Article: The challenge of being poor at America's richest colleges

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<p>I completely agree, and that thought is what led to my statement that I don’t feel sorry for poor kids, or <em>any</em> kids, including my own when they complain, who get to go to Harvard for 4 years. I have seen and lived, as a parent, what is offered and available at these schools, and my opinion is that a college student really could not have it any better. So all of you at HYPS and every college like them (there are quite a few), enjoy what you have, and cope with the hurt feelings you experience, because truly it doesn’t get any better than what you have where you are. imo.</p>

<p>My daughter is a student at Yale. She tried out for a campus group, and was rejected. When she told me how disappointed she was, should I have said:
a. That’s too bad–I know you’re disappointed–there will be other great opportunities; or
b. Quit complaining–you’re at Yale, after all.</p>

<p>Guess which one I did say.</p>

<p>I say both. Maybe, not that bluntly but the message is always something along of the lines of, " Oh darn! But, look what you have achieved. You’re doing really well." Perhaps, some of this is semantics.</p>

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<p>We actually said this to our D all the time. I guess it is a parenting ploy.</p>

<p>Hunt, you went to Yale, so you may not even know how good you (and she) had it.</p>

<p>Personally, I try never to tell an unhappy person that they really shouldn’t be unhappy. It never seems to cheer them up.</p>

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I would certainly say this to her if she were complaining about something trivial. But something that genuinely makes her sad–like being rejected by a group, breaking up with a boyfriend, etc.–would get a more empathetic response. If all her friends were going on a fancy trip she couldn’t afford, I think I’d tend toward the empathetic, because, in my opinion, that s*cks.</p>

<p>ETA: Flossy, there IS extreme poverty in our country. There ARE kids who are hungry, cold and homeless–we have them in our school district. What’s bizarre is that you don’t see a difference between “working class” and “poor.” </p>

<p>The article is about families making 40K per year. I know there are homeless people. Are there homeless, hungry students at Harvard? Or are we talking about income disparities between the very wealthy and the rest of the world. Ski trips and lavish gifts suggest the latter.</p>

<p>I tell people it is their responsibility to be happy or not.</p>

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<p>That happened to my D at Yale, but neither I nor she (apparently) thought it s*cked. It just was what it was. I think we reacted more by marveling at their extravagance. If D felt bad about not going, she did not express it. Maybe it depends on how you raise your kids, as to whether they will covet others’ riches or not.</p>

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I’m sure this will be very comforting to your daughter when her boyfriend dumps her.</p>

<p>I don’t get this insistence–which I’ve seen in multiple discussions over the years–that people, and teenagers in particular, are somehow wrong to be disappointed by anything that happens to them. It goes against human nature–when you are hoping for something, and don’t get it, it’s natural to be disappointed–and to me, it’s natural to empathize with somebody in that situation. Could it be that there are some people who really can shrug off any disappointment immediately, and just can’t get why others can’t?</p>

<p>By the way, Bay, I didn’t care for your last comment, either. And it’s an odd one, coming from somebody who is championing the non-empathetic position.</p>

<p>I agree with Hunt - sympathy isn’t a fixed quantity that must be reserved only for the most desperate cases. The important thing, I think, is that both the person giving and the person asking (whether implicitly or explicitly) for sympathy maintain a sense of proportion. Pointing out that it is sometimes difficult for a low-income student to navigate a social world composed primarily of the wealthy is different than lamenting the irreparable harm done to the student’s prospects and/or self-esteem by his inability to shop at JCrew. </p>

<p>It isn’t all that different to some of the discussions we’ve had before about applicant’s reactions to not getting into their chosen college. A top student winding up at his safety is not remotely a tragedy, but it is OK for him to be disappointed and express that disappointment as long as he isn’t acting as if his admissions results are a tragedy on par with the Holocaust, an injustice equivalent to slavery, or something that will condemn him to a life of mediocrity. He also shouldn’t be telling his tale of woe to the kid in his class who is going to a CC for financial reasons. If the disparity between desired and achieved outcome is less severe, the disappointment, and expression of same, should be proportionately more moderate. Someone who was a reasonable applicant for elite school A but gets into slightly less elite school B is entitled to a pang, or even a few tears, at 5PM on March 30th, but if he can’t very quickly regroup and say (and feel) “Hey, I’m going to school B. That’s fantastic!” he’s acting like an entitled brat, especially if he’s voicing this to people who would have loved to be going to school B.</p>

<p>One of my kids was in a scout troop that also included the severely autistic child of a very wealthy family. This family paid for trips for the entire troop and sponsored every event. It was a very strange experience and it felt like they were trying to buy friends for their kid. As enticing as a top tier private education sounds, I wouldn’t want one of my kids to relive that experience- that you are at a place for the amusement of some rich person. </p>

<p>The troop folded after 2 years.</p>

<p>I would also say that it was very difficult to decline their generosity! They were trying to be nice and really it just made everyone uncomfortable.</p>

<p>I do not covet anyone’s riches. But I don’t think it makes me a bad person if a colleague is going on a two week cruise of the Mediterranean and I am spending my vacation taking care of an elderly in-law with Parkinson’s whose full time aide just quit. It doesn’t make me a bad person for bristling a little when I need to hear (for the fifth time) about my bosses difficulty expanding his three car garage to a four car garage since “We can’t keep little Timmy’s Jeep in the driveway forever, can we?” during the week where my aging Honda lost a muffler backing out of my driveway.</p>

<p>I think it’s crazy to tell your kids to buck up every time they are disappointed or irritated or hurt- even when they’ve won the lottery and are at Yale. Yes, your kid understands that disappointments are a part of life, and I’m sure they are thankful not to be living under a bridge and getting breakfast out a dumpster. But jeez- a little empathy never cost anyone a nickel.</p>

<p>There are productive ways to help your kids come to terms with income inequality- and it’s also important to model that behavior yourself. If you’ve raised your kids to believe that people with money are insensitive monsters who are out to make the 99% feel lousy about their lives, it will be harder for your kids to handle living with the 1%.</p>

<p>Teaching your kids that they have the ability to not be disappointed or unhappy due to what others have is an important thing for parents to do, imo.</p>

<p>I don’t understand your last sentence, Hunt, so I can’t respond.</p>

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<p>It is too bad they both can’t, and getting the trip or not getting the trip have nothing to do with that kids’ own merits. </p>

<p>I am comfortable saying that’s too bad the poor kid can’t have the ski trip. I am comfortable saying it sucks that poor kids - through no fault of their own - can’t get a lot of things. </p>

<p>I’m comfortable recognizing that poor kids at elite Us have specific challenges, some of which the U should attempt to remedy (textbooks available in library, loaner interview outfits, subsidies for internships or study abroad, student support groups and the like) and some of which the student needs to suck up and deal with (BF is going to Aspen and you’re not).</p>

<p>But it’s still OK to recognize the disappointment in the latter case. Empathize, discuss it, whatever. As apprenticeprof said, it’s not an all or nothing thing.</p>

<p>Nice post, apprenticeprof.</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s coveting somebody’s riches to feel sad that you can’t go on the ski trip that your friends are all going on. It may help some people to rationalize how they didn’t really want to go, perhaps. But if it sounds like a fun trip, and your friends are going, a normal person will be sorry that he can’t go too. And if you are the parent of the kid who can’t go, you can empathize and express sympathy, within reason. I would also empathize for the kid who couldn’t go on the trip because he has a broken leg, or has a job interview that conflicts, or whatever. “Hey, that’s too bad–I’m sorry you can’t go. Maybe next time.” As I said, I just don’t get the resistance to this idea.</p>

<p>Again, probably because of how I was raised, going on an extravagant ski trip with friends is … extravagant. No further explanation needed if one kid can’t go. It is simple in my mind but maybe not to others who have always been allowed to go on these trips.</p>

<p>Beyond awkwardness about money inequality is the culture shock that some kids from poorer backgrounds experience when they go to residential colleges. I have had students who left school mainly because they could not take the separation from their families; not just the physical separation, but the cultural and economic separation. Some of these kids do feel that the price of entry into the upper middle class or professional world is rootlessness and loneliness. It’s too high a price for some to pay. Money is just a symptom, not a cause.</p>

<p>That’s different from coming from a professional middle or upper middle class home and being in the company of rich people at college. Aside from consumption, most will share the same bourgeois values and assumptions about , for example, the role of family or work in life, what women should do for their parents (or not), what fork to use when there’s more than one, etc. etc. Going to college does not, for them, represent a total rejection of their communities.</p>

<p>Bay, what about a pizza? Can we feel a little sorry for the kid who can’t even afford to go out with friends and split a pizza? Or does he need the lecture, too?</p>

<p>Hunt,
The poor kid can go. He can do what my D did about going out to dinner with friends. Eat in the (extravagant) dining hall first, then go along for the social part of it. No one will force him to eat any pizza, I promise.</p>