Similar to the hundreds of colleges which still give preferential treatment to legacy applicants, Harvard admits close to 30% of its students had previous generations attend their school. Generally, students who get in through legacy applications are wealthy and under qualified for the colleges that they’re attending. Although there are students who deserve to attend the school due to their academic potential, many are there because they have two very important things: money and parents who attended the school. A vast majority of the colleges which still give preferential treatment to their legacy applicants, weigh receiving donations from affluent student over building an academically fit class for the institute. Although schools receive donations …show more content…
Legacy applicants tend to be from upper class America and most of the time, white. The answer to why schools continue giving preferential treatment to legacies is unfair but clear and understandable. Despite what colleges may say about close alumni relationships being the reason for legacy admissions, the real reason is money. An alum who has a good experience and a child attending the school is more likely to donate. If the alum comes from a wealthy family, they are even more likely to donate, increasing their child’s chance of being admitted into the school. For example, Stanford alums tend to become more economically successful than the general population. Stanford alums have an average mid-career salary of $114,000 versus the $51,017 national median household income. Colleges keep this in mind during their admissions process, which is why underqualified students are attending elite schools they aren’t academically fit for. This ends up impacting more than just the thousands of deserving applicants who are turned away to make space for legacy students. By doing this, college students begin becoming impacted as well. With the admission of under qualified legacies, colleges are forced to “water down” or simplify material to avoid having a majority of their students failing
• Why not add alumni children to the list of favorable treatment in admission process?
The author felt very strongly about the need to get rid of exclusive preference for legacies or other special qualities in students that did not relate to academic achievement. Golden felt strongly about this matter when was writing for The Wall Street Journal. He had done a lot of research and discovered how dishonest Ivy League schools were being in their acceptance process. He interviewed many people, and sympathized with the intelligent students who did not get into their college of choice because they weren’t financially or socially satisfactory for the school. Many of the rich he tried to contact refused an interview, which Golden proves as their embarrassment to how they were admitted. He has many suggestions to help improve how Ivy League schools can better their acceptance process.
In the article “Who Gets to Graduate” by Paul Tough examines a problem about low income students are less likely to graduate from college than students from middle class or wealthier families. In the United States, school systems are not created equally. Middle and upper class students have access to safe and modern schools equipped with everything they possibly need to stay in that high rank because they came from a family who has the money to support their studies. Students from low-income families don’t have a lot of the support, stability, and money from home that higher-income students can take for granted.
1] I know a lot of people who whine and complain about the children of alumni having an easier time getting into Cromwell than other applicants.
From a young age, accomplishment is associated first with monetary gain and then with going to a good college. While my peers and I are currently fixated on the latter, Outliers has shown us there is no need to be. With Nobel prize winners coming from anywhere from MIT to Holy Cross and Stanford to Rollins (Gladwell, 81-82), success is not determined by the higher learning institution one chooses to go to, although it certainly does not hurt to attend a prestigious one. As I look to the application process I am deterred by many things that should send me towards success. Being a Caucasian, upper-middle class citizen, I am perhaps the most replaceable student in the world with thousands just like me, hoping for the same chance I look forward too. However, I feel it is what I have done in the summers that will set me apart. Karl Alexander realized that privileged students tend to ‘outlearn’ underprivileged children over the summer, something I am beginning to see more clearly. This past summer, I was fortunate enough to be part of the 6-percent accepted to the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes for Business and Entrepreneurship. It took only a few days to realize that I was the only true ‘white kid’. With the majority coming from Asian descent, the only other kid at the camp who may have been Caucasian came from a Panamanian family. As I noticed this, I realized
Imagine a brilliant high school child named Michael who has a high GPA and is enrolled in the honors and AP curriculum; he precipitates in multitudes of extracurricular activities including sports and clubs. He gets accepted to many schools and received many scholarships. However, even with financial aid, he and his family are economically deprived and therefore incapable in funding a college education. This scenario is not an imagination but a common event in modern day America. Fifty percent of eighteen to twenty-five year old adults who did not attend a higher education institution experienced a similar situation (Why). These people belong in a university, an establishment whose nature is to judge base on the intelligence not on the
Jerome Karabel has explored many areas of the college admissions process and is unhappy with his findings. In his text, “The Battle Over Merit”, Karabel concludes that the college admissions process has to be updated, so that everyone gets a fair and equal chance to get into these institutions. He includes a substantial argument of how college admissions have evolved and has been initially favoring one social group. This justification shows the concept of privilege and a need for inclusion. Karabel believes that race shouldn 't be a factor of change, but socio-economic backgrounds should be a way for students to get help and get into these schools, because they need it the most. He also brings up the idea of power and politics and that the
Many middle to lower class families cannot afford to send their kids to school and with Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton giving out generous financial packages to their student, who mostly come from wealthy background. The poorer students are on the losing end because they are not given the opportunity for aid. As Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council of Education, says, "Smart poor kids go to college at the same rate as stupid rich kids." What this is saying is that the wealthy families have vastly more opportunity to succeed in the college system even though they have equal or lesser smarts. Well respected schools such as NYU are now admitting students based on the financial fit not by merit.
However, when a student wants to attend college after high school, the chances of going to any school of his or her choice can seem unfair and have unequal opportunity to other peers. Unfortunately the idea of being limited to attending certain schools has a big influence in chances of becoming successful. Even though higher educations seems to have a direct path for high wages, the access to college can have reverse effects on intergenerational mobility. By limiting access from someone in a bottom percentile to have the possibility to attend a good college harms their upward mobility. In efforts to help breakdown an understanding of how education affects intergenerational mobility, a study called Mobility reports cards show significant findings. Mobility reports cards were conducted by collecting administrative data from more then thirty million college students in the years of 1999-2013. “We obtain rosters of attendance at all Title-IV accredited institutions of higher education in the U.S using de-identified data from federal income tax returns combined with data from the National Student Loan Data System. We obtain information on students’ earnings in early adulthood and their parents’ incomes from tax records.”
Black alumni are enthused to see increasing numbers of Black students at elite schools such as Harvard and Yale, but raises the question of what type of Black students are getting in (Rimer & Arenson, 2004). African immigrants
Teachers have and will always have a big impact in everyone’s life and if not everyone, well, at least they did for me. They teach you everything you need to know about a subject and valuable life lessons, so why are they not paid sufficiently enough to make a decent living? Teachers salaries have always been low and I believe it is the time that changes. Being a lawyer, doctor, or engineer is great, but none of that would be possible without the insight of a teacher, I will inform you in this paper on why I believe there is a need for action. I will go over the background of teacher’s salaries, my ideas on what would be best for teachers not just in Texas, but nationwide, and pros and cons on the issues and ideas at hand.
School funding is a mix of different funding sources like federal, state, and local. About ninety percent of funding for education comes from state and local community. K-12 education has failed to keep up with high enrollment. Schools must spend to counter effects of poverty while many European countries alleviate these conditions through government spending. Currently more than forty percent of low income school get an extremely unfair share of state and local funds. Low income school are receiving inadequate funds for their school, whereas other schools in the United States are unfairly distributing their state and local funds. That is unfair to the low income schools because those schools really need the money for school books, field trips, etc. Funding for public schools has been quite unequal for years, but even though Americans are fully aware of this issue no one does anything to solve it. Researchers are trying to show them both sides of this unequal funding issue in public schools in order to help balance the distribution of educational funding.
They give our students an education,if we did not have teachers,there would be no reality in jobs etc.Another reason is that they literally work a full time every day of the week and weekend job.They even have to take work home with them, such as grading students work and thinking of new plans to teach in the classroom.They also have to teach in all different ways because every student learns differently.
In the United States, public schools get their funding from their respective state. As a student, it can be seen as concerning when one compares how much states spend on their schools. Many schools are inadequate in both an aspect of safety and effectiveness of the learning environment. As a result of inadequate subsidy across America, schools resort to taking drastic measures. Not only are the unequal sources of subsidy a difficulty, but the concept and execution of budget cuts also exacerbate the issue. In order to give every student in America equal opportunities for success, funding should be controlled by the federal government with a policy that enforces equity rather than equality. This is also a viable option that could be carried
Should college be free or is it good the way it is? This is one of the most debatable questions of this generation. Like every other thing it would also have its pros and cons. Many say that it would greatly help a country while others say that nothing is truly free and someone must pay for it. However the growth of a country’s economy over the long run is miles more than the loose in the short term. So in my opinion College should be free for everyone.