I don’t agree that mentoring is a “terrible” idea. It is provides another resource that a student can utilize - or not - as they so choose. For those who feel they need more guidance and assistance (as some expressed in the Globe article) then it is there for them. For those who do not need or want it they need not take advantage of it.
This thread is chock full of posters “throwing darts” but short on proposals/solutions on things that might address the concerns voiced by students in the article. Californiaa, wondering what you think might assist these students.
Just as clarification, the “white coat” medical school ceremony, is not really a graduation event. Some school do it up entry to medical school, others, like my wife, and the school she attended, had to complete their first two years before receiving a white coat, or thus a symbol of the transition to the clinical world…
I think mentoring is a great idea. I think students should learn to respect and assimilate into a different environment than the ones they’re used to. It’s part of growing up. They will have to do that eventually when they enter a job field, probably. I know a law student now who is also working part time in a firm and was surprised to discover that one is expected to wear suits there. Just because she’s never worn them before, that means the rest of the world should accommodate to “the diversity she brings?” No; she needs to accommodate to the majority culture there. (And thankfully, she is doing so. She does so because she’s smart.)
Life is not just one giant political effort at validation or affirmation: Accept me as I am OR ELSE.
Everybody’s an activist already. Enough. What you wear is an aspect of social norms, not political norms. It doesn’t diminish your individuality to respect an environment.
I have a few observations. These are mostly about Yale, since that is the school I know most about.
There are kids at Yale who are so rich that they don't really have a good grasp of just how rich they are. Many of these kids are nice, friendly people--but they make certain assumptions about the way other people live that may not be accurate. I think some of them need to learn how to be more considerate of other people's financial situations, and I think most of them do this. Some don't, though, and band together with other similar people.
There are kids at Yale who are so poor that going to college there constitutes a real culture shock. I think this is especially the case if they went to a relatively weak public high school, and probably even more so if they are first generation college students, and yet even more so if their parents don't speak English. I think it's important for colleges to consider ways to deal with this culture shock, and Yale does some things to address this--it probably could do more.
Most students at Yale are somewhere in between. They all need to navigate situations in which some of their peers will have more money, and others will have less money. Most of them learn how to do this. We made a point of talking to our own kids about this before they went to college.
At Yale, you can get away without having a tuxedo--unless you join the band, the orchestra, one of a bunch of singing groups, etc.
My observation has been that girls are more sensitive to issues involving clothes than boys are (ON AVERAGE). It is also my understanding that the importance of having the "right" clothes varies from college to college, and perhaps among social groups at the same college.
Culture shock isn't just about money. I remember when I was a freshman at Yale (mumble) years ago. In my French class, I was the only student who had never been to France. I grew up in a small town, and people didn't really go to France. They went to Myrtle Beach. My parents were well-off, but there were many experiences that some of my classmates had that were foreign to me. This didn't blight my existence--but my French class experience was blighted.
Finally, I think colleges handle financial disparities differently, and these are worth considering when choosing a college. For example, some colleges have all different price ranges of housing, even for freshmen. At Yale, all housing costs the same, and freshmen are (mostly) randomly assigned. Personally, I prefer this, and think it models a more egalitarian approach. Also, at Yale, everybody (more or less) has the same meal plan and eats in the dining hall, especially as a freshman.
I agree with Hunt on most all levels. Yale makes a very strong attempt to identify some of both the barriers and situations, in which the university can either assist and/or educate those coming from less-than-so, background. I know many of the assistant deans of the various houses on campus, and they are at once dutiful, culturally sensitive and intellectually keen. Could Yale do more–most certainly-- but it really does put forth an earnest effort.
Not to do the Yale pile-on- but I agree with the above, and think that any college dean who hasn’t lent a kid $100 or gotten them access to free housing during breaks or helped them find a job over Thanksgiving vacation so the kid could afford to go home at Christmas has likely only been on the job a week. There are travel fellowships and stipends and workarounds galore to give kids from disadvantaged backgrounds the ability to tap what their more affluent friends get access to.
But not every college has a housing system that plunks kids down in a living arrangement the way Yale does-- and it is easy to fall through the cracks if your only “eyes and ears” are an RA (i.e. an undergrad) vs. a real live grown up living downstairs with his or her family.
I just cannot agree that mentoring is not needed. I was solidly middle class, but college was still a big change from HS. I did not necessarily know what resources were available and certain etiquette things (like is it okay to just go to professor office hours to introduce yourself. I had people there to tell me how to use the resources available to my advantage and yet I never compromised my diversity. For students who are first gen or low income they likely don’t know about some of the offices or resources they have available- having a mentor can really have a difference on their success in college. It’s nice to have someone to make sure you don’t fall through the cracks.
I think one thing that’s essential is to make clear to kids before they even reach campus that there are resources available. I wonder how many low-income kids turn down elite schools because they know they can’t afford to go home at Thanksgiving (not realizing that schools will find a way to house them over the break if necessary) or are worried about not fitting into the campus culture.
My DH came to the US for college. The month before he was supposed to get on a plane his home country’s currency was devalued and in one fell swoop his family lost half the money they’d saved for his personal expenses. When he called the college to tell them he couldn’t come despite a full scholarship they found a way to make it possible for him. We’ll be forever grateful. His plane ticket to the States was paid as part of a Foreign Fulbright scholarship, but it was standby. The first two days the plane was full, so he missed the first day of college orientation. He was a serious soccer player but he didn’t know to contact the coach to be invited to pre-seasons. Thank god one of the deans was the faculty advisor to the international club. He took the international students under his wing, including making sure they had a place to stay over vacations and taking them to the nearby outlet stores to buy winter wear. Coming from a warm country DH didn’t own a winter jacket or a pair of boots and he wouldn’t have known what to look for.
Bright kid from a highly educated family, yet he encountered difficulties I would never have imagined.
This is some thread. A lot of provocative posts, a few from a username one letter off from a long-ago banned user,a lot of “this is my experience so I don’t believe anyone else’s is true”.
But in between, some very interesting discussion. My own D is on her way back from a fly-in accepted students weekend, which is one of the measures this school takes to ensure that all students can visit. I’m interested in what other programs they have in place now, i’m familiar with some but they’re not so different from what I hear H and Y are doing in that article and this discussion.
Re Reply 391:
Not sure about that particular school, but lots of privates will pay for flights & connecting ground transportation of accepted students on FA. (Happened for us.)
I am not trying to minimize the stress that low SES students might feel as new freshmen, but some of us might make less of it (not call it whining, but I understand where MiamiDAP is coming from, just not so extreme) because we had similar experiences due to our non-SES (in my case, middle-class) parents being extremely frugal and we survived just fine, and I think became stronger, wiser and more independent because of it.
My parents bought me a ticket to fly across the country to my college alone, I moved myself in, was not allowed to come home at Thanksgiving or Spring break (just Christmas), and move myself out at the end of the year and fly back. I was given no monetary allowance (lived in the dorm and ate dining hall food) so I immediately found a part-time job, and could rarely even phone home because it was expensive long distance. Somehow I managed to find and choose all my classes and graduate on time with honors and be admitted to grad school without ever once going to a counselor. I went to instructor (T.A.) office hours exactly once because I was afraid I might fail my Econ class (I didn’t). I went home with my roommate and a hall mate for Thanksgiving and Spring break.
Granted I knew that if I ever had a serious problem, my parents would bail me out. But very few students owned a car, most students wore the U sweatshirt and jeans everyday, and borrowing clothes for fancy events was the norm. I never felt bad about my situation because that was just what it was.
Sometimes I think the average kid today is so hand-held and over-advised that it is a wonder they can ever manage on their own.
I believe DS did this at least a few times in college. We did not help him get such clothes for formal events. It is not that we do not have money. We do not know what or where to buy such clothes. I have never liked to wear such clothes. They are very uncomfortable as clothes in my opinion. (Luckily, I do not have to wear such “silly clothes” (to me at least) at my work place. I do not think DS can get away from not wearing it at all like I can in my life.)
Just think of this: We ourselves do not have proper clothes to go to a formal event.
A reminder to myself to buy such clothes in the next couple of years – before my own child’s wedding. (Will this likely happen in the next couple of years?)
@HarvestMoon1,
It was an outside scholarship (not through the college) that paid for his applications to schools and his flight to college. He had a whole big goodbye scene with his family at the airport, then had to go home with them when he didn’t make it off the standby list. This happened two days in a row! The third day he just got a ride to the airport and got a seat on the flight.
The college did absorb the cost of his books and gave him a work-study job with the maximum number of hours. As a non-US citizen he couldn’t work in the community because he didn’t have a work visa. Work-study was allowed under his student visa.
The whole vacation issue can be tricky for students without money. Foreign students have more obvious need, so it’s more likely that someone will be paying attention to the fact that they can’t go home for times like Thanksgiving or spring break. On the other hand they often, at least in the first year or two, make closest friends with other foreign students which makes it harder to find a place to go off campus. US students may have better networks among kids likely to offer to take them home with them for vacation but it’s not as obvious they need help and they make not feel comfortable asking. My son’s freshmen year we had to add a couple of chairs to the Thanksgiving table when the one student he was bringing home with him suddenly turned out to be three when he pulled into the driveway. He knew we wouldn’t mind.
My college used to keep a dorm open for international students during school breaks and would serve limited meals in the dining commons. I don’t know if this was offered to all students in need. I do know the school in recent years has tried to be sensitive to the plight of low-income students. Just a small example-they started paying for a parent to accompany the students they invited to their diversity fly-in program. Apparently some of the students they invited just weren’t comfortable going so far from home for the first time on their own. It makes sense. My kid might be nervous about a weekend on her own as a prospective student, but she’s been on a plane countless times. She knows how to negotiate the airport challenges, she has an emergency credit card, and in general she knows the conventions of airline travel. Obviously many minority students have experience traveling, but since this program is focused on low-income students it was an issue.
It seems to me that that there are (at least) two different issues at work here–the lack of money, and the lack of knowledge. I think either can be overcome, but having both problems may multiply the problem.
My own adjustment problems as a college freshman were pretty mild, but they all related to the lack of knowledge or experience, because I didn’t have money issues. Other people were the opposite. I think it’s probably hard for some of us to grasp the difficulties of somebody who is really poor and who also comes from a background that doesn’t prepare him or her culturally for a high-pressure college environment.
An acquaintance of mine works with at-risk young men from urban environments. He says it is hard to fathom all the social knowledge most of us have without ever consciously learning it, that these kids now have to deliberately study in order to make it out of the ghetto. Just remember all the little instructions your mother and father have given you over the years about the appropriate things to do or say in a wide variety of circumstances. Now think of a kid whose parents could not be observed even doing the right things, much less teaching them. One African-American man I know was pulled out of his neighborhood school and sent on scholarship to a prep boarding school. He learned a lot of social rules there before going off to Penn. But he was not even living with his parents during those formative years, so it was not like they were teaching him anything or even would have had the wherewithal to do so. I am sure his teachers helped him a good deal, but they were not parents. Would a teacher have reminded him to shave the back of his neck or buy a lint brush for his black suit pants?
It seems that people want to hyper-focus on the specific details of examples given, like whether or not some kid actually needed a tux, because you and your children never needed tuxes at college, and besides shouldn’t someone smart enough to get into HYP know where to get one for cheap, etc. The tux problem would be one of a large number of issues that could arise for a student at college that money and knowledge would easily take care of, but some of these kids lack one or the other or both. Why is that so hard to grasp and have compassion for?
I do not think that it is the obligation of colleges to right social wrongs and compensate for socio-economic differences. And yes, a whole lot can be overcome by motivation and hard work on the part of the individual. At the same time, when people want to help and can do so, it’s great and I think it’s uncharitable to begrudge it.