<p>How much does being a first generation particularly help one's application? Mainly for schools such as UVA, UNC, Michigan, and other public schools?</p>
<p>Nobody really knows. </p>
<p>It varies from institution to institution. It probably varies within an institution from year to year, depending on the year’s applicant pool.</p>
<p>It matters only at colleges and universities that practice more holistic admissions (as opposed to numbers-driven admissions), and in those cases, it usually matters only in so far as it shows you’ve achieved what you’ve achieved without (presumably) many of the advantages that children of college-educated parents had. (This principle applies probably doesn’t apply if your father is LeBron James.)</p>
<p>But the point is, there’s no known standard for this kind of thing. There isn’t a standard for what counts as “first generation,” and there isn’t a standard for how much being “first generation” helps. It probably helps a lot less than being 6’11" with a killer jump hook, a lot less than having your parents build the college a new lab building, and actually a lot less than being LeBron James’ kid.</p>
<p>You can get a general clue from the Common Data Set of each U. For instance UVA says first gen is very important while UMich just has it as important. If you look at how each element is weighted you can generally see where it stands.</p>