alumni Digest, Vol 39, Issue 5

[Nick Gorton]

"Actually, NCSSM has, as far as I know, always gone to considerable
lengths to ensure that its students are representative of the state
demographics. The school doesn't simply collect the SAT scores of
applicants and pick the students with the highest totals. The first
among many problems with that approach is that it's illegal."

Joseph, they have gone to great lengths to ensure it is representative
of MANY demographics (certainly not all.) However some are more
difficult to control for than others like socioeconomic status. As
Douglass said, when he was a junior in 2004 the median was $80,000.
The median household income in 2005 (closest I could find) in NC was
$41,000. That speaks for itself.

The reason I made that statement even without those figures is because
EVERY time there is a 'merit based' benefit (whether admission to
NCSSM or a scholarship) there will be a disproportionate
representation of children of affluent families. If your parents can
afford to have one stay home with you in the first 4 years of life, if
they can afford to take you on educational trips, if they can afford a
private elementary school or private tutoring, if they are more
educated and can help you with your schoolwork, if they can afford
nutritious foods and can take you to the doctor when you are sick, you
are quite obviously going to do better on any 'merit based' metric at
age 15 or 16 than kids whose parents were unable to provide those
benefits.

Its not just the SAT as you mentioned, but it doesn't have to be that.
You can have a quite legal (and more socially acceptable) means of
disproportionately benefiting the children of those who are more
affluent by making it 'merit based'.

Douglass: "I personally would have not been able to afford college
without the tuition grant."

Cough-bullshit-cough. You would have afforded it the same way that I
afforded 8 years in the UNC system without a single dime from my
family and how everyone else does: educational debt, working while in
school, selling your plasma, being a research subject, etc.

Nick