Interesting article from the NY Times today
Interesting. I mentor a young woman whose mom, a college graduate, died with the girl was 8. Her dad never remarried, and raised her himself - he had some college but never graduated, was not at all academic, didn’t really involve himself much his daughter’s schooling. When she and I toured colleges in her senior year, I was told at two of the three that she WOULD be considered first generation; a third said “probably, but we’d have to check.”
I never knew that the definition of First Gen only meant parents, and that you would be considered First Gen even if every grandparent has a degree. Makes me think of the Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
The Common App only asks about parents. But realize the lead anecdote in the article is via a paid counselor.
Colleges can take some leeway. No parent college, parents didn’t complete the degree, or a grey area like katliamom’s, where there just was no college-bound influence in the reality.
I do find it odd the article describes a kid whose grandfather paid for a private counselor.
Each school defines the term differently. At some colleges, your parents can have associates degrees in decent paying health fields (an MRI tech, for example)…but they still count their kids as first generation because the parents have no bachelor’s.
At some colleges, if your parents took one class of basket weaving at community college…you’re not first generation because your parents did, in fact, set foot in “college”.
Some colleges will count being licensed in a trade, some won’t. It’s pretty arbitrary.
I know two first gen kids who meet the definition
of not having a parent who graduated college. Both of them hired a counselor because their parents felt they didn’t know enough to be able to guide them effectively even though both had a grandparent with a college degree.
There are also community based organizations that will help first generation applicants for free.
Well, not basketweaving. The point would be matriculating toward a degree. Not an accounting class or two, eg.
But I’ve seem kids who had a parent only recently complete college get some leeway.
And a trade license isn’t really “college” influence.
You need to check each college.
A trade license isn’t college influence, but it gives you socioeconomic advantages similar to having a four year degree, and it is organized education, complete with documented education hours, certified instructors, and state board tests of competencies. Again…every college has a different criteria for “first generation”.
There’s an upcoming first National first gen student day and it defines first gen as students with parents who have not achieved a bachelor’s degree. And that’s it. Nothing about grandparents.
As a first-gen student (and I had no adults in my family in any generation who had ever attended a four-year college), I absolutely would have hired a college admissions counselor if I had had the money for the same reason. My parents didn’t know anything about the maze of college admissions even back in 2003-2004 - my mother had attended a technical school to get an LPN for nursing, and my dad had taken a few community college courses, but neither is helpful experience when trying to get admitted to a four-year college - especially when money is a chief consideration.
Mmm, maybe, although it depends a lot on the trade license itself (cosmetologists, for example, don’t necessarily make money comparable to a college degree). But I don’t think that’s the point: I thought the original point is that college graduate parents can give their children a lot more guidance and institutional knowledge than ones who didn’t go. My husband and I are both first-generation but we both now have four-year degrees, and if we ever have kids they will be in a completely different boat than we were.
First of all, they’ll be raised expecting to go to college, which in and of itself is a big changed mindset that makes a big difference (I didn’t decide to go to college until the end of my junior year, and I had no idea what the admissions process looked like - I thought if you wanted to go to Harvard and you had the money, you just went.) We know what steps you have to take in order to apply - what tests, and how often you should practice them and when; that these things cost money and there are fees you need to save for; that providing our tax forms for the school is part of the process and not The Man trying to steal our identity. (My parents had a hard time releasing their financial information for me, and I didn’t apply to any schools that had the CSS PROFILE because I couldn’t afford it and originally thought it was a scam, since I was taught financial aid forms were supposed to be free.) And those are just the first things I thought of off the top of my head.
Of course things change in the 20 or so years between the time you go and the time your kids go, but the basic structure is the same.
That’s why I think that it’s who raised you in the household that should count, not distant or dead relatives. It’s weird that a college would “count” a parent who died before you were verbal (do they think college admissions knowledge passes by heritability?) On the other hand, I think grandparents are a gray area…their involvement in your life is really variable depending on the family.
First-gen is not the same thing as low-income - most colleges consider both and would likely distinguish between a student who fit one and a student who fit both.
Wondering if the deceased father had attended a school the kid was interested in, would he claim legacy?
@julliet – things have changed SO much in the decades since I went to college, I truly have no idea how it’s at all relatable 
… Y’all should all be considered first-gen, for all the use that experience has turned out to be.
@wisteria100 -He probably could/would claim legacy. Would that be an issue?
^^ If a hypothetical kid (not saying the kid in the article), checked first gen on one application and legacy on another - I do think it is disingenuous.
There is no such box on the CA, really (maybe some specific supplements). It asks for your parents educational history and there it is clear who is first gen (by whatever definition the school wishes to use) and who is a legacy.
As far as I know a kid doesn’t “claim” either one.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
As @OHMomof2 states, the Common App has no boxes that says: “Check here if you are URM (or legacy/athletic recruit/etc).” The applicant fills out the info, and the colleges choose how to use it. Each college (or scholarship program), where not prohibited by law, is free to define what it considers a hook, is free to define said hook, and is free to decide how much of a bump, if any, said hook will give an application.