Investing
|
11/27/2013 @ 8:00AM |142,901 views
The Challenge Of Being Poor At America's Richest Colleges
Entrance to Bostock Library at Duke University. Duke senior KellyNoel Waldorf wants Duke students to be able to openly discuss income and class disparities. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Shelling out $300 for one chemistry textbook. Jetting off to Budapest, Paris and Rome while studying abroad in Madrid. Grabbing a last-minute Amtrak ticket to Manhattan for a job interview during senior year.
For many students at America’s elite colleges, these are as much a part of university life as pulling all-nighters and complaining about dining hall food. But for low-income students, these are not only unaffordable luxuries, but part of a topic that can be more taboo than sexual orientation: the size of their wallets.
Much has been written about getting high-achieving, low-income students through the Ivy-covered gates of America’s top colleges. And indeed, the focus on improving the economic diversity of college admissions is needed; a recent Brookings study found that just 8% of low-income students applied to a “reach” school and just 34% of high-achieving students in this group attended one of the country’s 238 most selective universities. (The study defined low income as being in the bottom fourth, income-wise, of families with a senior in high school. For 2008, the year studied, low-income meant a family income below $41,472.)
Not surprisingly, while poor kids are underrepresented on elite campuses, the wealthiest kids are overrepresented. At Harvard, 45.6% of undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200,000 — in other words, incomes in the top 3.8% of all American households.
Yet for all the studies and attention paid to how to get more low income students onto America’s top campuses, there’s little discussion (on or off campus) about what life is like for those students after they win admission.
In a guest column for Duke University’s student newspaper that recently went viral, senior KellyNoel Waldorf addresses how isolating it can feel as a low-income student at an elite university. “Why is it not OK for me to talk about such an important part of my identity on Duke’s campus? Why is the word “poor” associated with words like lazy, unmotivated and uneducated? I am none of those things,” she writes. “Why has our culture made me so afraid or ashamed or embarrassed that I felt like I couldn’t tell my best friends ‘Hey, I just can’t afford to go out tonight?’”
In a recent phone interview, Waldorf clarified that this isn’t just a Duke-specific problem, but an issue that exists across the country and is exacerbated by some of the wealth she and others see at Duke.
“I was in a class once where a professor basically assumed that no one in the class had cleaned a house for money, and that wasn’t true,” Waldorf says. “It’s sort of like an erasure of that population,” she says.
Beth Breger, executive director for Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), a scholarship organization that helps high-achieving, low-income students gain admission to America’s top colleges, says part of the problem stems from the fact that a majority of campuses are set up for your average upper/middle class student, one who comes to school with a certain set of “soft skills” that disadvantaged students still need to learn.
“Setting up a bank account for the first time. How to make an appointment with a professor. How to ask for a recommendation letter. How to navigate support from a TA (teaching assistant),” are things lower-income students need to learn, Breger says. And these knowledge gaps are just the tip of the iceberg.
As anyone who’s ever subsisted on ramen noodles for weeks on end knows, the effects of an empty wallet can pervade virtually every aspect of life. Students I spoke with talked about how, despite full academic scholarships that cover tuition, room and board, difficulties arise with everything from affording on-campus student events (such as musicals or concerts), to missing out on Greek life, to eating alone in at the dining hall on a Friday night when friends are eating out somewhere they can’t afford.
Even something as simple as a trip to the laundry room can serve as a reminder of the income disparities. Christian Ramirez, a LEDA scholar who grew up in Queens and is currently a junior at Harvard, remembers a time during his freshman year when his mother came to visit and decided to help him with his laundry. They both noticed piles of clothing on top of the washing machines in his dorm’s laundry room and Ramirez realized that he had seen those exact same piles a week or two before. The realization—that someone would simply forget to pick up his clothes –took both Ramirez and his mother aback. “When I do laundry, I literally make sure I have every single sock and no piece of clothing is left behind,” he says. “I personally cannot afford to replace them,’’ he says.
Clothes can be one of the most conspicuous indicators of wealth, and more than one low income student noted the designer threads peers wear serve as persistent reminders of the wealth gap. Yasmine Arrington is a Jack Kent Cooke scholar – the recipient of a prestigious scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, so named for the former Redskins owner who left his fortune to high-need, high-achieving students — who now attends Elon University, a southern school where guys favor khakis and many girls wear the preppy Lilly Pulitzer brand. Arrington remembers her reaction when she discovered what an average Lilly Pulitzer piece might cost.
“I was like, ‘oh my goodness a dress for $200?’” Arrington, an Elon junior, says. However, she says it doesn’t get to her because she focuses on developing her own style for her own prices, which most importantly, makes her happy. “I don’t feel deprived because it makes me more unique. My style is my style and no one else is going to walk in with my suede boots or jeans.”
Nightlife offers its own set of dilemmas. Those whose wealthier friends don’t mind footing the bill for a night out — in the name of friend-group unity, perhaps — find accepting such financial help can introduce a certain level of guilt.
“If we go out, and friends are like, ‘oh no, I’m getting this, I’ll pay for this,’ and then it’s like bah!” says Edith Carolina Benavides, a Jack Kent Cooke scholar who is a senior at Harvard. “I literally owe so much money to my friends, beyond owing them so much for their support and being there for me.”
Maureen Mahoney, the dean of the college at Smith College, and Barbara Cervone, president of the education non-profit What Kids Can Do both noted that medical problems — particularly lagging dental care or undiagnosed learning disabilities — can cause significant snags for poor students who might already be reeling from the academic culture shock. Cervone remembers one high achieving student from the Dominican Republic who, in her freshman year at Wellesley, found she had several rotting teeth, which couldn’t be fixed because the university’s health policy wouldn’t cover it. After a petition to the college president, the policy changed and the student was able to get the care she needed and continue with her studies. But the situation highlights how proactive students have to be to procure the funds and care they might need.
This proactiveness doesn’t always come naturally, Mahoney notes, as many high-achieving students (low income or otherwise) have trouble asking for help when they need it. Assuming, of course, a low income student knows exactly what resources they need. Renata Martin, a Jack Kent Cooke scholar at Brown says that she never saw herself as “disadvantaged” while growing up, but coming to a school like Brown brought to light all the resources and opportunities she had missed out on, and missing out on even the simplest things – like academic support resources or individualized academic attention – can make it hard to look for them in a higher-ed scenario.
“I think the hardest part is not even financial – it’s trying to know about most of the things that your peers know about,” she says. “It can be isolating, going to a public high school with all these differences you don’t think about until you go to an elite school where you stand out in many different ways.”
Some colleges, like Smith, and scholarship foundations, like LEDA, try to spread awareness of the academic and financial support resources available to low-income students. At Smith, this support includes a (limited) extra fund available to students in emergency situations, so if a family emergency arises and a last-minute flight across the country becomes necessary, a low-income student can make the trip. Not all campuses or scholarship organizations offer this feature, so it’s important to check with the office of student life and/or the financial aid office to get a full list of student benefits and resources.
While many of the students interviewed say that life as a low income student at an elite campus got progressively easier as they got older and carved out their own niches, Duke’s Waldorf notes that her low-income status adds additional pressure to one of the more trying parts of senior year: hunting for a job or applying to graduate school.
“I don’t have money to pay for transportation for interviews. What if my phone gets shut off right before an interview?” she says. “A lot of the Duke population is not thinking about, ‘is it difficult for my neighbor to job search because they don’t have nice interview clothes?’”
To be sure, the solutions to these issues vary on a campus-by-campus basis. Some student career service centers — like Barnard’s — have a suit-borrowing program from which students without business-professional clothing can borrow a donated dress suit with their student ID, at no cost. Other campuses, such as UNC, have a stipend students can apply for that can help pay for interview clothes. Likewise, some colleges and graduate programs (William and Mary’s Mason School of Business is one) have stipends available for job-hunting transportation costs.
LEDA’s Breger says that graduate school application costs – including prep courses, prep books, test fees and school application fees – are so high that is not uncommon for a low income student to decide the costs are prohibitive. Instead, they may graduate and work for a few years to save money and then apply to graduate school. The good news is that there are fee-waivers available for low-income test takers of the GRE, GMAT, LSAT and MCAT; the bad news is that because different testing boards run each exam, the eligibility requirements and application process for the fee waivers vary from test to test, so it’s important to read the fine print before you count on receiving discounted exam fees.
It should be noted that job-related resources aren’t just for low-income seniors; there are a number of stipends and scholarships available for low-income students who wish to pursue unpaid internships and research opportunities earlier in their undergraduate careers — opportunities that are frequently limited to their higher-net-worth counterparts. College Greenlight is one such resource for these scholarships: a division of scholarship search engine Cappex, it dedicates its algorithms to finding resources especially targeted to low-income or first-generation college students (often one and the same). Among the scholarships currently available on College Greenlight is a $10,000 award for a student interested in broadcast journalism or digital media; a $25,000 award with a potential spot in Merck’s summer program, specifically for an African American college junior; and four consecutive paid summers at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California.
Jonathan April, College Greenlight’s general manager, says that many colleges offer their own internship stipend programs, so it’s important to supplement a Cappex/College Greenlight search with visits to the financial aid office and the career services office. (The dual visit might be a pain, but it’s better to leave no stone unturned with these things.)
Ultimately, it’s spreading awareness of resources like these — and not being afraid to have discussions about economic disparities on campus — that will help low-income students feel more at ease at elite universities, students and adult experts say.
Low income students “need to be assured that they’re as entitled to all the resources of a Smith education as any other student here. It’s often not so much about direct intervention so much as exposing them to all the incredible opportunities we have here, and to make sure they know these opportunities are for them,” Smith’s Mahoney says.
Breger echoes these sentiments. “You’re getting an education valued at a quarter-million dollars and you should milk every dollar you can,” she says. “Get the most bang for your buck whether it’s your buck or not. These resources are part of what make these campuses so phenomenal. It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help; if anything it’s a sign of strength.”
If hearing advice from adults doesn’t help, take it from someone who’s still navigating this often tricky terrain. Harvard’s Christian Ramirez remembers feeling alone as a low-income student at an Ivy League institution at first, but slowly realizing there were many other students like him and it was okay to ask one of them, or an administrator, for help.
“[The school’s] resources are there to help you, and don’t be afraid to seek them out,” he says, ultimately concluding that success is possible if students channel one key characteristic. “It’s about being tenacious. I think tenacity in these situations can go a long way.”
Also on Forbes:
-
“”In 2012 the worlds 100 richest people earned a total of $240 Billion, enough Capital to END EXTREME POVERTY WORLWIDE four times over”". The PRIORITY of the ELITE must be to END POVERTY all OVER the WORLD!!. All human beings should be educated, and have the same opportunities, all over the world, that today only few privileged humans have!!. The ELITE can no longer have the poor, ignorant and miserable living in the DARK AGES while they live in the FUTURE!!.
-
Try that RIDICULOUS tripe on LEGAL Americans unemployed by 15,000,000 ILLEGALS INVADING the USA.
Fool.
-
Considering there are 5.2 Billion people living in poverty across the world, I doubt that the wealth of the 100 richest people would end poverty. Would help some, but if you’d spent even a minute working with poor people in places like Somalia, you’d see that even to get some help to them is a monumental task.
What was left out in this article is that college expenses are stressing not just the poor, but the “middle class” who are required to borrow heavily to attend in the first place.
Perhaps the first question that should be asked, is why a college education costs tens of thousands more in real dollars than it did only 10 years ago, and nearly three times more than it did 20 years ago?
These institutions of “higher education” have spend lavishly on luxuries that have less to do with learning, than competition among themselves to provide a 4-year fantasy experience.
As for giving people “the same opportunities all over the world”, I’ll start with trying to reduce hunger, disease, and overpopulation. We can worry about 4-year colleges after that’s solved.
-
Since I started with my online business, I earn $62 every 15 minutes! My best friend has been averaging 11k for months now and he works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. The potential with this is endless. This is what I do…. Јоbs95.Сom
-
It was very brave of Kelly to write that particular article in Duke’s student newspaper. I’m glad that she is getting the opportunity to study at a place like Duke, and I’m sure that she will be a credit to the university.
-
Google “Victim Studies.” There’s your answer.
-
I googled “victim studies”. Mostly it looked like they were referring to victims of crimes, which doesn’t seem to apply here. Perhaps you meant ‘Bitterness studies’?
I for one am having a really hard time feeling sympathy for these privileged children. Who cares if they are poor? I was poor, paid my own way at a cheaper school, and I certainly didn’t have a scholarship that paid for me to go to such an expensive school as Duke. Rather than complain about what you DON’T have, why not express gratitude for what you DO have? (Try not to play the victim your entire life; people around you will start treating you like the plague that you are if you do it too much).
-
“Rather than complain about what you DON’T have, why not express gratitude for what you DO have?”
Reducing to the absurd, slaves, whether modern or historical, should never complain about not having freedom, they should be grateful they weren’t killed in various wars that resulted in some of them becoming slaves.
I’m going to treat you like a jerk, because that’s the way you’re coming off. Jerk.
I, for one, am glad these people are standing up for these issues. Someone needs to, or the close kin of the issues will never even be looked at at less elite schools, much less addressed.
-
“Setting up a bank account for the first time. How to make an appointment with a professor. How to ask for a recommendation letter. How to navigate support from a TA (teaching assistant),” are things lower-income students need to learn..” These comments are absurd! Berger makes it seem as if low-income students are inadequate individuals. We go to these competitive, and highly priced, universities to..COMPETE! Compete amongst our peers. Compete in the professional work field. To compete in a country who obviously looks down on the lower-class. This article isn’t defending low-income students, because it is missing the main point. We are going to top universities so we can create better opportunities for ourselves, but we feel isolated on campus when we are REQUIRED to buy overpriced books, or are being socially denied by our peers for not being able to afford campus clubs, fraternities, and other on campus events. We are not retarded! We have earned admissions just like any other student, so if you want to help, figure out a way for all students to become equals once they step foot on that college campus. Do not discriminate based on income level. Lets not forget… we are the children trying to make it, so why punish us for our parents not being able to reach a certain level of expected wealth…we are on your campus to work towards obtaining our financial goals. Kelly I truly appreciate you contributing to this article, and am glad to see you are working towards creating better opportunities for underprivileged university students.
-
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/10/washington-lee-university-to-offer-free-tuition-to-needy-students-95405.html
w&l to offer free tuition to students whose families make less than 75,000 a yr
-
It is a challenge, indeed! As a former WashU alum, it makes me sad to see how few “poor” students they accept. The school was very fond of reminding us (as teaching assistants) that not all students were from wealthy homes, but they were referring to a very small group.
-
An excellent article…and this attitude progresses throughout lives. The same goes for many who know wealthies, where keeping up is the prize, having experienced this myself. Character keeps those friendships together; though it’s tough in college where friendships come & go. I feel a sorrow 4 richies, albeit having it all because they have no limits. Middle brows at least learn early how to schmooze for a time and then continue in their own realm. They learn better skills in the long-run, I feel. Their priorities can be more principled and appreciative. I call myself, The Camper; a mentality that goes everywhere and can make ‘almost’ something out of nothing.
-
Spare us the crocodile tears about the plight of low-income students
in top universities. While the wealthy are indeed overrepresented, the group
that is really underrepresented in these schools are middle-income students.
Low income students often get a full paid ride (minus the $200 dresses
or jet-setting trips about Europe), but middle-income students get
minimal aid packages, which usually leaves state schools as the most
realistic option for these students. These are fine schools, but stop
playing the fake victim card! -
If you can’t afford to be there, you don’t belong! There are over 250 Colleges to choose from, some of which may be in your budjet.
-
I can appreciate these problems, having been a student at both elite and state commuter colleges. Even as an undergrad at a state commuter college, UMBC in the 70′s, I had friends who toured Europe in the Summer or studied overseas during the Semester break in January, while I worked to save money for school. Fortunately I had a job on campus my last two years that gave me enough spending money to party with friends, one of whose parents had a rental property in Ocean City, MD we got to enjoy for a week each summer.
I got scholarship and teaching assistantship to IIT and my 1973 stipend of $325/month (about $1600 month in 2013 dollars and requiring me to teach 2 4-hour labs per week and grade papers) allowed me to keep up with the rich kids in the dorms. Still, I had a black/white TV and they had color, they had a small room refrigerator and in cold weather I used the space between the screen and window in my room, they had their own phone and I used the pay phone in the hallway.
But my teaching assistantship put me on equal-footing for the most part, so I can’t complain. I did feel sorry for the guys from poor families like mine who didn’t have extra money coming in. They spent their “spare” time working 20-30 hours per week to try to keep up on the cost of books, etc. -
Thank you for writing this. On this note, I think the challenges of being poor extend further even after college when one is applying for a job. Often times the HR’s are not willing to consider the individual personal differences one student had from another income level being one of them & the ways it may contribute to the lack of internships, lower GPA, etc. You do a good job of pointing out the isolation that students may feel but often times there are also pressures on those low income students to work part time to support themselves or their families making it that much more difficult to devote adequate amount of hours to their studies. While the resources may be there it makes it that much more difficult to take advantage of them if you are constantly working all the time. Also, while there may be stereotypes about poor people there are also stereotypes about rich people its important to consider both perspectives when talking about such a sensitive issue. I understand that this has not been the focus of the article but I would love to see the perspective of what society labels as “rich students” and their experiences on college campuses.
-
Thanks for reading! Completely agree about how many still support their families — I had some sources talk about this pressure but because the article veered a bit more towards social pressures/isolation, I had to leave it on the cutting room floor. It’s certainly a complex topic and the many angles — the academic pressures, the POV of students from other social classes — certainly create fertile ground for potential future coverage.
-
Believe it or not, some poor people don’t attend these schools because they anticipate the class injuries awaiting them and don’t wish to be “saved” by the rich and privileged. Here’s a quote that I read and thought a worthy response to this piece:
“Forbes is a right wing source, so maybe that it is their spin. But for anyone reading this, it’s obvious that people who are oppressed through class or race face incredible challenges, and small band-aids, like ensuring a tiny proportion of oppressed students are present alongside silver spoon students in top universities, just isn’t enough to address the massive economic and racial inequality in America – and isn’t enough to really ensure these young people equal opportunities, even if they manage to graduate from these universities without the support their peers receive.
Deep and radical problems need radical change. At the very least, university tuition fees & private school fees should be abolished.”
-
I think my issue with this article is that it focuses on minority students who are poor. It makes me wonder what its like to be a white student at an elite school who isn’t poor? I myself come from an upper-middle class background and went to an Ivy League and because I’m black I feel like I’ve had people judge my financial status because of it. Yes, there is a challenge of being poor at a wealthy university and the wealth disparities can be harsh but they are apart of reality. And elite schools, in my opinion, do try to accept more lower income students and help them as needed, but the wealth disparity is reflective of the educational disparity as well.
-
This is a subject of an article in Forbes?
-
while i empathize with the plight of the poor at elite universities, i’m not entirely sure what this article accomplishes beyond its title. it’s a challenge being poor at americas poorest colleges too. it’s a challenge being poor at penn station on the coldest winter day when the amtrak security people intuitively know that your shoulder bag contains everything you own and not just some travel stuff and so they won’t let you into their waiting area where rows and rows of empty seats call out to your weary soul; so you have to try and find somewhere anywhere in the station to sit and hope for a minute or two of sleep before the police push up against you and tell you to move along. while i wasn’t destitute when i showed up at columbia university for my undergraduate education, i was poor. particularly in comparison with the bulk of my peers, most of whom were the sort one would expect to see at an ivy league college. columbia is particularly special being situated in new york city, the crossroads of obscene wealth and heartbreaking poverty in america. still, i’m glad i was poor. i didn’t need to be coddled because of my lack of an amex black card from mommy. i got a work study job and learned about life. i learned things completely incomprehensible to so many denizens of insulating wealth bubbles. people who don’t know what want means until the proles are dragging them to the guillotine. i can’t speak for schools outside the ivy league or even schools other than columbia but i found a job in the library that provided more than enough money for any reasonable expense of daily living and learned some priceless lessons about life and wealth and where value lies. now i have an ivy league degree and i’m still poor. i must like it.
-
You have to be smarter than your high school classmates to get into Brown. The real kick in the head is discovering that most of the rich kids are smarter than you. I’m not sure how letting in more poor kids would help. Maybe Brown should admit some rich kids who are stupid. Or not.
-
great article definitely agree that this is overlooked. Many students from low -income families have to struggle in college to make eds meet although they have already gained admission and a promised “full financial aid package”. the worst is when they say I wish there was something I could do
-
I asked myself why I am not born to be an American, when all the opportunities and scholarships are free for them. They have universities that are so great that out universities here in Philippines is just like a high school in America. I have read several different articles about scholarships in America but there every scholarship’s eligibility needs you to be a US citizen. No one ever wrote here in Forbes about scholarships for international citizen. My hunger and thrive for knowledge never stop because I was poor or there are no scholarships for us Filipinos to elite universities in America, I have read useful articles here in Forbes that are useful in some way. I’ve discovered edx.org and code.org through Forbes and when I enrolled in those different online course, I found out the big difference between studying here and abroad. Studying online isn’t enough because some of my queries were not answered, having the right resources to perform those assignments are also difficult and it is really different to be in university than to study online.
-
As a student of lower income at an elite school in the US, I do think about these issues for international students. There are many int’l students at my university, but according the the schools website it only gives scholarships to about 50 of them per year. I’m not sure if this all full scholarship, or some partial scholarship; however, this means that the majority of international students are paying almost $60,000 a year on an education. This means a lot of great students from around the world are losing out. I was just talking to some people yesterday in Spanish on a language conversation website, and one person was from the Phillipines. I commented that I was really excited to be able to study abroad next semester in a Spanish-speaking country, and he told me that he’d love to be able to visit somewhere where he could be surrounded by the language, but he does not have enough money. I didn’t get to tell him that the only reason I can do such a thing is because of the generous financial aid given to me by my university. My family hardly ever even travels during vacations.
-
This doesn’t address the hardship of “not poverty level” but “not upper middle class” Middle class income family around 60K household income find themselves earning “too much” to get full rides and “too little” to share in the perks to get in to the top schools. We find our selves working very hard to get accepted into the Ivy Leagues. Once we do get accepted we find that we can’t afford to attend unless we are willing to take on a 250K debt. Of course schools like Harvard and Princeton are generous in their financial aid, but that can’t be said for other Ivys or private schools. Basically, you have to be really poor or really rich to be able to afford to attend without too much debt, or just attend the school that offers you the best scholarship.
-
All of this is very true, but I think it’s important to stress that this issue also has a particular impact on many middle class students. I come from a middle class income family in a very wealthy region, and went to a public high school where most of the students came from families wealthier than my family. My parents are really breaking the bank to send me to a top-tier private university. I don’t get nearly enough need-based financial aid, as my parents are supporting my sister who is in graduate school (considered independent, for financial aid purposes, though she is definitely dependent). So it is not just the issue of not having enough spending money as my peers, but accruing a ton of loans, as well. My school’s need-based financial need program covers all “demonstrated” need, but due to certain regulations, cannot give my parents extra money though they have a dependent living with them and a ton of debt from my older siblings attending college. Many low income students have access to more resources and have an advantage (on internship applications, etc) due to their disadvantaged status. While I agree that they should have that advantage, where does that leave students like me? Disadvantaged enough to qualify for some additional aid, but not really enough, while creating a load of debt and still never having nearly as much spending money as my friends who don’t qualify for need-based aid (will pay $237,000 in full for 4 years of education without any aid).