Elite education

Because the University does not release all relevant data on students’ family income, let me provide some back-of-the-envelope calculations for those disinclined to believe that Princeton undergraduates are disproportionately wealthy. The University expects that 40 percent of the Class of 2015 will need no financial aid at all, which is quite high considering that the University even provides grants to some families earning over $200,000 a year. Because the 2008 census statistics indicate that only the richest twentieth of Americans earn $200,000 annually, conservative estimates suggest that four in every 10 Princeton undergraduates come from the richest 5 percent of American families.

By contrast, a U.S. News & World Report study of the 2008-09 academic year states that only 10 percent of Princeton undergraduates receive Pell Grants. Pell Grants are federal grants that typically go to students from families who earn less than the national median income. Some caution is merited in interpreting this statistic. I should note that it is a small but welcome increase from 6.9 percent a decade ago. Moreover, the study includes international students who comprise 10-11 percent of the undergraduate body but are not eligible for Pell Grants. Even so, these numbers paint a depressing portrait of an elitist institution.

While the richest twentieth of American society is overrepresented at Princeton by a factor of eight, students from the bottom half are underrepresented by roughly a factor of five.

This imbalance is particularly concerning since a 2000 study by the University’s own Alan Krueger that indicates that lower-income students gain the most financially from attending a selective university. Instead of picking those students who would benefit most from four years at Princeton, it seems that we continue to admit those who are already born into privilege.

Since admission officers have invested so much effort in recruiting low-income students, I suspect that they are just as frustrated as I am by this economic imbalance. University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said that the percentage of low-income students in each class has increased as a result of Princeton’s dedicated efforts to encourage high school seniors in under-resourced areas to apply. She told me that Princeton feels that to be successful in recruiting an economically diverse class, it must continue its efforts to boost the absolute number of low-income applicants in the applicant pool.

But recruiting is only half the battle. We have to admit these students as well.

The conventional explanation for why the percentage of low-income students remains low is that they are simply not qualified. But few would contend that wealthy students are actually more intelligent than their peers — plenty of rich kids on this campus show that money is a poor indicator of brains. Indeed, many of our peer institutions do admit more (though still not enough) low-income students without sacrificing quality. Consider, for example, Harvard (where U.S. News & World Report documents that 14 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (15 percent) and Columbia (16 percent).

Rather, lower-income students may only appear on paper to be less-qualified than their wealthier peers because they are unable to take advantage of the same extracurricular activities, summer internships and expensive tutors. Surely our admission process should account for these differences by giving credit to low-income students who succeed despite their disadvantages.

Unfortunately, this is not how our admission process appears to work. In a 2005 book, former University President William Bowen GS ’58 noted that that while universities such as Princeton tend to give an edge to recruited athletes, legacies and underrepresented minorities, lower-income students receive “essentially no break in the admissions process.” Cliatt told me that our admission office learns a little about a student’s background based on their personal statements and other details they decide to reveal in their application. Still, the disproportionately small number of lower-income students suggests that the process is not as effective as it should be.

As Bowen suggests, because we are “need-blind” in terms of financial need when admitting students, our admission office seems to remain blind to the many disadvantages of growing up in a lower-income family. The result is unsurprising: Children of privilege fare better and are admitted at disproportionately high rates.

If Princeton is serious about serving our nation, then we must do more to narrow income inequality. We need to fine-tune the admission process to better identify qualified students who come from families who earn less than the national median. If the work of the last decade was about convincing lower-income students to apply, the next decade must be about actually admitting them.

Adam Bradlow is an anthropology major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at abradlow@princeton.edu.