
Elite Colleges Make Low-Income Students Feel Unwelcome - lifeisstillgood
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/privileged-poor-navigating-elite-university-life/585100/
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omnomnomtea
I really feel this. This article felt almost like a "duh" moment to me, but I
realize not everyone has the same experience as me.

I went to an "elite" college (Northwestern University- thought about hiding
the name, but really this says more about them than it does about me). I could
easily have gone hungry if the cards had played out a little differently.
(Friends would sneak me food from the dining hall when I couldn't get enough
meals to sustain me, which got me through the worst of it, so I never actually
missed more than a meal here or there)

If there was a way to get free tickets to anything, as in the school in the
article, I never heard about it. Like the students in this article, I didn't
knew what office hours were for until later. Oh, and I was charged to apply
for financial aid, because they required an application that cost $20 in
addition to the FAFSA. That year I had to beg my aunt for $20 or I wouldn't
have been able to apply for financial aid for the next year. Navigating the
system to get financial aid was a battle every year.

I graduated a few years ago, make good money now, and honestly I don't think
I'll ever donate money to NU after the experiences I had there. Sure, they let
me in and gave me need-based-aid - but they sure didn't do anything else to
help me succeed. Saying that elite colleges make low-income students "feel
unwelcome" is an understatement.

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mmsimanga
I can understand you not donating to institution, are you donating to students
in a similar position to you when you were studying?

~~~
screye
If only donations could be targeted to specific causes and not massive
faceless pools of cash which can go anywhere.

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hopler
A more accurate headline is "Elite Colleges don't eliminate every downside of
being poor, despite giving the most generous gifts poor students have received
from anyone in their entire lives except their immediate family."

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hashberry
Classism is America's dirty secret. What makes these colleges "elite?" Rich
kids attend them because their rich parents attended them (or donated to
them).

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ThrowawayR2
Depends on what kind of "elite" school it is. The top 10 engineering
university I attended had its own nuclear reactor for its nuclear engineering
program and the ability to fabricate chips on-site.

And, yeah, as a low-income student, I did feel unwelcome there. But the
education was worth it.

