Why is it that the rich kids always get the free rides to college?

Why does it seem that the kids with parents who could probably afford to send their kids anywhere wind up getting a full scholarship? Recently this happened to 2 athletes from the town I live in. One got a free ride to play baseball at Illinois the other will play football next year at Miami/Ohio. They both live in neighborhoods of million $$ homes. The football player's dad even paid for fireworks and a jumbotron at all the home football games this past fall. Now my cousin is next. They have a million + home in Arizona and a house outside Chicago as well. His daughter just got offered a free ride to Michigan State. I have a feeling this one is purely academic. I am happy for her, but my cousin could probably write a check today to pay for all four years. Why? Why?

and have turned it down..... suggesting someone that needs it, gets it. i can afford to pay. on the few times i have done it, it was hard to get it across. they couldnt understand why i was refusing something free.

These guys are on scholarship, and most of them are not from neighborhoods with million dollar homes.

People who can afford things are often given things for free, often as an attempt to secure favor and brand recognition (a la the Hollywood stars who get the gift bags at awards shows), and/or because they can afford to be put in the situation which allows them exposure and experience (like your example).

I mostly put myself through college by working FT and taking on debt, and this girl I went to school with who went to a private High School was given all the breaks including opportunities for scholarships and grants that were not even available to me because she was in the "honors" program, even though her work was not as good. It kind of sours you. Don't let it, even though it sucks.

I heard that my cousin hired one to help them with the decision making, application processes, etc. So if you hire someone like this, do they have access to or know about things that regular joes like you and me are clueless about thus enabling them to have access to more things?

I work at a university, and my job is to literally give awy money. These..chareltons...are ripping off the very people who need help the most. Every single REPUTABLE college or University hires an office full of "Me"s to help you with any questions you have. Never ever ever pay for any service that will "help you find money".

the only cost you should ever see is to for the CSS Profile.

and expensive sports camps/music camps/ for their kids.

I know lots of people who have their kids get private lessons in baseball, basketball, Chinese, they go to dance camps for $5000 for 3 weeks, which I certainly could never afford, these kids get the best of everything. Meanwhile, most kids are working summer jobs, or are alone or at a local camp because their parents are both working, even in the summer.

We are Two Americas, as Edwards says.

.... many poor urban youths get scholarships because of football &
basketball.

when considering scholarships. Biff and Buffy are often in lots of after-school programs, National Honor Society, etc. There's plenty of
room for them in these extra-curriculars because the poorer kids are off flipping burgers after school, trying desperately to save enough money to
get into a community college 2-year program.

The colleges also like to think longterm. Once those kids are alumni, they're going to get solicited for donations to endowments at the colleges.
There's a much better chance for a big pay-off from some rich family rather than some working-class stiff who got into college by the skin of
his teeth...and didn't get great grades once he got there because he spent most of his after-class time at college working at Home Depot so he
could get something to eat when he got off work at midnight (and to pay for those damn textbooks).

The return on investment potential is all important. Giving a rich kid $20k a year in scholarships could come back as millions of dollars in alumni
donations in the out years.

I don't know if any of this is true, but it sounds good.

they live in home with high property taxes so the local school is wonderful. their parents can afford athletics... their parents can afford tutors.. Theres probably some alumni association with the parents and the schools...the parents have the means to pay for musical lessons, up to date computer media equipment...

I can't even afford to goto night college right now, but hey.. :)


The high school is my district just put in a swimming pool.. the schools in the city of cincinnati, 10 miles away, are falling apart, have lead paint, and a few are not even air conditioned.. Let alone the lack of books that are not falling apart...

People who have money often have the time and money up front to arrange their affairs to accommodate such.

We had a client come in and basically looked at all of the parameters a particular scholarship program required, and then we made suggestions about how he could move things around to make sure his son didn't break any of the rules. For example, many scholarship programs require that the applicant can't be currently declared a dependent.

There were other requirements as well, but each was navigable.

Lastly, my experience has shown me that MANY scholarship programs are offered by country clubs, golf clubs, etc.

Unfortunately, these tax write offs for the clubs are often slush funds for the members who will have 'an understanding' with those in the club determining the winners...

In my cousin's case anyway. I know that before they moved to AZ they belonged to a Country Club here in Northeastern IL. I think it was 40K to join and then you had to pledge to spend so much more a year there. Now they do love to golf and living in AZ I am positive they belong somewhere, my aunt told me last time she visited my cousin sent a limousine to pick her up and take her to the club to meet him for lunch.

and would be an asset to a great institution?

But my cousin's wife is an overbearing bitch. From what I hear, her two kids fear her. They look to her before they answer a question they are asked. She probably stands over them threatening the fear of god in them if they don't do well.

It only offers 4 AP courses. It's a private Christian school. When I lived in AZ, some of my kids' classmates had older siblings at the school my cousin's kid attends. They were doing things at my kids' school in middle school that their siblings at the private school were doing in sophmore year.

MSU doesn't give those out lightly. They're hard to get.

State is a great university and has a good student mix. She'll be exposed to quite a bit there.

*disclaimer*
I never went there, but my family did. My dad worked there in research after having gone there for his bachelor's, my brother got his first two degrees there, my mom went there to get the classes she needed for a Michigan teacher's license, my stepmom got both of her degrees there, and my stepmom's dad played football there and was an All-American. Let's just say that I know all the words to the fight song, even the ones most don't sing anymore.

but the main one is that these kids grow up with access to the most and best resources be they academic or athletic.

But that aside, if the students earn a scholarship, I see no reason for them not to get it, due to parent's income level. Some very rich parents have a tremendous amount of control over their children and a scholarship allows them to attend the college they chose as opposed to the one their parents want them to attend. They have a right to stand on their own merit.

That said, I work in a high school and do college planning and there is alot out there for students who come from lower economic groups too. In fact, if a student is in their top 20% of their class they get a free ride at the community college (which is a great school) and if they maintain a 3.0 those two years they can transfer to a 4 year state university for free for the remaining two years. Not bad if you ask me.

class. I came from a lower middle class family in the early 80s. I had to fight tooth and nail to convince my "guidance counselor" that I wanted to go to college. I was the first in my family to navigate the college thing and didn't do it well since I was basically doing it on my own. My mom didn't have a clue nor did I.

Needless to say after sludging along for two years I had to quit because it got to be too difficult to work and go to school and support myself. I was also amassing student loan debt which frightened me.

"Guidance" counselors are quick to direct military recruiters to kids who come from my side of the tracks but the scholarships are directed to the kids who come from the "right" side of the tracks.

so they tend to quality for more scholarships. They also have the time to do all the extra-curricular activities, because they don't have to hold down after-school jobs. Those extra-curricular activities help you get into better schools that have more money for financial aid.

There are a lot of ways upper middle class and rich kids benefit. As the saying goes, born on third base and think they hit a triple.

Qualifying for an athletic scholarship can be very expensive.

to boost the prestige of the institution. That's why. Is that fair from a society-wide social perspective? Probably not, but it's rational self-interested behavior for that institution.

There are merit-based scholarships and there are need-based scholarships. See? There are two kinds. Looks like your friends got the merit-based ones, which poor kids can get too if they're smart and talented.

if they're rich enough to have all the resources and help. :eyes:

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but the deck is stacked in favor of kids with money. Better schools, better teachers, better libraries, better tutors and academic help, better labs, better books, etc. It takes a lot of money for kids to be "smart and talented."

We often - OFTEN! - hear stories of the exceptional kid that "learned" his or her way out of the ghetto. It's an uplifting tale, to be sure, and I use the word "uplift" with a full awareness of its racial history.

But those kids - those exceptional cases - are only doing what is utterly expected of most middle of the road kids in wealthier districts. We don't require THOSE kids to overcome incredible obstacles, to be exceptional, to have the chance in our education system. So the uplifting tale of the individual struggling against all odds is REALLY an indictment of the social obstacles we refuse to deal with. Needless to say, these narratives are so common and popular precisely BECAUSE they obstruct our view of the socially accepted outrage that is inner city and low-income education ("hey - if you work hard, you can make it out!" is the motto, never mind that we don't ask wealthier kids to work half-as-hard, and they "make it out" as a matter of course).

Savage Inequalities is shocking and incredible.

If anyone here hasn't read any of his writing, I highly suggest picking up some. It will change the way you view education and equality in this country.

Savage Inequalities...even my freshman comp students, many of whom come from fairly privileged backgrounds, were enlightened and even moved by the excerpt they read in their Comp I class. Even I was shocked the first time I read it.

Yes, the deck is stacked in favor of the rich kids. Always has been and always will be, no matter what. On the other hand, it doesn't take a lot of money for kids to be smart and talented: it just takes parents who give a shit and help their kids express their talents. Like mine.

if they both work full time +. Especially if they work a lot of overtime or have 2nd jobs, or if their one job is very draining and physically demanding.

That's another way that poverty holds kids back, through the demands on the parents. :(

No one ever said being poor was easy. It's not.

The issue isn't whether or not it's easy to be poor. The issue is whether merit based scholarships are really based on merit.

To a large extent, they're not. Our society is not a meritocracy. Our schools aren't, our corporate workplaces aren't, and our government isn't. There is no place where "merit" is accurately isolated and measured, much less used as the sole standard for achievement.

Nothing is a pure meritocracy, but business is fairly close. Higher education makes a good shot at it. Government is far from it, as is made plain by our elected officials.

But hey, what can ya do?

And you're blind if you think it is. I'm a corporate consultant, and I watch and advise on hiring. I've seen hiring decisions made based on a lot of considerations other than "merit." When you have a pool of people who have roughly the same qualifications the decision always (ALWAYS) comes down to who the hiring executive likes. And that decision is always based on class, culture, race and other issues that make the executive more or less comfortable with the person.

I've seen people evaluated poorly in interviews clearly because of racist and class based prejudices. I've seen hispanic women with a lot of Project Management experience degraded as "administrative assistants" while white men with less experience are complemented as "up and coming." Merit had nothing to do with it as far as I could see, and I say that as a white man who was there.

I've seen clients who require higher education for all of their employees, and yet the lower paying, lower prestige jobs still end up predominantly black and hispanic and female. Often those lower paying, low prestige jobs require more skills and more pressure. So even once you get a job, there's no guarantee that merit has anything to do with the pay-scale or prestige of a job.

I can't speak to your second example. But in your first example, you are talking about merit, insofar as likeability is a merit. Which it is. Executives value certain qualities about people that may have class implications. Style of dress, the way one carries himself, etc... For example, in the business world, the language generally spoken is good English with a minimum of slang or inflection. Being able to speak that way is a merit for a business that wants to impress customers, clients, other businesses, etc... This may put people who grew up in ghettoes at a disadvantage, but that's the way it is.

If someone is more comfortable only with white men than you think being white and male is a merit? So your idea of a meritocracy allows for, and encourages, bigotry?

That's sick. And that turns the whole idea of meritocracy on it's ass.

Edit to add:
Your assumption that all the black, hispanic and female employees in the lower wage jobs don't carry themselves well, or don't speak well, or are somehow "ghetto" is truly frightening. What an amazingly ignorant generalization. You seem to really, desperately want to justify inequality as the fault of the people at the bottom. That is truly sad.

I think I'll not be talking to you.

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Wise they are.

you had a few posts deleted, too.

Yes, the deck is stacked in favor of the rich kids. Always has been and always will be, no matter what. On the other hand, it doesn't take ANY money for kids to be smart and talented: it just takes parents who give a shit and help their kids express their talents. Like mine.

There can be affluent kids that are good at sports. But, most likely, those with the wherewithal are always going to have advantages over those that do not. My Grandparents were born dirt poor, my Grandfathers moved north to Gary, Indiana in the 1920s to work in the steel mills. My Grandmothers worked as well, one as a Domestic and the other went to College and became a Nurse. My Dad joined the Military and they sent him through school all the way to his Doctorate. He retired as a Navy Captain. That granted us a degree of affluence so that we grew up in an area with good schools and expectations of a professional career. Three of my friends went to service academies, others went to Ivy league Schools, I went to Knox College...........sorry, the point is that families try to raise their kids "better" than they were raised and getting better jobs in better parts of the country in better neighborhoods is part of it.

There needs to be more money available for grants and need-based scholarships. These have been drying up since Uncle Ronnie got in the White House....But, if we are going to have a "fuck you, I got mine" society, then I guess that's the right way to go about it. And by electing Reagan, we decided to have a "fuck you, I got mine" society.

culture of learning authorized and valorized knowledges, etc., etc.

Rich kids get a better education in the US than poor kids. That's a fact. With respect to the athletic scholarships, rich kids also get camps, dedicated coaches, better playing conditions, more information on scholarship applications, access to scouts, community involvement, etc., etc.

There's no mystery here at all. Scandal? Yes. But mystery? Not so much.

hooking up with the rich husband, become a house wife and the degree is wasted.

And last I checked, it wasn't backed up by any kind of facts. I wonder what your point is?

Should women not go to college if they might stay at home with the kids? Relatively few women stay home as housewives. When they do, it's often because of financial considerations. Often daycare costs more than she was able to earn, so the issue is that women are often underpaid and kept in lower end jobs.

Where are all these women who are searching for rich husbands to leach off of? Where are all these supposed rich men?

:eyes:

The degree is not necessarily "wasted". Successful men often have their wives helping them out in many ways, including advice with their job. Many stay at home mothers participate in community organizations and do career work. Mothers help their children learn outside of school.
I think that many degrees are actually wasted in the business world.

By NCAA rules, the school can only spend 14 scholarships on roughly 30 players. A full-ride for baseball is EXTREMELY uncommon. That kid would have to be Major League Baseball draft ready for that to happen; and then he could make 5-6 million on a signing bonus and pay his own way through school.

baseball at Michigan. Then the high school coach helped work with them on getting an offer from Illinois which I guess, was his first choice. This kid's younger brother plays on my sons 13 year old team, so last season we heard an awful lot about this.

Had a friend who was shopping for schools for his kid. They visited a small private (and very well known) school to scope it out and size up the kid's chances of getting in. They were told flatly that legacies and NCAA athletes had top priorities, and he was stuck fighting for the few remaining slots.

As long as college sports are big business, this will never change.

Many universities are now entirely dependent on their sports for their funding. It sucks and it's fucked me over :thumbsdown:

most schools lose money on athletics.

Because they make MILLIONS on boys football and boys basketball.

Now, if you're talking high schools and such, then, yes, they usually lose money on athletics. But that would have nothing to do with this thread.

but most schools lose money or break even on football, and lose $$$ on just about every other sport)


http://thesportseconomist.com/archive/2006_10_01__arch_file.htm

in a story about FIU:

Big-time college athletics is an lure that many schools find difficult to resist. The reality is, however, that even revenue sports such as football and men’s basketball are money losers for most programs. Certainly FIU must be rethinking their decision to step onto the football field.

$120K in ticket sales for the season is pathetic. Even if they had only one home game and sold tickets for an amazing bargain of $10 a pop, that's 12,000 fans. The big boys sell 60,000+ per game for at least $25 per seat.

And, depending on the agreement with the conference, there are many hundreds of thousands to be made from conference bowl agreements, TV time, etc.

I'm not sure which UT which was being mentioned, but the Tennessee and Texas programs are definitely not losing money.

There are two serious money-makers at the big schools: men's football and men's basketball. A successful women's basketball team can sometimes break into the black as well (Tennessee, Texas, Duke, etc), but they depend on TV revenues as well. Men's FB and BB make so much money that they support all the other teams that are required to be a "NCAA" school.

In my experience, profits from athletics do not go directly to other university programs (i.e., academics), but the benefits are clear and undeniable: a successful FB and/or BB team will energize the alumni to give and give and give. cha-ching.

"Few remaining slots?" That's a lot of legacies and athletes. So many, in fact, as to make your statement flat-out false.

The poster asserted that the vast majority of openings in that college go to legacies and athletes. That's absurd on its face.

If what the poster claimed is "absurd," surely there's some support for your assertion, right?

Think about it this way: when you were in college, how many of your friends were either a) NCAA athletes or b) legacies whose parents attended that college? About 20% of my friends were athletes, and I didn't know anyone whose parents went to my school, a small liberal arts college ranked in the top 25.

Many of my high school friends went to a top-ranked, large university, and I used to visit them often. None of my friends there were athletes and none of them were legacies.

Your experience ought to tell you this too. Colleges don't release statistics about their legacy admissions. I'm sure you can figure out how many students are on sports teams at any particular school, though, and put that figure in a ratio with the student body itself, and put the lie to the above poster's assertion. Feel free to do that and get back to me.

But thanks for elaborating a bit.

My daughter got a free ride through college - I only gave her pocket money. She graduated seventh in her class, was in National Honor Society, and practiced cello for hours and hours every day (it was a school cello until one of her teachers helped her buy one.) She worked hard. I was always in bed before she was when she was in high school. We struggled - both her father and I were out of work for a while when she was in school, but she kept on plugging away. She graduated summa cum laude a couple of years ago, and I am very proud of her. Sometimes good things do happen to deserving kids who don't have money.

her right. I am sure she will do very well.

:-) Very uplifting. Thanks for sharing, and congrats to you and your daughter. :hi:

My cousin's daughter was a champion runner, winning a lot of state records. She was offered scholarships to many universities. My cousin has a lot of dough but they took the scholarships.

scholarships as the ones you're talking about. Kids don't get athletic scholarships because they're rich. They get them because they're elite athletes.

the better person you are

and the closer you are to heaven

Please share with your network.
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In making the announcement, Harvard's president Lawrence H.
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If you know of a family earning less than $60,000 a year with an
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<http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/03/30-finaid.html>
or call the school's financial aid office at (617) 495-1581.

BUTTERCUP
SEND TO SOMEONE WHETHER THEY CAN USE IT OR NOT. THEY JUST MIGHT
KNOW SOMEONE WHO CAN!

Education is in the interests of the nation. Every citizen should have the right to be educated for free.

Enough said.

You get what you pay for w/r/t education- the higher education systems of Europe are in shambles mainly because they can't charge tuition.

parents could afford to live in areas with good schools or send their children to private schools, afford tutors and/or afford allowing one parent to stay at home to help with the homework, thus ensuring their children get the grades to get said scholarships.

thank-you-very-much.

:eyes:

My parents (who were at the time fairly comfortable but by no means rich) were not going to pay for my college no matter what, for whatever reason. My dad is basically a cheapskate. We all had to either find a way to pay for it ourselves, get scholarships or take out loans. I made straight and graduated first in my class. I earned the scholarship.

scholarship. No matter how much money their parents make. If the kid has worked hard and gotten good grades and done all the right things, they should be rewarded. Now I happen to believe that higher education (Bachelors degree) should be free for all but that's another issue. I don't believe in college athletics at all either.

public school in the University System of Georgia is free.

but as a GA professor at a regional university I've seen numerous students piss away this opportunity. At my university, less than 25 of the entering freshmen will graduate from my university or any other GA state university.

The rich kids get merit scholarships because of the usual reasons cited. They might take special test prep and can afford to take the standardized tests more than once.
Rich kids are more likely to get athletic scholarships too because their parents pay of camps and special club teams.
As someone mentioned above, poor kids are more likely to be working in high school.
The unfortunate thing with the poor working kid is that it works against them if they try to get financial aid. There are many schools that do give good need based scholarships. Unless the student is going to spend every cent of their wages on college or are truly impoverished, they are better off not working in order to pay for college and concentrate instead on studies and extra curriculars.

perhaps anyone who wanted an college education, could get one, free of charge, on the taxpayers dime.

Fifty percent of all federal taxes go to the DOD and that doesn't include war funding. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Iraqis, prior to us invading there country, got a free ride, from kindergarten to the Phd level. We just shove all our money down rat-holes, which later ends up in rich motherfuckers pockets. 10 or 20 thousand nukes in our possession which gives us the power to wipe any country off the face of the earth in a matter of minutes, but yet we still spend over $500 billion on year on the military industrial complex. We are one sick country.

Conservative, Compassionate, Christians. Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining!
Have you ever noticed that we love declaring war on stuff but we always lose the war, you know like the drug war, 30 years in the making and still losing, war on poverty, losing, etc, etc, etc.

The War on Greed is the one we should be fighting!

most academic scholarships are also merit based, but the VAST majority of aid, in the form of loans and grants, is given based on need. It's not the poor who get screwed in this situation, it's the middle class.

It shows where our society's values are - sports, sports, sports. It's really weird. Where I grew up you were lionized for success in sports far more than academics.

The "merit" thing is also in play - but what a coincidence that rich kids get better grades and better educations - we are obsessed with competition and anything goes to get ahead, and that includes getting an advantage in the game.

I think we should support the community colleges that don't have sports teams. There is no need for a college to have a sports team, period, so somehow we need to get academic colleges started. It would be possible for them to turn out higher quality graduates in the long run. Let football make its own minor league instead of using the colleges.

but the connections among fellow elites they have that will get them those first, cool jobs, while the rest of us in lower classes who busted our butts in school get to lag behind and become resentful because everyone told us college would give us "choices."

/thought working hard in school would get me a job! Graduated with Honors!
//yeah, right, it's who you know
///now make copies and fill in forms for a living while cynically posting on the Internet