At Lenny's request, half a dozen Asian American seniors chatted with me in a conference room adjoining her office. I soon understood why she described them as “outstanding survival kids.” All knew the uphill challenge they faced in college admissions, yet they weren't bitter. Instead, they adapted as best they could, trying to counteract the stereotypes by expressing individuality in their activities and essays. These valiant efforts apparently made little headway with admissions offices. Although all of the group would end up at prestigious colleges, only one was accepted by his first choice; none of the others were judged worthy of the Ivy League.

  When Senna Ye emigrated from China at the age of seven with her divorced mother, she knew two words of English: apple and pear. A decade later, she scored 1460 on her SATs, including a 720 verbal score, and was a mainstay of the Hunter math team. Yet despite this remarkable progress, she feared that Columbia, her first choice, where she would qualify for free tuition as a staff child because her mother worked as a medical researcher there, would dismiss her as just another Asian science whiz. So in her application essay, she adopted a humorous tone toward her research into Legionella pneumophila bacteria: “Oh LEGs, LEGs, where are you? Are you trying to elude me on purpose? With my trusty pipetmen [tubes used to transfer liquid], I'll be as meticulous as Sherlock Holmes and as unstoppable as Superman.” The verdict was still out on this strategy; Columbia had deferred her. Months later, all four Ivies to which she applied— Columbia, Penn, Brown, and Cornell—would reject her. She would enroll at the University of Maryland.

  Shirley Shaw, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, acknowledged her college admissions predicament: “I'm the stereotypical Asian, more into math and science. I don't particularly like writing and social science.” With a 3.85 grade point average and a 1540 SAT score, including a perfect 800 in math, plus choir and bowling for outside activities, she applied to MIT and was deferred. She later enrolled at Johns Hopkins.

  Thomas Lee, a Korean American senior, learned from the cautionary tale of his older brother, David. Despite scoring 1590 out of a possible 1600 on the SATs, David was rejected by MIT, Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, and enrolled at the University of Michigan. Realizing that his brother “didn't present himself as well-rounded,” Thomas was “more open” to school activities and “took every opportunity that came my way,” including captaining the track team, and still notched a 1560 SAT score. He was accepted at an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania. In a subsequent email to me, David Lee theorized that a slump in his junior-year grades had sunk his Ivy prospects. “I do wish perhaps that I'd have concentrated more deeply on my extra-curriculars,” he added. “But I wasn't much of a believer in doing things to ‘look good for college,” and I don't really regret it.””

  Another Asian American senior in the group, Elizabeth Wai, had the opposite problem. She had bent over backward so much to distinguish herself from the Asian stereotype and demonstrate leadership, particularly in community service efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, that she had neglected her studies, she told me. She settled for a 3.7 grade-point-average and a 1530 SAT score, which she jokingly termed an “Asian fail.” She feared that an “Asian fail”—which she also defined as “getting a 95 on a test”— would undermine her aspirations to her dream school, Yale.

  Her worries proved well founded. The next day, she learned that Yale had rejected her. Elizabeth enrolled at Georgetown.

  Asian Americans aren't the only unconnected group confronting especially imposing odds in college admissions. Also bypassed in colleges” pursuit of the rich and famous is another set of applicants even more distant from the American establishment: international students who need financial aid.

  Admissions directors from the humblest community colleges to the Ivy League these days aspire to international diversity. They go on overseas recruiting junkets, pontificate about spreading American values and competing in the global marketplace, and boast about how many countries are represented in their student bodies. What they neglect to mention is that their foreign students don't just offer diverse backgrounds and viewpoints; they also offer ready cash.

  Most foreign students enrolled at U.S. universities come from wealthy families and pay full tuition. Many of them graduated from exclusive boarding schools or international schools overseas that cater to children of businessmen, diplomats, and upper-class families and charge hefty tuitions. They commute to campus in their BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, and jet off to Paris for the weekend.

  Foreign applicants from lower social tiers learn a painful lesson about the economic limits of American goodwill. They aren't eligible for federal financial aid and are often charged out-of-state tuition at public universities. (Undocumented students living in the United States in violation of immigration laws are in similar straits.) Only a few U.S. universities, notably Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, evaluate foreign candidates on a need-blind basis. Whatever pittance other colleges provide usually takes the form of merit scholarships—which often reward affluent students who don't need the money—rather than income-based assistance. According to a 2004 Institute of International Education survey, 81.8 percent of foreign undergraduates listed their primary source of funds as “personal and family,” compared with only 10.1 percent citing “U.S. college or university.” Most of the others were sponsored by their home government or private companies. By contrast, 63 percent of all undergraduates in 2003-4—and 83 percent of students at private four-year colleges—received financial aid from federal, state, institutional, employer, or other sources.

  American colleges are looking overseas for what one admissions dean described as a “trifecta”: students who have high test scores, don't need financial aid, and are children of potential donors. Colleges “talk about international diversity, but if you look more closely, you'll often see they're admitting a foreign national who brings less of a diverse perspective because of time spent in America, or schools attended in America,” this person told me.

  Even for the cream of foreign undergraduates, poverty can be a barrier. Amherst College ranks applicants on a 1-7 scale from best to worst, and admits 85 percent of the Is. Who makes up the rejected 15 percent? Often, it's international applicants seeking financial aid. Neither the University of Southern California nor New York University, which boast among the largest foreign-student enrollments in the United States, offers need-based aid. Barbara Hall, NYU's associate provost for enrollment, pointed to “limited dollars” and difficulty verifying need: “You get the financial statement and the bank has certified that the family has two cows and three goats. How do you put a dollar value on that?”

  Although college administrators lament that increased security and visa delays in response to the September 11 attacks, as well as increased competition from Canada and Australia, have slowed foreign enrollment, they haven't compensated by seeking a broader socioeconomic spectrum of foreign students. In 2003-4, Kasia Szalecka was an exchange student at the high school in Barrington, Rhode Island. While her SAT score was unexceptional, the teenager from Warsaw, Poland, ranked in the top 10 percent of her senior class with a 3.8 grade point average and was named to the National Honor Society. “She was a very serious academic kid,” said her great-uncle, Bill Malinowski, a Providence Journal reporter. “She had to tell me to turn the music down.” She also joined Barrington High's archery club, volunteered as a “junior keeper” and translator at a nearby zoo, and earned money babysitting.

  Savoring her first taste of America, Kasia decided to go to college here. Believing all the rhetoric from American higher education leaders about their commitment to global diversity, she figured she would have little trouble getting into a good school. Dipping into her babysitting savings, she paid a $130 fee to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), which most U.S. colleges require for international students, and scored a strong 260 out of 300. Overall, she spent nearly $1,000 in test and application fees.

  But Kasia soon discovered that her intelligence and dedication meant little without wealth. Because her father, a doctor, only earned about $20,000 a year, Kasia was dependent on aid—and little was available. Foreign students don't qualify for federal financial aid, and as much as colleges espouse global diversity, most are loath to spend scarce scholarship dollars in its name.

  At first, Kasia wanted to attend nearby Providence College, and she scheduled an interview there. The interviewer was “very interested,” Kasia later told me, until she confessed she would need financial aid, whereupon he “sounded very surprised” and told her not to expect any. She next tried the University of Rhode Island, only to find the state school was no bargain for foreigners; according to its website, “minimum costs” for international undergraduates are nearly $30,000 a year. Kasia and her Barrington High guidance counselor, Steve Rotondo, then scoured websites and polled colleges until they identified a handful of schools offering assistance to international students. “Most of my friends were applying to a handful of schools, having so-called ‘sure shots,” ‘safety options,” ‘high reach,” etc.,” she emailed me. “Unfortunately I could only apply to a few of the best schools in the U.S., because they were the only ones to provide any financial aid.” Princeton, Wellesley, Bates, and Connecticut College all turned her down—as did less selective St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. St. Anselm's scholarship money for non-US. citizens is so limited that it prohibits international students who need financial aid from applying there under its binding early decision program.

  “No college ever told me, ‘We don't want foreign students,”” Rotondo said. “They all brag about geographic diversity.” But financial aid “is not a top priority.”

  Kasia applied early to her first choice, Middlebury College, one of the most generous U.S. colleges in giving financial aid to foreign students, which deferred her to the regular pool and then placed her on its waiting list. “I know Middlebury would be the place for me,” she wrote its admissions office. “Many people in the United States take equality for granted, but I know, coming from a country like Poland, how precious it really is. Throughout my life, I saw my father, a physician, work endless hours for meager pay. I watched my mother, who is well educated, grow increasingly frustrated with her inability to get a job because she is a woman and a mother…. I came to the United States with the hope of a better future. I want to continue my education here where the opportunities for a woman are boundless. I know that Middlebury is a place where I can receive an excellent education, develop as a person, and strive for a better life.

  “My friends in Poland have doubts that a young woman from Warsaw can actually get into a top college in the United States. They are just teenagers, but they have abandoned their dream. I want to show them that we can all dare to dream.” Despite her appeal, Middlebury did not make room for her. Kim Downs, director of student financial services, said the decision was based solely on academic merit and her financial need was not considered.

  Stymied in her pursuit of a U.S. education, Kasia enrolled at less expensive Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she plans a double major in sociology and social anthropology. After college, she hopes to become a photographer for National Geographic or Discovery magazine, preserving the world's cultures and religions with her camera.

  But the money culture of American college admissions is one she'd prefer to forget. “It was horrible,” she said. “I didn't know that I could go to Dalhousie, and I was at the point of thinking that probably I would not go to college. I was there in high school, and all my friends around me who had better or worse grades than I did, they got in somewhere. I was trying so hard, and there was nothing I could do, because of finances.”

  WHEN I arrived at the luncheonette in the Johns Hopkins student center one afternoon in March 2003, Henry Park emerged from the kitchen to greet me. I waited while he cooked the last order of his work-study shift. Then he changed out of his chef's coat and we walked to an off-campus restaurant. His mother, who had driven to Baltimore from the family's New Jersey home, soon joined us for coffee.

  She told me that her husband used to own a string of small clothing stores in the New York area, enabling the Parks to send Henry to Horace Mann, a Manhattan private school, through ninth grade. But several of the outlets failed in the mid-1990s, forcing his mother to work full time teaching Korean. Concerned that she couldn't spare enough time to drive Henry to Horace Mann and his extracurricular activities, she decided to send him to boarding school for grades 10 through 12. After visiting several schools, she chose Groton for its small enrollment, “homey” campus, and notable Ivy League placement record. To pay Groton's $30,000-a-year tuition and room and board, she sold her only investment property, an apartment building in Hoboken, New Jersey. “I thought, the most important thing is really my child's future,” she told me.

  Founded in 1884, located on a graceful Gothic Revival campus 40 miles northwest of Boston, Groton has long been regarded as a bastion of the elite. It borrows heavily from the English “public school” model and vocabulary: grade years are known as “forms,” student leaders are called “prefects,” and students attend chapel each morning. Distinguished alumni who fulfilled its call-to-duty credo—“To serve is to reign”—include Franklin Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, and McGeorge Bundy. The class of 1998, among its roster of illustrious or wealthy families, boasted Stanford-bound Margaret Bass, daughter of oil baron Robert Bass; Julia Halberstam, the daughter of best-selling author David Halberstam, destined for Brown; and Elbridge Colby, grandson of the late CIA director William Colby, who was headed for Harvard.

  Academically, Henry more than held his own in this company, ex-celling in German, Latin, and especially math. But as one of only three Asian American students in his form, he felt ill at ease socially, except for one party where he loosened up and demonstrated his proficiency at “liquid dancing”—dancing with a glow stick. In 1997, when England's Princess Diana was killed in a car accident, three-quarters of the Groton student body—many of them from America's royal families—closely followed the news, and 15 percent bought tribute magazines. But the House of Windsor's travails didn't interest Henry Park, who preferred listening to Korean music and studying martial arts at an academy off campus. “I don't think I really fit in,” Henry told me. “I just felt it was a very homogenous population.”

  Classmates admired his intelligence but resented his aloofness. In a retaliatory snub, they voted him most likely to “never be heard from again.” One said, “I wish I knew him better. He was just not a part of the Groton community.” Neither was his mother. Busy with teaching, she didn't become friendly with Groton faculty or administrators. Nor could she elevate Henry's status there by donating to the school.

  Most students at Groton, as at other prep schools, feel intense pressure to get into a top college. Those who come from generations of Ivy League old money want to maintain their families” status and avoid social disgrace and economic decline. Those from middle-class backgrounds want to lift their families into the upper echelon and prove that their parents” hard-earned tuition money wasn't wasted. Scholarship students from humble beginnings carry their parents” dreams for a better life for their children.

  “It's a high-pressure environment,” recalled Eric Cohen, a 1995 graduate who attended Williams College. “You had made it to Groton, and everything seemed to turn on the next step. Would you make it to Harvard, Princeton, Amherst, Williams?”

  For many in the class of 1998, preferences eased the transition. Affirmative action lifted Groton's minority students. Lakia Washington, an African American who grew up in the Bronx, attended Groton on a scholarship. She was admitted to Columbia, where her father worked as a stu-dent loan representative, despite ranking 60th in her class and scoring 1110 on the SAT. She said affirmative action gave her a “great opportunity.” But, she added, preferential treatment for children of alumni and donors “amounts to exactly the same thing. That's what upsets me the most about criticism of affirmative action.”

  At Groton, Lakia outpaced another African American scholarship student, Latoya Massey, who had a 1080 SAT score and ranked 64th in the class. Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, a top liberal arts college where three-fourths of freshmen in 2003 scored at least 1290 on the SATs, admitted Latoya. “I was competing with children who had been in private school,” said Massey, who was the first in her family to go to college and who attended New York City public schools through eighth grade. Her father, an immigrant from Trinidad, is a Brooklyn hairstylist. “I worked every summer and babysat on weekends for extra cash. Most Groton students didn't have to do that. It's a white male world.”

  One white male at Groton had a record strikingly similar to Henry Park's but fared much better in the college-admissions process. John Roberts was tenth in his class—four spots ahead of Henry—but had a slightly lower SAT score, 1530. They were two of three Groton seniors enrolled in the school's most advanced math course, and their research for an article titled “Mapping the Hypercube” was published in a math journal for high school teachers and students. In addition, both students were on the Groton cross-country team.

  But John, unlike Henry, had a significant Harvard hook. His grandfather and uncle, Albert H. and Albert E Gordon, both alumni, gave Harvard an indoor track and tennis center and a professorship, among other donations. John says that when he was applying to Harvard, his family arranged for him to meet with William Fitzsimmons, the admissions dean, and Jeremy Knowles, then dean of arts and sciences. John's relatives also linked him up with Harvard's track coach and team members in the hope that he would be given preferential treatment as an athletic recruit. Harvard accepted him.