Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrwthrw93223 | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of talk about elite universities offering full-tuition to those that make under a certain income, but what this ignores is usually you have to be in a certain income bracket to obtain certain SAT, AP scores along with the right ECs and upper division college prep courses. This usually means attending the best private, public, or STEM magnent school in your state, which sadly most families in those income brackets cannot afford. The people getting into these elite schools come from elite secondary schools and the poor people that can't attend these schools are usually excluded from admissions to elite colleges. So the "free tuition" advertisement is nice, but in practice their admissions standards do a good job of keeping such poor folks out.

View on HN

This is at best a half truth. Going to these schools helps, but it is not necessary.

There are an abundance of people who are qualified to get into elite universities at less-than-best schools in a given state.

There are three main issues that I see:

1. They self-select out of applying. They know lots of smart people, but they don’t know anyone else who applied, so those elite schools must be impossible to get into.

2. Their teachers/administrators have no idea how to write a strong recommendation for a stellar student. The applicants don’t know how to choose people who can write good recommendations.

3. The applicants don’t know about the small tweaks in their extracurriculars that will make them standout (e.g., demonstrating leadership, vision, etc.), and/or they don’t know how to write about their considerable achievements in a compelling way (e.g., I’ve heard an incredible and incredibly modest person saying that their considerable achievements were not worth discussing on an appication because “Well, what else would you do? Isn’t this just normal?” Answer, no, it was not normal.).

Note also that plenty of the “poor” students have been recruited in one way or another, with athletes probably being the biggest recruiting pool.

What you wrote only adds to, not negates my overall message. These are the products of being poor.

I think the admissions practices are largely fine, and they dont, by design, aim to keep poor people out (as you suggested).

I think that these schools could do a better job at educating potential applicants and the circle of people around said potential applicants much better. In my opinion, the internet has democratized this process considerably over the past 20 years or so, but I think there is still considerable room for improvement, especially by the universities themselves.

I worked at a well-known Texas college for a few years in the IT department. I can tell you first hand they overcharge. Tenured professors are largely lazy. They are paid enormous sums of money for as little as 4 hours' work daily. The adjuncts work their tails off and while they are making 75k+, the whole thing is a sham. Let's not talk about incoming students with credits from other institutions who are like 4 credit hours short and they make them take a full year or more (because they can), and charge out the wazoo and think you should be grateful. Working for this college let me know one thing: those who can't, teach. More than once I had to step in and assist the CS professors with basic things they should have known. Tenured professors whose CV read like they must have been there at the epoch and worked with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.

I guess I'd disagree, in that admissions practices at many schools are designed to admit children of rich people. Sure, poor people aren't penalized for being poor per se, but they're not going to contribute to the endowment, you know?

So you get a boost for being a legacy, for having parents who are rich, for being from a rich feeder school that indicates you have parents who are rich, etc. It's not that you get a -1 on your point total for being poor. It's that you get a lot of +1s for being well-off, because ultimately well-off people give more money back to the school & produce well-off alumni who are attractive to well-off applicants. At private colleges and universities in particular there is a careful attention paid to long-term revenue, as colleges are feeling the economic squeeze in the amenities arms race. Colleges are separating into 'winners' and 'losers' and that sorting is along the lines of revenue and endowment.

The article is right on that connecting unconnected kids with connected peers is the biggest benefit of an 'elite' education. 'Winner' colleges today are trying to surf the wave of existing power structures rather than create/educate a new wave of potential elites.

In addition access to exclusive and expensive sports, if you have the money, some easy tickets into the Ivy League include: fencing, sailing, rowing (crew), lacrosse, golf, tennis and equestrian.

And if you don't have the money, being elite at any other sport will do. Soccer, basketball, football, track, etc.

A run of the mill guy or gal with a straight A record and shooting 60% from three will find a ready welcome at Stanford. That same run of the mill straight A student would be laughed out of the room if they applied without the elite basketball skills. Your daughter might not have much of a chance as a simple straight A student, but if she has straight A's and runs a 48 or 49 second 400... yeah... I can guarantee you that they'll make room for her.

If you're talking about using sports to get in, then almost any sport will do, you don't have to have money for the expensive ones. Problem is, you kind of have to be elite to make it work. Four year varsity starter, state champion level basically.

> Problem is, you kind of have to be elite to make it work. Four year varsity starter, state champion level basically.

Maybe at Stanford. Maybe at Ivies in certain highly competitive sports (e.g., rowing).

In most sports, simply being a recruitable athlete at a level lower than “power conference” but higher than NAIA (maybe?) is possible depending on the sport and/or specialty. In terms of skill, any high school with 1000+ students probably has 10-50+ students in this category — grades and/or lack of desire are often holding them back from a tertiary education of any kind. Said another way, that’s much lower than “state champion” level.

Again, knowing how to get recruited and having a coach who knows how to showcase talent for recruiters goes a long way. That said, it only helps, but is not required in most sports.

I’m really glad you mentioned running as an example. There are a ton of good track & field and cross-country folks who: 1) can improve significantly just by training well, and 2) are very recruitable at the Ivy League level. Want-to goes a long way.

It is not mandatory to be in a certain income bracket to get a high score on your SAT or on your AP exams.

If the universities want to help low income students, and are only able to help a certain number of them given the resources they have available, academic merit is the best way to do it.

It isn't mandatory, but it certainly helps when you can pay for private tutors or professional consulatants that craft your application package. Students that tend to score high on SATs tend to come from higher income brackets. It also hurts when you attend a school that doesn't offer an expansive list of AP courses, or if you come from a family that never attended college and do not even know what the college process is like.

Edit: To your "This is patently untrue" comment. Taking AP courses and scoring 5s on the exams is pretty standard for applicants getting into elite colleges. By not taking those courses you are huritng yourself when applying to such places.

> It also hurts when you attend a school that doesn't offer an expansive list of AP coursess

This is patently untrue.

The rest of youe post is accurate, although the words help and hurt are the keys to keeping it accurate. None of these things are required.

I worked at a small liberal arts college for a few years that basically admitted (1) legacy students, (2) rich kids, (3) sports kids from the South (from states with no D3 football, basically), and (4) poor kids who got high SAT scores. They used (1) for history, (1) and (2) for revenue, (3) for school spirit, and (4) to boost the average SAT for the whole student body.

So many schools are doing exactly what you suggest. It is kind of weird to teach there & realize pretty quickly that the rich kids are mostly not the smart ones, to be blunt.

> have to be in a certain income bracket

Have to be? Or tend to be. I think we often overlook that richer families tend to have a lot better parenting. It's not just about money. Good parenting is arguably more important than being wealthy.

Having money to throw around makes it a lot easier to be a "good" parent.

I grew up helping my dad with every project around the home. Economics improved over the course of my childhood and my much younger brother spent his after school time playing sports and musical instruments. He got to put that on his college applications. "Dig's a good fence post hole" is not something you put on a college application. I went to the state school that gave me the best aid. He got an almost full ride at an exclusive liberal arts college. His side projects during college were audio related. My side projects involved parting out vehicles. When you're interviewing for an entry level job at FAANG and they ask you to tell them a little bit about yourself talking about how you do custom speaker enclosures is probably a good choice. Talking about your side gig selling used car parts will get blank stares if you're lucky and make you look like white trash if you're not. We'll see what he does after college but I suspect he'll be doing better than me by the time he's 30.

Having enough money to give your kids a marginally higher class upbringing from day 1 makes a world of difference.

Richer families can outsource the parts of parenting they're crappy at.

Like...?

Harvard legacy acceptance rate is 33%

Reply on news.ycombinator.com