Given the increase in aid allowing more lower-income students to attend Ivy League schools, I thought this article presented an interesting view into the challenges they face once on campus.
I was solidly middle class growing up and went to an average public high school and was generally exposed only to people of my same SES. I was not even close to being a lower-income student but even I remember feeling out of place at my selective private university because for the first time I was exposed to kids my age with a level of wealth I could not appreciate.
Considering that many highly selective private universities have about half of their students without financial aid (probably from families with income > $200,000 per year), and even half or more of the students with financial aid are likely from above median income families (based on the usually-small percentage of students receiving Pell grants), it is not surprising that they look like concentrations of wealth.
While I sympathize with these students, I also think that there is not a single student who at some point doesn’t feel “lonely, isolated, scared.” Much like accusations of white privilege where it’s assumed that white people just sail through life, these articles have the unfortunate cast of suggesting that non-poor students just sail through their experiences and never encounter a negative emotion.
I’m interested in the psychology/sociology of not asking for help and why that is so predominant in these poorer families.
I think this is the main issue. I teach at a directional U with about 50% on Pell grants . We have tutoring centers, extended office hours etc. etc., and we do not see the students using them as much as they should. We have scholarships that we have to coax students to apply to. We have summer positions for students that go unfilled. They don’t seek out any information - they want others to come and hold their hand, take them through, and tell them everything. It’s a different perspective, and not easily understandable if you grow up in a middle class / upper middle class family. I have teaching for many, many years and I still don’t get it.
Crybabies.
They are unfortunately part of the crybaby/victimization/entitlement culture that is so prevalent these days. They are also media darlings.
I was a lower income at an Ivy, at a time when there were a lot less of us. There were a lot of people with a lot more money than me. So what? There were probably rich kids who wouldn’t want to hang out with me. So what?
These days, 25-35% of the Ivies are lower income. Something like what, 60% (??) or more qualify and receive need based financial aid. This isn’t the ivy league of the 1950s.
Time to grow up.
Getting in isn’t enough. Getting a full ride isn’t enough. Some feel the need for sympathy and attention. Boo hoo. Give me a break.
(Although IMO, based on my own experience at the time and now, these kinds of crybabies are NOT the majority of lower income kids at elite schools. A tiny minority, IMO. But media darlings because the media loves anything that can foster race or class warfare).
BTW, I have personally found, with my own kids, that the vaunted financial aid at Ivies is not what most hold it out to be. I’d say, based on my experience, there are very few kids with $200,000+ family income receiving financial aid.
Our high school is mostly well off but we have a decent sized population off low income first gen kids. In 8 th grade the most academically talented of them are put in a 4+ year program to prepare them in every way possible for elite school admissions and attendance. In addition to academic support (including ACT tutoring and use of what amounts to a private college counselor) we take this group of kids to museums, the opera, fancy restaurants etc… We help them learn how to seek out resources. This is what the well off students in our area already know about. We give these other kids a fighting chance
I think it’s wrong to say low income students want people to come hold their hands.
Instead, they might come from places where there weren’t these types of support systems. They may not realize how far behind they’ve fallen because they’re used to low standards (bad schools). They don’t have parents and other role models to seek advice from. And so on.
But to say they want to be coddled, imo, is off the mark and misses the vast majority of the story.
I would think that many of the lower income students who do not ask for help may fall into two different categories, 1)those whose days are comprised of work-study hours in addition to class/study hours, and 2) those who may consider the need for tutoring to be suggestive of a public mark of a lack of readiness for the courses they are taking.
Additionally, if one ties the tendency of those in the lower socioeconomic realm to distrust and hold in suspicion therapists, psychologists and other forms of counselors, and this is certainly true of those in the Black community (historically), then this avoidance behavior can be seen to be somewhat rooted in cultural associations and practices.
"… we take this group of kids to museums, the opera, fancy restaurants etc… "
I understand that this might be work thought to ready the kids socially for the environment of an elite university, but many middle class kids don’t get that, and I can’t really see how exposure to such helps kids learn to seek out resources.
A few years ago Swarthmore placed a few lines in their viewbook which fairly much stated that they do the same to ensure that the students of color they bring in learn to acclimate to, and thrive inside of, the campus community. I think the language they used was “we introduce them to culture.” Made me so angry, I penned a long response.
I get that there are many components of being ready to thrive at an elite, and it is not easy for the kids who just don’t have what the others have. My own kids have seen that at middle and secondary school, but I can’t help but think that your example quoted above is one more thing that places the overlooked and oft-disregarded middle class in a kind of place of not being seen, and not being thought of as also able to benefit from certain forms of access.
@Waiting2exhale. The fancy restaurant visits are in addition to various lessons in seeking out recourses. Not a part of them. You are right about the middle class. But our school district is made up of one suburb comprised mostly of top one or 2 percenters and another small suburb made up of lower class mostly immigrant families. There are very few in the true middle class but I agree those that are get lost in the shuffle.
Oh, I understood that the cultural outings were part of a larger mission, sorry to sound as if I truly thought it was attached to being resourceful.
When I was a kid, and read Basal readers, there was a lovely story of a long-legged, afroed teacher in a yellow dress and calf-length boots who did much the same for the kids in her tutelage. I remember it because it was one of the most fascinating and completely unfamiliar ideas explored in my readers.
She did it to expand their horizons and their sense of what the world could offer, and because she was preparing them to go out into the world their best selves.
My father was the valedictorian of his public HS in Portland, OR in the 40s. Virtually all kids of immigrants, mostly Scandinavian and Chinese. He went to Yale on a full scholarship. He had to wear a white jacket and serve dinner in the dining hall. He spent countless hours of his childhood listening to recordings of operas. His favorite was Tristan und Isolde. His father, a landowner in his native country, was a handyman in the US. His best friend in HS was of Chinese ancestry and went to Princeton. He became a doctor. My father was an engineer. Both of my father’s parents died when he was at Yale. He was an orphaned only child by the age of 19 or so.
30% Columbia
19% Harvard
17% Brown
17% Cornell
17% Penn
14% Dartmouth
13% Princeton
12% Yale
https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm indicates that students from families with income up to what is probably about the median for those with high school or college age kids can get Pell grants. So that means that approximately the bottom half of the income distribution provides only 12% to 30% of the students at Ivy League universities (and the 30% is an outlier where the others are in the 12% to 19% range).
Using Harvard as an example, 58.6% of student receive financial aid, average amount $47,475, according to http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=444 . That means that 41.4% do not receive financial aid; https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator indicates that a family of 3 with 1 in college living an Alabama can receive some financial aid up to an income of $245,000. So that means that 41.4% of students come from very high income families. Of the 58.6% receiving financial aid, note that while $47,475 looks like a lot, a family with income around $140,000 will get that amount from Harvard. Of course, the Pell grant recipients receiving almost full rides from financial aid would be counterbalanced by some financial aid recipients who receive lesser awards due to higher incomes.
In other words, Harvard students are still heavily skewed toward high income backgrounds.
Someone a while ago posted a link to an article that I do not remember the title of or publication it was in. It was about the observations in K-12 schools in upper, middle, and lower income areas. The claim was that, in upper income areas, students were encouraged to ask questions and taught to understand what was behind each concept presented in class, while in lower income areas, students were discouraged from doing anything other than following instructions by rote to do some particular task.