@OHMomof2 , you are right, my bad. Majority of the students described in the article are probably not paying more than their federal EFC so they are not eligible for subsidized loans. I projected my family experiences into this situation.
As a member of the peanut gallery I disagree with the rest.
Give them more money and they’ll find something else to complain about. Next it’ll be they feel uncomfortable because all the wealthy peers have $1,000 Canada Goose winter coats.
If you read the article, nothing like needing more money was even suggested. In fact, all the students said was that it wasn’t like they expected, that there were expenses they hadn’t expected or even though about.
What about
What about it? http://www.1vyg.org/about/
It is still primarily about money
I don’t see complaining here – just a lack of prior understanding of the expenses that a full ride scholarship doesn’t cover.
And that lack of understanding is not unreasonable, considering that most of the students who would be eligible for a need-based full ride are the first in their families to go away to college. If you’re totally unfamiliar with this situation, you might not recognize how greatly it differs from other, more familiar situations – such as a young person enlisting in the military.
We could say that the students and their families should have anticipated the financial problems that might arise, but it can be very difficult to find answers when you don’t even know enough to ask the right questions. We see basic misunderstandings about college admissions and college financing all the time on these boards – even among parents who are college graduates themselves. Should we expect more sophistication from those for whom an elite university is akin to a foreign country?
“Meets full need” is an easy phrase to misunderstand. Not only does it mean “meets full need as the college calculates it, not what the family considers full need” it also means “meets a specific set of needs, not all the needs a student will have in order to survive through four years of college.”
No it really isn’t. The only financial aspect I found (and I’ve read all the linked articles before and some again just now), is stuff like keeping dorms open over breaks when not everyone can afford to go home and leaving a dining hall open or providing food vouchers of some sort. Nothing about more money to send home to families or buy fancy clothes or a Starbucks/clubbing budget, though some schools do help with a suit for an interview or a winter coat or dorm bedding. Not specifically for first gens, but for the poorest kids.
If you read through the linked articles (the NYT is a good one to start with: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/first-generation-students-unite.html ), you’ll find what it’s primarily about is support for each other and improving programming (like orientation etc) to help first gens succeed. Colleges already knew first-gens face challenges other kids don’t, but have varying levels of success with helping them get through once they arrive on campus.
In 1Ivyg and similar organizations, very poor first gens talk to each other about how to handle living in “two worlds”, and not necessarily poor first gens can share tips and stories about navigating college without help from home. Many first gens don’t have the family help with things those with college educated parents do, like choosing classes/a major or “texting to brainstorm topics for papers” (two examples given by one of the reporters), that office hours are where they are expected to go not a place where they are imposing on a professor and so on.
One of the really cool examples in the NYT article is about a study done at one school. During new student orientation they had two groups of first-gen kids. One had an hour-long panel with students giving them tips about resources on campus, time management, whatever, and so did the second group except the second group’s panelists intermingled those tips with stories from their personal background (and the panel was made up of rich and poor students so both kinds of stories were told). The second group got something like a .3 higher GPA after the first year. THAT kind of stuff costs colleges nothing over their “normal” programming and can make a huge difference.
What I get from 1IvyG is not whining or asking for money for lattes, but first-generation-to-college students getting together both to help and support themselves and also to come up with solutions to problems that the colleges can help implement. To that I say bravo, not “stop whining about money”.
Do these elite colleges have the Federally funded TRIO programs that serve to support 1st gen (along with low income and students with disabilities)? Many college do.
Here is a story of one student’s radical reaction–she was reportedly on full scholarship, though I don’t know how much her money situation was a factor in her choice to disappear. The article below does reference the article in the OP, though:
"In a piece titled “Why I had to escape my Ivy League life and disappear,” Kidd recounted how the school’s pressure-cooker environment led her to become increasingly ambivalent about her schoolwork. As the search for her intensified, she was trying to erase all traces of the life she knew: “I started to totally disconnect. I deleted my Facebook profile first, shut down my phone and got a prepaid number, took all of my money out of my Chase bank account and opened a new one.”
These measures were prompted by a sense of alienation from Columbia and its expectations, Kidd wrote. Since arriving in college two years ago, she ceased to be the academic all-star that she had been all of her life."
^ She’s not first gen though, “Her mother holds graduate degrees from John Hopkins University and MIT.”
Sounds like Columbia was just a bad fit, though she was clearly having some issues that counseling might have helped. She was a sophomore living with students who had graduated and were already working, apparently.
http://nypost.com/2016/05/29/why-i-had-to-escape-my-ivy-league-life-and-disappear/
That case is so awful. Her poor mother. Run away if you need to, but don’t put your mom through living hell.
What a selfish girl. Her poor mother! And she wasted three days of NYC policemen looking for her!
So she stockpiled her work study money. How long will that last for a room rental of $750/month?
Columbia threw good money after bad (for two years!) in this case.
IMO it’s worth reiterating that this student doesn’t appear to have had any issue with financial aid, her race or being poor (it’s unclear to me if she was poor at all, based on her mom’s occupation, but maybe multiple grad degree scientific researchers don’t earn much?)
Her issues seem wholly unrelated - she hated not getting individual attention like she did at her boarding school, was suddenly a small fish after being a superstar, etc. It seems to me also that there is perhaps some mental issue, which we know often makes itself known around this age.
I agree she was totally selfish - she knew people were looking for her as she “had been ignoring the avalanche of calls and texts from friends and family asking where I was and if I was OK”. What did she think would happen, no one would report her missing? I understand why she didn’t want to face her mom, but she could have texted or FB posted that she was all right but dropped out and not spoken to her directly. SMH.
That is one of the most cruel things any child could do to a parent. She is at least a third generation college student. Her mother is a professor so not sure she was on “full scholarship.” She was receiving some aid and had work study but I’m guessing her mother also had to pay at least a minimal amount? If she was that unhappy, as a young adult, she should have figured out a better way of dealing with her frustration. She caused a lot of stress and anxiety for her family and friends, as well as wasting the resources of Columbia and the police. Very strange all around . http://news.mit.edu/1997/kidd-0604
And yes, she does sound as though she possibly has some mental health issues. Unfortunately, her actions don’t seem to bode too well for her future. This story will follow her. Hopefully, she is getting some help to sort all this out.
Room in Williamsburg for $750 is practically a steal. Even in East Williamsburg where she lives. I wonder if this opportunity contributed to her speedy departure from Columbia.