Each Student With A New Job On Campus Must Provide This Completed Form To Student: Fill & Download for Free

Cross posting from How to earn Living Expenses and Tuition Fees as an International Student in the US - Study at Ivy LeagueIt's not a good feeling when you are in the United States or any foreign country for that matter and you have to ask your parents to send you money every month to pay your monthly bills and tuition fees.Fortunately, there are ways to earn your living expenses and even pay your tuition fees as an international student in the US.There are some restrictions that one needs to be aware of as an international student like...A student on F1 Visa cannot work off-campus for the first academic year but can work off-campus after completion of the first academic year as...- CPT (Curricular Practical Training)- OPT (Optional Practical Training)A student can only work 20hrs on-campus or off-campus if he/she is enrolled in more than 4 units during that particular semester. During breaks of vacations like Summer Break, Spring Break, Fall Break, a student can work full-time (40hrs) if he/she intends to register for the next academic semester at the University.Working in an industry not related to your academics while you are a student is illegal and may put your Visa into jeopardy. Many students work at grocery stores or restaurants to earn some extra bucks. If your Designated School Official knows you are working without permission, they must report it through SEVIS, resulting in termination of your SEVIS record. That means that you will have to leave the United States immediately, and you may not be allowed to return. Always stay away from such practices and think of long-term loss rather than short-term profit. The U.S. government takes working illegally very seriously. Please, do not make something stupid and get yourself deported.Now, that's out of the way, let's discuss ways in which an international student can earn while pursuing their studies.On-campus JobThere are always opportunities available for student workers at the University. Keep looking for opportunities at different departments at the university you are enrolled in. Departments like University Housing, Libraries, Gym, Cafes on campus, IT, etc hire student workers for Front-desk and technical positions. You can easily earn enough to cover your monthly living expenses if not more. Active F-1 students may apply for on-campus employment up to 30 days before the start of classes.I worked as a student worker for one of the offices at the School of Cinema at the University of Southern California. My job was to clean the stage and put all the equipment in the proper place every Monday morning before the class began. Since it was not a big task, I was only employed for 4hrs/week at $8/hr which was the minimum wage in the state of California.I knew I need to find something better as this wasn't enough to even pay my grocery bills. After a week, I went with one of my friends at the Health Science Campus of USC. My friend had an interview there and I was just hanging outside and saw a post for Student Worker on the notice board. Since not many people go to the Health Science campus, I was able to get the job easily. I was hired for full 20hrs/week at $10/hr. Now I was making >$800/month which was enough to pay my monthly bills (Rent, Grocery, etc). My duty at the new job was to make kits for Doctors at Department of Genetics to collect data from the field. It was fun as we had people from different countries like Israel, Bangladesh, India(me), Indonesia, United States, China, South Korea, Philippines, etc.But during summer, there was no research work and hence they couldn't continue the position but luckily, I was hired by the same department as a programmer to create software to feed the data collected from the field into the computer. Since it was summer, I was able to work full 40hrs at $15/hr. I continued the same for next semester as well for 20hrs/week and once I had completed 1 year as an international student, I started applying for an internship (CPT).AssistantshipThere are different types of assistantships available at different universities like Teaching Assistantship, Research Assistantship, Graduate Assistantship, etc. You can do more research more on each of these but at most universities, your school fees are waived off if you are lucky enough to get one of these assistantships. On top of that, you are also paid a handsome stipend. But there's too much competition for this and fewer positions hence it's very difficult to get one. If you are going for Masters program, make sure you apply for one at Undergrad level where not many students apply. Even if you do not get it at first shot, keep trying every semester. If you get one, you will save a lot of your parent's money.Curricular Practical TrainingAn international student can start working off-campus in the company of his field of major after completing one academic year. This is one of the best opportunities to get exposure to the industry in the US. Many times, this can even help you get a full-time job if you do well during the internship. Don't waste this opportunity enjoying Foosball, Free Coffees & Sodas.I got my first internship as a Software Developer Intern at one of the Design Agencies - Iconmobile LLC in Santa Monica where I was paid $30/hr. I fully enjoyed working there. Some of the work I did there is being used by companies like Microsoft & T-Mobile. At the end of the semester, they were running out of the budget and I had to find another job and got one at O Negative Media (now Scopely) as a Software Developer Intern. I worked on MySpace & Facebook apps there. I continued there for the next & final semester of my Master's program. Since during my final semester I was left with only 3 units, I also worked at one of the departments at USC and helped them with the Library Management System.During all these time, I was able to make enough to fees for my last 2 semester which is half of my tuition fees at USC apart from my living expenses.How to start working as a student in the US?Apply for a job wherever you find an opportunity for a student worker.Get the employment letter from your employer once hired.Take this letter to your DSO at the Office of International Students for approval.Once approved, your DSO will provide you with a letter of approval. Take this letter from your DSO and a letter of approval from your employer to apply for a Social Security Number (SSN). All students who wish to work must apply for a Social Security Number.How does one get paid in the US as a student worker?Like any employee, you can ask your employer to make a direct deposit into your bank account or you can ask them to provide you a check (or cheque) at the end of every pay cycle which you will have to manually deposit into the bank. There's no custom of paying salary in Cash so make sure you have an active bank account in the United States. It's very easy to open one.I write on similar topics at https://studyativy.com

Caution: Pls be objective while reading this. I still know that I would be trolled. I’m no expert on the politics of JNU. But we all can understand basic numbers & information that JNU has on its website & other public media. Trouble however is that this data is extremely unorganized, as if nobody cares to know about it. At-least that is what I observed. You can draw your own inferences. I’ve tried to compile some critical information at one place which poses certain questions.The student strength & courses: What do they teach at JNU.Let’s go one step at a time. Do you know how many courses are there at JNU & what is the student strength? Here is how it looks.Now we see that there are a total of ~8000 students at JNU. Of this, the lion’s share of 57% students is of social sciences, language, literature & arts (4578 students) & International studies 15% ( 1210 students). So between the two categories, we have 72% of the campus covered.There is another interesting statistic here. Almost 55% of the total student strength i.e. 4359 students are doing M.Phil. or Ph.D. At any campus across the world, the strength of students declines as we move from under-grad courses to post grad & there are very few who pursue doctorate level courses. This is also driven by financial compulsions as people need to get back to the earning workforce fast & get on to a career track. I couldn’t find specific information about why did JNU chose to have such high strength of M.Phil. & doctoral level students. Anyways we’ll use this number once again to derive some conclusions so keep this in mind.Cost of running such University: Just how much does government spends on JNU?Look at the Profit & Loss account of JNU for 2018. This is from the 600 page annual report, & this one page which should possibly be the first section on any annual report, is hiddnen somwhere in the middle. Probably this was not very important in the overall scheme of things. So what do we observe here :So JNU spends about Rs 556 crores per year on its functioning. This is aside of the fixed assets it has, the huge land base, the infra & building it owns which was built on government money at some point. I see that some depreciation is accounted for.So what is the cost per student at JNU ? We can calculate. Rs 556 crore / 8000 students gives us Rs 6.95 lac per student annually. Although the university calculations somewhere quote this number as Rs 2.33 lac per student (Rs 170 crore/7304), this calculation is seriously flawed. The real numbers have to divide the entire university expenses by the number of students. There can be no university withoput students so all expenses eventually have to come from student body & other income.Even if we exclude “other income” & count only the govt subsidy & grants, we have a total expense of Rs 352 crore over 8000 students. We can safely assume that each student consumes Rs 4.4 lacs of government subsidy at JNU every year. Shocking how public money can be misused at scale. What talent are we producing at this high cost subsidy ? This is competing with IITs & IIMs fee.Research, publications & patents at JNUNow the students would say that JNU is an academics focused institution & it should not be compared with commercial institutions. Fair point. I tried to dig in the kind of work & research papers JNU publishes. You would be surprised that for an institution which claims to be the center of academics on social sciences, the claims on the website seem pretty sketchy. Read for yourself as I quote from the website:Publications : The faculty of the University has been regularly publishing many research journal articles, books; contributed chapters in books; presented papers in national and international conferences/workshops and delivered several lectures outside the University.Research: JNU has been promoting research by students and faculty. Faculty members have been able to attract competitive research grants from many national and international funding agencies. Currently, more than 300 research projects are running in the University. Research grants are also received from DST, DBT, ICMR, CSIR, UGC, ICSSR, ICHR, ICCR, Ministries, European Union, European Commission, Ford Foundation, Welcome Trust etc. In addition to research projects, faculty members are also encouraged to undertake consultancy projects. University has also set up an Advanced Instrumentation Research facility where state of the art equipment have been installed to meet the requirements of many science schools/special centers. University has also set up an Intellectual Property Management (IPM) Cell to facilitate filing of patents and technology transfers.As you can see, there is no specific mention of any numbers or concrete claims on research & publications, no names of journals or publications worth mentioning. Perhaps JNU doesn’t need to publish this info as nobody cares to read this. At-least not the students who study there or want to join JNU.But there should be some patents at-least ? All that we find for patents is the below information:Patents by faculty:• R. Bhatnagar (2001-2002). A Process for the Preparation of Non-Toxic Anthrax Vaccine. Indian patent (1222/Del/2001) accepted. International PCT application (PCT/IN2002/00048; WO-03-048390A1, June 12, 2003) published. R. Bhatnagar (2001). A process for constitutively preparing anthrax protective antigen. Indian patent (1127/Del/2001) accepted. R. Bhatnagar (2001). An Anthrax Protective Antigen. Indian patent (1074/Del/2002) accepted.• Aparna Dixit (2007). Anti-diabetic recombinant protein. Indian patent and International PCT applications filed. Aparna Dixit (2007). Recombinant vaccine against Aeromonas hydrophila. Indian Patent application filed.• R. Bhatnagar (2008). An immunodominant B cell epitope based protein vaccine against Anthrax. Indian Patent application (2947/DEL/2008) filed. R. Bhatnagar (2008). A pharmaceutical composition of vaccine against Rabies…..its preparation thereof. Indian Patent (1449/DEL/2008) and International PCT (PCT/IN2008/000578) applications filed.• K. J. Mukherjee (2006). A process for getting high yields of xylanases (patent application filed). K.J. Mukherjee (1999). A process for getting high yields of streptokinase. K.J. Mukherjee (2002). Process technology for production of human alpha interferon in E.coli Application No. 212080 (1276/Del/2002) Indian Patent Accepted.• Santosh K. Kar, (2006). Method for Identification and/or Diagnosis of REM Sleep Loss from Blood Samples. Indian Patent. Date of Issue: 24 Oct 2006.So barring some 4 names of Mr. Bhatnagar, Ms. Dixit, Mr Kar & Mr. Mukherjee, there are no patents by any other faculty. Number of patents by students ??? Try searching….I did not find any results. So much for the 57% students doing doctorate level courses.You want to know the best claims about the research JNU publishes ? You’ll find that in the placement brochure (yes they have one, although very superficial & doesn’t disclose any statistics about past placements). Here is what you’ll see in the name of research at JNU:Some inferences from the data above:1) With 4360 students in M.Phil. & Ph.D. courses, there are hardly 1000 research “articles” published in Journals. The university doesn’t name any notable journals while making such claims. This implies that there is just ONE “article” published for every 4.5 students each year. This when there are 600 plus Ph.D. s granted annually. Would you consider this any worthwhile research work ? May be JNU has more “liberal” standards for us to understand this.2) There is huge participation in international conferences. So about 2000 international conferences are attended every year. Again, not sure what materializes in those conferences. Certainly not the research papers or patents.Is the fee hike Justified ? Why punish the meritorious students?Firstly, in view of the data above, it doesn’t appear that there is much focus on output or getting laurels for the nation at JNU. There is absolutely no data point to believe that is the case.Now, let’s look at the “fee” the students pay to study at the university.Let me clarify. The numbers you are looking at are not in thousands or lacs. These are what they are in INR. So Rs 240 is the entire tuition fee paid by JNU student. Aside, they pay a generous Rs 6 for library & Rs 40 as refundable security deposit. How was a university allowed to run with this fee structure & without any hike for decades is itself a research paper in the making. Of-course, nobody at JNU would have time to research on this. IIT Delhi which is located close by charges about Rs 2.25 plus lac annually & IIMs charge about Rs 5 to 10 lac per year. We don’t see any strikes at those places. Students know they need to jump into the job market, start their earning life & also repay the student loan that they carry. JNU is free of any such thoughts or troubles. Probably the reason why students have much time left to create new troubles of their own. Ideology or idle mind, you decide.Is the fee hike justified at JNU ?I don’t want to conclude any political thoughts here. But the data from official sources of the university help us infer a lot of ideas. JNU is a perfect example of bad socialism. If you give something for free, people have no incentive to work & earn. Why would anyone at JNU be in a hurry to find jobs or even publish research. In a nation where we’re are hardly able to educate our children thru primary schools, JNU stands tall as an example of socialist elitism at its best. This must stop. The students may have all the time for doctoral courses, the nation is certainly running out of patience & money to pay for these scholars.Surprised that this social reform idea never came out from the university that claims to be the biggest study centre on social sciences ? Irony died a quite death !!Feel free to mail or write to me on twitterHonest - Unbiased - Simplified, as alwaysEdit on comments raised by some students in defense.Some students have raised questions or tried to defend the protests. Let me try to address some of these questions:Defense 1: There is a corruption of thousands of crores in public distribution system, so why target few hundred crore of JNU subsidy?I think this is amusing argument. So both should stop. Firstly, this is an unfair comparison. National PDS system budget has to be compared with the national/state subsidy on ALL universities in India. I’m sure that amount also will run into thousands of crores. It is a complete wastage of resources in India for privileged few. Classic socialism downside where state resources are cornered by a powerful few.Defense 2: JNU will have less patents as it is focused on social sciences. But it has contribution in social sector. It has provided various luminaries to the nation & many IAS officers. This is JNU contribution to society.I’m surprised by this argument. Joining a govt service is not a contribution to the society. And they will join IAS with or without JNU. People join for their own good. This is just like saying - politicians are in politics for public welfare. Well, the country understands these arguments better now. Also how do we measure the “social work” of JNU. When research papers are hardly anything to talk about & nation still grappling with poverty, there has to be some metric to measure contribution vs subsidy. And this also applies to all institutes where fee is subsidized.Finally, some students indicate that during M.Phil., they “contribute towards the research work by their professors & thus earn their education”. Well, has any one of them asked the professors what “research” they do because there are handful of papers published ? At least tell the country this when you protest. The idealism of “right to education” is hollow self-centered logic. This won’t fly. And social sciences study at Rs 4.5 lac per student ? This would put global schools to shame !!Defense 3: When PSU banks can lend money to industrialists & write off lacs of crores, why is JNU being targeted?Again a self-defeating logic. PSUs & nationalized banks are relics of the past. Many of them are dying a gradual death. Many exist since politics needs a free checkbook to write loans to loved ones in the name of socialism. So students want free education & politics wants free non-refundable loans. Common folks also want govt jobs and just sit on it till retirement. Not to mention the corruption. The country goes to dogs.This socialism of the 70s is dead. Not because politicians have become saints. But because govts have run out of budgets. Ask Air India, PSU bank employees & others. Did someone tell you that the Soviet Union has collapsed ? And that China is the most ruthless form of capitalism that you can have in the world. How about a research paper on that ?ReferencesIIM Fees Structure for MBA and SeatsUniversity of Delhi Courses & Fee Structure 2019-20Welcome to Jawaharlal Nehru UniversityWelcome to Jawaharlal Nehru UniversityWelcome to Jawaharlal Nehru University

Which high school you attend and how you compare academically relative to your peers matters, and sometimes is, if not the determining factor, then at least a very important factor in the college admission process. By the word “peers” I mean both those students around the country and the world who are going to apply to the same colleges as you, as well as those students in your school who are applying to these colleges too. There are some paradoxes and contradictions when it comes to evaluating if the particular secondary school you currently attend will benefit or hurt you in terms of getting accepted to highly selective colleges. And it will take me more than you probably want to know or read to try to cover this in ways that are not misleading or superficial.IFirst of all, it is important to note that after or during the process of evaluating your particular application, virtually every highly selective university looks at applicants within the context of the school you currently attend. Admission offices like to promote how they make decisions based upon a holistic evaluation of each individual applicant. Every admission office website underscores this part of the process and it is one way that the US admission process differs from most others around the globe which tend to use national exams to determine who gets in. In the US, colleges make it very clear that they are fully committed to enrolling a diverse student body. Diversity is one of the vaguer words in the admission process vocabulary and it has a range of meanings, but you can be sure that it applies to students from:different backgrounds and locations around the US and the worlddifferent income levels (especially if the school has committed to meeting full aid for all admitted students)different racial and ethnic groupsdifferent sexual orientationdifferent educational backgrounds (a range that covers the first in the family to attend college to having two parents with professional/advanced degrees).There are other groups that certain types of schools highlight (for example, in and out of state residents for state affiliated colleges). But not nearly as many schools put in writing that they wish to enroll students from a large number of high schools Why? Because in order to do this it might make it harder for students who attend some exceptionally good secondary schools and who might have stronger academic credentials than students from schools that rarely send students to highly selective schools (both schools in rural areas and inner-city neighborhoods would fall into the latter category).Schools do two different things when evaluating applicants—one is to read students as individuals and the other is to read them as a member of one or more groups. The former is what most people think of when they interpret the holistic admission process; the latter is often brought up in ways that show how contentious putting people in groups can be (especially by race or legacy status or athletic ability) in a country in which the national discourse often focuses on the sanctity of the individual. Colleges and universities, however, have different priorities in part because they are composed of a variety of groups and are committed to serving communities not just individuals.One group that students are put in by colleges and universities (unless they are home schooled) is the secondary school they attend. Simply put, colleges and universities evaluate and then use information about a students’ secondary school in terms of the offerings that are available and in terms of where the each student who has applied ranks against the others. Colleges run data that shows all the students who have applied from the same secondary school in a given year. In addition, some schools run historical summaries which show what the school has done with that particular secondary school’s applicants in previous years. (There is a platform that gathers data for secondary schools about their applicants to colleges, called Naviance. It uses gpa and test scores that aps on a scattergram all the decisions made on applicants over a 5-year period--accept, wait list, deny).Colleges examine students within school groups for several reasons. First of all, there are now very few highly competitive secondary schools that actually provide rank in class to colleges. By highly competitive, I mean selective private schools, boarding schools, and public schools that are located in high income school districts and which send the vast majority of their students on to 4-year colleges. The schools have found that they take too much heat from parents about tiny differences in gpa which goes into determining who ends up as the valedictorian or in the top 10% of the class. (Some schools now name dozens of students as covaledictorians --a few have over 100). This decision not to rank students is not just to give a large group of students "special snowflake" status. They also believe ranking creates unnecessary competition among the students who are already stressed out about getting the highest possible gpa now that admission to the most highly selective schools is under 10%.But here is the thing that many do not know about how colleges still manage to create its own ranking of students. Even if schools provide no information about rank to universities, students still get “ranked” in school groups. Colleges look at students’ transcripts and examine their gpa relative to other applicants so even though there is not an official ranking by the secondary school the colleges still rank students on their own. This can be helpful to the colleges for a number of reasons. Secondary schools determine gpa in very different ways. Some schools add .5 to the gpa for classes that are designated as honors and give a whole point added to the gpa for AP classes. It is no longer unusual to see students with a 3.8 gpa actually being in the bottom half of the class due to weighting. Having students group;ed by gpa lets admission officers get a snapshot of the individual student within the group as well as a snapshot of how much weighting goes into the grading system. Some schools have admission officers firt read applicants in school groups, so they see immediately where they stand compared to their peers. Others look at school groups after the application has been read by at least one or mother readers. Looking at school groups also helps the colleges to make sure they have been at least somewhat consistent in their decisions.When schools receive thousands of applications it is hard to keep track of every applicant and every decision without running reports. For example, school groups give colleges the opportunity to have another look to see why a student with a lower gpa was offered admission over another student with higher grades and testing. This helps, in some cases, avoid a call from the counselors from the secondary school after the decisions have gone out asking why a “weaker” student was offered admission/ Parents often call asking this same question, but most colleges will not address particular cases with parents. In some cases, it is clear why a student lower down in terms of gpa was offered admission--students with a special talent, a legacy tie, or who is a member of an under-represented group; or who is the first in the family attend college , or from a low-income background all might get in ahead of a student who does not have one of these so called “hooks”.While colleges all say they do not have quotas (and this is true I think) they do, however, have goals and limitations in terms of the number of students they can accept. For example, State universities have, in some cases, legal restrictions on the percentage of in and out of state residents. They must determine exactly how many students they can bring in from out of state or face budget cuts of they exceed this amount. State schools want a good representation of out of state students because typically the applicant pool is much larger (49 states vs. one) and the amount of tuition they pay is at least double those of in-state. It is always a balancing act to try to come in at just the right percentage and whether one wants to call this a quota or not this is effectively what it is.Private schools can drill down deep into data to make sure they get the mix of female and male they want. How else could Harvard, for example, come in at just about 50/50 year in and year out without running numbers and effectively picking students in part by gender. Some colleges narrow offers down by geography, so, for example, they will only offer to so many students from the Northeast or the far West etc. And more controversially, some schools have “goals” what the percentage of students they wish to enroll by race. Of course, it is not a firm quota (an exact number) but the difference between a goal and quota is often negligible. However, it is against the law to have quotas based on race, but it is not if a school has goals. A look at the percentage of Asian students at the Ives will give some sense of how virtually all these schools bring in almost the same exact percentages each year. This is not an accident and is one of the things that will likely come up in the Harvard lawsuit that is unfolding as I write this.There are no laws about giving students from a specific school or geographic location a plus or minus in the overall evaluation. For example, it is harder to get in from the Northeast to most of the colleges in Boston unless the school is what is called a “feeder school”. A feeder school is one that most have likely heard of think -- Exeter. Typically, at a school like about a third or more of the students attend top 20 ranked schools attend Ivies. Some schools benefit from having “family ties”. Boston Latin is a wonderful school and does have a number of great students. They also have a number of students whose parents are on the faculty at Harvard, and schools like to keep faculty happy. Any college will give at least a special look to students whose parents or parents work at the school.The joke that is often told in admission is that a student who attends a school in North Dakota has a much better chance of getting in than a student from virtually any school in the Northeast or West Coast. But it isn’t really a joke. Colleges do like to show on their academic profile that they have enrolled students from all or nearly all 50 States. It is less true internationally, in part because there are far more countries than States. Nevertheless, it is far harder to get into top colleges from China, India, Korea, and Singapore than it is from any other countries in the world. These countries produce thousands of students who are as good or better than any students anywhere, but colleges are not going to use up all their international slots on just a few countries any more than they are going to enroll students from a small group of States in the US. Students from some countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Honduras, The Congo, for example, would be given a huge plus in admission because so few students have the academic background to do well in a competitive college or university. Many of these students will need financial aid and only a very few US schools have aid for international students and almost all of them are the most highly selective schools.There is, however, one set of 17 schools around the world that has a unique advantage in placing students at top universities. They are called United World Colleges (UWCs for short), and they are unique places located in often less than typical campuses all over the globe (a castle in Wales, on top of a mountain in India etc.).United World CollegesEach of them has a student body who attend these boarding schools (a few offer day school options), for at least two years while completing courses in the International Baccalaureate program. Most of the students who attend these schools do so because they have been awarded need-based scholarships. Their funding comes from a variety of sources--countries, royal families, and, most significantly, a US billionaire, Shelby Davis, who has given a billion dollars to the UWCs to provide scholarships for students who to attend both the UWCs and then a select group of highly selective colleges. His funding permits schools to enroll these often-needy students without having to spend as much of its own need based funds to enroll them. Therefore, the acceptance rates of students from the UWCs to schools in the US is much higher than almost any international school and higher than most schools in the US too. Students have to be selected through a rigorous process from countries around the world especially if they need full funding.I have been to many of the campuses and the students who attend these schools often have overcome staggering odds to end up there. They have risen to the top of their countries’ education systems despite grinding poverty or war or civic unrest. Some students who can pay do attend these schools too and they often benefit both in terms of living among a truly global student body and because these schools enjoy great relationships with the top universities in the US and around the world. Students who come from these schools add a perspective that few students ever could, and this is one of the reasons they are admitted at a higher rate than students from even most of the top secondary schools. If students were truly interested in a unique secondary education and gaining an advantage in the highly selective admission process, then attending a UWC is an option to consider.IIOne of the best books I have read about the admission process is The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg. I have written about it several times because even though It is a bit dated it is still one of the best inside views of the admission process I have read. It traces the way one particular admission officer at Wesleyan University does his job. One part of his job consisted of fielding phone calls from counselors from some of the top private schools who were advocating for some of their students prior to final decisions by the admission office. Colleges do not like to talk much about this because it smacks of elitism and favoritism. In one particular case a counselor advocates for a student who was on the borderline for Wesleyan and the call edged the student into the offer pile. And while this it is true this is clearly not fair, it does not tell the whole story.Networking is going to happen in any field and to think it won’t is willfully naïve. For example, there are national and local conferences all over the world for educators to meet and connect. The vast majority of secondary school counselors who attend these meetings are from either private schools or schools that have large enough budgets to send people to a several day conference that will end up costing thousands of dollars. Schools also host counselors on their campuses and often pay the fees for them to fly in and go to MLB baseball games etc. At one level, everyone is performing as a lobbyist. Admission officers try to get the counselors to encourage great students to apply and counselors encourage the colleges to take more of their students. Colleges usually have admission offices that are organized so that there are regional readers or deans who are in charge of a particular part of the country. The admissions officers and the high school counselors then get to know one another and build relationships some of them extending back decades. Like any form of networking ,a large part is focused on building trust. If there is trust then when a secondary school counselor makes a special case for a student there may be some flexibility in moving as student from the wait list or deny piles into the offer pile.This may sound more sinister than it often is. It could be the counselor is advocating for a scholarship student at the school who has lower testing and grades but who would be a good fit for the school. So, while this student may end up having an advantage in getting in because of this special appeal, many in education would support this less than perfectly fair process. In addition, the main figure in The Gatekeepers is a strong advocate for under-represented students. He becomes an advocate for these students and they have a much better chance of getting in than most student at even the most prestigious secondary schools in the US. But it would be disingenuous to leave things here. Counselors may contact schools to go over the school group prior to decisions going out and if the counselor has someone who is currently on the wait list they may do a quick pitch for the student. And some will also ask for students who are in the deny group be moved to the wait list just to make the decision less of a blow to the student’s ego. Some colleges do not accept these kinds of phone calls. Others do. Some change decisions based on the calls. Others don’t. But back room deals happen everywhere, and this is one part of the admission process that does favor the schools that have developed relationships and contacts.The typical narrative in the world of admission these days often highlights the gap between the haves and have nots. The gap is so wide and deep that it makes the process unfair to those who do not have the economic means to compete with those who do. Students whose parents are in the top 10% in terms of income can afford to live in neighborhoods where the schools are good, or, if they think public schools is not the best choice then they send their children to private day schools or boarding schools. In addition, they can pay for expensive test prep, summer programs, travel, access to internships, and the kind of overall support that is not possible for those who are low-income. Equal access is an ideal that does not come close to existing in the real world.As with any metanarrative that gets applied as a uniform template of a large and unwieldy group of disparate people, there is a lot of truth to this but there are also important exceptions. If we start to get granular about how each student is hurt or helped by their circumstances, then things can get complicated. There is, however, no doubt that in the aggregate, those at the top of the income pyramid attend better schools, have more support and so get, far more often than not, a dramatic advantage in selective admission process.While this is all true, it does not tell the whole story. For example, there are low income students who attend Exeter, Andover, Brearley , Lawrenceville, Harvard-Westlake etc. on need-based scholarships. These students are often the ones who have the best chance of anyone in these tony schools to get into the most selective universities, because they not only attend an elite secondary school, but also have overcome a great deal in order to be there. Colleges are committed to enrolling under-represented students like these because they clearly have the ability to do well academically and socially on any campus.Does attending a great secondary school alter one’s life chances and not just the chances of getting into a small set of selective colleges? Of course, but the changes that occur for low-income students are greater than those who are already in the upper middle class. Advantaged students typically have a strong safety net that will help them in life. Low income students who get in to top ranked colleges on full need-based scholarship will graduate without any debt and will have a chance to enter into competition for jobs on Wall Street, Silicon Valley. When 30-40 % of the students at Princeton go into the highly competitive field of consulting upon graduation it shows that where one goes to college matters and this is one of the reasons so many families and students are focused on getting into elite college—their life chances are better, in the aggregate, for their graduates.IIIIs everyone who attends a great private or manet school in a better position to get accepted to the top ranked colleges?Sort of. I often tell the story of a conversation I had with the college counselor at one of the top boarding schools in the US. Schools like this tout their 30% acceptance rate to Ivies when trying to get people to pay $60,000 a year to send their son or daughter there. I asked the counselor if he ever disaggregated that 30% and showed the prospective parents the ones who get in to those schools. And he said “of course not “. Why? Because it would not be in the school’s best interest to do so.So, I will do it. Of that 30%, a fair number of the students are recruited athletes. Not many secondary schools have hockey rinks (the school I mentioned above has 2), but all the Ivies have hockey teams and they need athlete that will make them look good against their Ivy competition. While these students are not often at the top academically they do, if they are identified as recruited athletes, have the best chance of getting into top schools. Talented athletes, especially in a few sports that are largely limited to a tiny number of secondary schools—hockey and rowing and squash being the top 3—are far more likely to get in the any valedictorian at almost any school who does not something special besides great grades, test scores and recommendations. It should not go unremarked that almost all these sports are composed of white students.In the case of rowing it is best to be female. Title 9 legislation means colleges need women rowers to help offset the large number of football players to meet the guideline that there should be equal number of male and female varsity athletes. Football is a problem because there are so many players on the team and, obviously, no female team, so rowing, which requires a number of boats and athletes helps offset football. Very few schools around the US public or private, have boathouses and crew teams. Talented athletes who attend schools with high price tags and great specialized athletic facilities reap the benefits of attending these schools.In addition, low-income under-represneted scholarship students who attend these schools are also at a significant advantage in the admission process. In most cases, these students have far better academic programs and opportunities at these schools than if they had stayed at home. And then there are, of course the legacies who get special consideration for admission at almost all of the most selective colleges. The acceptance rate for legacies at the Ivies is far higher than it is for students who does not have a hook (athlete, under-represented group). In addition, there are international students who, if the come from certain Asian countries typically end up at or near the top of the class academically. Because attending top schools in the US is a goal many of the best students in China wish to pursue and because it is seen as an edge in admission if a Chinese student attends a great boarding school in the US it is now as hard or harder to get into to top boarding schools from China than it is to get in all but the most selective colleges. They tend to come in with exceptional academic backgrounds and tend to leave with academic prizes at the end of the year along with a prestigious college to head off to in the Fall.What all this means is that the average (if this is the correct word since getting into these schools is very competitive) student who attends these top boarding schools and who wishes to get in to a top 20 school without a hook may actually be at a competitive disadvantage, in some cases, than if they had stayed at home and been a star in the local school. I would still argue that the overall experience of attending a great boarding school may be worth the investment because of the things that come with the education that do not automatically translate into being offered admission to a top 10 university.Something similar in terms of admission happens at the magnet schools that are public and paid for by taxpayers. Places like Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology have the reputation as among the best secondary schools in the US. The students who get in have been at the very top of the selection criteria and they feed off the atmosphere of learning and, typically, do amazing things in secondary school and beyond. The list of Novel winners and others who have done exceptional things who come from the New York magnet schools is long.But there are two problems that these students have when it comes to getting accepted at top schools. The first has to do with the effort of colleges to enroll students from a wide variety of secondary schools around the US. They could take a couple hundred students from each of the schools I have mentioned and all of them could compete both academically and outside of the classroom with just about anybody. But colleges want to get students who will contribute because they have different experiences and backgrounds. Therefore, schools limit the number of students they will take from even the best schools.To give just one example, I will use information about students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax Virginia. I have written about this school before and have included some great comments about the experience of going there from students. It is without doubt one of the top secondary schools in the world. Although a public school, it requires everyone who wishes to attend to apply and it is not unlike the holistic process that colleges use. They accept about 17% of those who apply.There are several things worth pointing out on the profile. The first is the average test scores students earn. The SAT average, of 2200 ( or 1510, converting it from the old to the new SAT) puts the typical student above the top 98th percentile in the nation. This means in their class of over 400 students at least 200 are in the top 1%. In the admission profession many people point out that SATs are not a good predictor of academic success compared to other measures such as the transcript and grades. While this is true of scores overall, those students who score in the top 1% are far more likely to do well academically that any student who is in the top 50% or below. Most studies about the effectiveness of standardized tests to do not disaggregate test scores at the tail ends of the bell curve since it undermines the narrative that scores are not useful. But if top 1% scores do not convince people who hate the SAT that the students at TJ are better prepared than most to do well there are other factors cannot be easily dismissed.There is almost no disagreement that the two factors that are the best predictors of academic success are-- courses a student takes and the grades he or she earns during grades 9-12. The course offerings at TJ are far beyond what almost any secondary school offers. Many TJ students are arriving on college campuses several years ahead in terms of course work in the STEM fields. In fact, many TJ students arrive on campus with a lot more STEM courses than many students who attend college for four years. And the courses they take are not the whole story. They also have conducted research in ways very few secondary students do. Students have the benefit of being in a research hub, so they can get experience at start up tech firms and NIH, to name just a few.Once again, these opportunities and puts TJ students at the top 1%. When focusing on grades, however, it is hard to make a case that a TJ student has higher grades than most other students. Grade inflation is so rampant in high schools that almost 50% now earn A grades. As gpas continue to rise the ability of schools to predict success based on grades fall. In addition, more and more schools no longer rank their students. A generation ago only small private schools did not rank. Now almost all private schools and most public schools in the suburbs and upper middle-income districts no longer rank. Schools choose not to rank for a variety of reasons in part because it seems misleading to differentiate students by tiny difference in gpa that may be based on whether a student took a gym class or not and in part because the US News ranks schools based on the % of students in the top 10% and schools with great students were seeing fewer students get in because it would potentially lower the rankings.A's are on the rise in report cards, but SAT scores struggleEven though the average gpa at TJ is quite high there is still one way for their students to demonstrate have actually earned their high grades--the results of their AP exams. As the profile states, students took nearly 3900 AP exams. This is such a staggeringly large number that I would bet that it tops the total number of APs taken by all the students in certainly less than populous States. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that 97% of the students earn grades of 3 or higher, the score that many colleges use to grant academic credit.The reason I underscore the AP numbers is that the Dean of Admission at Harvard has said that AP scores are the best predictor of success there, better even than grades and transcript:We have found that the best predictors at Harvard are Advanced Placement tests and International Baccalaureate Exams, closely followed by the College Board subject tests. High school grades are next in predictive power, followed by the SAT and ACT.Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard's Dean, Part 2Given all this data which demonstrates that TJ is at the very top in terms of preparing students to do well at any university, one would assume that this would translate into the number of students who get into the top 30 ranked schools being exceptionally high. And this is true. Sort of. (Again.)A glance at the profile show that of the acceptance rate at three of the top State Universities in the US is far higher than their average acceptance rate. For Uva-- 224/348 students were accepted (64% acceptance). the average acceptance rate for Virginia residents to Uva is 29%. William and Mary and Virginia Tech accepted 82% of TJ applicants. These colleges recognize the strength of entire student body at TJ. During my time at Uva the statistics showed that students from TJ earned the highest gpa of any school with over 10 students enrolled of any school in the world. Given that there are over 400 students from TJ at Uva this is a testament that the school has done exactly what it was designed to do—produce expectational graduates who will do well in college.Looking at a number of highly selective colleges on the profile, it is clear that they too accept TJ students at a rate that is much higher than the typical high school. Technical schools like CMU and Georgia Tech offer to over 34% of its applicant about 20 percentage points higher than the overall acceptance rates. Most of the top ranked schools acceptance rate tare twice as large as the overall rate. But there are exceptions.Princeton, MIT and U Penn offer to about 10% of the TJ applicants. For a school that specializes in STEM the acceptance rate at MIT seems especially low. What does not show up on the profile, except in an oblique way, is the acceptance rate to Harvard and Stanford. The profile only lists schools which have accepted 10 or more students. These two schools have decided there are not even 10 students at arguably the best school in the US who have earned a spot. It is more than a safe bet that the acceptance rate for these two schools from TJ is under 10%. For those who want evidence of how much demographics and geography and other factors play into admission at the most selective colleges, they need look no further than this.Many people would be surprised to learn that attending a school like this while providing a huge advantage to getting in to many top schools dos not help that much when it comes to Harvard, Princeton or Stanford. Of course, these colleges do not have an exact quota, but they will reach a point (and it is pretty consistent each year) where anyone below a certain gpa and a certain set of standardized scores on the SAT/ACT and AP exams is pretty much doomed if they are not hooked. To put it simply, non-hooked students at the most competitive secondary schools need to be at the top of the class even if the competition and academic accomplishments are, on average, far greater than at any non-magnet school. As a result, some students’ parents are choosing to keep their children from attending the magnet school; instead, they keep them in their neighborhood school in hoping that their children will be of the valedictorian who will get in instead of the person “only” in the top 5% of a school that has 150 National Merit Semifinalists. Some might call taking such a small number of TJ students a misguided policy on the part of the colleges. And many I hope would think not having a child attend a magnet school in the hopes of increasing the chances of him or her getting into an Ivy as a very bad idea.In addition, there is a very inconvenient truth that is getting a lot of attention in the media and in courtrooms. The vast majority of these students at magnet schools like TJ or Stuyvesant are, at least currently, Asian. As anyone who has read the headlines recently in the New York Times and elsewhere, there is a lawsuit against Harvard that is based on the study that Harvard itself carried out which concluded that the admission office discriminates against Asians. Opinion | Harvard Is Wrong That Asians Have Terrible PersonalitiesAt the same time, in New York, Mayor De Blasio has put forward a plan that would drastically reduce the number of Asians students who currently make up the vast majority of students at the 8 magnet schools. 75% of the students at Stuyvesant, the crown jewel of the NYC system, are Asian, even though they comprise just 15% of the overall NYC population. The new selection system will get rid of the standardized test currently used to select students and implement a percentage plan in which a set number of students automatically get in from every middle school in the city. Many have argued recently that making it more difficult for Asians, many of whom are low income --they have the largest percentage of low income students in New York City- is unjust. They spend time, money and effort to do well on the test. The test does not favor them in any way except that it rewards those who prepare for the test more than those who do not.Opinion | No Ethnic Group Owns Stuyvesant. All New Yorkers Do.I have been lucky enough to visit secondary schools around the country and the world. In most cases I have visited schools where the majority of students are motivated, the facilities are up to date, and the teachers excellent. But I have also visited schools in Appalachia, New York and other locations where fewer than 10% of the students will go on to college. In many cases I have sat in on classes and talked with students in groups or individually. There is what I would call an energy field in certain classes I have been in whether it be at one of the magnet schools in Shanghai or Singapore, or at Stuyvesant or TJ. The teachers expect students to be fully prepared and in almost all cases I have observed they are. They are focused and seem to enjoy the interaction between the teacher and their fellow students. When classes end and the hallways fill, there is an energy that is both powerful and intense in ways that I find unique and inspiring. Having students ask me questions from schools like this I come away humbled at the level of knowledge and achievement these students have already attained.On the other hand. I don't know that I have been treated so well as when I visited schools in Appalachia. People all say hi and thank me for making the effort to get there. But inside the classes many students are not engaged; some have their heads down on their desks and are asleep. I can’t really blame them. Most have already decided college is not for them and they are headed to the military or trade school. They are essentially passing time until graduation.The same can be said of students I have met at some Inner-city schools. Too often, these students are living in environments where they do not have access up to date text books or lab equipment. Some call schools like these warehouses as students do not get a chance to learn much but are kept off the streets. Nevertheless, gangs recruit heavily at these schools and these organizations have a much higher “enrollment rate” than colleges and universities. My brother taught in these schools for 25 years and his heart was broken many times when bright students gave up learning because they had to choose a gang or worry about their safety and their family.The disparities between schools exists on virtually every level, whether economic, pedagogical, cultural. One’s life choices are opened or limited by what kind of secondary school one attends. Every year there are calls for leveling the playing field and for improving education at most schools, but very little has changed in the past several generations to close the achievement gaps or create schools that can dramatically improve the chances of most low-income students.For example, If Mayor De Blasio’s New York plan is adopted, more under-represented students will likely have a chance to get the opportunity to attend the top colleges and universities. It will be similar in the same way that the under-represented scholarship students at the boarding schools and private schools will have the many of the top colleges in the US recruiting them. This will, however, come at a price of keeping out low income Asian students whose parents are recent immigrants. But most in education at secondary schools and colleges think this is a worthwhile trade off. The courts may not agree. (I will be addressing this issue in a future blog entry.) And neither does the current President. President Trump and his administration have just sent a message to schools across the US which reverses direction from the Obama administration with respect to affirmative action: “The Trump administration said Tuesday that it was abandoning Obama administration policies that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, signaling that the administration will champion race-blind admissions standards.”Trump Officials Reverse Obama’s Policy on Affirmative Action in SchoolsGiven all the politics and legal issues, things are uncertain when it comes to how and if affirmative action will survive these current challenges. If it does not, then there will be little change in terms of the composition of magnet high schools, but it is likely that in an effort to still have a diverse student body magnet high schools and selective colleges may adopt percentage plans similar to the one proposed by Major De Blasio or the one currently in place in Texas. Secondary school students in Texas who are in the top 6% of their school are automatically admitted to University of Texas. This helps to create opportunities for students of color since there are still de facto segregation at many schools there (and around the US). Taking a certain percentage at the top of the class of all high schools will mean that underrepresented students will still get in to selective state universities even if affirmative action gets struck down. This, in effect, is what the NYC city plan is about but getting rid of the test and replacing it with a percentage while the plan will dramatically alter the racial composition, it will come at the cost of pushing out low income Asian students who have done nothing wrong except for perhaps out testing everyone else.As I mentioned above, the atmosphere of a magnet school is one that mirrors the atmosphere of highly selective colleges and universities. There are very few slackers, and all have high aspirations. While this increases stress levels it also creates an environment that the alumni of Stuyvesant underscore in defending keeping the admission to the school the way it is. If the school admits students who are, for example, two years behind in terms of mathematics courses the school will have to design a two tiered system of classes and have to re-allocate already limited resources.To sum up, at long last, attending a wonderful secondary school will prepare students for success better than attending a school beset by budget woes and weak facilities and underpaid and overworked teachers. This much is obvious.But it is also true that what group one belongs to within different schools will determine a great deal when it comes time for colleges to pick students. As a parent I would always pick the best school that a child could go to and thrive in. Even if they did not get into a top ranked school they would still have the skills and the atmosphere that would foster a love of learning. Studies show that students with high grades and testing do well in life regardless of whether they attend a top 20 school.