You are not necessarily in disagreement with IslaDeEncanta, as they said "lower middle class", not "low-income". What exactly constitutes "middle class", and even "lower middle class" is not clear. But, I think, most would agree "low income" means not middle class, so you're probably talking about different sets of people.
Re:Text Your Way to College
by IslaDeEncanta on Saturday January 07, 2017 @02:45PM
(#13346165)
You're right. I wasn't really talking about people in poverty/near poverty. They can benefit from the network involved with an Ivy more than just about anyone, because they usually don't have a network at all.
Everyone talks about the networking but this can't possibly be true for everyone. What if you're just not good at networking? And do poor kids on scholarships get accepted by their yacht-class peers?
My friend had subsidized tuition at Columbia, and IIRC their cutoff at the time (2009-2013) for household income was $100k. If it's a similar figure at other schools, I guess you could decide on some sort of demarcation around there.
Certain elite schools cover tuition, room and board, and occasionally supplies for low-income students through merit-based scholarships [1] even for out-of-state students, while many state schools can only afford to grant fewer full-rides, and usually only covering the in-state price -- with out-of-state being significantly more expensive.
This doesn't mean that low-income students at elite schools still won't struggle with expenses [2] or fitting in [3]. But anecdotally, when I was a top-performing high school graduate from a well-ranked high school in the mid-2000s, this information was even harder to find, so I, and many of my peers opted for state schools instead, some with scholarships.
But much of this information asymmetry still exists today. This is what this effort is trying to rectify.
[1] https://www.collegeraptor.com/blog/affordable-colleges/these... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/for-the-poor-... [3] https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/04/09/what-like-po...