<p>NOTE: I did not post the entire article. If you want to read pages three, four and six, click on the link below.</p>
<p>5/2/05 </p>
<p>Class Conscious </p>
<p>Low-income students have long been a rare and invisible minority at elite colleges. That may be about to change. </p>
<p>By Justin Ewers </p>
<p>Before Jamie Sparano arrived at Princeton University as a freshman last fall, she didn't think she was that unusual. Her father, a New Jersey building contractor with a community-college degree, makes close to the national median family income, which is roughly $51,000. Her stay-at-home mom never attended college. Most of the families she knew at Ewing High School on the outskirts of Trenton looked a lot like hers. </p>
<p>Princeton, though, was different. She'd expected the old stone buildings and expansive lawns, of course. But the school was also dotted with BMWs and students in Polo and Lacoste. Prep-schoolers seemed to rule the dorms. Sparano quickly discovered she wasn't quite as normal as she thought, at least by Princeton standards: She was a strong student, sure--1420 on her SAT, graduated fifth in her class. But she just didn't have the same background as most of her classmates. Everyone's parents seemed to be Ivy-educated doctors and lawyers. Nearly half of her peers had attended private schools, while over 85 percent came from households making more than the median family income. More than 1 in 10 students had a parent who'd gone to Princeton. </p>
<p>Wealth and privilege quickly made their presence felt. When her roommate, early in the year, told her she was going out to get "a cheap school bag" and came home with one that cost $80, Sparano's jaw dropped. She found herself turning down invitations to go out to restaurants with her friends because she couldn't afford it. In class, she seemed to be a voice in the wilderness: When a professor in one small discussion group asked the class why they thought people joined the military, the wealthier kids, she says, started talking about duty and how prestigious the military academies were: "I was like, let's be honest," she says. "I know like a dozen people from my own high school who enlisted, and they did it to get out of Ewing!" In another seminar, while discussing a book on the working poor, a student commented that no one in the room could understand such people since Princeton families all made six-, seven-, or eight-figure incomes. Sparano could barely contain herself: "Maybe there are a small minority of us here," she replied, "but some of us do know how the other half lives." </p>
<p>Overshadowed. Not many, however. In a book published last week and already making waves in college admissions circles, William Bowen, the former president of Princeton and current head of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, finds that students with family incomes lower than Sparano's are even harder to find on elite college campuses: Only 11 percent of the undergrads at 19 selective public and private schools he studied--ranging from Princeton and Williams to the University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign--come from the bottom income quartile nationally (about $27,000 a year and under). Only 6 percent are the first in their families to go to college. The same goes for other schools as well: At the nation's 146 most selective colleges and universities, according to another study last year, there are 25 high-income students (from families making $77,000 and above) for every first-generation student from the lowest income bracket. </p>
<p>For Bowen and a group of would-be reformers, it's just about time that changed. Race and ethnicity may have dominated the admissions landscape for years, but when the Supreme Court gave the nod to certain forms of race-based affirmative action in 2003, some of higher education's biggest thinkers began casting about (at long last, some would say) for ways to increase access for another campus minority--low-income students. In the past year and a half, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, among others, have announced major changes to their financial aid packages in an effort to attract more needy students. Supporters of class-based affirmative action are starting to demand admissions boosts for the underprivileged. So the Next Big Question after race seems to be increasingly clear: Why are there are so few low-income students on college campuses--and what else can be done about it? </p>
<p>For many admissions officers, the stock answer has long been that there is simply not a large enough pool of academically qualified low-income students. Performance on standardized tests, class rank, grade-point average--all are highly correlated with family income and parental education. Low-income applicants, as a group, don't do well on any of them. "I just don't know how they're admissible in much higher numbers than we already have," says Don Davis, associate director for student financial services at the University of Texas-Austin, one of the state's elite universities, where undergraduates' median family income hovers around $80,000. "It's not something we can change." </p>
<p>Bowen, the author of several influential works supportive of race-based affirmative action and critical of low academic standards for college athletes, disagrees. In his new book, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, he insists that there really is a substantial pool of low-income applicants who have what it takes to succeed at the nation's most selective schools. Some of them may not look as good on paper as do more affluent applicants, Bowen acknowledges. Still, his data show they have great academic potential and that admissions officers aren't doing what they could to give promising low-income kids an extra nudge in the process. </p>
<p>After all, alumni children, jocks, and minorities get a helping hand: Recruited athletes with combined SAT scores from 1250 to 1299, for example, are admitted 77 percent of the time at the 19 schools Bowen studied. Blacks and Latinos with the same scores enjoy a 66 percent admit rate; alumni kids, or legacies, 51 percent. Nonminority, low-income applicants in that SAT range, however, are admitted only 37 percent of the time--exactly the same rate as the rest of the nonminority applicant pool. Admissions officers may think they're already doing all they can to admit low-income kids, he says, "but as an overall statistical statement, they're just wrong." </p>
<p>Outsiders. And more than a few low-income students, as a result, feel like fish out of water on campuses that pride themselves on being inclusive and diverse. For some, collegiate culture shock can be triggered by something as simple as a haircut. Princeton freshman Thomas Tullius Jr., whose widowed mother lives on a pension of about $30,000 a year, ended up cutting his own hair when he found out his classmates were paying nearly $30--seemingly nonchalantly--at one barbershop near campus. For others, the tensions run deeper still. When Jose Silva, a 2004 grad of the University of Denver who grew up in a housing project on the city's west side, transferred in as a junior from a community college, "I didn't really have a whole lot of friends," he says. He hung out with the basketball team, mostly, and discovered that his firsthand experience with urban violence and poverty made it hard to relate to his more-sheltered classmates. Especially in public-policy classes or discussions of crime and punishment, Silva says, "my view of what life is like is totally not their . . . view." </p>
<p>...................................</p>
<p>Aid. So what next? While it's clear that K-12 reform is the key to building a bigger pool, in the shorter run offering an edge in the admissions process may be the fastest way of increasing low-income numbers. At the same time, cash-strapped students need to know that there are schools willing to give them a generous assist with the financial burden of college. Already, a number of schools, including Yale, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia, have announced no-loan policies for low-income students--with some dramatic results. Since Princeton began its no-loan program (which is open to all undergrads), for instance, its freshman class has included almost twice as many students from families making less than the median family income--from 88 in 1998 to 161 last year. Undergrads like Jamie Sparano and Thomas Tullius Jr. may still feel outnumbered, says Janet Rapelye, Princeton's dean of admissions, but "we've been trying to pay more attention." </p>
<p>Most schools, though, say scarce resources on campus mean that outside financial help--perhaps from the federal government--will be needed before they can create more socioeconomic diversity. For now, transparency may be the best anyone can hope for. Researchers at the Century Foundation are looking at ways to put a spotlight on economic diversity--by asking schools to routinely report the number of low-income students they have on campus, for instance, just as they do for racial minorities. These figures could be instructive: Only 7 percent of Princeton students, for example, receive Pell Grants targeted at low-income students, compared with 16 percent at Amherst and 35 percent at the University of California-Los Angeles. </p>
<p>Students like Sparano, meanwhile, will most likely continue to feel like lone emissaries of the working class, outnumbered at elite schools. Yet the experience, says Sparano, has given her fresh pride in her roots. "For all the times I'm frustrated with people," Sparano says, "I'm glad just as much that I'm bringing a little of [my background] to Princeton." Some solace, perhaps, for a once forgotten minority that may not be forgotten for much longer. </p>
<p>................................</p>