Are You First Gen? Depends on Who’s Asking

Applying to College
1

"…With so many variations on what constitutes higher education and even more assortments of family structures, it’s no wonder there are lots of ways to slice and dice the label. Using data from a longitudinal study begun in 2002, Robert K. Toutkoushian, a University of Georgia education professor, analyzed eight different definitions of the term and found that the number of students who could be called first gen in a 7,300 sample ranged from 22 percent to 77 percent.

Policymakers have begun to wrangle with the definition of ‘first generation,’ which, according to Maureen Hoyler, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, entered the legislative lexicon in 1980 as a better way to identify disadvantaged students without referring to race or ethnicity." …

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/first-generation-college-admissions.html

2

Interesting quandry.
But I wonder for instance if the deceased father had gone to a school the child was interested in, would he have claimed legacy?

3

Our daughters are adopted from China, most likely their birth parents did not attend college (but we don’t know). My wife and I both have Master’s degrees, so they won’t claim first gen status.