Anonymous wrote:In response to those who have suggested that "poor" students (not sure how they're defining this term) aren't going to make it at highly- selective colleges, I'll trust that your concern is coming from the right place, but I don't think the answer is to keep the barriers to entry up. My son just completed his freshman year at a highly-ranked university with a demanding curriculum and stringent grading. He graduated from a local independent school and was very well-prepared, having written 5 or 6 research papers during high school. In contrast. he observed that some of his friends who had gone to inner-city schools or regional high schools in rural areas faced a real challenge in making the transition to college. A couple of these students had never written a research paper and had done very few essays beyond the formulaic AP requirements. What those kids did, though, was to get help when they needed it. The most selective schools have high graduation rates for a reason -- they offer support services, particularly with respect to writing, for students who enter with less preparation. Keep in mind, too, that those kids generally aren't frail flowers prone to wilting; rather, they survive and flourish. For one example, take a look at Justice Sotomayor's autobiography, My Beloved World, and her account of her experience at Princeton after coming out of an urban parochial school background. I'd say she didn't do too badly in the long run.

The one world theory...

In response to those who have suggested that "poor" students (not sure how they're defining this term) aren't going to make it at highly- selective colleges, I'll trust that your concern is coming from the right place, but I don't think the answer is to keep the barriers to entry up. My son just completed his freshman year at a highly-ranked university with a demanding curriculum and stringent grading. He graduated from a local independent school and was very well-prepared, having written 5 or 6 research papers during high school. In contrast. he observed that some of his friends who had gone to inner-city schools or regional high schools in rural areas faced a real challenge in making the transition to college. A couple of these students had never written a research paper and had done very few essays beyond the formulaic AP requirements. What those kids did, though, was to get help when they needed it. The most selective schools have high graduation rates for a reason -- they offer support services, particularly with respect to writing, for students who enter with less preparation. Keep in mind, too, that those kids generally aren't frail flowers prone to wilting; rather, they survive and flourish. For one example, take a look at Justice Sotomayor's autobiography, My Beloved World, and her account of her experience at Princeton after coming out of an urban parochial school background. I'd say she didn't do too badly in the long run.

I grew up poor with nearly a dozen kinds in my family. We never expected anyone to pay for our college. So we worked our tails off and took public transportation to go to the local public college. Why would anyone think they deserve for someone else to pay for them to go to college? In a democracy -- some people have more than others. That's what freedom means -- not everyone has the same stuff...this isn't socialism. If you want that...vote for it. Until then, no one deserves a free college education.

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3) Notwithstanding the above, if you look at the research by Avery and Hoxby, what's apparent is not that poor kids aren't well-qualified for admission to highly selective colleges and universities, but that they don't even apply. This is a significant and disturbing problem that universities, including my Ivy alma mater, are just beginning to grapple with.

This is what I've seen in my experience.

I went to a high school in a blue collar town. None of us applied to Ivy League schools. It didn't even occur to us that we were qualified for the Ivy League. I was a National Merit Scholar with a boatload of sports and clubs, all honors classes, a job, and very good ACT/SAT scores. There were two dozen other kids just as qualified at my high school . No one advising us had the slightest idea how to apply to an Ivy League school or why we should consider it.

Yes, I agree. I grew up in a poor rural town and, despite getting a 1600 on the SAT, acing my AP exams (physics, chem, and calculus), and having a STEM major as a woman, no one -- my parents, my school counselors, my teachers -- even brought up the subject of applying to an elite college. It was just too out of the realm of their reality. I ended up getting a full scholarship to a great state school, but an elite school would have probably opened doors that are now forever closed to me. Not bitter -- but I will be a huge advocate for my DD when it comes time for college. I suspect part of the reason people in DC can be so rabid about this is that they have similar backgrounds to me and want better for their children.

Why on earth would the power elite want to do that?

Anonymous wrote:Why would anyone think that the poor in America (300 million of them) are entitled to an Ivy education? The middle class can not afford 60K + yearly (240K+) There are plenty of colleges around. Why the Ivys have to take the poor? BTW, they do accept scholarship students. Why the outrage?

So, there are 300 million poor in the United States? That is the entire population of the country. I do not see outrage, but I see problems for these institutions if they become increasingly insulated and isolated from the larger society. Are they to be stepping stones in upward mobility or the bastions of a narrow socio-economic privilege?

Anonymous wrote:Why would anyone think that the poor in America (300 million of them) are entitled to an Ivy education? The middle class can not afford 60K + yearly (240K+) There are plenty of colleges around. Why the Ivys have to take the poor? BTW, they do accept scholarship students. Why the outrage?

Access to the Ivy League is access to powe and class mobility in the US.

The top Ivies have huge endowments and have committed to making an Ivy league education affordable for every student. Up to about $200,000, they provide substantial need aid and continue to provide it after that on a sliding-scale.

That commitment looks great, because it suggests that they are committed to class mobility in the US. However, if they don't take kids from lower income areas and middle class areas, it's a sham. They're not really committed to class mobility, they just want to look like they are.

Anonymous wrote:Why the ridiculous anger at the poster who has BTDT and says that it takes some work to get through?

I wonder if this is the troll from the Hate on Landon threads. It's too bad, because this forum and just a few others usually have very helpful posters and I was hoping we could avoid the sort of BS that takes place in Off Topic.

Why the ridiculous anger at the poster who has BTDT and says that it takes some work to get through?

Why would anyone think that the poor in America (300 million of them) are entitled to an Ivy education? The middle class can not afford 60K + yearly (240K+) There are plenty of colleges around. Why the Ivys have to take the poor? BTW, they do accept scholarship students. Why the outrage?

Anonymous wrote:
This is the funniest thing I've read in a long, long ime. No defensivness about the "quality" of Ivy admits to see here. Move along, people, move along.

Sweetie, your class anxiety is showing. You should make an effort to argue with logic instead of insults and off-topic mud-slinging, and then you could earn the respect you so obviously crave.

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Anonymous wrote:However, I don't think the solution is just to send kids who never had to write a research paper to an Ivy.

Why not? With the grade inflation at the Ivies these days, it doesn't really matter. Once you get in, you're entitled to a gentleman's B+.

I'm sorry, but perhaps you are thinking of Harvard in the 1950s, or you are just wrong. My kid is at an Ivy and there's no entitlement to a gentleman's B+ anymore. Some schools have reputations for being easier (hello, Harvard). But you will still flail if you can't write a research paper.

(1) YOUR KID GOT IN TO AN IVY!!! I'M SOOO IMPRESSED! (This was the point of your post, I assume.)

(2) If you seriously think top performing kids from low performing areas "can't write a research paper," you need to get your head out of your hind region. "Writing a research paper" is not the same as invention cold-fusion, even if your perfect little snowflake insists it is and that you should send more money immediately because your LO has it SOOOOO hard. Also, it's not West Point.

(3) I see the worst writing from Ivy-leage grads. Absolutely dreadful. It doesn't mean I don't also see excellent writing from other Ivy-league grads--I do. But if they're using some writing litmus test in the Ivies, then they need to change the formula.

Dear poster:

You are an idiot. You clearly don't have ANY understanding about the workload at a selective college, including Ivies. This doesn't disqualify you from having a happy successful life, but it TOTALLY DISQUALIFIES YOU from commenting on what it takes to succeed at a selective college. You clearly have NO CLUE. Which makes your bullying, insulting, pitiable insults even more OBNOXIOUS, NASTY AND STUPID. (Sorry for the caps, but you seem to think caps are necessary for communication, so I'm trying to help you out here.) I have a niece who pulled down straight As in a bad highschool in WVA, who never wrote a research paper.

If it helps, think Stanford, MIT, or top SLACs instead. Clearly you find the word "Ivy" very threatening, which says a lot about you, and distracts you from your ability to listen to people who actually know what they're talking about.

That's all I have to say to you, because you are an ignorant blowhard who blathers on about things you don't understand. Are you the Stony Brook bully by any chance? Buh bye!

This is the funniest thing I've read in a long, long ime. No defensivness about the "quality" of Ivy admits to see here. Move along, people, move along.

Thanks, PP. There will always be some people rich enough to pay private school tuition, but I agree with you that it would be a bad outcome if the top universities and SLACs turn into ivory towers for the privileged few.

I agree we need to shore up public education, both at the K-12 and college level. I was dismayed to read one prediction that community colleges will be the most threatened by MOOCs, although I'm not sure I agree. On the other hand, MOOCs run in a rigorous way might be a big part of the answer to providing a solid credential that employers can trust at a price most can afford.

Cohen has a piece in today's Post about the benefits of taking anthropology in college. I agree with him, yet I'm also worried about that ivory-tower-for-the-rich aspect. Can MOOCs with distributional requirements make this sort of academic free inquiry affordable? I don't know.

To the toxic PP, the phrase is "gentleman's C" not "gentleman's B+". You really shouldn't be posting toxic screeds on college readiness standards if you didn't go to college yourself.

Going forward, I think the Ivies and other "elite" schools, are going to have some very difficult issues to confront as to their mission, the students they serve and their relevance to the larger society. This will be especially true as the demographics of our society continue to change and evolve.

The U.S. population is undergoing very serious changes and the country will look very different in 2050 than it does today. The overall population, fueled by immigration, will grow to 438 million. The country will be a "minority-majority." While whites will still be the largest ethnic/racial group at 47%, the balance will be Hispanic, black and Asian at, respectively, 29 %; 13% 9%. Much of the working age population that will be supporting a majority white retiree population will be black and Hispanic. Meanwhile, increasing income inequality will mean less for the lower and middle classes.

Given that the public schools in the U.S. to date have a poor record of addressing the education gap between whites and minorities, it behooves us as a society to find some way of closing this gap so that more of our up and coming population can find a place at our elite institutions. These institutions should have a self interest in promoting and supporting whatever it takes to do this. Otherwise, they will find themselves to be only bastions of privilege with little relevance in an otherwise diverse country.

America needs a recommitment to those aspects of the American dream that made this country such a draw for the likes of my great-grandparents: the infrastructure - educational, political, physical and social - that made it possible for someone who, in Bill Clinton's words, "works hard and plays by the rules" to have a chance to succeed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However, I don't think the solution is just to send kids who never had to write a research paper to an Ivy.

Why not? With the grade inflation at the Ivies these days, it doesn't really matter. Once you get in, you're entitled to a gentleman's B+.

I'm sorry, but perhaps you are thinking of Harvard in the 1950s, or you are just wrong. My kid is at an Ivy and there's no entitlement to a gentleman's B+ anymore. Some schools have reputations for being easier (hello, Harvard). But you will still flail if you can't write a research paper.

(1) YOUR KID GOT IN TO AN IVY!!! I'M SOOO IMPRESSED! (This was the point of your post, I assume.)

(2) If you seriously think top performing kids from low performing areas "can't write a research paper," you need to get your head out of your hind region. "Writing a research paper" is not the same as invention cold-fusion, even if your perfect little snowflake insists it is and that you should send more money immediately because your LO has it SOOOOO hard. Also, it's not West Point.

(3) I see the worst writing from Ivy-leage grads. Absolutely dreadful. It doesn't mean I don't also see excellent writing from other Ivy-league grads--I do. But if they're using some writing litmus test in the Ivies, then they need to change the formula.

Wow, I'm still stunned at this overreaction. You seemed very threatened. And frankly, you seem like a truly horrible person.