As most NC State students know, getting accepted to this university and even a top-100 U.S. university is not an easy task. Even after acceptance, issues like paying for tuition, room, board and books come along. For students who can afford college and who attended good schools beforehand, these issues are not important, yet students from modest or underprivileged backgrounds have a different experience both in admittance and being able to afford attendance.
The same story is reflected at NC State. Established under the Morrill Act as a public land-grant university, NC State was founded to teach mechanical and agricultural arts; only later were other programs were added. Funding for the university was and still is provided by the State of North Carolina. However, the state has recently had to cut funds, meaning that, according to the UNC website, only $2.5 billion is given to the 17-campus UNC-System, of which NC State is a member.
It is expected that top private universities, such as Duke University, are very selective with admissions and expensive to attend; but with an acceptance rate of just 46.9 percent for the class of 2020, NC State is also a selective and expensive university.
As someone who was born in a small factory town in North Carolina and attended a public school there, I know how getting into such a selective university can prove difficult for students in lower socioeconomic districts. Social mobility in our state and the country as a whole is simply not at the level that it should be.
The difficulty for students from lower socioeconomic districts of being competitive with students who were offered better resources from their schools can seem overwhelming. My father is a public school teacher and the first in his family to attend college, which he did after serving in the military, while my mom works in human resources for social services. I also have a younger brother, so it’s fair to say that even attending NC State with in-state tuition isn’t affordable for my family. Similarly, most of the kids I went to school with lived well below the poverty line.
For the so-called poor student who attends a public school, their path to college is much more different than a wealthy student who attended a college prep school or private school. The goal of a prep school or private school student is to attend college, while the goal of a student at a public school, like the one I attended, is simply to graduate from high school.
The truth of the matter is that access to resources such as extracurricular activities, leadership positions, volunteer work, SAT and ACT prep, tutoring and much more has a large effect on admissions decisions. Therefore, there is a legitimate concern.
If NC State is supposed to serve the people of North Carolina, it is not unreasonable to expect that admissions decisions will honor that. Although I am generalizing, it is fair for me to ask if middle- and upper-middle-class students are disproportionately admitted compared to the more modest students at NC State because of their more competitive applications.
I am thankful to be a student at NC State, but I have a deep concern for the people who cannot attend this institution or have a hard time doing so. As a public university that receives funding from North Carolina, the high cost of attending NC State is not the university’s fault. However, it is within the power of our state and federal governments to change this. Likewise, it is within the university’s power to change how we think about admissions.
It would be much more fair and meritocratic if the students who apply would be considered based on their academic record as it compares to the school and the resources that were available to them, in a reasonable way of course. This would ensure that the best students who are actually capable of graduating from NC State are chosen, not just those who benefited from having extra access to resources.
