Parents whose kids have gone to isolated colleges, how has it been?

[cobrat]

I’ve written about it before, but this hits on one of the most overlooked benefits of a small rural college experience–socioeconomic differences are less visible, less unavoidable. I was dog broke in college, work-study, the whole thing, but my wealthier classmates weren’t eating out in Michelin star restaurants or clubbing–those just weren’t available–they were drinking nasty keg beer alongside me. I’m sure they had nicer vacations, and many of them had cars, but I wasn’t “left out” because I was a scholarship kid, even though the full-pay kids came from some serious, serious family bucks. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but in retrospect it was a huge plus.

Also, one great thing about the close-knit friendships formed on such campuses, especially if the campus culture was one which fosters a strong ethic of helping those with less is that when there were expensive activities involved, many of the upper/upper-middle class students were more than happy to spot more financially constrained students…whether temporarily or even insistently refusing to accept repayment.

Benefited a bit from that as a FA/scholarship student and nearly a decade after college have had the opportunity to return the favor as some older college classmates who spotted me in undergrad were hit hard by the 2008 recession and needed serious financial help.