<p>Family income is less than $15k a year, and I am a first generation immigrant. None of my parents went to college. But I am an Asian male from CA. Would this give me any type of advantage? My grades are very good and I am expecting pretty decent SAT scores as well.</p>
<p>woah unless you are an only child, how do you live off that income?</p>
<p>Being first gen will help. But from what I've read, unless you're applying to a need-blind school (Stanford for instance) a college may factor in the need for them to give you financial aid and it could actually hurt you. But no worries, there are plenty of programs and scholarships that are designed to help low income students and can counter the impact your income would make in the admissions process.</p>
<p>First in family to go to college definitely is a hook. Unfortunately, simply being "poor" isn't, although imo it should be.</p>
<p>However, they will definitely consider your income level when they look at your GPA and SAT scores, so if they ARE at the top of the applicant pool for the UCs and such, then you should have an even better shot getting in somewhere.</p>
<p>confused_student, would you really consider first gen a hook? I mean yes it helps but I don't think it goes in the "hook" category. Can somebody clear this up please?</p>
<p>Confused is well, confused. First gen is a slight tip factor-far from a hook. Low income is a plus at certain colleges, several of the ivies and top LACs among others), because they enroll so few low income students that they seek them for diversity.</p>
<p>Yea, I heard low income is steadily becoming the next "URM" in that some schools have so few people with lower incomes that they give a boost to low income kids</p>
<p>Really Badkarma89? I know a lot of Ivies and privates know that they scare off low-income students with their price tags so they offer great financial aid to them (sometimes even free rides), but I didn't know that it actually was an advantage in the admission process. I wonder why they'd want poor kids like us haha.</p>
<p>I'm not 100% sure, but I remember reading an article about how some top schools have more kids with parents making over 200K than kids with parents making less than 40K, etc. </p>
<p>In an effort to make the campus more "diverse" they started giving a bigger boost for low income kids.</p>
<p>Actually Brandy, anyone with a decent college counselor knows that low income kids often get much better aid from ivies and other private colleges than they do from state schools. The privates have more money to give grants with. These schools want their student bodies to be as close as possible to a microcosm of the world. They want kids from as many states and countries as possible. And they don't want them to be just the rich kids who have long populated the top schools because they have gone to strong schools all of their lives that feed into top colleges, their parents went to top colleges, they can afford tutoring, they've travelled the world, etc.......Even given their attempts to attract a broader financial range, at ivies about 60% of kids can afford full freight meaning their parents mostly are in the top 5% of income for the US (and many more get just a little aid). About 35% went to private schools (tuition for the good ones now $25K/yr/$40K boarding) while only 7% of US kids go private including parochial schools). So you start to see that without giving a boost to low income kids, they would probably find very few who are on level ground with most of the applicant pool and the schools would have just continued to be the domain of the rich and famous.</p>
<p>low income and first gen are both tip factors for the UC's....(the only UC hooks are recruited athletes and elc (which is realy your transcript), IMO)</p>
<p>Seriously consider Grinnell - its in the middle of nowhere, but is wonderful academically and has a huge endowment per student. As other have mentioned, income and 1st gen are tips, not auto admits.</p>
<p>I'm not sure, but I'd say that being low income/first gen gives you a boost comparable to slightly more than being a legacy, but not as much as being a URM. Nothing is going to make you an *********. </p>
<p>Does anyone know if low income kids get "thier own applicant pool?"
I know URM's do, but do Low income/first gen kids too?</p>
<p>legacy trumps first gen/low income.</p>
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<p>I know suze, that's what I said earlier. See:</p>
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<p>My question was why they wanted poor people in the first place, which you cleared up in the rest of your post. So thanks.</p>
<p>(p.s. It's Brandyn)</p>
<p>Maybe you could integrate that subject into your essays. Such as about being low-income or being a first generation made you work hard or something.</p>
<p>On the college board's website, Amherst list first generation status under very important admissions factors a long with standardized tests and high school record.</p>
<p>This is the second time today that I have recommended this program but I had fabulous results with it. Questbridge is a fantastic program; its whole goal is to get low income students into top colleges. You can get more information about the program from their website <a href="http://www.questbridge.org%5B/url%5D">www.questbridge.org</a> . I found all of my colleges with help from the program and I am now going to one of their match schools on a full ride. With a family income of 15,000, you are surely qualified in the financial area.</p>
<p>The reason that these top schools want low income students is because of diversity. Diversity helps increase the learning environment of these colleges. Think about it, a kid who grew up in a very low income family is going to have a different perpective on many issues. If you just throw together a bunch of higher income kids they are losing out on a facet that the low income kid could give them. It also gives these colleges more "bragging" rights. Look in their view books and they all say "we have so many % of kids recieving fin-aid". One of the problems is that many of these kids do not know of the fin-aid that the top colleges are offering so they cut them off their list. </p>
<p>I am also a low income student and the top schools are trying very hard to recruit more low income students. I am getting very good aid from Dartmouth, so it is actually cheaper for me to attend Dartmouth then it is to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage with my free tuition for being in the top 10% of my class.</p>
<p>I have an older brother, and my family income is less than 15k/yr. It's more like 12k/yr.</p>