“.... in addition to white students who historically have more avenues open to them when they ARE high achieving, even when from poor families.”
Forget the “historical advantages”. They’re not here now and haven’t been for some time. For example, my daughter graduated from H.S. in 1991. She was rated #18 in a class of over 440 students. A Black kid across the street who didn’t have nearly as good a grade point average as my daughter was awarded $50,000+ in scholarships. My daughter was awarded $4,000. Go figure. Then get back to me about “disadvantaged minorities”.
Gates gives (or pledges, or whatever) money in a 100% politically correct way like most big money. Big money is then left alone by government as no opening is left for lawsuits.
Same as political contributions.
You may be confusing scholarships and grants. Most scholarships and nearly all grants today are need rather than merit based. You don’t specify if your daughter or your neighbor received scholarships v. grants, merit v. need, from whom, what the families’ income disparities might be, how many children in each of the families, etc. THAT is more often than not how those matters are worked out today.
My daughter went to a $40K/year private school that ended up costing us the same or less than her classmates who went to the state schools. Private schools are extremely well endowed. She decided what school she would go to and went for their most generous merit scholarship, which was basically a free ride. So one could say she was awarded $160K in scholarships compared to a friend who got the state university’s most generous award of $4k/year or $16K in scholarships. But that is comparing apples to oranges.
She is now completing her Masters at another top university, and went only on the condition that the school would pick up the tab. She’s pure WASP, not one point for any disadvantage, but scores, grades, work ethic, etc. that the universities felt was worth their investment. Sometimes it is just that simple.