After reading the article chapter about University Educational the Grip of Ideology and Poverty, it made me think about my own college experience. After reading I saw many common traits between my college experience and those of the students in communist Poland. One of the topics that the reading discussed was how the universities had a specific acceptance procedure. From my own college experience I can say that this is true for many schools.
In the article it talks about how since Poland pays for their citizens to go to school, they control who get to be accepted into the universities. They start by looking at where the young boys and girls family class. They give they first accept those young students who are from families of workers. The next in line would be the sons and daughters of peasant farmers, and the list goes on and on. From my experience, this is along the same line of how universities and colleges chose their students. Quinnipiac it self is a perfect example of this, looking around the campus and observing the students a person can automatically tell what type of student Quinnipiac chooses.
When a student in the U.S. applies to a university or college, that school looks at where they went to high school, where they live, their race etc. From that the university can tell what types of family the applicant comes from and much more. From the information on the application the school then hand picks that they want to be in that school. More then often they student does not get into the school because of their grades or what they have done through their high school career but, they get in because of their family background, or financial back ground. This is exactly what I see when I walk around this campus; our school pulls from CT, MA, NH, and NY, with the acceptation of international students. A majority of them are from well off families and come from a privet or well-respected high school. The majority of our campus is made up of white students from middle to upper class families.
But this is not only true for Quinnipiac, universities and colleges around the world are giving high priority to those who come from certain families, and backgrounds. It has been my experience that schools do hand pick their students and it many not be because they have the best grades or are high achievers but because of where they come from and who they know in life.
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Although in my blog I spoke of how universities in the US allow for anyone to come to their college, I completely agree with you. I feel that although it is stated "anyone with a xyz GPA and xyz SAT score are eligible", it is so true that people from certain backgrounds, social classes, geographic regions, and even ethnicities are looked at differently depending on what the school is looking for. Quinnipiac is definitely a prime example of this, although they say they are trying to "diversify" Quinnipiac even more. But what does " diverse" really even mean these days? Is it just the color of someone's skin? Is it their heritage? Is it their income level? Is it their language? There are so many ways one can define diverse it's hard to tell what is meant. Clearly a general population of white middle-upper class kids go to QU, that's something hard to argue. I think it will be years before Quinnipiac achieves the " diversity" they say they are looking for.
ReplyDeleteHey Alex I really enjoyed reading your blog. I like how you took a different stand from what some of the other blogs said. I thought it was so different how communist Poland and Quinnipiac choose their students. The whole idea of looking at what the partents of students in communist Poland do. I agree with you in that when you look around campus at Quinnipiac that there is definitely a certain type of student that Quinnipiac chooses. You could almost say that it is a bit of a cookie cutter school; the majority of student are middle to upper class.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would said against this idea is that Quinnipiac doesn't necessarily choose the students that come here but its the students that decide to come here. For example if I visited a school that was majority African American and located in a City I would feel out of place and would probably choose a different school over that one. This may not make complete sense but I'll try and mention it in our class discussion if we talk about it.