Comment by aidenn0
4 days ago
> Bumping this up to families making $200k seems really unnecessary and helps people that don't really need to help.
My household income is right around $200k, and my daughter (still a few years from college) would definitely consider e.g. UC Berkeley, which (including housing) is half the cost of MIT for an in-state student. Free tuition would certainly make her look at MIT more closely, so if the goal is to draw the best students (and helping poor students is a side-effect), then it's a good idea.
Also, it's headline-grabbing. There's at least one poor kid somewhere in the US who will read this headline and consider MIT, when they previously didn't (even though they probably already would have qualified for free, or nearly-free tuition).
True. Counselors at poorer school districts frequently don't recognize that these "dream schools" are often more affordable than a state school for certain populations. The students certainly don't know it unless a trusted adult shows them and really pushes them towards pursuing it. Hopefully, some students out there will see this and realize that while MIT is crazy selective, getting in is the hardest part.
Programs like Stars College Network (https://starscollegenetwork.org/) and Questbridge (https://www.questbridge.org/) help to bridge this gap in knowledge. They are really good programs, based on my limited to exposure to them as a Caltech alumnus. It was an incredible stroke of luck that I knew Caltech even existed growing up in a very small town pre-Internet, and these programs take some of that luck out of the equation.
Good point. Kids of poorer school districts still have the prestigious admissions system stacked against them, in many ways, but simply knowing that Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc. may be options will lead some to look into it, and some will then have information, time, and means to make their application look plausible.
As a young teen, I applied for financial aid, to a state school, and got a nonviable response, since my parents of 6 kids could afford to contribute zero, but some bureaucracy thought otherwise.
So I went to Community College part time, while working at a store, and then was a co-op student, and worked my way up from there. After working in industry, I went to grad school, at an Ivy and MIT, and only then did I learn what successful undergrad applications tend to look like, and also that there's various financial assistance available (including some not advertised).
My story is not of the system working. I've seen so much systemic class nonsense and rigging (and sometimes bad behavior by people who feel entitled to whatever they can grab). Being at a disadvantage in those games doesn't stop once you're nominally in. But the relatively recent need-blind admissions, and family income thresholds for tuition, help a lot, especially if we can pair that with getting the information/advising about successful applications to everyone.