I concur. MIL keeps pushing D17 to apply to Harvard for the “networking” and “connections”. I keep telling MIL that the rich people aren’t interested in “networking” with D17 because she HAS no connections.
We are solidly upper-ish middle class, and most of the time we feel very comfortable with what we have and what we can do. The only time I start feeling poor or inadequate is if I venture out of my happy little meritocratic neighborhood to play tennis at the uber-wealthy country clubs. THEN I come smack up against what wealth and privilege really is. A lot of people really don’t understand it-they see it on TV and they get all acquisitive and hope the rich rubs off.
Yeah, no, it doesn’t. There’s no difference between me and a legitimately poor or working class person to the rich-it’s not in kind, but in degree. I’m assuming it’s the same at the uber-elite or wealthy colleges, which we’re carefully avoiding. We’re looking much more closely at the merit aid-heavy schools, which we think will attract other hardworking, merit-oriented kids like her.
Columbia students can tap lucrative ($10,000-20,000) 10-week summer internships as early as the summer after freshman year.
As long as they finish their degree, they’re all but guaranteed a high status, well paying job in a city most of their peers dream of (NYC, London, DC, LA, SF).
While there’s some truth to this, it isn’t the whole story at someplace like Harvard (or Yale, which I know a lot more about). While it’s true that a poor or middle-class kid may not be able to network socially with the richest kids, there are lots of very good networking opportunities that are available to all students at these schools. They include working with well-connected faculty members who can open doors, but also with other students who may provide opportunities in the future. I think this is especially true in the arts, where you can work with students who are likely to be successful in a lot of different arts fields. They will care more about whether you can assist them with their campus arts projects than how rich you are.
Plus, there are many, many students at Harvard, Yale, and peer schools who aren’t uber-wealthy. There are plenty whose parents are academics, or professionals in law or medicine, or who are middle-class in general. But those students, because they are really smart and ambitious, are worth networking with as well.
I noted the girl was putting at least three pieces of fruit in her bag from the dining hall (said she took less than that), and then there is this young man…"Recently, Ramirez took screen shots of a textbook with more than 500 pages so that he could avoid buying it, a mind-numbing maneuver that can take hours on a computer. He has done it more than once. “It’s not bad,” he said. “You get into a rhythm.” Isn’t that a violation of copyright laws?
I think low-income students who get full rides at Ivies (and elsewhere) should think carefully about how lucky they really are.
Charming, honest, easy going, hard working, open minded low-income kids at an Ivy have no trouble making lots of friends.
But close minded professional victims always on the lookout for a micro aggression, who complain they can’t buy a latte before class, are going to struggle.
This makes me so nostalgic for the good old days. My father described attending college (Brooklyn College) during the Great Depression. His parents paid his tuition. (It wasn’t much.) He lived in the Y. Otherwise, he had $1 per week for food and incidentals. Translated into 2016 dollars, that’s $17 per week today. Yet he did it.
This is a link to another article highlighting the difficulty a homeless student had in adjusting to her freshman year at Georgetown.
I am a little bit appalled at the attitude of some people about the difficulties these students have in adjusting.
Pretty sure if the tables were flipped, and you were adjusting to living in a homeless shelter, with all of your belongings in a couple of trash bags, you would be equally challenged.
Wow, I gotta say, yeah sometimes it sucks not having the things that your classmates have and being the poor one. I’ve been there, though I am not there anymore.
All our money basically went into sports for us, even though it wasn’t a lot.
My sister and I didn’t dress poorly, but we were never wearing the abercrombie and fitch clothes that cost $100+.
When you don’t have as many material things you just have to be confident in yourself and not worry about it.
There is absolutely no reason for money barriers to keep you from networking. I know plenty of pell grant students at colleges that they thrive at, even if they’re washington and lee or newport.
My mom always told me being poor is a state of mind. While this seems kind of harsh, the difference between broke and poor for me was hope and potential. My friends were living at tennis academies that cost 50k a year, and they were going to europe and mexico for random weekends. They’re still my best friends even if I can’t compete with them on any monetary level, but my mindset never kept me from fitting in anywhere.
@OldFashioned1 Exactly right, I am by no means low income, but at one point I was and I made friends with kids who could pay full tuition at any school and I never felt out of place.
“Jack recalled seeking help during spring break at Amherst when dining halls were closed, rich classmates were traveling and he was staying on campus because he couldn’t afford to leave. “It’s kind of gross to live off peanut butter and jelly for a week,” he said. The college arranged for meals through a local cafe, Jack said.”
I think Washington Post is reaching a bit with this example.
Cafes are closed to give all the student employees a chance to go home during breaks. The dates are well publicized. Everyone that stays on campus struggles for a week or so–largely international students. Not a big deal if you plan ahead. Deli meat and pb and j and some yogurt is $10. Enough of the manufactured grievances.
And the girl that paid $120 to ride a bus home from NYC to ATL, that flight segment is one of the most popular in the nation. $120 if purchased in advance.
I think these types of articles are written for the wealthy, who are reacting predictably with comments like this.
Most poor students have been poor all their lives. And some of them come from multi-generational poverty. It’s not like they went to college and were suddenly surprised to find out that they are poor. Not having what others have is something they’ve encountered all their lives. This surprises no one except the rich. They’ve gone a long time without, which makes them more resilient than the average kid. They are not “professional victims.” They are professional survivors – having to adapt and survive with very little all their lives and enduring the sneer of those offended by their audacity to want what wealthy students have. We can all learn a bit of humility from them.
I didn’t read this article as advocacy for a hand-out on behalf the poor at all. If being exposed to how the other half lives is uncomfortable and threatens your worldview, you live in a really small bubble and should get out more.
The article is poorly written in that it really doesn’t capture the true issues poor students face. Not being able to buy Starbucks or go to a concert or Broadway show? That is the reality for many middle class students on a budget at Columbia. Bad examples. As is the cost of a fraternity. Again, many kids whose parents are paying for tuition and room and board have to fund their own extra-curriculars, like fraternities. That is not something the school should be paying for and not something, IMHO, that is limited to the very poor.
The article seems to trivialize the real issues these kids have. The pressure to help out at home. The isolation when everyone around them seems wealthy (but not every kid is jetting off to Europe on spring break, many/most are taking a Bolt bus/getting a ride back home to see their families). The lack of preparedness. Those are real issues.
Food during breaks for kids that can’t go home? Free class fees? Of course, for those on a free ride. But not frat fees or free trips.
There’s a thing about close-knit communities: if you’re not “one of them” then you get marginalized. They may treat you like a curiosity for a time, but in the end they will generally consider you to be so far removed from who they are that they would generally prefer to have nothing to do with you. Try being, for example, a Turkish immigrant living in a rural farm town (where there are only a few hundred or thousand people and everybody knows everybody else) and you’d see very quickly how little that “community” wants to have anything to do with you. This is why people live in these communities, and “the poor” (or more accurately, specific subsets of people who come from modest means) have their own as well and they will similarly feel marginalized in a new community.
Could be worse? Sure. Are there exceptions that overcame this? Definitely. Is it still a relevant issue that is being framed into whining by this article and the people commenting on it? Absolutely. Social classes with exclusionary behavior are still the norm.
I think that the attitudes of some people on this thread are rather harsh. Even if you disagree with the anecdotes in the article, surely you can imagine other situations that make it hard for low income students to feel like they fit in? My family has been living paycheck to paycheck for as long as I can remember, but thanks to generous financial aid I’ve been able to go to all private schools. Throughout high school it was very challenging for me to pay for my textbooks and we always purchased used. Right now my computer screen is literally attached by two small wires and we can’t afford to get a new one until college. Those things have created a lot of shame and stress for me and my family. What many posters on this thread don’t seem to understand is that the majority of people want to fit in and when they feel like they don’t that is a painful experience. Even for unnecessary things like ski trips or Starbucks, if most of the people you know are doing those things it is hard to not be able to participate in that too. One example from my life is birthday parties. Many of the people I knew were wealthy enough to have huge elaborate birthday parties at horse barns, gymnastics centers, in New York City, etc. My family couldn’t afford to do any of that and they could barely afford to take me and a couple of my friends out to dinner. When I was growing up I couldn’t have birthday parties at my house or even invite friends over because of how run down it was. Do I expect my high school to foot the bill for my birthday party or house renovations? No, I understand (as I’m sure many in the article do) that those are unnecessary expenses, but that doesn’t change how crappy it can make you feel to know that you can’t afford things that other people can pay for without even thinking about it.
Also I remember someone earlier in the thread complained how entitled the students were to think the college would pay for their mom’s rent. I don’t think any student expects that, but if your parents were barely making ends meet wouldn’t you feel bad and wouldn’t you want to help? Lower income students have to worry about their family as well as themselves and I think that was what that anecdote was about. It wasn’t about an entitled student who thought the college should pay for everything, but a student who wanted to make sure their mom could keep her apartment and put food on the table.
My kid ruled out Ivy’s and other Elite schools as way too expensive. We are not poor, but D. was pursuing ONLY colleges that would offer her substantial Merit awards as we did not qualify for any need based. She ended up attending in-state public on full tuition Merit award and this school was a perfect fit for her. Who has decided that great college education could be obtained only at Ivy’s / Elite colleges? The student education depends on the student and not the place. And that was exactly my 17 y o position, who simply said: “I will do fine anywhere” and she was absolutely right while many others were soo wrong, it makes me feel very sorry for them. “Sorry” was the same emotion as several D’s medical school classmates expressed before graduating from medical school and realizing that Ivy’s did not give them any advantages, while they spent family resources on college education.
If kids are really after saving money for the family, I know several who were not poor by far, but still conscientious about financial side, these kids attended at the local college and lived at home and later attended at the local medical school, while still living at home. I am talking about children who had a physician father, I am not talking about poor. Why poor would not do the same?
I think a lot of people are missing the point. Yes, there are students who whine about not being able to keep up with the Joneses but that is not the point.
The point is not about not going to Starbucks with friends but about having no money for even the basics like shampoo or cold medicine. It isn’t about not being able to buy textbooks new but about not having money to rent or buy used and thus going without textbooks and thus failing.
Even when a full ride provides an allowance for some items like books (and most don’t) we are talking in extreme cases about students who not only have no money from home for these items but are sending every extra nickle they can scrap together back home so that younger siblings don’t go hungry.
It’s a piece of cake for my daughter to work a summer job and pay for all her books, personal needs and reasonable desires while at college. I’m still paying her transportation costs, phone, medical bills, giving her a safe cozy place to stay on all breaks. I also live in an area where it is easy for a bright presentable college student to get a summer job. I don’t expect or need her to contribute to the family costs.
Extreme poverty exists in this country. Students who receive full ride scholarships to any kind of college should be and almost certainly are very grateful. All this article is saying IMHO is that we shouldn’t view these kids as having won the powerball and now being set for life. They won a lottery, no doubt about it, but they still face extreme challenges and I think those of us more privileged should not whine about how much luckier they are than our kids who are full pay. They are not.
@Snowybuny Yeah that’s rough, I’ve been there. The differences is I’m not ashamed of a lack of money. My parents got divorced and my mom had no working experience or help before moving to a different country.
Things suck sometimes, but personal attitude is what makes it different. My birthday party was a pool party at my apartments because we didn’t own a house. No shame in that, just where we were in our lives.
I still had no issue being friends with people who had money and could afford to rent out amusement parks for their 16th birthdays(maya henry).
There is no reason to feel shame for things you can’t control. You just have to be happy with who you are and what you are.
Fitting in is about who you are and what you make of it, not having the money to do the same things as others.
Edit: you mention you go to a private school, I’m not sure what state your public school is but I know that I made it through public school. That is also an added expense. No reason to be shameful on scholarship there.
There are absolutely opportunities for the less wealthy and thankfully we don’t live in a feudal world where your social class is determined at birth and you pretty much cannot aspire to anything more. However, the effect of social classes on outcomes is still highly significant, especially in college where students are still pretty much the same social class as their parents. Pretty much no (undergrad) college students have any globally significant accomplishments to their name because that sort of thing takes years of work to achieve, and they’re just not there yet.
Generally people, including students and professors, want to “network” with people who have something to offer them. When you have a dad who is a senator, many companies would be happy to give your child admission to Harvard or give you a $500k/yr job right out of college for the connections. When you’re a full-ride student from modest means without much to offer people, you really don’t have much to offer them. Sure, there will always be those who will be willing to extend a helping hand, and will perhaps open doors to you if you show promise. But I don’t think it would even be controversial to say that a lot of doors, especially for the most lucrative opportunities, tend to be stratified by social class. Academia has its own separate social class, that is perhaps not so strongly dependent on wealth (most academics aren’t particularly wealthy) but on something along the lines of professorial cronyism.
Most of the poorer people who manage to achieve wealth in their life do so in their later years, and they have a whole life of social climbing that they need to do to get to that point. The fact that they’re going to and finishing college in the first place has a lot more to do with their success than that they had an Ivy to their name.