Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges | Hacker News Reader

Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges

nytimes.com

84 points_RPM68 comments

One problem is that the poor and highly qualified are mostly white kids from flyover country and to a lesser extent recent Asian immigrants, both of which are ethnic anti-priorities for colleges.

I don't have statistics on hand, but my experience as a Harvard undergrad (class of 2013) was that the less wealthy students at the school were more economically diverse than the more wealthy students. Any efforts by Harvard to increase racial diversity and increase economic diversity would likely work hand in hand.

I would bet that's because there are far more scholarships available for poor minorities.

Hmm, I'm not so certain. My alma mater (Princeton) probably has similar scholarship structures to Harvard, and there, need based aid gets given out to every student who needs it, regardless of race. (iirc there is now a system where families making less than $180,000/yr only pay 10% of their household income for tuition)

But you might be right that there may be additional scholarships that students can apply for (I remember a few friends writing letters to their scholarships annually to update them on what they've been up to as part of the scholarship deal, provided by bodies separate from the school itself -- presumably set up by alums with a set of stipulations as to who can qualify), may perhaps these may be skewed one way or another along various dimensions.

Nope, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Harvard's policy is pretty similar to Princeton's described by hkmurakami. You can check out the calculations at [1], but the basic idea is that it's free up to 60k family income for Americans regardless of race then about 10% up to 180k income. This means that you can be making the median family income and still have an expected family contribution of $0 at Harvard. Obviously these sorts of levels of financial aid are only at the top few schools, but at places like Harvard and Princeton it really is independent of race.

[1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...

One of the issues plaguing the UK is that the wealthy students go to private schools, which have the best facilities/teachers etc and are able to produce far far higher results. The argument becomes "when n% of the people with maximum A level grades come from private schools, that's the % you should expect at the top universities which gate by grades, regardless of their history".

So I guess I have 2 questions: Do you have a similar issue where the wealthy buy better tuition to ensure higher results and get a better shot at the best colleges? Is there a scaling factor applied to those of different backgrounds to mitigate this?

I think the answers to those two questions are roughly yes and yes. I get the impression a lower percentage of people here go to private schools in general (and could be totally wrong), but many do. There are also plenty of other opportunities that are easier to access with wealth. Even with public schools, wealthier people tend to live in school districts with better schools.

There's no simple scaling factor because there's no numerical value to scale (admissions at places like Harvard are not just an objective formula of grades and test scores) but background is certainly taken into account. A kid going to a school without lots of AP classes isn't expected to take lots of AP classes, for example. A kid from a rough economic background who has to work a minimum wage summer job for financial reasons will get more understanding than the rich kid who chooses a summer job for spending money instead of volunteering in a research lab, and so on.

As I mentioned in another comment, I think one challenge is that it is harder to differentiate kids without these opportunities. To use the AP class example, you can help separate kids from top schools by looking at how many/which AP classes they took and what scores they got on the tests. If you take a similarly sized cohort of kids at a school without AP classes, how do you differentiate them?

Hey fiatmoney. I think you're concerned about some thing that a lot of people don't vocalize civilly, so I'm glad that you are.

Though I don't work in admissions, I work alongside a number of people of that do.

I've gone out of my way to ask about those "white kids from flyover country". I will elaborate on those of my alma mater here.

Very few kids from rural school districts perform highly on standardized testing. Very few receive the encouragement (familial and cultural) to go to high-quality, distant schools. If you want to hear some horror stories about this from me, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share them in private.

Point being that even within its state, my large public school struggles to recruit from its rural parts.

Contrary to what you assume, they actually do employ recruitment and affirmative action policies towards to the exact folks you're talking about -- predominantly poor and culturally disadvantaged rural people who are predominantly white.

I'm interested in hearing a few of these stories.

If you email me at jordan at birnholtz dot com, I will get right back to you.

Hell, if you email me right now with your phone number, I'll even call you.

I think these stories are worth telling, but I'm not going to compromise the privacy of my very close friends in the public forum without their consent.

Couldn't you anonymize personally-identifiable information?

Reasonable question. I don't think I've made my motive for not sharing publicly very clear.

That you'd parse their identities is a secondary concern to me (as I don't think you could). I'm more concerned about their feelings, since they could easily find this post (as my real name is tied to this account).

While I think it's alright to anonymize and subsequently discuss my friends' lives in private, 1-to-1 discourse, I'm not ready to make their lives part of the public record with out their approval.

Does that make sense, enraged_camel?

Well, I was a poor white kid from flyover country. I slacked off all through high school while hating the cruelty and boredom, and did my best to get terrible grades. I knew nothing about test-prep, and buying a Kaplan book would have been a stretch. But my HS's counselor gave me a SAT fee waiver so I took the test and got near-perfect scores.

That made me feel like I should apply to good schools, and I liked Thai food and the New Yorker mag so I applied to Columbia. I wrote them an admissions essay about living in an Indian tipi and having a single mom, and submitted an application photo of me standing in front of my tipi. CU admissions ate that up and the rest is history.

However, I did have a supporting, loving, literate mother and I avoided becoming a meth addict/pot smoking loser. Both of those things really help avoid small-town stagnation.

Well now we need to see the photo. Good story.

Unfortunately that photo was on a spinning-platter hard drive and I knew nothing about backups. Of course it's still on one of Columbia's servers somewhere but liberating it would involve an unbelievable amount of red tape.

I think the fact you lived in a tipi and managed to not smoke pot is a greater accomplishment than perfect SAT scores. You're probably the only one!

The Ron Unz link I share below shows this is not an accurate picture. Plenty of high scoring "hicks" do apply to the ivy league but tend to be turned down. Participating in 4-H has been shown to have a large negative impact on your application! At elite colleges there is clearly a strong anti rural bias.

Hi a. I've followed you around HN for a while. I can count at least a dozen times where I've begun to write a comment about one of your comments. Really. So it's a strange honor to see you responding to me.

Anyway, you drive me mad, and I'd be very willing to have a public debate about pretty much anything with you, provided it was teleconferenced.

I've read the Unz article start to finish thrice as it was recommended to me by a dear friend, fellow semite (though he's mostly Mizrahi, and I'm largely Ashkenazi) and recent H grad. It's like a big turd taken after a visit to the cinema -- a pile of crap with kernels of truth in its midst.

I agree that our current college selection process is not ideal nor Pareto efficient, but I reject Unz's suggestions on how to reform them as well as the real nature of the problem.

If you'd like to have a long and serious debate on Unz, let's do it somewhere other than in this thread. How's a month from now? I need some time to prepare.

Edit: Somewhere to start: https://sites.google.com/site/nuritbaytch/ & http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-a...

Ron Unz found clear evidence that in the ivy league qualified poor whites and asians are actively discriminated against. Jews are disproportionately admitted.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...

This white "reverse racism" meme seems to have really caught on in the last decade or so. To the point that white people now think they are discriminated against more than black people[1]. Our culture sucks.

[1] http://politicalblindspot.com/study-finds-white-americans-be...

No, it's not that white people think they are discriminated again more than black people. The idea is that discrimination based on race is bad regardless of who it is practiced against.

Poor people are likely as rare in elite Silicon Valley investor portfolios.

The vast majority of investors today are from upper middle class backgrounds and educations. We know this isn't based on merit because they're almost universally bad at investing. But who makes the decision to invest in VCs? It's LP money managers with almost identical backgrounds.

"upper class"? As in aristocrats? Old money? I don't really think so. Maybe upper middle class.

We don't have aristocrats in the US. The term refers to people with wealthy backgrounds.

"We don't have aristocrats in the US."

Not yet.

The Kennedys and Bushes disagree with that assertion. ;)

Sure you do, you just call them dynasties.

edit - There is loads of European aristocracy in power in the US.

"The frequency with which royal blood has found its way into the White House is much higher than the share of the American population with links to British or European monarchs, which is estimated at less than 5 percent. In short, American Presidents have been at least six times more likely to have royal blood than the people who elected them."

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/bush-they-say-is-indeed...

Investing in poor people who are bad at managing their own money or improving their lot in life is probably not going to get you very good returns.

All joking aside. Upper middle class families are more likely to value, encourage and afford personal computers for their kids. That's what got me into programming. I started using my dad's computer too much when he had to work, so he bought the parts and a friend and I built my first computer at 14 with an awesome Riva TNT2 Ultra graphics card.

> Upper middle class families are more likely to value, encourage and afford personal computers for their kids.

Afford, sure. Value and encourage? I'd say they're more likely to demonize personal computers than to encourage them. My mom recently bought laptops for my little brother and sister, but she can't stand that they want to use them.

Among the middle class, computers for children have become yet another parenting moral panic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30

Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one? Where I'm from, about 8 universities offers roughly comparable Bc.S and Ph.D engineering programs. I'd guess that roughly 90% of the study material is the same. It's the same in many EU countries. No one, but an idiot, would claim that an engineer who studied in Luleå is more qualified than one who studied in Lund because of their choice of schools.

But in the US, if you graduated from (expensive) school X you are objectively more qualified than if you graduated from (cheaper) school Y?

Or if university programs are supposed to be equivalent across universities, cant you just lie and say you went to a brand-name university? Because it doesn't seem fair that someone who couldn't afford an expensive university should have his or her whole career retarded just because of that.

There is an enormous threshold effect once you hit the "elite" level of colleges, because it's where many industries heavily recruit. It's relatively easy to sleepwalk from Harvard into a career in finance or consulting, very difficult from even a very good state school. "Qualification" has nothing to do with it.

That isn't true across all industries, of course.

If you want to work for an elite company, you don't had a hands unless you go to one of their chosen schools. Lying is always a violation of your employment contract, so probably not the best course of action.

The real ripoff is mid tier private schools.

Exactly, I still have no idea why anyone in the right mind would want to go to a mid tier private school that no one has heard of yet still charges the same tuition as Stanford and Harvard!

Objective qualifications are not the primary filter. The biggest advantages are from a higher level of networking, your fellow students are generally from a higher income bracket, have better connections, etc. Similarly the best paying firms tend to focus on the more prestigious universities as well.

All of this leads to a situation where wealthy parents have the education and means to ensure that their children have the advantages to give them a better chance of going the more selective universities, adding another level of systemic injustice based on wealth.

> Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one?

One of the best engineers I know went to DeVry, which is definitely on the lower tier of schools. And I know a few great programmers that don't even technically have engineering degrees.

That being said, if I had to roll the dice I'd put my money on an MIT, Berkeley, or Caltech grad any day. The minimum standards, your peer group, and your opportunities are much better at an elite school. There are crappy grads from 'elite' schools, but the odds of this are a lot lower. And if you have a lot of talent, you're going to get noticed at the elite schools and have a much easier time finding a way to use your talent than at a lower-tier school.

But why are you contradicting your own anecdote? Do you have any evidence to believe "elite" university graduates are more competent? Seems to me like you and the sibling comments who also would pick the "elite" graduates could influenced by marketing.

But in the real world you don't have to roll the dice. You can ask applicants what courses they took and what their grade scores were. So if you had two applicants with the same grades in front of you, would you still pick the one that went to a brand name university?

> Do you have any evidence to believe "elite" university graduates are more competent?

I guess I'm talking about the difference between a strict rule and playing the odds.]

> You can ask applicants what courses they took and what their grade scores were. So if you had two applicants with the same grades in front of you, would you still pick the one that went to a brand name university?

With no other data, yeah, I'd pick the guy who graduated from MIT with great grades over the DeVry guy with the same grades. But of course my job during hiring is to try to acquire more data, and I swear I tried really, really hard, and sometimes it made the difference.

Short answer, no. Employment and wage statistics suggest that simply completing a 4 year course at an accredited school is sufficient to put you into the much smaller unemployment pool. Additionally major has a bigger impact that 'eliteness.'

That said, we were at the College recruiting fair this past spring helping out and one of the problems is that kids from disadvantaged familys do not even apply when they might be successful on the reasoning "Well if I got in, I couldn't afford it so why waste my time?"

We suggested to the representatives from Princeton, Ohio Wesleyn, USC. Stanford, and Brown (and any people we could talk to) that they make visible ways to apply without paying any fees for these kids. We have to make it at least a no-risk proposition for them to apply, in order to get them into the system in the first place. On the proactive side one of the parents was reaching out to the Bill and Melinda Gates trust to see about an application scholarship fund (basically fronting the application cost).

Computer engineering is probably a special case. It’s easier to demonstrate skills independent of credentials. Eg, a prominent open-source project or successful app likely proves employability as much as a degree.

It’s also true that the value of an elite education decays with time. The studies I’ve seen (someone help me with a cite) seem to indicate that after 10 years, choice of school has very little predictive power for one’s career success.

I think elite schools probably are helpful for elite engineering positions. One would expect a compsci degree from, say, Carnegie Mellon if hiring for, say, compilers or chip design or operating systems. But even then, successful work outside of university can trump the credential.

A small nitpick to your comment: the most elite schools in the US are not more expensive. Schools like Harvard and Princeton are effectively free for families at median income. Only very wealthy families pay the "sticker price". When you adjust the out-of-pocket costs by the risk of not graduating, the elite schools are even more affordable, because they offer significantly more supportive environments.

It isn't out-of-pocket costs that keep poorer people out. It's more the difficulty of becoming a highly competitive applicant when you're competing with students who have far more opportunities to develop academic and leadership skills.

Given that funding for elite colleges is largely about social signaling, if the poor and rich were fairly represented by ability in these colleges, wouldn't the rich move their money out and set up new elite colleges?

This is really interesting. It would be great to see how this plays out, as there are "menu effects" and "reputation effects", intertia and such that would make it awkward to have society make this change without people publicly admitting what they are doing.

This might be why you end up getting colleges within colleges within colleges. They are like a kind of social power fractal, that becomes crystallized in brick over time.

> Sustaining one poor student who needs $45,000 a year in aid requires $1 million in endowment devoted to that purpose

I don't see how this makes sense. Why does it require over 5x of what you would expect by multiplying cost per year times number of years??

The endowment is invested, and the dividend supports the student. This quote assumes a 4.5% yearly return on investment. If the institution spent the endowment directly, they would shortly no longer have it.

Shouldn't we be more concerned with the frequency of poor people becoming not poor? Frankly, I'm not convinced that going to college, potentially accumulating debt, and not having a guarantee of a job is really the best strategy for someone near or below the poverty line. Perhaps there are other avenues available that promise or at least offer positive outcomes that don't require a college education.

The problem should not fall on colleges - if someone grew up poor and that held them back then sadly I think it is too late for them - colleges should not have to reach down. Assistance needs to begin way before poverty stricken kids apply for college!!!! That's why I think we need more programs like Head Start.

P.S. Teacher pay needs to increase while at the same time teachers must be tested for competency.

I still feel offended that my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, is not need-blind despite its $5.7 Billion endowment.

Wash U alum here. I agree: unacceptable.

I believe Wash U uses the term "need-aware." It aggressively recruits based on "merit" at the cost of socioeconomic diversity. While I was attending, Wash U had the most National Merit Finalists, largely because those students get at bare minimum a $2k/yr scholarship for showing up.[1]

On the one hand, this has resulted in a significant increase in the standardized test performance of its student body [2]--and that has probably resulted in higher rankings overall. On the other hand, there's a simulated environment quality to being around people who are all so similarly well off. For example, every student from a 150k+ income family thinks of his/herself as middle class. Not much perspective.

[1] http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-highest-sat...

Thanks god. Last thing we need is actual meritocracy where people can cross class boundaries with hardwork and a bit of cunning.

Harvard and Princeton are rubber stamp universities for the elite. GW Bush graduated from Harvard.

Bush has an MBA from Harvard, which unlike many MBA programs, is pretty impressive. He got his BA in History from Yale, averaging a 77. (All according to Wikipedia.)

Edit: I mostly agree with your post, but I don't think dragging Bush into the discussion is constructive.

Who knows how many of his papers he did himself?

[Because usually wealthy drug abusing rich sons of prestigious fathers do all their hard work themselves right?]

And your point is? A lot of lame people graduated from Harvard. A bunch of them. And they have no clue how economics work. 96% of political contributions from ivy league staff and faculty went to obama, not romney.

Looks like GW was a yale grad, Obama harvard. Oops I stand corrected, GW has degrees from both.

thanks for the input, reddit. guess where ralph nader went. oh, and jill stein.

Quite a few nobel laureates are also associated with Harvard. [1] I'm sure one could cherry pick rich jokers from virtually any school.

[1] http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates

The question is not whether the unqualified, but elite are getting into elite universities. We already know that to be the case.

The question is whether the qualified, but impoverished can get into these universities.

No one asserted that these universities represent pure meritocracies.

What really matters: Are the most capable getting into elite colleges?

Do you think that it's rare that the poor are the most capable? Presumably, if the poor are underrepresented at these schools, they're missing out on a lot of potential people who are very capable. I studied at Harvard and certainly wish the student body were more economically diverse, as challenging of a problem as it is to solve. It can be very hard to identify highly capable high schoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds since they often don't go through the sort of differentiation that the wealthier high schoolers coming to schools like Harvard do (top high schools, academic summer programs, research at local universities, et cetera). And that's ignoring the problem of getting them to apply and attend.

Edit: grammar

By what metric, and over what timeframe?

I went to Amherst, which has made a very concerted effort both to make an Amherst education affordable to low-income students (the school is free for people making under $60K/year, and has generous financial aid for the $60-100K range) and to recruit from low-income neighborhoods. I've heard it has been...challenging. It's very difficult to find students from low-income backgrounds who can handle a freshman Amherst courseload. Heck, I found it quite difficult as well, and I came from a solid middle-class background, had aced my SATs, passed 8 AP tests, etc. The school has had to bump up remedial tutoring and study-skills courses particularly to low-income students.

It's hard to catch up with 18 years of systemic advantages in one year.

Now, I do think that over a lifetime many people who grew up poor are as capable or moreso than people who grew up rich. But it takes time, effort, and opportunity, and if any one of those is missing, it doesn't happen. College may provide the opportunity to students who put in the effort, but without time...they can't catch up. Students may put in a sustained effort over a long period of time (I think this may actually be the most effective approach, as opportunities tend to come to people who do this), but without opportunities, they'll go nowhere. Or we could set up a concerted system of opportunities over a time period ranging from pre-school to college, but unless you can convince people that it's worth the effort, they won't make a difference.

Interesting how you thing it is obvious that you are more capable than low-income folks with the same test scores as you, or that you assume that there aren't low-income students with the same test scores as you.

Would you mind elaborating on what you mean by "capable"?

What really matters: Actually reading the article.

The entire point, beginning with the very first paragraph...

"This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges."

...is that these students are completely capable, yet underrepresented with the cited studies bearing that out in good detail.

Reading the article? Sounds like somebody went to a state school!

Elite colleges are overrated and overpriced for bachelors degrees. It's different if you're getting a masters degree but for the most part you learn the same basics in a bachelor degree at any accredited school. Maybe they are doing the smart thing by choosing schools with a better value per dollar.

If you're poor, the most elite colleges are either free or nearly free. Some avoid using debt at all in financial aid.

The most elite colleges can be a better deal than a state school.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com