The thing is, the rich elite privates still provide so much more to poor kids than a flagship state school (where the population tends to run towards the upper middle-class these days as well with limited fin aid at most of those places and costs that you can’t cover just by working summers). If anything, with state funding cutbacks, it’s worse at state schools.
For example, Northwestern and UChicago provide grants to kids who take unpaid summer internships so that poor kids don’t have to forgo enriching opportunities that may be good for their future careers but are unpaid ( http://www.northwestern.edu/careers/about-us/sigp/index.html and https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/jobs-internships-research/summer-action-grants). What other schools have that?
I think shining a bright light on the issue of inequality at elite colleges is an important one. The goal shouldn’t be just to enroll a diverse class, but rather invest in the support system so the impoverished students can survive at school. Invest in resources so impoverished students can thrive on campus. Ensure that impoverished students have winter coats, boots, gloves, blankets, food, school supplies, etc. and for graduating seniors, interview attire so they can earn jobs. Being able to stay at school with food at breaks when it is not affordable to travel home (or maybe they don’t have a home) is essential.
Let’s not set these students up to fail, rather invest to change their lives and invest in their future. With the endowment these schools enjoy tax free, these elite schools should lead by example and create exemplary programs for their impoverished students that other schools can implement.
But the reactions here were to the article, not to the issues faced by poor kids surrounded by the privileged. Most here understand and empathize with true hardships faced by poor kids at expensive schools, but the article did a bad job of explaining that. It is not fun to be the odd one out. But if you look around you will find that there are other kids that are in the dorm on Saturday night because they can’t afford to drink at a bar. There are plenty of kids who are drinking coffee from the cafeteria and not a $3 cup from Starbucks. There is a difference, however, between it being “not fun” and being a true hardship. Many working parents never buy a Starbucks so of course they are not going to react well to an article in which that (and Broadway shows) are given as examples of what some college students can’t do.
Extreme poverty exists and is rampant and something this country tends to ignore. The kids who don’t get the chance to even graduate from HS or struggle to pay for community college also experience the negatives associated with that. And most of them do not go on to earn a degree. I have read other articles that did a much better job of expressing those issues - for kids at elites and kids at community college.
House Master’s at Yale maintain slush funds to quietly subsidize needy students who can’t participate in social activities, go home at Christmas or attend grandma’s funeral, etc. There are “people to go to” who can quietly buy a kid a tuxedo or black evening gown for a musical performance when they are required, and dozens of professionals on the payroll ranging from chaplains to deans to other administrators who can negotiate a dental bill or help a kid out with unexpected medical expenses not covered by insurance (broken pair of eyeglasses for example).
A needy kid at most public U’s are SOL when it comes to “quiet” help. Sure- there are social workers in the city or town who can help a kid with an application for food stamps if he/she is eligible. But not the kind of on-campus, discreet assistance to allow a kid from a modest background to participate in campus activities.
Buying tickets to Hamilton? Probably not.
I was a “scholarship kid” back in the day and I gotta say- I “networked” (which we used to call being friends) with kids from backgrounds like mine all the way up to the top of the social register. Do you really think kids ask to see a parents tax return before deciding whether or not to make a new friend at college???
I think the reference above to professors is way off; there may be rare situations in which professors care about the wealth of a student’s family - but not often.
I think some small percentage of students do care about this type of “networking.” I also think most other students, rich to poor, would prefer to keep their distance from those students and their warped priorities .
I don’t recall being embarrassed to invite wealthy classmates to visit me at home on breaks. Kids who grow up in mansions with “staff” (I was so gauche as to call them servants but was gently corrected) know that millions of people live in modest capes and ranch houses and vacuum themselves.
I had a close friend who grew up in very different circumstances and I recall a summer visit to her house where we ate EVERY meal at “the club” which I found hilarious. Nobody so much as brewed a cup of coffee or fixed a sandwich in that gorgeous kitchen. When she visited me we made mac and cheese and my mom made a “company meal” for dinner.
You guys are really steering your kids away from colleges where you think nobody will want to be their friend? This is mind-boggling. Nobody runs a credit check on you in college.
@SeniorStruggling Just as my experience isn’t indicative of all low income people, yours isn’t either. For some people it is not as easy as simply not feeling shame. I’m generally happy with myself and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have had that my parents didn’t. I know that are many things to be proud of in my life. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything when I can’t do what my friends are doing or I can’t afford textbooks for the school year so I have to share with my friends or my family has to sleep in a motel because we couldn’t pay the heating bills in winter.
I attended private schools because I live in a very poor school district. The public school has rotting ceiling tiles and is in poor condition. There is a lot of gang activity, drugs, stabbings, etc. even in the middle schools. For my parents investing in my education was worthwhile and that was their choice to make. I am glad that I was able to earn scholarships and financial aid so that I could afford it, but being proud of that does not negate my ability to feel shame. I’m sure there are things you feel badly about that wouldn’t bother me at all. We all react to things differently and just because you don’t feel shame about your income doesn’t make my experience less true.
There are definitely social differences in elite colleges since, even though kids potentially could form friendships with anyone, those who attended arts summer camps finding their inner child and understand how to be polite in an upper-middle-class fashion will more easily bond with those who did the same. Likewise those who spent summers in the public library reading Mencken and Twain and honed their wits and physical skills in scrapes both physical and verbal.
I do agree with those posters who noted that the emphasis on those poor kids who are at elite colleges (speaking as one who was) is a a bit dear when poor kids attending publics with much fewer support systems are both greater in number and face a more daunting plight.
Networking helps. My son was one of the poorer kids at MIT. His friends knew it (just by the fact of his meal plans, never buying books and never spending money on stuff), and were pretty helpful at various times. He never bought a textbook. He either borrowed, shared or used the online (free, I presume?) versions. My son didn’t complain for the most part, and I know it was hard on him at times. He found a lot of free food in the first two years, before he landed a well paid internship after sophomore year.
He couch surfed one summer in order to save the meager money that MIT UROPs pay. Miserable summer, but he managed. The only time it became an issue was when he went on a spring break trip (with his own saved money from working) with some friends and the plans changed. He could have sat in the house (a rich friend’s mom hosted a group of students) by himself, but he decided to go to Disneyworld with everyone else. He wasn’t happy about spending money he didn’t have. He learned a lesson about who to hang out with, though.
At this juncture, with another son going to an expensive elite school on tons of need-based aid, we are more prepared for the costs outside of tuition, room and board, but it might be harder to network at Penn than it was at MIT. Fortunately, my son has no interest in going into Philly and spending money, so it should work out ok. Covering flights and books will be the big deal for us, but to be honest, the combined Penn aid and outside scholarship makes it less expensive than the local state school would have been, at least tuition/room/board-wise, so we will figure it out.
We’re nowhere near poverty level, and I can’t imagine how kids at that level pay for things like flights, books, snacks, cleaning supplies,and so on. I was dirt poor in college-poverty level-and it took me longer to graduate because I was working as a waitress almost full time and didn’t have the capacity to take on a heavier school load. I still remember my first apartment- I had a sleeping bag and metal shelves and an old black and white tv that someone had given me. I actually started out in my city at a private college (before transferring to the state college because I didn’t have money to stay there) with a lot of rich foreigners. Fortunately, there were also some poor kids like me. At times, it was awkward, but oh well.
Taking pictures of the book pages! Ingenious:). I doubt the publisher will fight that this is not “fair use” for educational purposes.
These articles tend to veer off into the have/have not element rather than the real issue, which is the day to day for these kids. The Broadway thing was probably just an anecdote, not a complaint. Just like the PBJ.
@Snowybuny I’m not saying your feelings are irrelevant, I am just trying to show disparities between our lives. I have no issue being the poor one in my friend group. No one thinks any less of me.
I just got a new computer finally, my last one was a hand me down with only 802.11ac connectivity which is the most basic. Being homeschooled doing internet classes is tough with bad internet.
However, I am not ungrateful for anything in my life and really could not be prouder.
My point being, if kids feel shame about not having money, the real issues are their own insecurities rather than their monetary worth.
My mom taught be to always be something and she invested in a sport for me. She always reminded me that it was far more important to be someone than to have material things.
At the end of the day I have been given a sport which I used to get into college, a job as a coach should things go bad I have secured a 60k+ salary teaching tennis, and a sense of self worth not affected by how much money I have or don’t have.
If a person is truly comfortable with themselves they will thrive wherever they go and within any economic society. Poor kids at Ivies may not be able to compete for vacations and extra things, but it doesn’t take away the most essential parts of college.
Its not the Broadway shows, but just everyday life. At any urban school, students can easily setup a study group at the local Starbucks, but the low-low income need to watch their pennies, and not purchase a cuppa joe. Or, the group heads out to a local diner, while the Pell grantees eats (for “free”) in the cafeteria.
As Hunt notes, all private schools emphasize “community” yet the poor really are second-class citizens in such places, particularly at the likes of Columbia/NYU & Georgetown, were have+ of the class is the top 5 per centers.
One of the victims profiled is a female, minority, engineering junior at Columbia; that’s the most sought after college student profile in Silicon Valley. I know female engineering majors that go to public U’s making $10k-25k for 10 weeks of work every summer—with offers to work remotely from college during the school year.
I had to look up how many people at some of the ivies had pell grants given. roughly 15% of all ivy students are on pell grants. That means that while they are a minority, there are not so few people that they stick out like sore thumbs.
Oh, sorry. Just had to share another story. (Sort of on topic, since it’s about being poor in college)
So after my first year in the expensive private (I got a lot of f. aid, but literally spend 3 days a week in the f. aid office trying to get more, but eventually left the school), I decided to try and stay here in So Cal and work. I got a job as a receptionist.
My parents (who lived in another state close by) warned me about the job seeming not to be on the up and up. Of course I ignored them. :-/ Turns out they were right. The guy was a crook and didn’t pay any of us…And then my car broke down. So, I had no job, no car, and no money.
What did I do? At first, I lived in the dorms on campus eating PB and J sandwiches that friends brought to me. And I stayed in the dorms at night because the sisters whose room it was were serving time at night for child support evasion! I had a most adventurous life. 
Eventually, within two weeks, I broke down and asked my parents for help. They brought me home and restarted me. (Can’t remember if they bought me an airline ticket, mailed me money or what) I was most fortunate that I had parents that were able to do that. They were decidely middle class (dad retired in 1990 making 60K a year as an engineering physicist), but had enough money to rescue me. I can’t imagine kids that come from families that can’t even do that…
Ok, I think I’m done strolling down memory lane.
@Blossom, there was one time that I did steer D away from an elite school, Amherst College. During the tour, we asked about dining and were told there was just one eatery which closed at 7 pm. When I then asked what happens if you are hungry after that time, we were told “most of us eat in town anyways, there’s a great sushi place and some other really nice restaurants”. We also observed lots of high-end clothing. I simply asked D how she would feel about going to a school where she would be the “poor girl”. We estimated she’d be able to go to a movie and pizza on a weekly basis, that sort of thing, but not much more. In the end she was rejected so it didn’t matter, but I absolutely did feel she would not fit in.
Professors don’t necessarily care specifically about wealth - their concern is more about academic social status. That is, who has enough name brand schools associated with them, the most prestigious individuals willing to vouch for them, the most prestigious awards, etc. It’s the academic social ladder. However, if you think that professors are generally egalitarian then you would simply be wrong.
Unfortunately that isn’t how real life works. Sure, everyone tends to dislike explicit prole-kicking jerks because people don’t like jerks. The real issue is everyone else, who just sort of chooses to keep their distance from the poorer kids with lower social polish.
Classist discrimination is seldom explicit, because people don’t generally ask you how much money your parents make. It’s the factors associated with not coming from money, like lower social polish and money habits, that people end up worrying about.
The college experience is likely the most egalitarian that these kids’ lives will ever be. It was much more segregated before college and will be again once they leave.
In my fraternity days (just as the glaciers were receding), one kid could not pay his room and board ever until he graduated and was in the Air Force. Several had never seen snow. One had parents who could not speak English. Another brought his BMW to college because he thought bringing his Porsche would be ostentatious. Our backgrounds were all over the map, yet we shared 99% of the same experience. I get similar feedback from my own kids and their friends here in the PNW. Many of the really wealthy end up in the NE for college and I hear less from them and their parents.
There are interests and behaviors that separate students into different social groups. Most of them are not about money. My son’s friends (big state school) come from gated communities and Indian reservations, Mercer Island waterfront and rural lentil farms. D’s friend group is similar, some working menial jobs this summer and others spending months in Europe. It may help that our background is smack-dab in the middle.
I do agree, though, that not having money for food is a real drag. I once lived for a week off of a loaf of white bread and the big pack of Oscar Meyer bologna, no mustard, no lettuce. Rice with ketchup or spaghetti with margarine and garlic powder were staples at other times.
I appreciate the issues raised in the article. This is good context for the thread about Harvard discouraging expensive social clubs.
Harvard has a number of policies designed to fight the problems described. For example, essentially everyone lives on campus, and students who live on campus MUST sign up for (with financial help) a full all-you-can-eat meal plan. So there are no poor students economizing with peanut butter in their dorm rooms. And although you can’t prevent rich students from eating out at fancy restaurants, the policy has the effect that everybody from all backgrounds eats in the dining halls most of the time even if they can afford to go out. Also, most student organizations have minimal, if any, dues, and you can apply for a waiver if it’s too much. Many groups like the Glee Club have intake programs that anticipate the need to keep expenses down, like instructions about buying used tuxes or arranging for hand-me-downs. I believe Yale is similar or identical on most of these policies.
So if we’re talking about $1300 (in the article) or even higher dues for social clubs, and there aren’t any need-based waivers, a lot of the effort to create economic integration goes down the drain. Nobody at a school like Columbia ought to feel that they need to go into debt to get the social life they want. What a shame.
I think that is missing the point, which is just the opposite.
Thus, you had a ready-made, built-in community, and community is all/mostly of what the top privates are about.
There are 20% Pell grantees at Columbia, spread over what I would guess is a number of classes that may exceed that amount. The odds of finding a like person in a single class at Columbia is low.