And by “small advantage” she means white students.
(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a “college opportunity summit” on Thursday, First Lady Michelle Obama described “two worlds” of college-bound students:
“[T]he fact is that right now, a small number of students are getting every advantage in the college admissions race, while millions of other students who are just as talented can’t even begin to compete.”
Mrs. Obama was making a pitch for expanded college counseling. She said too many students go through school without any real guidance on how to get into college or how to pay for it.
She described one world, where students “don’t know what classes to take, or how to prepare for the SAT or the ACT. No one helps them decide which colleges to apply to. No one reviews the their applications. And plenty of kids have no idea that they’re eligible for financial aid, so they assume they just can’t afford college, and they don’t even bother to apply.
“Now, that’s one world. The other world is much smaller — it’s a world of schools where the question (for students) isn’t … whether they’re going to college, but where. Kids in this world start preparing for college long before they even start high school. And from the first day of freshman year, they’ve been shepherded through every step of the process.
“They’ve got SAT and ACT prep courses, they take those tests again and again to improve their scores. Counselors have much smaller caseloads, and they walk kids through every deadline, they edit every draft of their essays.”