<p>I am Hispanic (Mexican-American, a little less than half) and a first-generation college student, but not low income. My family is middle class/upper middle class and I don't come from a disadvantaged background. Many of the scholarships, programs, and other resources for URMs seem to give a lot of weight to low income status. Note: I'm not saying they shouldn't. I obviously wouldn't want to choose to be low income and I understand that low income families have many other struggles because of finances.</p>
<p>I want to start a general discussion and get some insight from other first-gen URMs who are not low income on how they feel this affected their results in the admission process, summer programs, scholarships, etc. Is the URM and first-gen status discounted slightly if you are not low income?</p>
<p>There are a lot of scholarships out there and each one has different emphases. I am sure there are some for Hispanic students that don’t just focus on SES.</p>
<p>My son is 1/2 Puerto Rican and we are a family of 5 that made 77K last year. He is not first gen. and I have a Bachelor’s Degree from a state university.</p>
<p>He won several scholarships that did take SES into consideration. We’re certainly not poor-he didn’t qualify for Questbridge. I would consider us middle income, but these particular scholarships apparently felt we had a fair amount of financial need.</p>
<p>My family more than likely wouldn’t be able to show any financial need (200k+ income bracket). It’s still would be far from easy for my parents to pay full cost of attendance at a private university, though. My sibling attends a private university which obviously costs a lot. And, in the Southern California area where I we live our income doesn’t spread as far is it would in many other parts of the country. </p>
<p>Any scholarships for me would probably have to be won through merit and URM/first-gen status.</p>
<p>Hopefully, itsv or entomom will chime in. There are threads with discussions of scholarships for Hispanic applicants. Peruse through this forum and I’m sure you’ll find them. You’ll probably also need to look at individual schools for the details of their scholarships, but I do think there are scholarships that aren’t based on SES. I don’t have any experience with higher income families, though. Sorry!</p>
<p>The OP has linked to several of my posts, I don’t have anything to add to a ‘general discussion’.</p>
<p>I will say that income level is usually a factor for outside URM scholarships, but for many institutional scholarships (both open and URM targeted) it is not.</p>
<p>These are very good questions. Address them in your essays and it may help you gain admission. Keep in mind, there are no quotas for Hispanics. Infact, some colleges do not even consider ethnicites and race in admissions. So, it is not like there are two points for being a poor Hispanic and one point for being a wealthy Hispanic etc. A lot depends on the school you are applying, the year you are applying and the other students who are applying etc. To which colleges are you applying? How do your stats compare to the average student at that school?</p>
<p>I know there are some threads on this matter, and I have read through most of them. I understand that they’re is no set boost for URMs, first-gens, low income, etc. and the emphasis varies from each program to program (or school or scholarship).</p>
<p>I am looking more for URM and first-gens who are in higher income brackets to discuss whether or not they have won scholarships (and which ones) and gained entrance to certain programs for URMs. Obviously they can’t say for sure how being in a higher income bracket affected them, but it still helps to see their results. Most of the URM-targeted programs also state they consider income level.</p>
<p>@perazziman: I’m a Junior this year, so I still have another year before I apply to schools. I am planning on applying to schools with varying degrees of selectivity as an engineering major. Right now I’m looking at some ivies like Cornell, Columbia, UPenn, some other top-tier privates like Duke, Northwestern, JHU, USC, some less selective privates like BU and NEU, and some UCs like UCB, UCLA, and UCSD. These are just to give an idea of the kinds of schools I’m applying to. My stats are in the range for most, or all, of these schools and above for a few, but obviously I’m looking at many very selective schools so I’m not sure how predicative my stats are.</p>