<p>After a search, I saw another thread that prompts this thread. I'm wondering what colleges that you know about seem to be most accepting and most helpful to low-income students. (Here, "low-income" means that even attending a state university at list price as a commuter seems forbiddingly expensive.) I see, and in fact have given myself, a lot of advice here on CC to go up as high on the college selectivity scale as one can to make sure to have lots of financial aid. But are the students on lavish financial aid really able to enjoy the elite colleges that admit them as well as the well-off students who can pay full list price? How is the social gap between rich and poor at the colleges you know best? What colleges do you recommend for bright, ambitious students who just didn't happen to grow up with much money?</p>
<p>Stanford University</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I haven’t visited and I haven’t lived there yet, so this is not the end-all-be-all of reviews. However, I have spoken to the former Low-Income Student Coordinator and a current member of the QuestBridge team about the lives of low-income students at Stanford.</p>
<p>Firstly, of course, there’s financial aid. Stanford offers essentially a full ride for any student from a family income under $60,000. $60,000 is actually the median income in this country, not low-income at all (i.e., federally defined as 150% of the poverty line or less), but at a college with a sticker price of just over $53,000, $60,000 isn’t awful. There are no loans and the “student contribution” of $4500 is mostly negated by the inclusion of non-billable expenses in the financial aid package; i.e., with the minimum student contribution, most low-income students owe the bursar between $0 and $750 a year.</p>
<p>Secondly, the presence of other low-income students is key. Stanford is, if I’m not mistaken, 17% low-income and 24% first generation (those were the numbers given to me by the Low-Income Student Coordinator). I’m not sure of the number of Stanford Pell Grant recipients, but as top schools go, 17% is a fairly good low-income (<$60,000) number. (Unfortunately, 51% of students don’t even qualify for financial aid. That is, they come from family incomes of at least $150,000 and above.)</p>
<p>Palo Alto is an expensive location for Stanford, but most students stay on campus for most of the year. Cars are fairly rare on campus and public transportation, while complained about, is available.</p>
<p>Almost all on-campus jobs pay $11.80 an hour or more. The cost of living is high, don’t get me wrong, but even then $11.80 is generous.</p>
<p>There are also a plethora of programs for low-income students. Although the position is now split, there was once an actual coordinator for low-income students on campus. Her job was to find and make possible opportunities for students on limited funds. Although she is no longer the student advocate, the financial aid office is supposedly easy to approach and reasonable. The same goes for the dorms. If the dorms go on a trip that costs money, say, $100, any student on financial aid can approach the RA and ask for a fee waiver or deduction. The RA can then go to the “pot” (the collection of a portion of the Student Activities fee that paying students pay) to make the funds available so the low-income student is not excluded.</p>
<p>Low-income students also tend to come from poorer high schools. I don’t know if they are used or if they are stigmatized, but the tutoring center and the writing center have extensive resources. Stanford also requires several writing-intensive courses to get students up to par, regardless of their background (they are required).</p>
<p>The California atmosphere also comes into play. Middle and upper income students are middle and upper income students everywhere, but apparently Stanford is more laid back - or at least more subtle.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that Stanford also has a student group aimed toward low-income students. It’s called Stanford NexGen. They are a support and discussion group (i.e., supporting low-income students through a mentor program and bringing the realities of low-income students to the campus community at large). For example, they have a division called Going Home, which provides students with the materials to go home and speak at high schools, discussing low-income students at colleges and universities.</p>
<p>You should consider all the ‘need blind’ schools. I attend a small New England LAC and was given a ‘very generous’ FA package. My award included money to cover transportation (2 trips/year; an account to cover all my books and a monthly spending allowance). When the FA office learned was would be spending my junior year abroad they provided me with a supplement that covered lost wages (from academic year work-study and summer jobs) and sufficient funds to cover the cost of touring Europe during the two 3-week breaks between semesters. I did not have to submit a request or beg them. The FA director called me into his office and offered me the revised package. A year in England and 8 weeks of touring Europe cost my mother $500.<br>
The majority of my classmates were either upper middle class or wealthy. Yet it was my impression that the majority of the low income students felt comfortable and were fully integrated into the campus community.
The quality of the faculty and the campus resources were outstanding. It was also clear that both the administrators and the faculty were fully committed to diversity in the broad sense. Creating and maintaining a diverse (ethnic, cultural, income…) student body was a key component of the college’s educational mission. As a result the graduation rate for low-income and URMs was similar to that of the wealthy majority students.</p>
<p>Wow Stanford seems pretty awesome. If only I did better in high school. :(</p>
<p>Many colleges brag about their selfless sacrifice for the good of low-income students, but the numbers don’t lie. Among selective (SAT Math > 700) schools, here are the ten with the highest percentage of students receiving federal grant aid:</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve University 39
University of California-Los Angeles 31
University of California-Berkeley 30
Harvard University 24
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 24
Amherst College 20
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 19
University of Rochester 19
Davidson College 18
Dartmouth College 18</p>
<p>…and here are the lowest ten:</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania 9
Colby College 8
Colgate University 8
Tufts University 8
Bucknell University 7
Oberlin College 7
Wake Forest University 7
Vassar College 7
College of William and Mary 7
University of Virginia-Main Campus 7</p>
<p>I can PM any interested party the full list.</p>
<p>noimagination, those numbers are actually considerably better than I thought. I have a hard time believing that Harvard is 24% Pell Grant recipients (I read 8%, but it may have been an old collection of numbers), but if that’s the truth, then so be it. I’d be interested in receiving the list, if not to determine Stanford’s number.</p>
<p>^ Those figures are for recipients of federal grant aid in general, not just Pell Grants. The category includes the following:
The info on Pell Grants alone is supposed to be on IPEDS, but it isn’t working right now. For the record, Harvard is at ~13%.</p>
<p>I still think that this data is fairly meaningful.</p>
<p>EDIT: Here’s the full list using the aforementioned stat:</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve University 39
University of California-Los Angeles 31
University of California-Berkeley 30
Harvard University 24
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 24
Amherst College 20
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 19
University of Rochester 19
Davidson College 18
Dartmouth College 18
Columbia University in the City of New York 17
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 16
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 16
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 16
New York University 15
Reed College 14
Brown University 14
Vanderbilt University 14
Georgetown University 14
Williams College 14
Carleton College 14
Macalester College 13
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 13
Emory University 13
Harvey Mudd College 13
Grinnell College 13
Stanford University 13
Carnegie Mellon University 12
Cornell University 12
Illinois Wesleyan University 12
Pomona College 12
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 12
University of Chicago 12
Brandeis University 12
Wellesley College 11
Boston College 11
Johns Hopkins University 11
Scripps College 11
University of Southern California 11
Wesleyan University 11
Hamilton College 11
Haverford College 11
Lehigh University 11
Duke University 10
Villanova University 10
University of Wisconsin-Madison 10
Rice University 10
Bowdoin College 10
University of Notre Dame 10
Princeton University 10
Washington University in St Louis 10
Northwestern University 9
California Institute of Technology 9
Yale University 9
University of Pennsylvania 9
Colby College 8
Colgate University 8
Tufts University 8
Bucknell University 7
Oberlin College 7
Wake Forest University 7
Vassar College 7
College of William and Mary 7
University of Virginia-Main Campus 7</p>
<p>I have read on other threads that Smith enrolls more Pell recipients than other LACs. Below is a quote from JBHE:</p>
<p>“During the 2008-09 academic year Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, had the highest percentage of low-income students among the 30 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges.”</p>
<p>Cal State University Monterey Bay [CSUMB</a> ~ Homepage](<a href=“http://www.csumb.edu%5DCSUMB”>http://www.csumb.edu) Built to serve an historically underserved population with oodles of support and programming for the first generation and/or low income kid</p>
<p>Thanks for the interesting replies. I appreciate the links to other sites.</p>
<p>In response to noimagination and nyc, Pell Grant data:</p>
<p>[Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)</p>
<p>[Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/liberal-arts-economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/liberal-arts-economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)</p>
<p>I would suggest the rural elites bcos they have the best finaid and they have no where to spend excess cash. For example, contrast Dartmouth, which is in a little town, vs. Columbia in the Big Apple. The wealthy kids can afford to go out to eat and clubbing every weekend in NYC (while the poor have to eat dorm food); but there are no clubs in Hanover.</p>
<p>The UCs have horrible finaid. Even a family with a zero EFC/income needs to pony up $10k.</p>
<p>Is dorm food at Dartmouth bad, or reasonably good other than being dorm food?</p>
<p>Pomona is very friendly for low-income students. As one such student, I am receiving nearly $50,000 in financial aid, including Federal Pell Grants. The school is even covering half of the cost of my student health insurance. When everything was added up, Pomona was more affordable than my local state school (ASU) on their biggest merit scholarship (National Merit). </p>
<p>It has also been pleasantly easy to thrive at Pomona as a low-income student. The financial aid office gives generous work study allotments to all students on financial aid (and even to those who aren’t). The administration believes that experiencing LA and the surrounding area is an integral part of a Pomona student’s education, and goes to great lengths to subsidize trips to cultural/sporting events in the area (and many times, even providing transportation). Private music lessons are also available for free to every student on financial aid. Between my first two semesters, Pomona will have spent nearly a thousand dollars on music lessons for me with an amazing teacher (who has helped record soundtracks for movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, the new Indiana Jones, and Toy Story 3). </p>
<p>In short, my experience at Pomona so far has been pretty incredible, and money has been almost a non-issue. Before I moved in, I was afraid I might feel a little socioeconomically isolated, but that hasn’t been the case at all. I’m friends with people who are receiving more money from Pomona than I am, and people (such as my roommate) who are paying the full sticker price.</p>
<p>dorm food at Dartmouth is great, but that is kinda off point. My real point is that the poor kids are stuck at home (aka dorm, frequently alone) while their rich friends are out on the town living it up bcos they have an allowance/trust fund that allows them to do so. It’s my opinion that the wealth differentials are much more pronounced at urban schools. I remember one tour of Georgetown and the guide said that the dorm was “just ok, but it didn’t matter bcos everyone of his friends went into town on weekends”. Clearly, that takes a pocketbook larger than offered by standard finaid.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, you make a really good point about the class/money difference being more apparent at city LACs/unis than on more rural campuses.</p>
<p>noimagination, thanks for that list - but I don’t think it tells the whole story. I am not really understanding it, perhaps.</p>
<p>For example Colgate is listed down low on the list, but the financial aid it offers is fantastic - 100% of need (my daughter went there with an amazing package).</p>
<p>However, RPI is listed higher on the list, but my son was only offered a package of half of his need (as determined by the FAFSA). That particular year RPI published that they averaged 83% of need.</p>
<p>So maybe I am not understanding this list - perhaps Colgate is lower down the list because it is not need blind at admission - hence the packages they do offer are better, but it brings down this particular statistic?</p>
<p>When I went to Harvard, I had friends who were very rich and friends who were so poor that their families had received charity food baskets for holidays. Most Harvard students are deeply involved in ECs. What matters is how well you do on your ECs, and how interesting your conversation is, not how much money you have. Harvard students know that any graduate who wants to make a lot of money probably can do that.</p>
<p>@susgeek: I do think that those numbers tell the whole story. What they don’t tell is the many individual pieces of that story. Colgate is obviously not attracting very many low-income students. Either low-income students are not being accepted or they are choosing not to apply. Either way, I think that raises some questions for low-income students considering Colgate. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be a great fit for individual students such as your daughter, but on the whole they are not a major player.</p>