Do college admissions give the poor a break?

The answer is a resounding no, according to this New York Times op-ed. WARNING! The op-ed is really alarmist about getting into college (in keeping with the parody 12-part series about how your child will never get into college, mentioned a few posts ago).

I'm not thrilled about posting alarmist stuff on this blog. But I hear comments all the time about how poor kids and minorities have such a better chance of getting into top colleges nowadays.

The author proposes a lottery for some seats in top colleges. This is about as likely to happen as is the notion, espoused by a dear friend, of ending inheritance rights. Interesting idea, though!

And here's the author:

Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.”

The New College Try

AMERICANS are committed to the belief that everyone, no matter how humble his origins, has a chance to rise to the top. Our leading colleges and universities play a pivotal role in this national narrative, for they are considered major pathways to power and privilege.

Today, the competition to get into these institutions is at an all-time high, and this has led to serious problems across the socioeconomic spectrum — gnawing and pervasive anxiety among the affluent, underrepresentation among the middle classes and an almost total lack of access among the poor.

... at least since the 1970s, selective colleges have repeatedly claimed — most recently in amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in the landmark affirmative case concerning the University of Michigan — to give an edge in admissions to disadvantaged students, regardless of race. So it came as a rude shock a few years ago when William Bowen, the former president of Princeton, and his associates discovered, in a rigorous study of 19 selective colleges, that applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, whether defined by family income or parental education, “get essentially no break in the admissions process.”