Do we
need class warfare in the country? Those who participated in the Occupy Wall Street
movement thought so. But the battle lines are being drawn for a new battle that
will take place at selective colleges and universities. You may be surprised to
find out who stands to win and who stands to lose. I have written about this
before, but I will attempt to address the issue from the perspective of schools
and the perspective of those individuals who will find their efforts and hard
work will not being enough to stand out among those who are part of favored
groups.
There
have been a large number of articles recently focused on the plight of
low-income students. A number of studies just published indicate that students
who are low income and are in the top of their high school classes and who have
SAT scores in the top 10% of the national pool are not being recruited by the
top colleges and universities in the US. One of the articles, from Inside
Higher Education, grabs our attention by
demonstrating that even valedictorians who are low income and who fall into the
top 10% for SATs are not being sought out by the most selective schools in the
country. The way this article and others like it present the information, it
appears that schools are willfully ignoring these students. Having worked in
selective admission and having read thousands of exceptional student applications
from all economic levels, I would propose that while there may be some use to
getting selective schools to reach out more effectively to some of these low
income studens, the data behind the hype demonstrates that schools may actually
be doing that correct thing by not encouraging students to apply who have
little chance at being accepted.
This
article does raise some important issues, but at the same time does not report
important data which would help clarify why so many economically disadvantaged
students are not being recruited to the most selective colleges and
universities in the U.S.
The
first set of data that is not mentioned centers on the number of applications
submitted to top schools from the best students from around the US and around
the world. With applications topping 30,000 at some Ivies and other top
schools, the competition for spaces has increased dramatically in just the past
5 years. Acceptance rates are now below 10% at most of these schools. The
percentage of students who are not accepted who are valedictorians, whether
economically disadvantaged or not, is in some cases quite high—over 50%. It
should come as no surprise then that many of the students in this study are not
competitive for admission in such a strong pool of applicants. It does not indicate that there is any bias against this group of students.
College / University Overall Admit Rate Total Applicants Accepted
Brown 9.16% 28,919 2649
Columbia 6.89% 33,531 2,311
Cornell 15.15% 40,006 6,062
Dartmouth 10.05% 22,416 2,252
Harvard 5.79% 35,023 2,029
Princeton 7.29% 26,498 1,931
U. of Pennsylvania 12.10% 31,280 3,785
Yale 6.72% 29,610 1,991
The
second set of data points worth examining are the group statistics of the
students in the study: Students who self-report their grades as A- or higher
and have SAT scores in the top 10%. In a vacuum these stats sound quite good,
but measured against the applicant pool they are nothing special. A Critical Reading
score of 650 places a student in the top 10% nationally. A glance at Harvard’s
SAT average demonstrates that a score in this range is well below their average
of 697. The same holds true for each of the other subset scores on the SAT. Top
10% scores, in other words, are actually quite low in the pool of applicants to
places like Harvard. In
addition, students who are admitted to Harvard more often than not, have
staggeringly challenging academic programs.
What the
study does not report, and I do not think asked for, were the number of
Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes the students took in
secondary school. Schools in low income neighborhoods still often offer Aps but
not nearly at the rate of strong suburban public schools or any of the top
private and boarding schools. It is no longer unusual for students admitted to
top schools to have completed 10 or more AP courses by graduation. The number of
low-income students who have completed this number of AP courses is, I am certain,
very small. And for those who do, the numbers who earn scores of 4 and 5 would
be even smaller. Academic program is closely tied to academic success and yet
the study does not attempt to provide statistical information on this critical
assessment tool. To leave this out of the research is to skew the findings in
ways that makes it appear that selective schools are not adequately interested
in enrolling low-income students.
Finally, a premise the research
starts with needs to be examined. The current rush of articles and papers on
how low income students are being overlooked falls in line with what many other
attempts to rectify disparities from above often do—transform individuals into
statistical groups. Clumping individual students into a subset is sometimes
useful and sometimes not. In this case, I think it is a little of both. What
the article leaves out, for example, are the racial characteristics of
low-income students. A glance at the data demonstrates that 75% of the
low-income pool is white and 15% are Asian. 85% of these students, if they are
grouped in with other people of the same race, have to compete with the top of
the top of the applicant pool as an aggregate.
If all
those who were admitted because of some special ties to a favored group—under-represented minorities, legacies, athletes, development cases, children
of faculty etc.—then the SATs and academics rubrics based on performance would
be significantly higher than they already are taking the applicant pool as a
whole.
Let us
suppose, as a thought experiment, that the pressure being put on selective
schools to admit more low-income students works. What will happen? Another
group will then, from here on out, be measured and reported on each year. A
school’s commitment to this group will be measured by rising percentages of the
group. Raises will go to those deans who accomplish this. But at what cost? I
use this word 'cost' in its economic and metaphoric sense. Admitting low-income students at higher rates also means supporting them economically. Given full grants
to even 20 students a year amounts to over a 1 million dollars given current
tuition rates. A million dollars every year that does not go to salaries or
program or anything to do with the classes means that funds have to be found
that do not support the primary academic mission of the school. Need based aid
fundraising is one of the more difficult areas for development offices. People
would rather give to something with their name on it be it a building or a
merit scholarship.
Endowments are large at top schools
but many assume that money is readily available. For many top schools, this is simply not the case. Budgets are
tight when it comes to the day to day running of any university. The cost here
may be to expanding academic programs or hiring more faculty, but there will
have to be trade offs if a commitment is made to increase, significantly,
low-income students' presence on any campus.
The
other cost is to the other groups. If more spaces are allotted to low-income
students, this means that some other groups will have to suffer losses. Unless
a decision is made to increase the enrollment, it is a zero sum game. And who
will be the losers? It is very unlikely that the other special groups will take
the hit. If schools lower the number of legacies, athletes, under-represented
students etc., then there will be consequences either in terms of alumni
support or in terms of appearing negligent of racial diversity.
If not
them, then who? The ones who are already being squeezed the most, the people
who are the brightest groups of students-- upper middle class Whites and
Asians. The Ivies already have a defacto quota for Asians. The charts published
in the NY Times and other places detailing this phenomenon statistically seem
to provide convincing proof of this. Should an Asian student with 2400 SATs,
perfect grades, and over 10 APs be denied in favor of a low income Asian with
lower scores, a weaker program, and costs to bear? So too for white students.
If
schools are going to be measured by their ability to enroll more and more
targeted groups, then the idea of a relatively fair holistic evaluation of each
applicant must suffer. The students who have done everything right and are
nearly perfect in every way except for not being part of a favored group will
be the ones not admitted. Maybe this is the way education should work at our
most selective schools, however, it seems very far from the premise that
individuals are what matters most in the world of admission in the world at
large.
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