I feel bad for low-income/first-gen students at elite schools

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It really means many of them were academically less qualified to get into Princeton in the first place. They took advantage of the rest of the applicants, got a free ride (FA and more), and now they're asking for more free rides?

Your comment indicates that you have no understanding of what it means to be from a family where no one has gone to college and there is no money for anything but necessities.

I do understand. But where does it end in terms of giving them free rides?

+1 👍

Princeton is not a government welfare office. It’s not meals-on-wheels. It’s not Salvation Army. Got it?

It’s a private institution. Barring discriminating against protected classes, it can admit & give FA to whomever it pleaaes.

The problem is that they are not discriminating against the unprepared, as they should be.

They “should do” whatever they please.

Nah, we already know that no "private institution" is allowed to do whatever it pleases. That's been off the table since 1965.

You missed the “against protected classes” part.

There is massive government intrusion into "private institutions" since 1965 that isn't related to stopping "discrimination against protected classes".

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It really means many of them were academically less qualified to get into Princeton in the first place. They took advantage of the rest of the applicants, got a free ride (FA and more), and now they're asking for more free rides?

Your comment indicates that you have no understanding of what it means to be from a family where no one has gone to college and there is no money for anything but necessities.

I do understand. But where does it end in terms of giving them free rides?

+1 👍

Princeton is not a government welfare office. It’s not meals-on-wheels. It’s not Salvation Army. Got it?

It’s a private institution. Barring discriminating against protected classes, it can admit & give FA to whomever it pleaaes.

The problem is that they are not discriminating against the unprepared, as they should be.

How are you supposed to discriminate? All the low-income admits to Princeton I know were valedictorian or salutatorian.

If only there were some sort of standardized test they could use to judge people from widely different schools across the country.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they go to those schools and major in useless stuff, then good luck.
Of course it's better than majoring in useless stuff at a mediocre school, however it has more to do with major.

Who has the luxury of useless degrees?
I was first gen and went into engineering and did fine, even though a different science might have been my first pick if money was no object. I knew I had to have a career track right out of undergrad.

What you may not know about being poor is that you don't pick up merchandise unless you already know the price of it. I knew the other degrees were not in my budget.

Lots of lesser prepared kids get weeded out of “useful” majors like engineering, biology, computer science, physics & statistics. Even nursing (although Princeton doesn’t offer that).

Simple reason: Because those URM kids who were admitted only because of AA/DEI can’t handle STEM. In liberal arts they can fudge. They may even be given a free pass if they can’t write grammatically correct sentences. (Not suggesting that ANY liberal arts professors should EVER do that!) But in STEM there is no way to fudge.

+1 a DEI type student in my DC's math class got into an ivy. DC says this kid struggles a lot in the math class, and that they are going to flame out in the math classes there.

So what? That kid will graduate with an Ivy degree, and yours won't.

If they flame out, no, they won't graduate with an Ivy degree. But, to OP's point, part of the reason why you see some kids struggling is because of the "holistic" admissions factor.

Also, recruiters do look at college GPA for recent grads.

But they are not going to flame out because it rarely happens at elite schools because the schools care about their graduation numbers. The student will just change to a non-math-heavy major and graduate with a 3.5. Happens all the time.

That's true.. elite univ care too much about their graduation rate to let a student fail out. Companies don't care if they have to fire an employee because they aren't up to par.

Agree with switching majors.. humanities majors are way easier then STEM majors.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they go to those schools and major in useless stuff, then good luck.
Of course it's better than majoring in useless stuff at a mediocre school, however it has more to do with major.

Who has the luxury of useless degrees?
I was first gen and went into engineering and did fine, even though a different science might have been my first pick if money was no object. I knew I had to have a career track right out of undergrad.

What you may not know about being poor is that you don't pick up merchandise unless you already know the price of it. I knew the other degrees were not in my budget.

Lots of lesser prepared kids get weeded out of “useful” majors like engineering, biology, computer science, physics & statistics. Even nursing (although Princeton doesn’t offer that).

Simple reason: Because those URM kids who were admitted only because of AA/DEI can’t handle STEM. In liberal arts they can fudge. They may even be given a free pass if they can’t write grammatically correct sentences. (Not suggesting that ANY liberal arts professors should EVER do that!) But in STEM there is no way to fudge.

+1 a DEI type student in my DC's math class got into an ivy. DC says this kid struggles a lot in the math class, and that they are going to flame out in the math classes there.

So what? That kid will graduate with an Ivy degree, and yours won't.

If they flame out, no, they won't graduate with an Ivy degree. But, to OP's point, part of the reason why you see some kids struggling is because of the "holistic" admissions factor.

Also, recruiters do look at college GPA for recent grads.

96% of Pell grant recipients graduated from Princeton, compared to 97% of non-Pell grant recipients.

The low-income kids at Princeton graduate at a nearly identical rate. And a 3.5 vs 3.7 GPA is almost indistinguishable to most employers.

that's probably true, but the lack of internships will hurt, as shown by OP's post where they have a higher rate of not being employed after graduation.

However, I do think that lower income students are scrappier than umc students, so they will be fine.

I think it's those who were admitted for "holistic" reasons other than income will struggle more.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to STRONGLY recommend folks click through to the link because OP is cherrypicking data.

Recruited athletes do much worse than FGLI students, for example.

The group least likely to report having cheated? Yes, the group most likely this those reporting under $40K per year HHI. The second mostly likely group to cheat? Those whose HHIs are above $500K.

Look for yourselves. It's not nearly as cut-and-dried as OP would have you believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to STRONGLY recommend folks click through to the link because OP is cherrypicking data.

Recruited athletes do much worse than FGLI students, for example.

The group least likely to report having cheated? Yes, the group most likely this those reporting under $40K per year HHI. The second mostly likely group to cheat? Those whose HHIs are above $500K.

Look for yourselves. It's not nearly as cut-and-dried as OP would have you believe.

I don't really know what the recruited athlete data has to do with anything. It's irrelevant. The argument is between first gen/LI and non students.

The same thing is true for the cheating data. The point was about first gen/LI vs non-students. That those above HHI 500K are also more likely to cheat compared to the student body at large is interesting, I guess, but not applicable to this discussion.

I did not cherry pick anything. I listed out all the data I saw that compared the two groups for academic and income measures.

And if you're curious, my implicit understanding of the cheating point was that it's probably more common among low-income students at Princeton to be under tremendous stress/anxiety from academics, due to lack of preparation, work expectations, family obligations and worries, etc. That could result in a situation where a student might justify bypassing the honor code so they could do well. Of course, this could happen to any student at Princeton, but the gap between low income students and the student body at a large is noticeable (there's another one between liberal arts and engineering graduates, for instance- maybe due to rigor differences in the objective evaluation of assignments). It's a position I feel sympathetic about. The majority of LIFG students at Princeton are not cheaters.

[Anonymous]

Many elite schools are not needs blind, so don't assume first generation/low-income college kids aren't every bit as bright as yours. In many cases, they're smarter. That said, it's hard to get the same grades as your peers when working 3 work study jobs. Even with a "full ride" there is often a work study requirement, and at elite schools non-FA kids are not spending their weekends cleaning up after their peers in the dining halls. At my college, there were no mentorship programs for low-income students like there were for some groups through DEI programs. It was hard socially, and also sometimes hard academically. With a small school, dinners at professors houses and class discussions often made me feel like a fish out of water.

[Anonymous]

Just like some posters are arguing that the data shows that the FGLI students aren’t academically prepared, I would interpret the 500K+ cheaters are also not prepared and are admitted because of hooks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just like some posters are arguing that the data shows that the FGLI students aren’t academically prepared, I would interpret the 500K+ cheaters are also not prepared and are admitted because of hooks.

See: Kushner, Jared

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I teach in a Title 1 school and the rigor and workload is definitely lacking. Teachers are basically begging students to show up and hand in any work. If one of my high fliers went to a top school, the workload would crush them.

I went from a 60% FARMs public high school (that I took 6 AP classes at) to a T30 state flagship. No issues re: workload. I do come from a middle/upper middle class family, though.

Was this recently because times have changed. It isn’t hard to get top grades these days in most public schools.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I teach in a Title 1 school and the rigor and workload is definitely lacking. Teachers are basically begging students to show up and hand in any work. If one of my high fliers went to a top school, the workload would crush them.

Sigh, yes, I know.
It crushed me in my first semester, but I'm not a tin can. I scrambled to find what resources I could and graduated with a decent GPA (tough to make up fully for 1st sem.) Did well in my upper level classes and ended up in some good employment positions due to input from some of my professors. I'm scrappy and I'll bet some of your kids are too.

Some of them are but sadly most don’t make it through to graduation. They end up working to pay the bills at home.

[Anonymous]

I think the OP is completely disingenuous. She doesn't feel bad for anyone, except maybe her kid who she thinks should more rightfully have taken the spot at an Ivy that a low income kid got instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the OP is completely disingenuous. She doesn't feel bad for anyone, except maybe her kid who she thinks should more rightfully have taken the spot at an Ivy that a low income kid got instead.

Spot on.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just like some posters are arguing that the data shows that the FGLI students aren’t academically prepared, I would interpret the 500K+ cheaters are also not prepared and are admitted because of hooks.

See: Kushner, Jared

Typical what-aboutism. The stats didn’t say that rich kids don’t cheat. It says that poor kids cheat at a much higher percentage than rich kids, and still they get worse grades on average.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just like some posters are arguing that the data shows that the FGLI students aren’t academically prepared, I would interpret the 500K+ cheaters are also not prepared and are admitted because of hooks.

See: Kushner, Jared

Typical what-aboutism. The stats didn’t say that rich kids don’t cheat. It says that poor kids cheat at a much higher percentage than rich kids, and still they get worse grades on average.

The 500k+ group is 27.3 percent. The bottom low income group is 32. That’s much higher??