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How the Rich get the money to go to College and the Poor Don't

Elite schools make room for average students
who happen to be rich

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Richer Students Receive Much More Merit-Based Aid Than Do Poorer Ones, Study Finds
http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/01/2007011705n.htm
7.1.17 By ELIZABETH F. FARRELL
Merit scholarships are disproportionately awarded to students fromhigh-income families, and the percentage of merit aid colleges give out, compared to need-based aid, has increased significantly since 1994, according to report scheduled for release today.
From 1994 to 2004, students from families in the top-income quartile ($111,170 or higher annually) received three times as much merit aid as students in the lowest income quartile ($37,745 or less). Families in the lowest quartile spend 58% of their income on the net price of college, compared with 12% of income for families in the highest income group, according to the report, which was issued by Eduventures, an education-consulting company.
During the same 10-year span, the proportion of merit aid to total grant aid distributed increased from 6% to 16 %. The total amount of financial aid awarded from federal, state, and institutional grants reached $39-billion in 2004, compared with a total of $7-billion in merit aid.
The distribution of need-based and merit aid varied depending on the type of institution. Public institutions that cost $16,819 to $28,828 a year had the smallest difference between their tuition discounts for merit compared with need. Private institutions that cost more than $28,828 provided the highest proportion of need-based aid, and used merit aid only sparingly, according to the study.
Other findings in the report reinforce the assumption that the "line is blurring" between need-based and non-need-based aid. As students' SAT scores rise, so do their awards of need-based aid. Students in the lowest income quartile who scored at or below 1140 on the SAT received, on average, $8,403 in financial aid, while the mean award for students with the same family income who scored at or above 1261 was $10,820.
The data suggest, according to the report, that "need-based awards may be used, in part, as a recruiting mechanism to attract students of relatively higher academic profiles."
Differences in merit aid are particularly striking between students who scored very high on the SAT and those who got a perfect or almost-perfect score. The average merit-based award for students who earned a 1560 was $7,500, compared with a mean award in excess of $20,000 for students who scored above that.

At Private Colleges, Share of Aid to Wealthy Families Rose in 1990s
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i22/22a04301.htm
Students from wealthy families received much more financial aid from private colleges in 2000 than they did in 1993, according to a policy paper that was posted on the Web site of Education Sector, a new, Washington-based research group. The aid offered to students
from low-income families remained relatively stagnant, the paper says.
Mr. Carey said he worried that some colleges had become dependent on using merit-aid grants as they engaged in bidding wars for affluent, high-achieving students, whose presence raises colleges' standing in popular magazine rankings. In so doing, he said,
colleges are failing to use their financial-aid resources in ways that would maximize access for low-income students. Mr. Carey's policy brief is based on data from a table in the federal report, "The Condition of Education 2004," from the National Center for Education Statistics.
According to the federal data, wealthy students gained both relatively and in absolute terms from 1993 to 2000. (The figures apply only to four-year, nonprofit private colleges, and only to financial aid offered by the colleges themselves. They do not include student loans or grants provided by the federal government.)

In 1993 only 35 percent of the wealthy students at four-year private institutions in the United States -- "wealthy" meaning students whose parents' income was in the highest quartile -- received financial-aid packages from their colleges. By 2000 that proportion had risen to 51.2 percent.

The proportion of low-income students who received aid -- "low income" meaning students whoseparents' income was in the lowest quartile -- increased much more slowly over the same period, from 52.8 percent to 55.7 percent.
In 1993 the average size of an institutional grant was the same for both low-income and high-income students: $5,500. But in 2000 the average grant given to high-income students was $6,800, while that given to low-income students was $6,200. (All figures are adjusted for inflation.)

September 11, 2006 SOURCE
If you or your child is applying to a selective college this year, here's a reading assignment: Pick up a copy of The Price of Admission , a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden.
It'll either give you a useful view into how the elite admissions game works or just leave you disgusted about the whole enterprise.  Actually, probably both.
Mr. Golden's subject is the root unfairness in the way elite colleges choose who wins the coveted spots in their freshman classes.
Some folks complain about admissions policies that favor minority students. But Mr. Golden shows the degree to which the bias actually moves in the opposite direction: toward children of privilege.
We all know wealthy kids have enormous advantages not available to others. Their parents can afford score-boosting SAT prep classes and private school tuition. They can give their children an upbringing that provides endless educational opportunities. Those can all give the rich an edge.
But I'm not talking about those kids – the ones who, even considering their privileges, earn their spots. I'm talking about kids who aren't remarkably bright but still get into top colleges because of who their daddy is.
The most obvious way that's done is by legacy preference, the edge that colleges give to the children of their alumni. It's probably the most effective way colleges encourage – some might say extort – donations from their former students.
For instance, at Harvard the admissions rate for legacies is four times the rate for the hoi polloi. Is it because those kids are unusually smart? Nope – they actually have lower average SAT scores than other admitted students.
Mr. Golden, himself a Harvard alum, details the ways colleges chase after the children of the rich and powerful, like paparazzi pursuing Paris Hilton.
He shows how Al Gore's son earned a questionable admission to Harvard, and how presidential niece Lauren Bush got into Princeton despite below-average SAT scores, mediocre grades at her Houston prep school and not bothering to apply until a month after the deadline.
I'd like to see a working-class kid from South Dallas try that trick.
Actually, North Texas, home to more than its fair share of rich folks, shows up a few times in Mr. Golden's narrative. Members of Fort Worth's Bass family have given tens of millions to their alma maters, and that's helped when it comes time for their children to apply. Mr. Golden reports that one Bass daughter got into Stanford despite being in the middle of her own high school class and having an SAT score that ranked her deep in the bottom quartile of Stanford freshmen.
Mr. Golden writes about how, beginning in the 1970s, Duke – which comes out of this book looking awful – targeted the wealthy parents of Dallas prep schools because the university was looking for rich families to turn into donors, no matter how mediocre their kids' academic records were.
"We really worked Dallas," a former Duke associate director of admissions told Mr. Golden. It was all part of Duke's hunt for members of the "socioeconomically high-end."
And for the rich legacies who still can't sneak into a school, there's often a back door. Harvard, for instance, maintains something called the "Z-list" for students who can't survive the normal admissions process. They're told they can enroll if they just wait a year. Not so coincidentally, about three-quarters of the students on the Z-list are legacies.
If this seems like a personal issue to me, it's probably because it is.
I went to Yale. Some might call that casting against type. I grew up in a poor small town in south Louisiana. No one in my family had ever been to college, and most hadn't graduated from high school. It took $100,000 in grants, $16,000 in student loans, and a couple campus jobs to make Yale affordable.
I knew some of the people Mr. Golden is talking about. The prep-school kids with B-minus minds. The ones whose last names were on campus buildings.
They were a small minority of the student body, most of which was awe-inspiring. But there were some I couldn't stop comparing to the brilliant kids who I knew had gotten rejection letters.
I enjoyed my time at Yale, and I wouldn't mind if my kid went there someday. But Yale, with its endowment of $15 billion, doesn't need my money. It's depressing how many of my classmates preach the need to donate cash – not out of affection for their alma mater, but solely so they can be labeled a "productive alum" and someday get their own kids into Yale.
Is any of this really surprising? I mean, isn't it a given that connections matter, that a kid whose last name is Bush, Bass or Kennedy is going to have an edge?
I suppose. But America's elite colleges make such a fuss about their high-minded meritocracy that it's disgusting to see them dance like eager courtiers.
The American model is supposed to promote social mobility, not an inherited aristocracy. College admissions is a zero-sum game. For every C-student rich kid who gets into Harvard, there's a far more qualified middle-class kid who gets stuck with his safety school.
And those spots in the freshman class are more sought after than ever. When I applied to Yale in 1993, the university admitted 19 percent of all applicants. Today, it's closer to 9 percent.
Elite schools, including Yale and Harvard, have made efforts in the last few years to increase the number of low-income students they attract – mostly by offering more generous financial aid packages.
But as long as they keep holding the door open for the middling children of aristocrats, they'll be blocking the path for everyone else.

The Price of Admission source

 

When Martin Quiñones was starting high school, he and his parents looked at several Boston-area private schools before settling on Phillips Academy. It was one of the most expensive schools they considered, with annual tuition of $23,400, not including room, board and other fees. But with Martin's sights on getting into a top college, his family figured it was worth it.
They're about to find out if they were right. This weekend, the coveted fat envelopes -- and the dreaded thin ones -- for Ivy-League and other top universities are in the mail. Thousands of families across America are anxiously waiting to learn whether their huge investments in private education -- or moves to expensive neighborhoods with good public schools -- have paid off with acceptances to elite colleges. Martin Quiñones hopes for a nod from Harvard and other big names, and his family has made sacrifices to pay for his high-school education, such as driving older cars and taking fewer vacations, with that goal in mind. "If you go cheap, you're not going to get what you're hoping for -- an Ivy-class school," says Martin's father, Ricardo Quiñones, a computer consultant in Gloucester, Mass.
For families dreaming of sending their children to a prestigious university, the stakes have never been higher. Competition has intensified as the kids of baby boomers reach college age, and tuition at private schools -- believed by many parents to be the best insurance for college admission -- is soaring to record levels. Now, tuition of $20,000 a year is routine, with several of the best-known private schools topping $25,000. But do the most expensive schools really offer more bang for the buck than cheaper competitors? And just how do these pricey schools compare with highly successful public high schools?
Curious about the link between money and admissions success, Weekend Journal studied this year's freshman classes at 10 of the nation's most exclusive colleges -- including Harvard and other Ivies, and places like the University of Chicago and Pomona. We tracked down the alma maters of each entering student -- some 11,000 kids in all -- and came up with a list of high schools that had graduating classes of at least 50 students and sent at least 20 of them to our chosen colleges. For each high school, we then calculated what percentage of its graduates went on to those colleges. Finally, we compared tuition costs.
Though all the high schools in our survey have outstanding reputations, the success rates at some were astonishing. The best-performing high school on our list sent a staggering 41% of its senior class to our 10 colleges -- 30 kids out of a class of 74. (Hint: It's the private school where Academy Award-winner Jennifer Connelly went.) And that high school wasn't nearly the most expensive on our list.
Indeed, among private high schools, Weekend Journal found some surprising bargains. Germantown Friends School, a Philadelphia Quaker institution dating back to 1845, charges $16,675 in base tuition (plus an estimated $675 more for books and senior fees). But it did even better in our review than Buckingham Browne & Nichols of Cambridge, Mass., where tuition runs nearly $8,000 higher.
Determining tuition requires a balance, says Richard Wade, head of school at Germantown Friends, who adds that schools "struggle not just with what parents can afford, but also what teachers can afford to live on." In the case of Germantown, the school made a decision in the 1970s to increase the number of students per classroom (the average is now about 18) in order to raise faculty salaries while keeping tuition down. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have money in the bank: Germantown has an endowment totaling $27 million.

Costs Add Up

At Buckingham Browne & Nichols, spokesman Woodie Haskins says the school's tuition in part reflects its expensive region, and the need to keep faculty salaries competitive. "The cost of living in the Northeast is certainly high," Mr. Haskins says. In addition, he says, the school's endowment is less than some of its competitors, since the school -- founded in 1974 after a merger of two other schools -- is younger than some of those competitors. Finally, he says, the cost of running Buckingham's three campuses adds up, including such expenses as utilities and shuttle buses between locations.
Public schools obviously offer the better bang for the buck -- assuming you don't count the high housing costs generally associated with better-performing districts. But in our survey, public schools were in the distinct minority, with the best-performing school sending fewer than a third of its graduates to our choice colleges. And a number of the better-performing public schools were small, highly selective "magnet" schools, meaning that students whose families live and pay taxes in the area don't necessarily get to attend. For example, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Va., last year sent 10 graduates to Harvard alone.
Thomas Jefferson, which had a graduating class of 401 last year, draws students from five counties and two cities in Northern Virginia, based on their performance on aptitude tests covering both mathematics and verbal skills. The high school has seven full-time guidance counselors, who are assigned to students when they enter as freshmen and stay with them for all four years of high school. Besides Ivy League colleges and the University of Virginia, engineering schools like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology are popular with students, says Nina Pitkin, who oversees the guidance program. "We're encouraging students to broaden their search," she says.
For parents, the calculus can be complicated. A few years ago, when financial analyst Bruce Marsden was transferred by his company to New Jersey from California, he and his wife, Leslie, spent months looking at public and private high schools in their new state before buying a house. They scoured school rankings, interviewed principals and compared SAT scores and advanced-placement class offerings. They looked at highly regarded private schools like Pingry School in Martinsville, N.J., and nearby Newark Academy, and tried to assess the schools' college-placement records.
Ultimately the family chose a public school, Millburn High School, even though they figured houses in the district cost 40% more at the time than similar homes in neighboring suburbs. "Twenty thousand seemed like a heck of a lot of money to pay for high school," says Leslie Marsden. Already, their gamble seems to have paid off: Yale accepted the Marsdens' daughter, Jessica, during the "early action" process in December. (Other Yale hopefuls were able to log on to the college's Web site beginning last night to learn their fates; Yale also mailed out letters yesterday. Online notification by colleges is increasingly common.)
Millburn High School did well in the Weekend Journal survey too. Of its graduating class of 245 last year, 32 kids -- or 13% -- went to our college picks, including six to Princeton, three to the University of Chicago and two each to Brown and Dartmouth.
Extra Fees The cost of a private education has soared to unprecedented levels. According to the National Association of Independent Schools, the average tuition at private schools increased an inflation-adjusted 4.2% for the academic year 2003-2004, to $16,298. That's up more than a third from a decade ago (also inflation-adjusted). And tuition figures don't tell the entire financial story. Nearly all private schools charge some variety of extra fee, whether it's for books, meals, laboratory materials or even mandatory laptop computers. These inevitably add more to parents' bills -- sometimes a lot more. At New York's Trinity School, for instance, parents paying $23,475 in tuition can expect to spend about $1,250 in fees for meals, parent-association dues and other services.
The schools attribute the rise in prices to efforts to raise teachers' salaries and other improvements. Many schools say they spend huge resources on the college-guidance process, from hiring more counselors to organizing college tours.
For example, Saint Ann's School of Brooklyn, N.Y., the school with the greatest success rate on the Weekend Journal list, says its annual tuition of $20,500 is justified in part by the personalized effort the school makes to help each student get into the best possible college. Headmaster Stanley Bosworth says he writes a "personal statement" for each of Saint Ann's graduating seniors -- who numbered 74 last year -- sometimes mailing the letter separately to college admissions officers and sometimes including it in the students' applications. Mr. Bosworth says he sometimes telephones academic departments and even individual professors at certain universities, rather than leaving matters to the admissions office, to call attention to standout students. He has even been known to fly to an out-of-state college to deliver a student's portfolio of artwork or tapes of musical performances. Though originally started as part of an Episcopal church, the school is now secular.
"Nothing is a lot of money if you're educating a child," says the 76-year-old Mr. Bosworth, who is retiring at the end of this school year.
Heavy on Ivies No approach to ranking schools is perfect, of course. In setting up this study, Weekend Journal picked as our 10 colleges a group that included but wasn't limited to the Ivy League. Based on recommendations from admissions experts and guidance counselors, plus lists of SAT scores and acceptance rates, we narrowed our choices to seven Ivies -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Brown -- supplemented by three of the most exclusive colleges in the West, Midwest and South. These were Pomona, the University of Chicago, and Duke. (We were unable to get data from an eighth Ivy, Columbia University, or from one of the most exclusive colleges on the West Coast, Stanford University. However, Pomona also has impressive selectivity rates and SAT scores.)
For matriculation data from the high-school class of 2003, we relied on college face books and interviews with colleges and high schools. However, a handful of high schools didn't return our calls or wouldn't confirm our numbers. Our decision to include only schools that sent 20 or more students to our choice colleges was made to help the survey be more manageable.
As an additional check, we compiled the admissions data for three prestigious small colleges across the country, Williams, Amherst and CalTech, to see if our survey results would change significantly with those schools included. They didn't.
Our numbers thresholds, to be sure, excluded some small schools that had an extremely high admissions success rate. For example, New York's Collegiate School -- which John F. Kennedy Jr. once attended -- fell just below our minimum class-size requirement, with a graduating class last year of 49 students. However, a whopping 25 of them, or 51%, went to our college picks; that would have made it No. 1 in our study. Among the other elite schools with famous names that fell below our class-size cutoff were Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, Mass., and Nightingale-Bamford and Brearley in New York. All had impressive acceptance rates that would have put them high in our rankings. Notably, Roxbury Latin, with tuition of $15,200, is also an exceptional deal among private schools. Its 40% acceptance rate was almost as high as Saint Ann's.
Then again, it's important to remember that a secondary-school education shouldn't just be judged on whether it gets you to the gates of Harvard Yard. Even as high schools tout their admissions successes, they also emphasize to parents that the name at the top of the diploma can never be a guarantee of entry to a top college. For their part, A-list colleges say they pick students based on individual merit, and they say they don't give preference to particular alma maters.
Top colleges also say the obsession with feeder schools has become both excessive and misguided. "We admit students, not schools," says William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid. "We are looking for the best people we can get."

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