Now that I'm on the "other side" (got my PhD from an Ivy League uni), I constantly meet people who don't even begin to grasp how far away growing up poor puts you from things and resources they take for granted. Even stuff that may seem obviously within reach.
I'll give you an example from my own life. My dream schools were Duke and MIT. I applied to Duke, but didn't even apply to MIT. Want to know why? Because it cost $40 to apply. Every school charged an application fee, so I had to be incredibly picky about where I applied to stretch the money from my $5.50 / hr part-time job at Chik-Fil-A. I had to narrow my list to 4, and I figured MIT was a long-shot so it didn't make the cut (Wofford, Furman, Duke, College of Charleston; got into all but Duke).
It wasn't until years later that I found out all you have to do is call up the admissions office and they'll waive the fee. You can't imagine how gutted I felt when I learned this. I wanted to cry. I was doing pretty good by then but my mind was filled with the alternate histories that were within reach without me even knowing it.
Somebody is probably reading this and thinking I wasn't poor, I was just stupid. Maybe so, but it's really hard to put yourself in the position of someone who has no resources, no perspective, and no people in their life to guide them through basic things like this (my parents didn't go to college). Sometimes being blessed with a good brain just isn't enough.
Your skin color, who your parents are (educated or not), where you live have a big impact on your life. The effect of parents and mentors (if you are lucky enough to find even one) have an out sized impact on your choices, I've observed this through personal experience. In high school, we had kids who i didn't think were that exceptional by any means but they got funneled into ivy leagues/top universities due to the fact that their parents were educated upper middle class types that push their kids, and give them proper guidance as to how the world really works. The talented poor kids were pushed to go to the local state universities by the parents who though top schools were out of reach/too expensive. The folks that went to the top schools went straight to SV/NYC/Boston, while the talented poor kids kinda stayed in our local Midwest cities, talk about a huge opportunity cost of being born poor.
I know for me personally, when I was in high school nearly 20 years ago they didn't tell us anything about applying to colleges until late mid April before I graduated. This is typically months after most decent schools end their deadlines.
This was a really important perspective to hear, thank you for sharing your story. At my school (Caltech) we are reviewing our admission and inclusion policies - application fee waivers are already in place, but are just one aspect of this process, as your story illustrates.
How many people do you think ARE financially able to go to MIT?
The tuition cost is $53,450, with housing costing $10,430 and to my understanding living there is required the first year.
Factor in books and food, and you're looking at $60,000-70,000/yr.
That's $240,000-280,000 for a four year degree.
I dropped out of highschool at 16, got my GED (thinking I'd be able to get a 2-year headstart on my degree without researching the cost of college), and enrolled in community college where it cost me $800 to take a single class.
Making $8/hr working in a lumber mill fulltime on top of trying to go to school, that just wasn't going to work out. After taxes my income was about $1,000/mo and I was living on my own and supporting myself, so all told I could manage to save about $200-300/mo.
It took me a third of a year to save up enough to pay for one community college class -- or I could go into crippling debt as someone who wasn't even legally an adult yet.
I eventually wound up quitting and giving up on the idea of ever obtaining a college education.
Real fantastic options, our education system and opportunity equality in the USA is just swell.
I mean, if you get into MIT, you can definitely get student loans... lenders agree that your MIT degree is proof that you'll make significant income later in life and pay off that debt.
Your situation sucks. It's not really applicable for top schools though. With a combination of financial assistance and debt, it's possible for most people coming from bad financial situations.
> It's possible for most people coming from bad financial situations.
I know this probably applies to almost nobody, but it's something I haven't seen discussed openly before:
If you're a completely average person in the US. Not a minority, coming from a middleclass family. But your family doesn't want to just hand you money -- you're kind of fucked.
There's something called "Expected Family Contribution". The country has decided that everyone's parents are just going to give away their money to their children.
> Eligibility for need-based financial aid is determined by a formula that subtracts the student’s expected family contribution (EFC) from a college’s total cost of attendance. This determines financial need. The equation looks like this: (cost of attendance – EFC = financial need).
So if your parents are say, by-your-bootstraps capitalists, and they go "Get a job bum, you want something, go work for it." then you're shit outta luck.
I applied for financial aid and I was denied.
"Your parents make too much money."
"Well, that's nice for them. I don't live with my parents and they have no interest in financially supporting me, so can't you calculate it from my $8/hr wage?"
"No, sorry. You can try waiting to go to college until you're no longer considered a dependent."
I'm not trying to make this out to be a sob story, but if you're a completely unremarkable individual without family contribution, your only way in is debt. And not even reasonable debt, that you could work a regular job and pay off in a few years, but obscene debt.
This applies to a lot more people than you think, and regardless of whether they're a minority or not (whatever that even means anymore). Also even if your family does want to support you, the rates are far higher than what middle-class can realistically contribute. Ridiculous debt is the only option on the table for the majority of college students these days.
They do their best to prevent it, but a lot of students don’t even apply because they or their parents think they can’t afford it. Access to education about financial aid itself is a privilege. That has got to be the biggest limiter by absolute volume of people.
It “felt” more uncommon that someone actually turns down an MIT offer after they see the package, as they do their best to provide student work aid and students tend to be optimists about debt - but I only saw the people who said yes, so my data is totally biased. I’ll note that one common situation is folks who can technically “afford” MIT, but are offered a full ride elsewhere - a lot of folks I knew who joined felt some pressure to save money by taking the scholarship elsewhere, and struggled to turn it down.
> How many people are not going to MIT because they are financially unable?
I have heard MIT has slightly less complete need-based financial aid than some of the other big name private schools, but still much better than most before-aid cheaper schools, so probably some but relatively few of the people who would otherwise go to MIT, and those few are probably going to other big name private schools, not excluded from education.
There's probably a lot more not applying because they think they wouldn't be able to afford it, because knowledge of the sticker price of big name colleges seems far more widespread than knowledge of the amount of school-based need-based aid they tend to have available.
Our prestigious higher education institutions have become hedge funds with small educational arms. Over the last decades billions of dollars has been transferred from middle class households to the hedge funds of these universities. If their goal was to maximize education they wouldn't artificially limit admissions so as to increase the rarity of their luxury brand.
