need of the class while being need blind for individual applicants.
Right, but the admissions officers are making the judgment of whether the applicant will need FA or not. FA officers aren’t trying to guess whether the applicant from Riverside High is wealthy or not. I went to a public high school in a rural area. There were poor farmers and millionaire farmer kids in my class and the application probably wouldn’t indicate which was which.
Congratulations to your daughter!
One positive note: at least you didn’t pay someone to tell you all of these suggestions!
@hebegebe That’s what I always intuited personally. Smart parents tend to have bright children. Completely anectodotal of course.
Although environment means a lot in student achievement. Plenty of educators have very successful children scholastically. I’m not sure it’s just because the parents are naturally bright. Once again, totally a personal observation only.
However, I only read a post or thread here at some point that stated the opposite relative to high iq parents and resulting in high iq children.
Which is why it struck me at the time. I certainly could have misunderstood or read it incorrectly as well.
Thanks for clarifying.
“I’d like to know where are these under-performing high schools of the rich and famous?”
Circuitrider- seriously? You don’t know where these schools are hiding in plain sight? Take a look at high income suburbs which surround an urban core which is losing population, experienced “white flight” during the 60’s and never bounced back, lost a few major employers, etc. There are lots of these places all over the country.
A few of these suburbs are going to have top notch, high performing schools. Their property taxes are high, and the citizens take great pride in the school system- even the elderly, who don’t technically benefit from a strong school system since their kids are long since grown. And then a few of these suburbs are going to have middling schools. They may have minimum acreage requirements for housing stock, so when you drive through you see big houses and big lawns and mcmansions- but the schools are average, and the taxes are lower than their more ambitious neighboring towns. Every tax increase to benefit the public school system gets voted down. There will be a couple of private schools in these areas- some catering to the gifted and talented kids, and some that emphasize “sportsmanship” which is rich folks code word for “not too academic”.
Or head South or look at states along the Mason-Dixon line and take a look at the “Segregation Academies”. These are the private schools established by the folks who could afford tuition which allowed them to keep out the “undesirables” after the Supreme Court struck down separate but equal. Two generations have passed but these schools are mostly still in existence. They are private schools catering to the rich who aren’t bothered by under performance as long as their “traditions” are maintained.
Or take a look at a chunk of “New England Boarding Schools” aka prep schools. The ones at the top of the heap are intensely academic, hire phenomenal faculty, and justifiably have earned their reputations. Most of them have gorgeous settings, high expectations of their students, and sky high tuition plus generous financial aid. But where do the less academically talented siblings and cousins of these prep kids go? They go to other prep schools. Less famous, just as gorgeous (most of them), but ho-hum academics in keeping with both the ability and aspirations of their student body. Nobody is going to mistake these places for Andover or Choate, but they provide the prep experience for the “under performing rich”. Every year a couple of kids get bounced from the top schools (drugs, academic code violations, or just can’t keep up) and they head down the food chain.
Not hard to find these schools if you look for them. Not every wealthy family wants their kids sweating it out in HS, and not every wealthy family wants their kids busting their tails in college.
And where did they all end up going to college?
The point is that the millionaire parents could afford to pay for extras for their kids, like online tutoring for SAT/ACT – or summer travel for specialized programs – or private college counselors - that would make their college apps look very different than the kids of the poor parents, who probably also relied a lot more on their kids to help with the farm at home. (For tasks that the millionaires hired other people to do). That rural public high school probably didn’t offer a whole lot in the way of AP’s or other advanced courses – but if the millionaires wanted to send their kids away to elite colleges, they could afford to provide the sort of enrichment outside of school that would give their kids the qualities needed to get into more selective schools.
I’d also point out that financial aid can be very tricky for farmers, because they typically have to fill out a farm supplement with info about the farm’s assets, income & liabilities. They may be barely eking by, even losing money, but the value of their land and the machinery and livestock they own is being counted and that’s enough to make the financial aid picture rather dismal for many – and pretty much makes NPC calculators useless. So I think that most of those kids wouldn’t be applying to elite, selective private schools; and those who did would be less likely to be admitted because of the overall quality of their applications — and of course much less likely to be able to afford to attend if they were fortunate enough to be admitted. I’m not discounting the possibility of some notable exceptions here and there – but the overall odds would be against them.
I’m happy to notice that, despite my time away from here, the arguments have not changed…
However, @socaldad2002, I would like to congratulate you and your D on her ED acceptance to Duke (I think that’s the college you mentioned you wrote on another thread).
@PurplePlum @elena13 May I ask where you reside? I think geographic diversity is often overlooked but is an important factor.
@1stTimeThruMom - I’m in the southeast. That may have helped S a little for Brown and Colgate but not for his other two most selective schools. It’s interesting that at Vandy, almost none out of his large group of friends are from the southeast.