This thread, like most every cc thread, has meandered far from its original discussion a week ago and over the 500+ posts. I give readers credit for their ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.
sometime the mentoring has nothing to do with diversity or income.
I lived in a part of the south for high school where winter clothing meant you wore your college sweatshirt along with your windbreaker. These type of kids can be totally unprepared for a winter in the Great Lakes region or New England area where their college is. They donât understand the concept of layering and the right clothes to buy.
Sometime, people donât know what they donât know. A mentor can help answer those questions about the culture or traditions where you are working or studying so you can make the transition easier and be productive in what you are trying to accomplish.
^True, but itâs a whole lot easier if the student can ask their roommate what to buy then get on line or hit the local outdoor store and buy underarmor, a fleece, a down jacket, and some boots instead of having to hunt through the sale racks or the local Goodwill trying to figure out if that stuff that looks warm really is or is just cheap junk thatâs going to leave them no warmer than the sweatshirt.
Our family has experienced what Marian discusses in #510. After 4 years of college payments, we had a tough time coming up with some money to help S pay the brokerage fees (necessary when trying to book a place from out of state), security deposit, first monthâs rent etc. for a NYC apartment. We did what we could, but wish we could have done more so he wouldnât have had to put furniture bills and other set-up expense on his credit card. Thankfully for us, while we were paying for 4 years of Dâs college, S was working and had accumulated some funds. So it was he who helped his sister with those start-up expenses when it was her turn. She had accepted a job near her college (far from home), and had had to rent the apartment for a whole month prior to her start date so as to have a place to stay after graduation (to save on plane fare home), which was 6/16 and be moved in before she began work 7/1. Then, out of the blue the company asked if she could start work several weeks later because of the July 4th holiday etc. That would have meant that now she was going to owe two monthâs rent plus the security deposit before ever receiving one pay check, and would need to borrow even more money from someone. She told them it would be a financial hardship to start any later, so they let her start on the original date. It was unpleasant and worrisome to have to tell them that, and D feared she would get off on the wrong foot before her first day! She is lucky she had a brother with some resources, because we had none to spare, especially since we needed to pay thousands for airfare and hotel for the trip to CA for graduation. If not, I really donât know what she would have done.
I know people who never went to college and who work three jobs to pay their bills and make it week to week who could teach many of us about manners.
I have worked with enough very wealthy people in my life both very well-educated and not formally educated at all to not equal education with financial success. I have also seen enough to not equal financial success with happiness or manners or any of these other things I am reading here.
I read these things and I wonder if people socialize outside of their income levels.
@AttorneyMother I agree with you on how reading this might make someone feel. @romanigypsyeyes good for you-what will be even better is when you donât feel you need to shut these people up and are just happy because you are!
It seems to me that the comments about what âeverybodyâ knows or does (if they are observant and intelligent) + the responses by romanigypsyeyes (and others) that everybody does not know or do those things are âspot onâ the thread topic. They directly illustrate why less advantaged students at the Ivies or similar schools (e.g. Michigan) might be uncomfortable socially.
When I was in grad school, my parents came to visit me just once. A friend asked where our family had gone to dinner the night before. I mentioned the not-so-good restaurant directly down the street. He asked why we hadnât gone somewhere better. It did not occur to him that my parents were really stretching their budget to travel at all. Every better place was considerably more expensive. I wasnât comfortable trying to explain it to himâI didnât even know how to start (at that time). The friend was from Harvard, but it could have been any of the schools in the thread title.
I think this thread is very useful in two ways: First, it helps students from less advantaged backgrounds understand some of the things that others take for granted that one would do in response to an invitation (or other event). Knowing whatâs expected takes a lot of the edge of anxiety off. Second, I think it might be very helpful to some of our children, who might be among the relatively well-off students at the Ivies, to think more broadly. Pepper03âs comment is excellent to pass along in that regard, too.
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I went to an Ivy a long time ago. A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a college classmate. My classmateâs mom was a SAHM when we started college. Her dad was the assistant manager of a store that was part of a big âdime storeâ chain. Neither of her parents had attended college. My classmate was a National Merit Scholar. It was a corporate scholarship sponsored by her dadâs employer. The summer before we started college, her dad dropped dead of a heart attack, and $ became even more limited. A college counselor had suggested she apply to our college because she felt my friend would be better off at it as a student with limited funds than she would be at a Seven Sisters college. Iâve no idea if thatâs trueâbut it was a counselorâs opinion so she followed it.
During our lunch conversation, she said âOne thing Iâll say for [Ivy U] is that not having money was never a problem. Nobody cared.â I interrupted her and said âI think it had more to do with our group of friends than with [Ivy].â The group of girls I hung out with in college was amazingly diverse economically. Some of our friends had work study jobsâŠand we could often visit them while they were working. (For example, one of the best jobs was being the switchboard operator in the evening. You could sit and chat between calls. There were no cell phones back then, of course. The switchboard operators knew ALL the gossip : ) ! We had a couple of other friends who came from extremely wealthy families. You had to get to know them pretty well to find that out.
Fast forward and my kid attended a different Ivy. Two of the freshmen in the suite were not at all well off. A third wasâand had attended an âAncient 8â boarding school and was recruited for a prep sport. She was pretty clueless and would sometimes say amazingly insensitive things.
But the group of friends my kid made was also economically diverse. One of the group was one of 7 kids from a working class family in the Midwest. He was about the fourth in the family to attend the same Ivy, so he knew the ropes. He announced upfront that he was on financial aid and he couldnât afford to go out to dinner or to the movies every weekend and he wanted to just say that once and get it over with. (This was said at one of the freshman orientation meetings in the dorm when you introduced yourself.) He had a job at a campus snack bar. The same thing happened that had happened when I was in college. When people in the group took a break the nights he was working, theyâd go to the snack bar and hang out there. He was allowed to eat a certain amount when he was working without paying for it and so he too would spend half the time he was âworkingâ chatting with his friends. I donât think the snack bar manager minded because it got a lot more business the nights he worked.
BTW, my Dâs poorest suitemate freshman year ended up marrying a classmate from an affluent family. (I know his parentsâ financial status because they gave more than $50,000 to the Parents Fund on top of tuition.)
I do think that the poorer kids in my /my kidâs group of friends were open about their financial situations without whining about them.
Personally, I think it can be easier to be poor at an Ivy. First, the financial aid packages are better. Second, at many of them, things like campus sporting events are free with a student ID. The dorm rooms cost the same amount, which is not the same as some big state Us. Now, some other schools, notably Swarthmore make it even easier.
Still, I think overall the Ivies and other top schools are just as easy for kids from poorer families to attend as the flagship state Us areâif not easier. Iâd rather be a dirt poor kid at Harvard or Yale than at Indiana U or UTexas-Austin because I think how much money you have matters more when more money can get you better housing or access to frats and sororities which require an extensive wardrobe for rush, and where season tickets to sports can cost and arm and a leg.
Agree. Reminds me of the âPaying for the Partyâ discussion - those poorer/middle class kids were in that spot. And with not-awesome advising or mentoring programs for the most part, plus a party culture.
It may depend on which big state universities. Some, like Virginia, Delaware, and Michigan, have a student body that is very skewed toward those from upper income families. Others, like UCLA, Washington, Stony Brook, and Berkeley, are considerably more SES-diverse.
Of course, Ivy League schools also vary in SES diversity. 30% of Columbia students receive Pell grants, while only 12% of Princeton students receive Pell grants.
I.e. it may not be just whether the school has the resources to make cost a non-constraint for many student activities â it may also be whether the predominant student population does not have to care about costs versus having to watch every cent.
I can tell you that if I go shopping, even at Sears, it matters if I am wearing ratty stuff (T-shirt, shorts, clean but not without wear or holes) or if I am wearing somewhat nicer even if the same stuff but no holes or overly worn, the salespeople will move me towards lower price and sales items.
I still have the same credit rating, and in one case, we were looking at a rather expensive TV and the sales guy looked up our credit, and said âOhâ because our credit and our appearance did not match in his estimation.
One of the problems with some kids with Aspergerâs and other issues, who arenât the best about hygiene and decent clothes, can really suffer on college campuses. There is a certain homogeneity that is expected in group situations, and it hurts those who arenât homogeneous. They deal with it, overcome it, or get depressed about how unfair it is.
Another important point - I am having trouble helping my son understand money, and we are relatively well-off. I have not given allowances because the work and EC load of my children, plus their ages, is vastly different, and they all must do chores or get on the âbad listâ which means no just buying them what they want (within reason).
We are working through this, but the upshot is, having money to withhold is different than needing your children to work. I was working class growing up, but my brothers were never asked to pay rent. I donât know if they asked for money for an apartment and were told they would have to live at home instead.
And as for insensitive comments, I think it is impossible to curb yourself from making them. If I say âwhy not buy Tropicana orange juice instead of the store brand?â, isnât that just as bad as someone else saying âwhy waste money on a brand that has shrunk their container sizes and is expensive?â Both make assumptions, in the first case that the other person has enough money to spend on expensive orange juice, and the second case that the other person is too dumb to be careful with their money.
We cannot help making comments based on our experiences. I suppose we could try to be the ultimate in PC and never say anything that could possibly hurt someone. But I think we couldnât say anything thenâŠ
Pepper, my apologies if my post came off as me caring what other people think. I meant that I came to that realization long ago (probably as far back as high school) and I could really not care less what people think of me. (People on CC can attest to that! lol).
I am incredibly happy and live a wonderful life- even if I donât know the ârightâ wine to bring (or not) to a dinner party.
Jonriâs thorough explanation in post 526 is a lovely story and one which resonates with my Dâs experience as well. I donât know if Iâm reading too much into that post: It sounds as if there was perhaps more disclosure about money than with my Dâs experience. Overall, she did not know the financial situation of her friends because it was not discussed. All of the people she âhung out withâ were discreet about discussing money. (And it would be like my D to choose friends who were discreet in any case.) She never found doors closed to her at this Ivy â subtly or not. On the other hand, she does have innate manners, so perhaps that helped. 
I knew the financial situation of some of my friends because I knew they had work study jobs. Only students on fin aid were eligible for them. So if I saw someone working âbells,â the receptionist, I knew she was on fin aid. If a friend didnât join us for dinner I knew she was on financial aid and worked in the dining hall because dining hall staff ate either before or after the rest of us. (We had sit down dinners every night when I started college.)
I also sometimes knew someone was from a wealthy family because sheâd gone to high school at Dana Hall ,Shipley, Foxcroft, Emma Willard, Miss Porterâs, etc. Back then boarding schools did not offer the sort of financial aid they do now. So, if someone had attended one, I was farily confident that their families had money.
It also matters what people DO. If going to a student dramatic production, a student sporting event, a campus movie, a student orchestral or vocal performance, ice skating, swimming, etc. are all free, then whether or not you have money matters less that if it cost $15-29 dollars to go to a play, concert, vocal performance, or sporting event or you have to pay for a pass to use the student gym, swiming pool, ice skating rink or golf course. If itâs more expensive to join a frat than to live in a dorm or singles cost extra or a third of the junior and senior classes live off campus in luxury apartment buildings, then people will know if you have money. My very wealthy friends really didnât do many things the rest of us didnât do too.
@jonri, the examples you give of different costs of campus activities/living arrangements are important ones to think about, but I think itâs also important to consider the costs of activities in the surrounding community, too.
If your school is in a major city, there are a lot of expensive forms of entertainment available to you. If itâs in the middle of nowhere, not so much.
IME, if itâs in the middle of nowhere, the rich kids have cars.
Post 532:
This is true, jonri, in terms of Work-Study. My D did have W/S jobs, and probably her friends did not. Again, though, there was no discussion of that difference, ever, in her presence.
My two best friends growing up, sisters, both went to Dana Hall on full financial aid. This was around 1978-80.
THEY had stories from there, being low income among the very wealthy, like the daughter of the Chiquita Banana fortune, etc.
This morning I saw this email and thought about the entitlement discussion earlier on this list. The short, funny article for college professors is only tangentially related to being poor as many other college students have trouble with the conventions of email, but the problem of teaching students conventions are foregrounded/implied in a tongue and cheek way in the article. What is the proper, kind way to go about telling students that they blew it, that they arenât representing themselves in the best light?
âIâd rather be a dirt poor kid at Harvard or Yale than at Indiana U or UTexas-Austin because I think how much money you have matters more when more money can get you better housing or access to frats and sororitiesâ
Well said. Itâs not a picnic either way, but this is an easy call for me. It makes a world of difference that everyone lives on campus, the rooms all cost the same, and everyone has to have a 19-meal dining plan.
I did know/know of two rich people who had dorm rooms AND rented apartments near campus to have an extra private space. One was Natalie Portman. The vast majority of kids who could afford to do this did not do it; it wasnât the culture.
âI wonder if people socialize outside of their income levels.â
Hardly anyone in America socializes outside of their social class. People who have moved classes and whose families didnât are practically the only ones. People are friendly across classes, but when you look at who they invite to their partiesâŠitâs very rare.
Hanna, Iâm glad you picked up on that in buttonâs (?) post. I did, too. I think socializing outside your SES and your race/ethinicity would do a lot to solving many of this worldâs problems. And Iâm not talking about just being friendly with your Mexican gardener. 