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Elite Colleges Struggle To Recruit Smart, Low-Income Kids (NPR - unintentioned honesty)
NPR ^ | 1-9-13 | Shankar Vedantami

Posted on 01/09/2013 12:12:32 PM PST by wac3rd

Across the United States, college administrators are poring over student essays, recommendation letters and SAT scores as they select a freshman class for the fall. If this is like most years, administrators at top schools such as Harvard and Stanford will try hard to find talented high school students from poor families in a push to increase the socioeconomic diversity on campus and to counter the growing concern that highly selective colleges cater mainly to students from privileged backgrounds.

(snip)

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"Imagine a student who is the only student who is a likely candidate for a place like Harvard or Stanford or University of Chicago — and he's not just the only student in his or her high school, but he's the only student that that high school has graduated like that in, say, three or four years," Hoxby says.

Without mentors and academically talented peers, Hoxby says, many of these students fail to apply to schools that can offer them a premium education free of charge. And because the students are widely dispersed across the 42,000 high schools in the country, college recruiters have a hard time finding them.

(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: affirmativeaction; education; highereducation; npr; preferences
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To: Bizhvywt
For real?

No.

Tuition and Fees 2012-2013
Harvard University Student Health Plan (HUSHP)
Student Health Fee $930

Student Health Insurance Plan $2,168
Blue Cross Blue Shield Hospital/Specialty and Medco Prescription Drug Coverage
Students with other health insurance may be eligible to waive one or both parts of HUSHP coverage. Waiver requests must be submitted online by August 31 for the fall term and by February 28 for the spring term. For details about HUSHP coverage and the online waiver visit www.huhs.harvard.edu/Insurance/Students.aspx.

link

Under Massachusetts state law, students must have health insurance. But if they don't have to use Harvard's plan if they show they're on their parents' plan.

21 posted on 01/09/2013 1:01:29 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
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To: wac3rd

What is the purpose of “a higher education”?


22 posted on 01/09/2013 1:01:42 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Tax-chick
This is one quality that is, to some extent, measured by standardized test scores. The tests don't give extra points for being a nice kid who doesn't cause trouble in class.

You're right about not giving extra points, but I don't think a good SAT or ACT score will tell you how hard the student will work when the work is hard.

I can tell you I sailed through high-school being pretty lazy. The work came easy to me. Not easy enough to get me into Harvard, but enough to get me into GA Tech.

Once there, I learned to work and was able to transfer to Cornell. Cornell is what my BS Diploma says.

My family modeled hard work, I just was slow on the uptake.

As quick as I was in learning the High School material, I don't know if I could have survived GA Tech if my family hadn't modeled hard work to me.

23 posted on 01/09/2013 1:04:51 PM PST by ArGee (Reality - what a concept.)
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To: Bubba Ho-Tep; Bizhvywt; kingu

Also, Harvard does not offer merit-based scholarships. They offer need-based financial aid; the cost of health insurance is factored in to the “cost of attendance” that is used to calculate a need-based financial aid package.


24 posted on 01/09/2013 1:13:42 PM PST by Conscience of a Conservative
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To: Tax-chick

I always say that they can find minorities that will qualify for elite colleges without lowering standards. They just have to invest more in recruiting. That is the key.

They spend money to recruit atheletes. I guess there is no payback in recruiting smart minorities.


25 posted on 01/09/2013 1:18:39 PM PST by USAF80
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To: ArGee

True and this is another area where everyone needs to put some effort into it. The school, the teachers, the guidance counselors, the parents, and the student.

Teachers know the grades a student makes. The counselors help guide the student and the student needs to fill out paperwork.

You get what you put into it.


26 posted on 01/09/2013 1:24:29 PM PST by ~Pandora
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To: blueunicorn6
Becoming El-Presidente for one. Didn’t that fella in the White House go to Harvard?
27 posted on 01/09/2013 1:24:51 PM PST by USAF80
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To: Tax-chick

The point is that as a result of the War on Poverty, a meager, but ample life (survival, including housing, food, education and healthcare) is given for merely showing up, not doing any physical or mental work to earn it.

After a certain amount of time (generations) as the National Parks warn, the animals lose their instincts to hunt for food when they are being fed by the humans and eventually die out after a generation loses that skill set.

We just borrow to keep those people breeding and voting for Perma-Santa Clauses like Obama and the Democrats. They will keep the train rolling for a mere lever pull every 2-4 years, citing more goodies that can be stolen from your neighbor.

The problem with the War on Poverty and the education system is that skills are PURPOSELY being destroyed so people are helpless and NEED Government to live. The hardscrabble days of finding wood for a fire, killing game and working odd jobs for a living are gone.

I have said this many times in FR. The Marxists’ goal is to have us divided by class/race/language, broke by the unfettered spending of Washington and raping of our Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid funds/incessant debt, making food more expensive as the final nail, gun control.

No weapons equals unarmed sheep the Commie slaughter, look at the language used by Lefties like Maher, Schultz, Letterman, Rock, Foxx...the unions, Dem politicians, Democratic Underground/Firedoglake/Craigslist...La Raza, ACORN...they want us dead and we think they are expressing their opinions...we are civil, our TEA parties are like church socials, theirs are pig stys...look at the Occupy Crowd, drinking, drugging, raping, killing....pooping...

I didn’t mean to go on a rant about everything, but the education system is purposely flawed and a joke/game with the Nationalized student loans and the policies that kill the jobs that would repay those loans. More Cloward-Piven anarchy-inducing morass.


28 posted on 01/09/2013 1:26:31 PM PST by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: ArGee

I’d take a GA Tech student over a Harvard student most any day. GA Tech is where students learn to make the world function. Harvard is where students learn to pontificate about the world. Congratulations on your accomplishments.


29 posted on 01/09/2013 1:27:47 PM PST by iacovatx (Conservatism is the political center--it is not "right" of center)
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To: wac3rd
Harvard and Stanford will try hard to find talented high school students from poor families in a push to increase the socioeconomic diversity on campus and to counter the growing concern that highly selective colleges cater mainly to students from privileged backgrounds.

Affirmative Action and quotas still exist in those universities and if they can't find the students to fill those automatic spots then it's because they don't exist.

I have a nephew who was a brilliant academic in a private school in Detroit, was named to the all state hockey team as a defenseman following his school's hockey state championship. His academics allowed him to go anywhere.

Because of his hockey skills, he was recruited by all the ivy league schools including Harvard. But because he wanted to play hockey and they couldn't guarantee him a starting position, he instead chose a small college in Boston called Williams College. There, he played all the hockey he wanted, had a great time and got a great education where he placed in the top 10 in his class.

Here's where I'm going with this. His academics pretty much guaranteed him entrance into a medical school program anywhere in this country but instead, he wanted to come back to Michigan and attend the University of Michican Medical School.

When he applied, U of M basically said thanks but no thanks because while he had the grades, they had to fill the quotas first. The quotas of course being minorities and students on foreign visas. U of M did go on to say that they would accept him the following years.

So he made a choice, rather than go to another university, he went to Europe and played semi-pro hockey for a year. While there, he played with guys from every European country, worked part time jobs with these guys and traveled extensively to their home countries and had a ball.

When spring time came, he was offered a pro contract with a professional team there and seriously considered accepting it but after calling home, his family convinced him to return and enter U of M's medical school and the rest is history.

As a side note, following U of M, he went on to the University of Pittsburgh to study surgery and ultimately received a fellowship to Harvard to study Thorasic Surgery which he completed about 4 yars ago prior to returning back to Michigan where he practices in a local hospital.......

30 posted on 01/09/2013 1:32:24 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (Jab her with a harpoon or just throw her from the train......)
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To: iacovatx

I agree with you. I went to a college near Harvard and knew some of the people there.

Unless they were in the hard sciences (math, science, engineering, healthcare/pre-med/research) they basically sat around and agreed with their Lefty professors about how terrible the US was. They mainly came from upper class homes but resented how hard their families worked (whatever generation) to get them there.

They usually drifted back home after a year or so traveling to Peru or China, then morphed into the family business or headed to grad/law/business school, where they immediately entered the workforce at higher level than their peers. I know this for a fact as I worked on Wall Street in the 90’s and we recruited from the Ivy/Stanford-type schools.

It’s a small fraternity and they have a superiority complex only known to a few dictators, including BHO, who attened Columbia and Harvard Law, ironically.


31 posted on 01/09/2013 1:38:26 PM PST by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: MeganC

Actually the FedGov has taken student loans away from the banks and now issues them directly (instead of just backing bank-made loans). So now instead of being slaves to a bank, our young people are made indentured servants to the FedGov.

Isn’t Change wonderful!?


32 posted on 01/09/2013 1:42:56 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Tax-chick
ACT or SAT ... and if you do well on the PSAT, every university knows about it.

Absolutely they do........Unfortunately "quotas" and affirmative action are still in effect....

33 posted on 01/09/2013 2:01:35 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (Jab her with a harpoon or just throw her from the train......)
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To: AppyPappy
Bring ‘em in and flunk ‘em out.

Not necessarily true when it comes to maintaing quotas in universities which the Obama transcripts will ultimately reveal.

Unqualified minorities are given a pass in order to keep them enrolled in their respective universities because to lose such a student is to put the school in jeopardy of losing govt. funding for failing to fullfill the minority quotas.....

34 posted on 01/09/2013 2:11:10 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (Jab her with a harpoon or just throw her from the train......)
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To: USAF80

Well, that’s what they tell us. Hard to say whether it’s true, since his transcripts are sealed.

But if he did, it just goes to show it isn’t just the smaht kids that get into Hahvid...


35 posted on 01/09/2013 2:32:01 PM PST by ZirconEncrustedTweezers ("I'm not anti-anything, I just wanna be free." - Mike Muir)
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To: Bizhvywt

Makes no sense. You can be on your parents health insurance until you are 26.

Do they have an exemption from Obamacare?


36 posted on 01/09/2013 2:47:31 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Want freedom? Think WWRRD? Then do it.)
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To: ~Pandora

“True and this is another area where everyone needs to put some effort into it. The school, the teachers, the guidance counselors, the parents, and the student.

Teachers know the grades a student makes. The counselors help guide the student and the student needs to fill out paperwork.

You get what you put into it.”

I am going through the application process with my kid now. He apped 6 universities and the first acceptance letter came in yesterday. He has very good grades, his SAT was blehh, but his social activities sold the school.

Next week he interviews for a school. They want to see what the kid is like in person.


37 posted on 01/09/2013 2:54:10 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Want freedom? Think WWRRD? Then do it.)
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To: Bubba Ho-Tep

Actually, yes. Four years was more than $10,000; their health plan did NOT meet Harvard’s minimum requirements (in one case, didn’t cover maternity, in another had too high of a deductible) and they were both required to use the Harvard plan, which is NOT covered by the needs based scholarship.


38 posted on 01/09/2013 4:08:26 PM PST by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: wac3rd

Surely Harvard and the rest can fill their ranks with the offspring of the shallow gene pool elites.


39 posted on 01/09/2013 4:17:38 PM PST by Makana
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To: EQAndyBuzz

And that is exactly how it is done.


40 posted on 01/09/2013 5:19:21 PM PST by ~Pandora
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