<p>How big of a hook is being a first generation college student? Unlike the rich students that are sons of doctors, I don't have all the academic advantages. I'm hoping that first gen is good.</p>
<p>you say first gen, but it sounds like you mean poor or financially challenged.</p>
<p>Its not that big of a hook.
I have the same thing as do many immigrants.</p>
<p>First Gen college student is good. Rich is good too, so long as the person doesn’t have a 'ude about it.</p>
<p>I’m first gen, poor, and not the top of the class</p>
<p>It’s a pretty good “hook,” strictly speaking. As a first-generation college student, you’re sort of swimming in unfamiliar waters without anyone around who knows how to help you navigate. It’s hard to explain in concrete terms, but if your parents went to college you’re more likely to have family and social networks that understand the processes and even the desire to go to college and how to get in. You have help. If your parents have never gone - and none of the older generations have), they’re clueless and that can be a detriment to the system.</p>
<p>Look at it this way - my parents didn’t go to college. Until the 11th grade I thought anyone who had the money could go to Harvard if they just signed up - I had <em>no idea</em> that you had to apply for these things! My parents couldn’t really name any colleges outside of the Ivy League and the colleges in our area and the area in which they grew up, and they didn’t really understand why I wanted to go - after all, they and everyone else they knew had good jobs and didn’t go to college. Even more than that, they didn’t really understand the concept of career v. job and how I wanted one and not the other.</p>
<p>Now I’m in graduate school, and reflecting back, I think about all the things that I will be able to tell my children and all the things they will know that I didn’t have. They will be raised from a young age expecting college, when I wasn’t. They will be encouraged to cast a national net by a parent who understands applications. They will have a parent more willing to spend the necessary $$$ on SAT prep or private schools and private college counselors. They will have a parent who will begin saving for their college education from the moment they are born, who knows the process and can answer their questions instead of shrugging their shoulders. Not that I’m downing my parents, they are great and I love them…but see the advantages that a person with parents who went to college has over the first-generation college student?</p>
<p>Admissions officers are very cognizant of this, and therefore it is considered a “hook” in their eyes. If you managed to be a driven and outstanding applicant even while being a FCGS, that’s a plus.</p>
<p>It’s not a hook. It’s a tip factor at a very small number of well endowed schools seeking income diversity. In college admissions, not having the money to pay is a severe disadvantage at most schools.</p>
<p>^ true, some colleges base their decisions on the students’ ability to pay.</p>
<p>Well…yea, but to a limit. They take as many rich people as poor people probably =P</p>
<p>I’m a first generation college student as well…but we make <$100,000 barely because my parents work extremely hard and we own a business. Will that help/hurt me? Or does it not matter…
I’m applying to some top schools.</p>
<p>I’ve heard first gen is tantamount to being an underrepresented minority - so it would have about that same weight. More leeway is supposedly given for lower SAT scores or lower GPA, but I’m not sure how much more. You wouldn’t want to count on that unless you had no choice. </p>
<p>And something Juillet didn’t mention is that when you have a college degree, you raise your own children differently. You may have them reading at an earlier age, you may take them to more cultural things - simply because you are educated. This is something else that first gen kids have missed out on.</p>
<p>if you’re first gen and not top of the class or top 25%(at most) then you wont get as much as a boost compared to better schools</p>