Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No. Last bastion of need-blind admissions.
Not quite, though they say that officially.
It costs 60k a year to attend an Ivy, and a disproportionate amount of students have parents who can easily afford that. I've met kids whose family attended Cornell and other Ivies multigenerationally.
Also they recruit in certain geographic areas (particularly at certain private schools) that have high percentages of wealthy.
Ivies will have lots of students from the Northeast, California, Texas, and the wealthiest parts of the South (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas). Basically they emphasize recruiting from the wealthier states). And of course there will be a decent percentage of international students who are either wealthy or who have foreign government paying all their tuition for them (foreign students cannot get financial aid as undergraduates though they can get graduate fellowships).
I'm not saying poor students don't get in (for those of us who do you get excellent financial aid which was donated to the universities by wealthy alumnae and wealthy parents) but no one should be under the illusion that having money doesn't help you get into a top university. It's a major factor, directly. Indirectly wealthy people have the money for tutors, test preparation, the best schools, so money helps indirectly as well.