Reply to If it’s harder then ever to get into top colleges, why do professors complain students now are bad?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "If it’s harder then ever to get into top colleges, why do professors complain students now are bad?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. [b]A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive.[/b] Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids. [/quote]
I’m so tired of this nonsense coming from mostly wealthy privileged families.

This is so cheap for most of the colleges that engage in this practice. Fly ins are almost exclusively at need blind institutions with billions in the bank. Fly in students are mostly students from top magnet schools and boarding schools. How do I know? I was one of them and most of us knew each other already because we were already identified as top students by CBOs most here would never know about.

A majority of top colleges don’t even have summer “remedial” programs in the way you are discussing them. Many have early access research and other programs, so students are connected to faculty early and can network before your wealthy children come in and take up excessive space. Your entire point about the UK is stupid, because the UK has a nationalized curriculum and even they’ve had to start adopting practices to improve low income representation.

Our issue is people like you are in the way. Instead of advocating for improving resources, you want to dissolve pathways for low income students with no practical replacement for stupid conceptions of merit that are made to exclude. We are already moving back to test required, so I’m excited to see the new excuses this forum makes for when talented low income students are still attending these top institutions.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics