Every year, it seems like thousands of low income students in the United States are found to be unfit by college admissions officers in their top schools, and they end up enrolling at schools which do not offer the best academic fit for them. A study explains why.
It is quite unfair for low income students to be given less opportunities than they deserve simply because of their socioeconomic status. According to The Atlantic, an investigation revealed only 14 percent of the students from the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution consist the population of the most competitive universities in the country.
According to a study conducted by Michael Bastedo, a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Education and Nicholas Bowman, a professor at University of Iowa's College of Education, college admissions officers are 26 percent more likely to recommend low-income students for admissions if they are able to provide detailed information about themselves and about the high school where they came from, Market Watch reported.
What the study suggests is that the applications that colleges receive from low-income students, especially from those who graduated from under-resourced schools, are the ones that are actually being overlooked. This only goes to show that despite the efforts to overcome the challenges and issues when it comes to inequality, the fact remains that colleges still educate a small percentage of low-income students.
And then what happens is that these low-income students will end up enrolling to less selective and under-resourced colleges which does not improve their chances of succeeding in the future. According to Bestado, the goal is to have a country with educational mobility and not be the one to reproduce the disadvantaged that they have experienced. He also added that these students deserve better because they have the talent and the potential to do amazing things in their lives.
