In this thread, it was implied that there is plethora of “programs” to assist minorities financially in attending university.
Be that as it may, I think even the number of people who receive minority-related scholarships is just a drop in the ocean, and it isn’t really a factor at all. A few lucky people get them, but most people cannot count on minority-specific scholarships as a major factor in their ability to attend university.
So, if you are a minority who went to university, did you receive any minority-specific assistance?
I did not accept my minority-specific scholarship for business school. I got the 2010 Forte Scholar award for Carnegie Mellon/Tepper School of Business when I got in. I turned it down because I went to another school. There is no application for the Forte scholarship, the school chooses someone and the donations come from generous alumni.
So I ended up choosing “no” because I didn’t accept the one I won.
I also got into most of invitation-only pre-recruitment programs for women in finance/consulting before business school even started.
It’s still a good time to be a woman in business school-but in all honesty, no matter how angry people feel about these reachout efforts, they aren’t working. Investment banking still has a hard time recruiting The Ladies and women are leery of the MBA program. Law and medicine have done a much better job.
Should also be noted that the Accounting department has a devil of a time getting American MBAs to major in it (of any race/gender)-Ernst and Young has been parked at our school since recruiting blackout ended.
What did those pre-recruitment programs involve? In what way were they an advantage?
Law and medicine: What have law and medicine done that business hasn’t? Is it not so much that law and medicine have done better at reaching to women but that more women have become interested in it, irrespective of reach out efforts?
Why are women leery of the MBA program?
Law and Medicine now have 50/50 gender representation in their classes with a few outlier schools. I also have a law degree and if I remember correctly, I had zero reach out from law schools based on my gender. I did, however, get application waivers because of my LSAT score.
There are multiple articles out there about why women are leery of the MBA program. The divide at most of the top schools is literally 80-20. I’m sure this alone is off-putting to most people. But to sum up 1) similarly educated male and female MBAs have a pay gap 2) the other theory relates to the work requirement for the MBA program. The average age is now 28-30 at the top 14 programs-exactly when most women want to start a family. This means that you get out of school at 30-32 and you spend another 3 to 4 years putting off having a family in order to establish “seniority” at your company of choice so you don’t get mommy-tracked.
Most of the pre-recruitment programs are attempts to sell you on the profession and that the idea that companies are supportive and won’t mommy-track you or punish you for being a woman. The largest advantage is learning the business etiquette of recruiting for things like investment banking or consulting (I focused on i-banking since I was a transactional lawyer and it seemed like a better fit). Investment banking has a very specific schedule and reachout etiquette/protocol that the banks want you to follow and you’re unlikely to get a job unless you follow it to the T. You can get some of the info off of sites like Mergers and Inquisitions, but the earlier you know about it, the better off you are. If you don’t have a lot of background context for finance or investment banking, getting into a pre-recruitment program can be a big help.
The second advantage (or perhaps disadvantage depending on how unsophisticated you are) is that you get in the company’s system during the summer rather than during regular recruiting rush in the Fall, which means that unless you pissed them off, you’ll probably get invited to the initial reach out dinners and happy hours and all of that. Then again, if they hate you and think you’re an asshat, you get blacklisted upfront as well. By “system” I mean that investment banks literally track every interaction they have with you, how you did and how they feel about you. Not sure about consulting, but I wouldn’t be surprised for them either.
Yeah, if you’re a South Asian male the competition for graduate programs/anything sciencey is unbelievable. I was buffered by the do-gooding background/“lady status” for the MBA but law school was really rough on account of being South Asian. My sister is still bitter about having a 36 MCAT/close to 4.0 GPA and what she went through to get into medical school because of the South Asian background.
Still, I feel pretty Don’t Cry for Me Argentina about the situation for American-raised South Asians since the biggest reason they are doing well is because of the economic advantages. On the other hand, I have plenty of not-as-wealthy friends FROM India who get lumped in the same category because of the test scores but have had to overcome much larger hurdles.
Some people think all Asian are treated the same, but this is not true. I know they are not technically Asians (but people consider them such), but folks from the Philipines are considered members of a disadvantaged minority group. I think the same might be true for Vietnamese people, but I’m not sure.
I am a double-minority (black and female) and I received scholarships for both. I received a National Achievment scholarship, which is sponsored by the National Merit Scholarship Program. Like the National Merit scholarship, it is based on your PSAT scores, but it is specifically for black Americans.
My university gave me a small scholarship targeted for women. I attended an engineering school, where women were a distinct minority. The scholarship was created out of a private endowment. I think there were probably a number of women students at my school who received it. My sister also got it too, that’s why I’m saying this.
For grad school, my fellowship was sponsored by an NIH program for minority students. This program not only included people of African descent, but Hispanic/Latinos, Native Americans, Phillipinos, and other people that I’ve probably forgotten. We didn’t just get a check, though. We had to attend monthly guest lectures, recruit students to our graduate program at yearly conferences, and present our own research. We were also strongly encouraged to take a high school student under our wing during the summer and help with their science projects, which I did and actually enjoyed. It was a great program because it allowed me to focus on research instead of teaching, and I had my own supply and travel money–so I wasn’t a “burden” to my grad advisor.
So yes, I have fed at the trough of “minority set-asides”. I can only hope that I’ve been a good investment.
For undergrad: I got the National Hispanic Scholarship, the latino version of monstro’s National Achievement and the overall National Merit. It was the only reason I went to University of Florida, and graduated debt free.
I have to point out, though, that the National Hispanics/Achievement scholars at UF received a lesser package compared to the National Merit scholars. I don’t grudge the scholarship at all, but I want to make people aware that these programs, at least in UF, were, at least at a time, treated differently.
For veterinary school:
Only Federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans.
For graduate school:
Just the regular graduate assistanship/researc assistanship program and pay offered by my department. It is slightly different to other departments, due to the nature of the program, but it is not a scholarship.
I counted “other” because I did get assistance targeted to my status as female, but all three of the schools I’ve been to so far, females have not actually been minorities (community college while in HS, female/male ~60/40; undergrad ~55/45; grad school ~65/35 (unless you’re counting JUST my specific field, where it’s more like ~80/20)).
I feel a little awkward counting myself as a minority, when in my educational experience, I’ve not actually been so, but I did receive assistance due specifically to gender.
I’m a white female, but applied for scholarships that were fairly specific to ethnic or gender status - that I did not get. I’m old enough that “women’s scholarships” were still around when I went to school.
I did get a full ride my final year but it was not a gender or racial specific scholarship - and the other recipient was a white male. It was a scholarship for student leaders.
I don’t consider loans to be “financial assistance” on the same scale as grants. In fact, some days I wonder if college loan programs aren’t a scheme the rich have set up to further oppress the poor and middle class that liberals have fallen for.
Yup. All this talk about how college affords social mobility without really considering the massive debt that comes into the equation for many of the have-nots.
If you can get into them, there are schools that have eliminated loans from their financial aid packages, and other schools (although with lots of overlap) that have eliminated familial contributions from households that make a good chunk more than I currently make.
That said, these tend to be tougher schools to get into. If those schools aren’t an option, massive debt still isn’t guaranteed. The local 2-year is ~$3500/yr for full time students, and the local public university is $8500/yr. Yes, you’ll still need a bed and food, but there is a big difference between this and the folks who take out loans to attend a $50k/yr school without any help.