
The best American colleges are still filled with students from rich families - known
http://qz.com/592646/the-best-american-colleges-are-still-overwhelmingly-filled-with-students-from-rich-families/
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luckydude
I'm a well off parent with a kid about to head to college. I don't find these
numbers surprising in the least. Here's why.

My kid, while bright enough, has a lot of advantages:

\- good schools

\- parents who care and are involved in his education

\- tutoring

\- ADHD medication

\- We're seeing if we can get him more time for tests, he processes slowly but
gets good results given enough time (I was similar)

Contrast that with some poor kid, no ADHD drugs, no tutoring, parents are too
busy trying to put food on the table, they are almost certainly in a crappy
school district, the kid is probably working to help put food on the table.

If my kid was poor there isn't a chance in hell that Harvard would look at
him. It would take a super human to live as a poor kid and somehow be noticed
by an elite university. Any poor kid who makes it into a place like that has
my utmost respect.

~~~
tamana
It is awful that activist parents can get their kids higher test scores by
requesting accommodations. The tests are (inappropriatelty) designed to
measure speed, but a minority of in-group families get that aspect of the test
waived to give their kids an edge, instead of making the tests loosely timed
for all students.

Not to mention the performance enhancing drug aspect, behavior that is banned
in sports but encouraged in academic games.

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cronjobber
"America’s elite is producing children who not only get ahead, but deserve to
do so: they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are
thus worthy of the status they inherit."

From: [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-
ric...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-rich-and-
powerful-are-increasingly-well-suited-earning-wealth-and-power)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8933562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8933562)

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krakensden
I have heard Harvard's student body composition strategy described as "wealth
and high achievers", which makes a certain amount of sense if you're hoping to
be a business catalyst that gets donations down the line.

Slightly downscale, public flagships deeply rely on rich students paying full
price to subsidize everyone else. If you wanted more poor kids to have a
chance, you might have to pay higher taxes.

~~~
peterhadlaw
Also, a big problem with public universities is that because they are so big
and inefficient with money, and that they do not have enough money to begin
with, to make up for it they accept foreigners who (with their parents factory
money) are easily willing to pay DOUBLE the regular out of state tuition to
have their children go to a good American school. On top of that, these
children then fly back and don't continue to the country that established
these schools in the first place - thus sapping our overall academic levels.

~~~
geebee
There's a lot to this, but a university like UC Berkeley does educate far, far
more undergraduates than a very elite private like Stanford or Harvard, and
enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined,
something you can say about several different UC campuses. Although UC gets
support from the state, the massive endowments and favored tax status of the
very elite privates may be more valuable than direct state support, with fewer
strings attached.

The UCs are inefficient with money, but think about how much places like
Stanford and Harvard are able to spend on an undergraduate class size that
might be a quarter to a fifth the size of a UC, with a lower percentage of low
income students as well.

If you consider scale an important factor, measuring a university by how many
students it can educate in addition to how well they do after graduation… you
know, I think the UCs may be a far more "efficient" model than the ivies.

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peterhadlaw
I don't know where I heard this but if these elite schools are really that
good, why haven't we commercialized them and made them even more accessible?
... Food for thought - I don't know what I think of that statement myself to
be fair.

~~~
moftz
Increasing admission means they need more professors. Assuming an elite
university has the best professors around, any addition ones are going to be
of lesser quality. Now the school is putting out worse students because their
professors aren't as good as they used to be. Their quality of research drops
because the students and professors suck and their reputation as an elite
school goes away. Additionally, if you open the admissions more, you will
effectively get students with lower grades. The more easy it is to get into a
school, the less people think of it. You are catering to the lowest
denominator.

~~~
tamana
An Ivy league education owes very little to professors. Professors are hired
for research skills, not undergraduate teaching. Teaching is famously poor,
except in the small minority of research assistantship cases.

