As they are packing up, I often ask the reps about their admission requirements for minority students since there are a significant number of these kids at Ben’s school. What I’ve discovered is that the college admission requirements for minority applicants are almost always lower.

Colleges want their student bodies to be ethnically diversified so they are willing to reduce the admission standards for minority students who don’t have access to SAT prep tutors and other advantages that many suburban teenagers enjoy.

It’s a touchy subject, however, which is why colleges don’t publicize the lower admission requirements for minority applicants.

An explosive new book by Thomas J. Espenshade, a professor at Princeton University, is shedding light on this issue of college affirmative action. (FYI, I am in favor of affirmative action, but I think it should be reserved for low-income and middle-income students of color and not affluent applicants.)

Espenshade discovered that there are significant differences among the SAT and ACT test scores that colleges want from racial and ethnic groups. He made this conclusion after looking at the admission records for 9,000 applicants at 10 highly selective, unnamed colleges.

In his book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal; Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, Espenshade notes that the biggest testing advantage belongs to African-American students. Black students who were accepted into these elite schools could have SAT scores on a 1600 scale that were 310 points lower than a white, middle-class applicant. Hispanic applicants enjoyed a 130 point advantage.

Low-income students, regardless of race, also enjoyed a 130-point advantage and working-class applicants got a 70-point advantage. Upper-middle class students enjoyed a 50-point advantage.

The applicants who were hurt the most by the affirmative-action admission policies were Asian students, who had to earn 140 points more than the typical middle-class, white applicant to gain admission.

You can learn much more about the book’s affirmative-action statistics and findings by reading this article entitled, The Power of Race.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog at CBSMoneyWatch.com.

Further Reading:

The Price of High School Success

Diversity Friendly Colleges That Welcome Minority Students

Are Elite Universities Discriminating Against Asians

The post that I found most fascinating was about a book — soon to be released — that examined the admission practices of seven elite (unnamed) universities. The author, who is a Princeton sociologist, concluded that Asian students experience the hardest time getting into these blue chip schools. In fact, white student are three times more likely to earn admission into these brand name schools. The students with the easiest time are African-Americans. If you read my post, you’ll get an idea of why Asian students have it so rough.

America’s Greenest Colleges and Dirtiest

The Sustainable Endowments Institute released its report this week on America’s best green colleges. In my blog, I name some of the greenest colleges and I also highlight schools that earned the worst (D-) grades.

A College Savings Account Disaster

Many of the prepaid 529 college savings plans in this country are in financial trouble. My post explains the reasons behind the concerns about 529 plans.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution.

The reason why elite schools visit is because High Tech High has something that the prep schools in places like Greenwich, CT, Lake Forest, IL,  Scarsdale, NY and Mercer Island, WA, do not. The school is a melting pot that attracts affluent students and an even larger number of students of color, many of whom have parents who did not go to college.

In higher-ed circles, there has been a great deal of debate about the efforts of elite schools to attract minority students. Curiously, it’s private, less selective colleges, which don’t enjoy large endowments, that underwrite the education of more of these students. In my book, The College Solution, I quote the president of St. Lawrence University, who had this to say about the phenomenon:

“The wealthiest colleges and universities – those that can best afford the financial aid necessary to enroll a large number of low-income students — in fact enroll the smallest percentage of such students.”

Actually, Columbia does a better job than most in attracting these kids. Yesterday afternoon Johnson bragged that 17% of Columbia’s students receive federal Pell Grants, which is the proxy used to measure the number of low-income students.  US News’ recent ranking of the top national universities by economic diversity bears Johnson out.  Columbia has more Pell Grant recipients than any other private college. It beats out University of Southern California by one percentage point. On the flip side, candidates for the hall of shame would certainly include Washington University in St. Louis (7%) and the University of Virginia (8%).

By far, the two universities with the most Pell Grant recipients is UCLA (35%) and UC Berkeley (32%).

You can find a handy list of top national universities and their Pell Grant percentages by visiting a New York Times blog post in The New York Times entitled, Poor Students at Rich Colleges.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and the college blogger at CBSMoneyWatch.com.

This finding would refute the argument that many college administrators make that scholarships for wealthy students don’t jeopardize the chances for aid for poorer applicants. Those who make this argument suggest that giving a rich teenager a tuition discount will help other less fortunate students because the affluent student will still pay more than needy kids who require lots of financial aid.

The Cornell researchers concluded the use of merit scholarships dropped the number of lower-income students at selective and elite schools by 6%. The number of African-American students at these schools declined by 2%.

In reality, teenagers who earn merit scholarships probably aren’t going to care about who isn’t getting this money. It’s only understandable that any parents regardless of how much income they earn will want to grab the best financial deal possible.

That’s certainly motivated our decisions when my daughter, who is now a college junior, was looking for schools. It also will play a role in my son Ben’s decisions now that he’s a high school senior. Frankly, if Ben doesn’t get a merit scholarship, he’s not going to that school. My husband and I are definitely not rich, but we don’t qualify for need-based aid. We have no interest in paying full price and subsidizing somebody else’s luckier kid.

There are consequences, however, at schools that dole out merit awards to affluent students, who are largely sought after because they bring with them higher SAT test scores. According to the researchers, here are a couple of consequences of merit scholarship policies:

• Top-tier colleges spend less on faculty salaries which can lead to higher turnover and difficulty recruiting high quality faculty. The salaries of associate professors at middle-tier schools rises.
• At middle and bottom-tier schools, the introduction of merit scholarships increased tuition by about 7%.

The Cornell findings are important because most private colleges and universities today awards merit scholarships. In fact, there are probably only three dozen or so private elite institutions that only dispense aid based on need.

You can learn more about shrinking the cost of a bachelor’s degree by reading my book, The College Solution. Lynn O’Shaughnessy