
The Ivy League Was Another Planet - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/elite-colleges-are-as-foreign-as-mars.html
======
JPKab
Probably the best point made in this article is that universities aim for
"surface" diversity: they take the easy route of pretending that picking
enough students of enough different racial backgrounds is actually making
their school diverse. Its not. You end up with a bunch of kids from the same
upper middle class suburbs. They might not all have the same skin color, but
they will have the same accent, culture, and their version of a summer job in
high school was at a shopping mall.

I felt like an alien at school. Rural communities have a much lower cost of
living, but also a much lower income. A rural kid who makes it to a university
will almost certainly have to work an almost full-time job just to cover their
living expenses, books, tuition, rent...etc. This divide was apparent to me as
a student at Virginia Tech. 80% of VT's students come from the wealth DC
suburbs. Yet wherever I worked when I was a student, the vast majority of my
coworkers were from rural parts of the state. The "NoVa" kids in general
didn't have to get jobs at all due to their parent's earning power. For them,
rent was a joke. For rural kids, rent for a room is half what their parent's
pay on mortgage or rent. Take this single piece of difference, and then
extrapolate it to every other aspect of culture.

~~~
davmre
No offense, but your comment is a symptom of the very problem the article is
highlighting. You say:

"A rural kid who makes it to a university will almost certainly have to work
an almost full-time job just to cover their living expenses, books, tuition,
rent...etc."

The point of the article is that _this is not true_ and almost no one knows
it! If you go to Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc -- basically any of the Ivy League,
top LACs, or a few other elite schools -- and your family makes under, say,
$60k/year, your tuition/room/board/books will be _absolutely free_. All
covered by the school. No crippling student loans, no expectation of you
working a job while in school (except maybe 10hrs/wk of cushy work-study for
spending money). Even if your family is a bit wealthier, it's still the case
that for most middle-class families the cost of an Ivy League education works
out to _less_ than the cost of the local state school. Very few families know
this.

Is there culture shock? Sure, of course. That's part of the point -- for both
the poor rural kids and the rich urban kids, and everyone in between. But at
schools with the resources to do diversity _right_ (which, sorry to hear,
doesn't sound like it includes Virginia Tech), the shock is _only_ cultural,
not financial, so the full college experience really is accessible to students
from any background.

~~~
venus
Interesting that "name" universities run their own little micro-cosms of
wealth redistribution without the usual howls from the anti-welfare troupe.
Indeed, it seems to be met with universal acclaim.

Not making a judgement one way or the other; just interesting that this
phenomenon seems to be exempt from politics.

~~~
nostrademons
A lot of this may be because people who get into Ivy League universities are
(rightly or wrongly) seen as talented and hard-working. Most people don't have
qualms about money going to talented & hard-working people who are down on
their luck; they have qualms about money going to lazy mooches who'll spend it
on booze.

Now, whether it's true that Ivy League student = talented & hard-working and
welfare mom = lazy hedonistic mooch is another discussion, but those are the
stereotypes that many people operate under.

~~~
VLM
Misaimed. The money doesn't go to the ivy league student. It passes directly
to administrators, professors, etc, via tuition and endless fees. The more
expensive the school, the lower percentage the kids get to skim off for living
expenses. So at vo-tech level most of the money loaned as a percentage is
going for booze, apartments, cars, gas, food rather than tuition.

Now if the kids got huge loans, stuck the dough in stock market funds, defer
interest until graduation at which time they cashed in the funds, paid taxes
and paid off the interest free loans, and kept a tidy small profit, as my econ
professor and his friends did in the 70s/80s, then money could be said to go
to the kids. This practice has been pretty much eliminated.

------
balloot
This article only scratches the surface of why most brilliant lower-middle
class kids can't get into an Ivy. Just look at what's expected:

\- lots of extracurriculars

Rich kid: spent the summer spoon feeding starving children in Honduras

Poor kid: works during the summer at the mall to make some money, and has
never left the country.

Rich kid: joined a dance troupe, plays two sports at varsity level

Poor kid: Doesn't live within 50 miles of a dance studio and can't afford the
extensive travel/coaching/equipment needed to excel in a bunch of sports

Rich kid: Fluent in Spanish due to private language tutor and aforementioned
trip to Honduras

Poor kid: Never was even formally taught _English_ grammar (most public
schools don't anymore)

\- lots of AP classes

Rich kid: Got a 5 on 7 different AP tests.

Poor kid: Goes to a school that doesn't offer AP classes at all.

\- testing

Rich kid: Took an extensive SAT prep class, then took SAT 3 times and ACT 2
times and uses the best score

Poor kid: Didn't take a prep class and just took the SAT once

\- connections

Rich kid: has a parent who went to an Ivy League school, or has a family
friend who is an alum/Important Person who can write a letter of rec

Poor kid: Doesn't know a single person who went to an Ivy League school. Gets
letters of rec from teachers

Pretty much every step in the admission process is designed to favor the haves
over the have nots. There's a lot of things selective schools could do to make
the process fairer without too much effort, but it's reasonable to assume that
the deck isn't stacked by accident.

~~~
protomyth
Poor kid: school counselors dealing with problem students and not helping with
college entry. Good luck knowing about the PSAT or anything other than state
requirements.

~~~
acchow
I don't think this is the way things work anymore. I went to a top private
high school. My research into college admissions and applications centered
around Google and online forums. I don't think I asked my counselors about
anything.

~~~
protomyth
Did you take the PSAT, and if so, how did you get it arranged?

~~~
acchow
Wow, didn't even notice this. Thanks.

They announced PSAT and SAT dates during "home room" with appropriate
registration deadlines. But for other college stuff, I really did rely
entirely on the interwebs.

------
thatthatis
I was a high achieving rural student, and ended up going to Harvard.

Why? Because at one college fair there was a guy from Harvard, not a
recruiting team, but one random alum who cared and brought a bunch of
pamphlets.

I asked him "do they ever even admit students from Idaho?" His answer, not
only do they admit them but they want to admit more. Had it not been for that
conversation, it's not clear if I ever would have applied.

I think it is hard for most people who grow up in an affluent area to
understand how little information rural students get about college options.

I never took the PSAT because my school's guidance counselors didn't think
enough students were going to go to college for it to be worth their time.

Hell, I applied to Harvard after the deadline because my guidance counselors
told me college applications were due February 1st (which is true only of
schools in the intermountain west) when applications we're actually due
January 1st.

My only hope is that in the modern world rural students are better informed
due to the ubiquity of the Internet. But in my experience, everything in this
article rings 100% true.

------
rayiner
Interesting article. My wife grew up in rural Iowa and told me the same story.
Nobody even applied to the elite east and west coast schools. If you were a
great student you applied to the university of Iowa.

She also thinks that elite colleges undervalue the kind of extracirriculars
common in rural areas: FFA, 4H, etc. When I was in HS, our extracirriculars
were things like robotics club sponsored by the DOD. In a way, both are
representative of their region (middle America versus inside the beltway).

I think ultimately its bad for diversity to take ECs into account. Too much
cultural and social bias inherent in that. Think about the kind of ECs elite
colleges like to see: concert pianist, interning at a research lab, community
service, etc. Unless you have a real sob story, "work" is not very high on
that list. But by and large people who can spend all summer on community
service projects are not people who have to work as teenagers to help support
themselves.

~~~
vwoolf
_If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa._

Which is a very good school. The other problem a small but important segment
of our society has is believing in the magic of very well marketed schools.
Really, there are lots of good universities, and I don't think many people's
lives are going to be made or broken by whether they're at U of Iowa or some
other school, especially for undergrad.

~~~
rayiner
University of Iowa is a very good school, no doubt. But depending on what you
want to do with your life, it can close a lot of doors. Top-tier banks and
management consulting companies don't recruit heavily from U of I, nor do top-
tier tech companies for that matter (though the distinction is less marked).
When you look at the fraction of the upper echelons of corporate America that
come from those backgrounds, that's significant. I went to a state school for
undergrad, but where I currently work most people have at least one Ivy on
their resume. The difference in our undergraduate social networks is really
quite dramatic in terms of peoples' career trajectories.

~~~
geogra4
What's a 'top tier tech company'? When I went to school at Penn State, we had
Amazon, MS, Google, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, etc. all come to our career fair.
It's not like quality graduates had trouble finding excellent jobs.

I had a roommate who ended up at JPMorgan, and a few more distant associates
really hit the jackpot in the Oil and Gas industry.

I will agree that if your life goal is a 100/hr a week investment banking
position or some top tier management consulting position in NYC then a big
state school probably isn't where you want to be. But you can't study
petroleum engineering at Yale so it works both ways.

~~~
ritchiea
Penn State is not a typical public university. You might as well have said UC-
Berkeley.

Hell Penn is a public university and an Ivy.

~~~
sqrt
Penn and Penn State are distinct universities; Penn State is a public
university (and not an Ivy), while Penn is a private university (and an Ivy).

~~~
ritchiea
I knew that Penn & Penn State are distinct schools. Though I did not know that
University of Pennsylvania is a private university. My mistake.

------
llplp

        Most parents like mine, who had never gone to college, 
        were either intimidated or oblivious (and sometimes 
        outright hostile) to the intricacies of college 
        admissions and financial aid. I had no idea what I was 
        doing when I applied. Once, I’d heard a volleyball 
        coach mention paying off her student loans, and this
        led me to assume that college was like a restaurant — 
        you paid when you were done. When I realized I needed 
        my mom’s and my stepfather’s income information and 
        tax documents, they refused to give them to me. They 
        were, I think, ashamed.
    

Almost painful to read that. Hit close to home a little too much. Sometimes I
wonder whether it's simply willful ignorance by the upper class to ignore the
realities of the poor class.

~~~
Evbn
Come on. At some point you have to expect some level of familial
responsibility. You can't on the one hand blame rich people from enjoying
handouts (grandpa's money) and on the other hand blame rich people because
poor people refuse handouts.

You can't fix stupid.

~~~
uchi
It's really sort of an interesting debacle. There's opportunities out there
for both privileged and underprivileged families but often times the
underprivileged are left completely oblivious while the privileged take full
advantage. When you're rich, you're not just monetarily wealthy. You gain a
lot of social and cultural capital that helps you maintain your wealth and
assets, and that's something that frankly many poor people just don't get the
opportunity to learn about. Believe it or not, most wealthy people who have
been wealthy for a while are very good at knowing what helps them remain
wealthy. In contrast, many underprivileged families don't know much about
saving money at all. There's a great book that goes into a lot of detail about
this. It's called the Meritocracy Myth. [http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-
Myth-Stephen-J-McNamee/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-
J-McNamee/dp/0742561682)

------
DanielBMarkham
One of the things that I've known for years but has become increasingly
evident is that there's the social nature of academia and then there's
academics.

We live in the age of the net. Knowledge is out there for the taking.
Communities of people? Different thing entirely. Physical communities of
people have value.

So when we say "college", we can either mean learning that knowledge and skill
which will prepare you to begin _really_ learning in the real world, or we can
mean a place you go to appear smart, hang out with famous people, and make
friends that can do you favors somewhere down the road.

We use "college" to mean both things, but more and more these are vastly
different concepts. As students, it's probably important to understand whether
your goal is to position yourself to actively engage in a discipline, or
position yourself to actively engage in a community.

It's important to know that because most elite colleges are starting to look
pretty generic in terms of politics, philosophy, and worldview. Either it's
worth all of that money to hang out with the right people, or you're better
off picking up classes at the community college for your undergrad and then
taking a look again at where you are.

~~~
kenferry
Here's the interaction, though: A person _can_ get books from the library
written by experts in any field, and a sufficiently motivated student can
learn that way.

A person _can_ also be a solo founder. But you know, that's kind of hard.
Sticking through it every day is a lot easier if there's someone besides you
who cares, and someone besides you who notices if you stop really working at
it.

To say that the social experience does not contribute to learning on a college
campus is to miss that _determination_ is the thing that's most difficult, and
that the external situation you set up as your learning environment can have a
pretty big impact on that determination.

Which of your classes did you learn from and remember the best? For me, it's
those classes where I had great problem set sessions with my friends. That's
what stuck.

(My startup is working on this problem.)

~~~
nborwankar
What startup is that? Can you post a link?

------
tokenadult
Thanks for the many interesting comments. Some of the comments asked why
anyone should care if the most elite colleges cast a wide net in seeking
students. (Christopher Avery of Harvard, and his colleague Caroline Hoxby,
once of Harvard but now at Stanford, have done research on how the most elite
colleges can find more one-off students from rare backgrounds that other
colleges miss.)

<http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/cavery/>

<http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho46.html>

My answer about why someone looking in from the outside might care about what
kinds of students are admitted by elite colleges is the observation that elite
colleges can be highly influential on public policy (as several other comments
have already pointed out). If we are to have the graduates of Harvard and the
other seven Ivy League colleges, along with graduates of Stanford and the
other several "Ivy plus" colleges, making many of the policy decisions for our
country, I hope they are informed by direct knowledge about the life of the
rural and urban poor, the life of students with a disabled parent, the life of
first-generation college students, the life of students who attended
especially lousy high schools, and so on. I'm sure every graduate of an elite
college knows how to take care of "his people," but it might be better for all
of us if those graduates, in the aggregate, include most of the subgroups of
people that include those of us who never attended such a college. That, to
me, is a possible broad social benefit of genuine diversity in college
admission.

------
jeremymims
I know this phenomenon may sound like a bug, but it's probably a feature. It
means that many smart kids go to schools close to home and are able to enrich
their own communities by staying nearby. It means that those rural towns get
great lawyers, doctors, and access to smart and talented people in dozens of
other professions. If I'm from a rural state, I absolutely want my top state
schools to compete with Harvard for talent. I don't want talented kids whisked
away, never to return.

In my home state of Connecticut (home to one of those Ivy League bastions and
a short drive from the others), many of the top students at my high school
went to UCONN, got great educations, got great jobs in Connecticut (since
locals know how good the education can be), and continue to contribute to the
fabric of the state. Because so many people have gotten quality education at
an affordable price, they encourage other top students to attend UCONN, donate
money locally after they graduate, and create jobs for future students.

At first blush it feels unfair (certainly on an individual level). But it may
actually result in a far better outcome for society. It certainly makes my
home state a better place to live.

~~~
ruswick
I don't think that systematic relegation of poor people to state colleges is
ever preferable, even if it prevents brain drain. We should never artificially
limit our nation's lower-class youth simply because it has collateral positive
effects in the long term.

Individuals deserve the ability to attain the highest level of success they
are capable of, irrespective of any of any effects on society. Students are't
public utilities, they're individuals with idiosyncratic aspirations and
interests. Why is it ok for society of hold them back?

~~~
Evbn
Why should anyone in Utah have an desire for someone in NY hands a Utah kid a
golden ticket to enjoy in NY? Those Utah individuals deserve the best outcomes
they can obtain, and that includes great doctors if they choose to pay for
those doctor's education and salaries.

Society is a collection of individuals. Arbitrarily picking some of those
individuals to be winners is certainly not any obligation of the rest of the
individuals.

~~~
nitrogen
I'm from Utah, and I would have much preferred to be told that I could
actually afford to attend an elite school through financial aid instead of
being disappointed by my state school education (though I did have a few great
classes and teachers). I took an online class from MITx and the difference was
astounding.

The rest of the state has no right to lay claim to my life. If states are
worried about brain drain, they should incentivize local development to
attract others from out of state (which I believe Utah is doing), not hide the
truth from their youth.

------
crazygringo
You don't have to be as far away as Nevada.

Heck, I grew up in rural upstate New York. It never even occurred to me to
think of a place like Harvard/Yale/Princeton, despite being only a few hours'
drives away. In my high school, those places might as well have been Mars --
they just didn't exist on anyone's radar. They were from the movies, or
something.

But after taking my SAT's, I got tons of unsolicited college mailings,
including a brochure from Yale. I sent back the card to receive an application
packet, decided to apply early-admission (what did I have to lose?), and was
shocked when I discovered I got in.

Literally, the only reason I wound up going to an Ivy League school was
because they sent me an unsolicited brochure. (And Yale was the only one which
did, strangely enough -- it still never occurred to me to research Harvard or
Princeton or anything, since the whole thing seemed so implausible in the
first place.)

But except for that brochure, I probably would have gone to the University of
Rochester, which, for whatever reason, seemed to be the default option at the
time. Nothing against it, of course! :) But it is funny how the smallest piece
of information can change someone's life so much.

~~~
stevenleeg
U of R student (and former resident of rural upstate NY) here, we would have
been glad to have you!

------
ntomaino
The problem lies in the information gap that exists between rural communities
and wealthy communities. The wealthy communities have people that have gone to
top colleges providing information and knowledge to young kids, and rural
communities don't, plain and simple.

Technology has the opportunity to change this, and although it hasn't
drastically altered the information gap yet as it relates to college
counseling, it is starting to. ConnectEDU is the most interesting technology
company working on this problem that I'm aware of right now, but I'd love to
hear about others as well.

~~~
griffordson
What percentage of kids in those wealthy neighborhoods have their education
subsidized by wealthy grandparents? Does a subsidized education (including
private school, extracurricular activities, and private tutors) make it more
likely that a child will get into a top college?

~~~
Vivtek
Yes.

------
newnewnew
The Ivy League cares a lot about "PC" diversity (race, gender, sexual
orientation). But not so much about regional or ideological diversity. In
fact, leadership activities and accomplishments that scream "red state"
actually reduce your chances of getting into Harvard - being a leader in the
ROTC cuts your admissions odds in half _ceteris paribus_ [1].

Poor rural white kids don't go to Harvard.

[1] Ron Unz explores this and other Ivy League admission statistics in "The
Myth of American Meritocracy"
[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

~~~
rainsford
I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a
popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about
is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and
experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology?

I agree that regional and ideological diversity might be a problem for elite
schools (or any school, for that matter). But I don't think the issues are
necessarily political ones. In other words, are Harvard admissions people
rejecting 4-H club members because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving
conservatives, or because the Harvard admissions people didn't participate in
4-H clubs and don't know much about them?

~~~
jjoonathan
> I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a
> popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about
> is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and
> experiences rather than liberal vs conservative ideology?

I tend to agree, but I haven't read the source cited by the article. If anyone
here has easy access to Epenshade's book, I'd love to hear how rigorous the
"4H,ROTC decreased P(admission) by 65%" result was.

87 Espenshade (2009) p. 126.

> In other words, are Harvard admissions people rejecting 4-H club members
> because they assume they're Sarah Palin loving conservatives, or because the
> Harvard admissions people didn't participate in 4-H clubs and don't know
> much about them?

A third possibility: admissions people don't believe that generic "leadership"
clubs are worthwhile, leading to a perceived bias towards clubs with more
specific purposes than being line-items on college applications. We could test
this hypothesis by looking for differential performance between 4H and ROTC
and between 4H and NHS (Natl. Honor Society, the prevalent line-item club at
my high school, which was not rural).

~~~
acslater00
4H and ROTC are many things, but they are not "generic leadership clubs
without a specific purpose". Both groups are much more akin to something like
the Boy Scouts, as they demand substantial amounts of time and effort, and
give achievements for the mastery of specific skills.

~~~
jjoonathan
I used ROTC as an example of something that was decidedly not a generic
leadership club, sorry I didn't make that clear.

My opinion of 4H was based on 10 seconds of skimming their website, but in
that time the generic terminology and cheap selling points targeted towards
parents were enough to turn my stomach. It's possible that their website is
just targeted towards a different audience, but you would have to convince me.

> they demand substantial amounts of time and effort

That doesn't exclude the possibility that they are a generic leadership club.
A leadership club that didn't demand time and effort would be entirely
fraudulent rather than simply having dubious value.

> and give achievements for the mastery of specific skills.

If it's like the Scouts, I'm tossing it in with "generic leadership club"
unless they provide a metric by which I can judge the engagement and
independence of an individual within their system.

Part of what I would want to see from an applicant would be personal goals
outside of the framework of the institutions surrounding them. The ability of
the individual to bend the institution to those goals would then count as the
type of leadership I think colleges are after. They want people who will use
the resources around them to do interesting things, not people who aim to
collect every badge in the pile.

The pollution of the term "leadership" by those seeking to sell educational
experiences is regrettable. Got your morse code badge? Not leadership. In
charge of a group of kids learning morse code? Possibly leadership, depending
on how much initiative you took to go beyond provided materials. Started a
morse code club, created a curriculum for newcomers, advertised, handled
paperwork / fund acquisition to get materials & go to a morse code contest?
Leadership!

------
ekm2
While i understand how important writing skills are,one should admit that they
are heavily culture loaded.The very bright poor that i personally know avoid
the top schools because they require too many essays and instead just fill out
the short objective application forms that most state schools provide.At my
local college i usually try to find out high rich someone is by comparing the
mathematics/critical reading scores vs the writing score.The smart but poor
have high critical reading and Math scores,but very low writing aptitude test
scores.

~~~
jjoonathan
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "culture loaded," could you expand
on that? For instance (this may come across as snide although I do not intend
it that way), is typing the word "I" in lower case and omitting spaces after
periods a cultural thing? I would assume that nobody would use such a "style"
in an essay on a standardized test, but then again I would have assumed that
nobody would use such informal technique while arguing for the equivalence of
a different writing style, since one would presumably want to criticize from a
position of mastery to avoid accusations of making self-serving arguments.

It is true that spoken English contains many informalities that become
inappropriate in the context of writing, but this observation holds regardless
of ethnic influence on the spoken dialect. Everyone has to filter what they
write to achieve the tone of formality. I certainly don't speak with the same
formality I use in my writing, and I suspect you don't either.

If you want to argue that the culture in middle/upper class suburbia gives its
children an advantage with respect to writing English, I would agree. I would
suggest that the problem should be addressed by raising standards in inner
city / rural environments, rather than by lowering them at universities, which
would only serve to fuel attitudes of resentment and entitlement.

> The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because
> they require too many essays

What does this necessarily have to do with being poor? I know plenty of "lazy"
rich people that avoid the same applications for the same reasons. How do you
propose that culturally induced hesitation be distinguished from laziness? How
should admissions boards distinguish between cultural influence and poor
technique in an applicant's writing? These questions aren't rhetorical, I
would love to hear answers, since I can think of none.

> The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low
> writing aptitude test scores.

I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing
to do with being poor. I, myself tend towards this end of the score spectrum
and I do not come from a poor family. Instead, my scores look like they do
simply because I chose to focus my efforts in school on math and the sciences
rather than on writing. Are you sure this is not the case with the people you
were referring to?

~~~
trotsky
Ivies added essays to the applications in the 1930s to deal with the "Jewish
problem" - a significant influx of jewish students being admitted based on
numerical admissions standards to what were traditionally WASP dominated
campuses. Written essays provided the admissions process with a subjective
element that allowed applications to be consciously or unconsciously sorted
based on linguistic and social cues.

[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-
semitism/ha...](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-
semitism/harvard.html)

~~~
jjoonathan
I'll accept that essays _can_ be used a legal excuse for nativism, quotas,
affirmative action, anti-rural bias, and so on. The question is weather or not
they _are_ being used to effect anti-rural bias, and I'm not convinced that is
the case.

------
ChuckMcM
That is a very clever writing. It reads like there is a problem and then
finishes with a punchline that there isn't.

She and her other friend from Pahrump, with the "standard" free public school
education, she ends up an assistant professor and her buddy ends up with a
Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Purdue (which is pretty darn employable).

That she didn't even "imagine" or think about the Ivy League schools made no
difference to either of them. They were smart, the worked hard, and boom they
are both "successful."

The comment about the military and its recruitment was also interesting.
Because having been a military brat (the child of a military officer) it was
clear that the military got their leadership from a wide swath of
participants, not "just" folks from the military academies, one of my friend's
dad was a general (1 star) and he always let us know he enlisted as an airman
because his Mom couldn't afford to feed him as a teenager.

So the conclusion is that there isn't really a problem here. People who have
the talent and motivation can get a good graduate degree from a good school.
They need only finish their undergraduate degree at a state school. All the
angst about Google or Facebook only hiring if you went to one of "these" 21
schools, is moot if you can get a masters degree there after you graduate from
your "loser" school.

So I see the argument that the Ivy League won't even _see_ you if you don't
come through the right schools as an undergraduate, and _that doesn't matter_
for anyone who gets an advanced degree. So if you have the talent get an
advanced degree, it doesn't matter.

That said, it implies that if you are a loser and by the luck of having a
wealthy family who shepherds you through the process so that you end up in an
Ivy League school, you may find it easier to get hired as an undergraduate.
But you are also just as easy to fire so that benefit is fleeting if you don't
know your stuff.

Anyway, I read it thinking the author was trying to point out a problem only
to discover that there wasn't a problem. I found that to be pretty clever.

~~~
mtdewcmu
I noticed that, too. I guess the point was that she had an unequal shot at
Harvard or Princeton. But it looks like the system worked reasonably well in
her case. It could have done worse. It's also sort of heartening that the
military is a kind of leveler. No one looks down on military service, at
least, I think most people consider it a plus (it's hard to start a sentence
with "no one..." that doesn't have some exception, somewhere). So the military
could potentially be a step stone to better things.

The problem with societal ills like inequality is that most of them can't ever
really be solved. Can you imagine a perfectly equal society? I can't. But
liberalism requires some suspension of disbelief. Too much realism breeds
cynicism, and cynicism allows intractable problems to get even more
intractable.

------
trotsky
Degrees from these schools serve as class signaling devices. They wouldn't be
very effective if they recruited more than a token of poor or disadvantaged.

~~~
thatthatis
Smart and connected is the new upper class. These universities select for
smart and by their nature create the connections.

There needs to be some number of smart and already connected students to
maximize the value of the network, but the connection to alumni is on the
average more valuable.

~~~
trotsky
I assure you that previous privileged generations didn't refer to themselves
as "rich and the right ethnicity".

------
desireco42
I read with great interest all that is written. My kids are small, preschool
level, still Montessori and will continue for few years of elementary school
for now. I am immigrant in US and still can't figure out everything about how
things work. From what I could understand, it is almost that your pick of
elementary school selects you for high school which in turn greatly determines
university.

On the other hand, depending on their interests, I don't think it is a must to
go to university, both my wife and me have Master level degrees, yet, we spent
a lot of time getting them. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer (shudder)
you need to get university degree, but not if you want to be a programmer like
me. I kind of love my work and would love my kids to follow my footsteps, but
you never know what they might choose.

Please feel free to give me any hints and advice because I need a lot of
those. What are your experiences and what would you do if you were in my
place.

I did start college fund for them, as I understand this will not be wasted
even if they don't go to collage.

~~~
eru
As an aside, your kids do not have to go to university in America.

------
davidroberts
The amazing thing is that excellent students from poor schools really should
apply to the elite private universities, because the private schools will
pretty much pay for their education through their huge endowments. It's a much
better path than going through state universities, where even the poorest have
a huge loan debt by the time they graduate.

The OP is right about the recruiting efforts of the private universities. It's
not just the rural schools they skip. My son went to a high school near San
Diego that straddles the border between an middle class area built in the 50s
and a low income area. The student body is about 40% suburban white, 25%
Hispanic, 10% recently moved from Iraq (Chaldean), and the rest African
American, Native American and other minorities. It has a 7 out of 10
California high school rating, so it's not that bad.

There were no recruiters from "elite" private schools. The best students
typically go to University of California, either USCD, UCLA, or Berkeley. The
next level goes to the other UCs, especially Irvine or Riverside. Many go to
San Diego State University, and the rest who continue their education go to
community college.

My son loves economics, and got it early in his head that he really wanted to
go to University of Chicago. We were pretty poor at the time, as I was
changing my career and working my way up in from the total bottom in a new
field doing mainly freelance work.

My son worked really hard to get to UChicago. He attended a recruiting event
in a downtown hotel he found out about on the internet. I borrowed money and
we flew to Chicago for an interview, staying in a sketchy hotel on the South
Side. He applied for early admission and got accepted last year, the first
student ever from his high school. They offered a financial package that pays
almost everything.

His friends who are still at the school said that this year, for the first
time, a recruiter from UChicago showed up. It is like my son put the school on
their radar.

One thing we noticed as part of the process is that taking the PSAT is really
important. It only costs about $20 and it's free in some schools. There might
be something similar for the ACT.

My son did well on the PSAT and he got multiple letters from Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, Columbia, and other Ivies trying to lure him in. Also from elite
private four-year colleges. So there is an outreach by those schools in this
way. Often those letters would mention the possibility of almost full support
for students that needed it.

I think the Ivies are trying to reach out to poorer students. It's just that
it's hard for them to think out of the box created by their own privileged
backgrounds and understand how to reach that demographic. But our experience
is that they are sincerely trying, and if a student makes the effort, he can
definitely get in.

I think one of the biggest barriers is that counselors in schools like my
son's or the OP's don't even consider these schools for qualified students
(are they uninformed? lazy? incompetent? complacent?). If they pushed harder,
both to the Ivies and in guiding the students, it would help a lot.

~~~
RegEx
I was part of a poor family growing up. I received many letters and packages
from upper tier schools after my PSAT. I got top 5% in the nation for math, so
that may be why. I didn't take them seriously, though. Now I'm at University
of Texas (at Tyler), where the idea of computer science education is a series
of publisher-distributed PowerPoint slides.

I want to move to a different school with passionate teachers and students,
but now I have financial obligations(unemployed mom can't find work so I'm
taking over her bills while she goes to school). I'm currently looking for a
python remote job or job near Dallas. Until I can find something, I have to
stay at this job so I can support my mom, thus UT Tyler is my only option.

I wish I would have done more research on scholarship opportunities back in
high school. Maybe I'd be somewhere great right now. Oh well.

~~~
aptimpropriety
It's never too late to transfer - and being a transfer doesn't make you
ineligible for financial aid!

I went to a major public university my freshman year and transferred to an Ivy
League school once I decided I wasn't satisfied with my experience at the
public university. It ended up actually being significantly cheaper for me to
go to the Ivy League, and opened up a world of opportunity and support I would
have never found at my original school.

Since then, my sister has also attended the same Ivy League (you see a lot of
families/siblings at such schools) almost free of charge. I could also go on
about how the resources and individual support from a private school
(effective tuition of 50-60k) far exceed that of a public school - even a top
UC.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to chat.

~~~
Amadou
> and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!

That isn't necessarily the case. A close friend of mine attended a school
(Bradley University, admittedly not ivy league) that gave a full ride to
national merit scholars and finalists, but only if they had never enrolled
anywhere else. She was a finalist, but she attended a state school for her
freshman year. Bradley gave her nothing, but she still enrolled because money
wasn't her biggest concern. She got her degree, but has said on numerous
occasions that she'll never give a dime to any of their alumni fund-raisers
since she paid the full load up front.

~~~
ryguytilidie
With the way most schools treat their students as cattle they need to get
through the mill as quickly as possible, it amazes me that anyone donates to
alumni organizations.

------
flexie
There are more than 15,000 high schools in America and just 8 Ivy League
schools and maybe 5-10 other universities in the absolute elite (Stanford
etc.). How would these maybe 15 schools go about sending recruiters out to all
15,000 high schools, and then test the interested students? What good would it
do? Why is it so important that talented rural kids go to Harvard?

~~~
rayiner
When I worked at the FCC, the Chairman at the time appointed two new senior
advisors. One went to Stanford, the other to Yale. The Chairman himself had
gone to Harvard, with President Obama. If you look at the top management
consulting companies, investment banks, etc, (which supply a disproportionate
fraction of corporate America's executives), you'll find they are dominated by
people who went to an Ivy-league school. Now part of the reason is that smart
people go to those schools and they would've done well no matter where they
went. But you can't discount the value of being able to call up a college
buddy who is a VP at a F500 or is in an important political position, etc.

~~~
flexie
I totally agree. But those CEOs, politicians and investment bankers would like
their sons and daughters to attend the same Ivy-league schools and not risk
them being outcompeted by some geeky kids from Missouri or Kansas. If that
happened too often, the Ivy-league schools wouldn't get those new libraries
and lecture halls, and one day the future president wouldn't be from there.

------
andrewchoi
As a current Ivy League student that's on full financial aid, I do agree
somewhat with the analysis presented in the article.

However, there are a lot of great programs that are out there that are trying
to rectify this situation. I applied to college through the QuestBridge[0]
program, and in addition to providing tools and guidance for me in the
application process, I've been fortunate enough to find a network of people in
similar situations at school. They also do outreach, especially through alumni
of the program.

[0] <http://questbridge.org/>

------
nhebb
I read this article on the same day that the piece on Stanford acceptance
rates hitting an all time low appeared on HN
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464115>). If tier 1 schools have a
relatively stable student body size and an increasing number of applicants, I
don't see anything happening to make them seek out even more applicants. Urban
/ rural geographic diversity is probably pretty low on their priority list
compared to other diversity goals.

------
btipling
I'm looking forward to the day when attaining education happens though online
courses and you learn as much you can and want to and achieve based on merit.
No more artificial barriers keeping talented and ambitious people from getting
a good education.

Then we get to do away with all of this institution status business and people
actually have to compete simply based on skill and competence. Not who your
parent were, how much money they had or where they raised you or where you
went to school.

------
pasbesoin
I agree with a lot of the observation and sentiment, here.

And, I'm one who is more reluctant to embrace "the Internet" as some sort of
default, "magical" solution.

But... most everyone has at least some level of access, now.

And so it seems to me that this particular... "information divide" is crying
out for online redress.

Not some super fancy example of "design". Not a marketing opportunity to be
"leveraged".

Some straight, to the point text (ok, maybe some pictures, even a few videos
-- but to serve the purpose, not become it). From real people. Who know about
this shit.

Brainiacs. And parents of future brainiacs who'd had to learn to negotiate
this.

Anyone can view web pages. Consider it a "contribution" to volunteer some time
to putting a good, concise, thorough, authoritative, and... I guess also
collaborative, site together. (There are always new strategies and answers to
be shared, and it helps not to feel one is in this all alone.)

Maybe also, or distinctly, this is something Sal and his Khan Academy should
take on. A "meta" of the educational experience. How to negotiate school and
its bureaucracy. (I realize this becomes daunting when looking across states,
countries, systems. At a minimum, it would have to be broken down into
regional efforts/teams.)

A half hour or hour's "WTF" video about the financial aid aspect, might be one
good starting point for parents, per some of the description in the OP
article.

P.S. Couldn't Khan Academy seek out good resources from dedicated career
guidance professionals? I've run across some who are really dedicated to their
field (and who are not mere marketing droids focusing solely on _their_
institution). It strikes me this might be a good mechanism for finding
appropriate materials and then getting them to the students and parents who
need them.

~~~
mjmahone17
That site exists. It's called College Confidential:
<http://www.collegeconfidential.com>

Especially interesting is the forum. Unfortunately, it may not feel "at home"
for all types of students, as most the participants are planning on going to
top-tier schools, and have been all their lives. But if you post "I'm a rural
student from X. Here is what I could pay to go to college, and here are my
current stats (such as class rank, etc.). Does anyone have suggestions on
where I should apply?" you'll get a whole bunch of people trying to help you
out, pointing out schools that "match" your statistics, and schools that are
"reach" schools, and explaining that you don't need a bunch of money to attend
the reach schools, as they offer need-based financial aid. While I don't
support spending ridiculous amounts of time on the site trying to figure out
whether or not you'll be accepted, I think it's a reasonable place to learn
about college admissions, especially if you have no background.

------
mayneack
This isn't all about the Ivy's recruitment. I am from a small (10k population)
town in Mid Missouri and currently an MIT student. In my graduating class of
150 there were maybe 6 that went out of state and only a couple that didn't go
to a neighboring state. I was always gunning for "top tier" because my parents
were professors and had gone to top tier colleges as well, but the high school
counselors were absolutely useless to me. They didn't know how to deal with
the common app and none of the scholarships that they could point me to apply
to were eligible for anything out of state.

I got the same amount of advertisements from out of state schools as in-state
after taking the ACT, but there was a feeling at my high school of anti-elite
schools.

------
forgotAgain
Want to know why Harvard made the NCAA basketball tournament this year?
Athletes are getting wiser about the choice between a full ride athletic
scholarship at a sports factory versus a full financial aid package at an Ivy.

------
ktugi
I fail to see why the "Ivy League" matters.

The same information can be obtained from reading the best textbooks in one's
field of study.

If one insists on classroom education, the solution is to do it using video
streaming, thus making it possible to enroll an arbitrary number of people in
the same course.

As for the "social environment", just applying won't necessarily make you
buddies with co-students, and anyway this model is not scalable.

------
forgotAgain
What disappointed me about this article was the total lack of accountability
for those local to the writer.

If the writer's parents, extended-family, and school faculty were all unable
to provide any insight for the writer then they were willfully ignorant.
People do have a responsibility to educate themselves. Especially when they
are in a position of responsibility.

The writer self-filtered himself from the opportunities available by not
seeking out opportunities. Universities two thousand miles away should (and
do) try to make themselves known to students. But that doesn't relieve a
person of responsibility. If you don't have the motivation to find out about
them, then you probably wouldn't succeed at the school anyway.

------
Vivtek
Why in the world would the Ivy League want to reach out to the talented rural
poor? They're only accepting 5-7% of the people who apply now - does anybody
think they lack applicants?

~~~
mikeash
The top people from a larger pool will be, on average, better than the top
people from a smaller pool.

~~~
Vivtek
And your touching belief that they accept "better" people is endearing.

~~~
mikeash
I'm addressing your hypothetical of why they _would_ want to, not addressing
the various strange ways they _actually_ act.

------
auctiontheory
I accept the reality of the author's experience, but I have to wonder why
internet access isn't making more of a difference in equalizing the access to
information about choices.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
The internet is great for finding the answers to questions - once you're able
to formulate them correctly.

------
jbhernan
related piece in the NYTimes:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-
wa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-way-to-send-
poor-kids-to-top-colleges.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp&pagewanted=all)

~~~
kaitai
To elaborate on your too-short post, this article is the reply to so many
comments above: it answers the questions "Does more information change
behavior?" and "How can we change this lack of information?" The researchers
in this randomized trial sent packages of information to high-scoring poor
kids and their families, while keeping track of the college choices of a
control group as well. Of the control group, 30 percent gained admission to
one of these fancy colleges. In the intervention group 54 percent gained
admission. The simple act of sending these kids a bunch of pieces of paper
that outlined the steps necessary for application and financial aid -- and
gave some cost comparisons -- had an enormous effect. This did not involve
improving the educational experience of these kids in a single way.

Everyone above who says, "Why don't these kids just Google Harvard and figure
out it's cheap?" or, "Why don't they use CollegeConfidential?" is missing the
point. The worst position to be in is when you don't even know what questions
to ask.

These kids don't even realize what questions they could be asking.

It's not so hard to tell them.

------
redwood
This is one of the reasons public schools have brilliant minds

------
pagekicker
not exactly new news.

------
Evbn
This whole discussion is aabout misguided. You don't fix inequality by
shuffling who is at the top of the pyramid. You fix inequality by flattering
the top to a wider plateau, or by raising the level of the base.

We don't need to repopulate the Ivy League, we need to deprecate it.

/Ivy League grad.

~~~
jjoonathan
Agreed. Now the hard part: how do we do it?

/Ivy grad

~~~
bane
It's easy, build more schools or recognize already great ones, and start to
educate people that most lists of school rankings (USNews in particular) are
mostly gamed anyway and are more or less meaningless...(or actually start to
rank schools correctly) and then stop discriminating hiring practices.

~~~
jjoonathan
> stop discriminating hiring practices

There's the rub. You have powerful, entrenched players working to protect
their own interests. Even more importantly, ignoring cues like an Ivy
education reduces the SNR for hiring managers who are already overwhelmed by
noise. Stopping discrimination will require them to do additional difficult,
thankless vetting work.

In the tech world, github makes this relatively painless, though not entirely
effort-free. Perhaps such a system could be extended to legal and regulatory
fields? A central platform for open source laws, regulations, and debates
would do the trick. The difficult part would be getting people to use it.

Maybe you could start by targeting law schools and debate clubs, giving them
an easy way to visualize the back-and-forth of an argument, and then try to
use that traction to move into the public sphere? I seem to recall hearing
about a few sites trying to do this, but evidently none of them have reached
critical mass yet.

