Unless you are a student whose parents work hourly paid jobs and likely earn less than the cost of a yearās tuition, you can only imagine what it is like to navigate the environment of an elite college as a high-achieving, low-income student. Until recently, low-income students gaining admission to elite colleges have been the focus of public debate and educational research because, ironically, those students who have the most to gain have the least access to institutions that pave the way toward social mobility .
Currently, elite schools are shifting their focus toward a more inclusionary model by confronting their lack of socio-economic diversity. Highly publicized āno loanā and āneed-blindā policies at elite schools have begun to address financial barriers and the burden of debt that prevents low-income students from choosing to apply.
Even with elite schools attempting to eliminate barriers for low-income students, many still exist. The Supreme Courtās dec ision (Fisher v. University of Texas) to uphold the challenge to a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas at Austin allowed race and ethnicity to serve as a factor in admissio ns. R ichard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at The Century Foundation , views the decision as a setback, and would favor using low income in place of race to achieve diversity.1 The most recent US Department of Education data shows the percentage of students from low-income families at highly selective colleges has not changed significantly in the past decade.2 Further research by Raj Chetty and Colleagues, using federal government data, indicates Ivy League colleges have more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution.3
Elite institutions need to recognize that for high-achieving, low-income students to āovercome the burdens of poverty and perform at a high level is itself an indicator of ability and perseverance.ā4 In their work, True Merit: Ensuring Our Brightest Students have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities, Richard Kahlenberg and Jennifer Gianco la acknowledge both the academic achievement and the long journey for hig h-achieving, low-income students who are determined to graduate from high school and attend an elite college.5 They conclude that current admissions policies make it harder for the high-achieving, low-income student to be admitted to selective institutions than for others.6
Many high-achieving, low-income students donāt apply to elite schools even with the possibility of generous financial aid packages. Stanfo rd economist Caroline M. Hoxby e xplains that many low-income students experience āsticker price shockā or undermatch by applying to schools that fall short of their credentials and true potential.7 Further, when low-income students do apply, upper-middle-class students are still most likely to benefit from early admissions policies and legacy practices of elite schools.8 Low-income students who do beat the odds encounter elite schools accustomed to serving upper-middle-class students. These well-intentioned, elite schools have not transitioned effectively to address economic diversity on campus.
Current research focuses on the admissions process of low-income students to elite schools. However, there is a dearth of research to reveal what happens to high-achieving, low-income students once they are admitted and attend classes. Accordingly, this book examines how previously excluded high-achieving, low-income students are faring socially and academically at an Ivy League college in New England. This book chronicles an ethnographic stu dy of 20 low-income men and women in their se nior year at Dartmouth College with 4- and 12-ye ar follow-ups. The students interviewed comprised 13 women and 7 men, and included 6 Caucasians, 5 Asi ans, 4 African Americans, 2 Latinos, 2 Native Americans, and 1 student of mixed racial background. Eighteen of those students were from the clas s of 2003, and two were from the class of 2004. My sample represented a quarter of the 80 low-income (US citizen) students from the class of 2003, 46 of whom were female and 34 male.9 At the request of the students, I have used pseudonyms. In addition, I have altered certain biographical information to avoid revealing the identity of the students. The information altered was not substantial to the interview.
In the 2003 graduating class at Dartmouth, 80 out of 1025 students came from families whose annual income was $40,000 or less.10 At that time, the cost of Dartmouth tuition , room and board was $35,988,11 while the annual median income for American families between 1999 and 2000 was $50,000.12
My motivations for studying low-income students at an elite college were scholarly, idealistic, and personal. As a scholar, I wanted to make visible the invi sible and to share the class-based stories of low-income students at an elite college. Like many of my research participants, I was a first-generation co llege student; idealistically, I wanted low-income students, including myself, to better understand how their social class impacted their college experience. My hope is to help bring visibility and self-awareness to low-income students, expose class issues and struggles, and encourage elite institutions to change their policies and practices to address the needs of these students. However, underlying all of these reasons, personally and selfishly, I had a powerful need to make sense of my own experience of fitting into and negotiating a n elite culture.
My father emigrated from Ireland as a young ma n and my mother grew up in the projects of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My fatherās education ended in high school, when he was needed to help work the family farm; my mother graduated from secretarial school by attending evening classes. Once in the States, my father worked various manual labo r jobs until he was hired as a welder and then as a steamfitter at Harvard University, and my mother worked several different hourly paid jobs.
Early on, seeking the American Dream , my parents bought a single-family house on the outskirts of Boston with an attic apartment where my grandfather could live. As a child, I remember my father going to work wearing his brown uniform with Harvard University embroidered on the left shirt pocket while my mother held part-time, hourly paid jobs, including babysitter, librarian aid, and later full-time secre tary. When I was eight, my parents moved to an affluent Boston suburb, into a fixer-upper house that my father rebuilt with the help of extended family , so my brother and I could attend better schools. By the time I was in high school, in addition to their full-time jobs, my parents had started a real-estate business. At first, they worked their regular day jobs and their real-estate business at night. Eventually they quit their day jobs to focus solely on real estate, often working six or seven days a week. During their busy times, my brother and I, both reluctant teenagers, vacuumed hallways, scrubbed bathtubs, and painted walls after tenants had moved out.
Although my parents worked hard to provide my brother and me many opportunities in this new white-collar community, we were still a working-class family. I remember my parents stressing the importance of going to college. With the help of my high school college counselor, I was accepted with financial aid and a work-study plan to a small, private, liberal arts college.
In my junior year, I desperately wanted to study in England. The college sponsored a trip for 2 English history professors and 15 students to live in a working-class community in England. My professors must have assumed their students came from privilege and that living in a working-class town would broaden our knowledge and understanding. When my parents heard this they almost refused to let me go. My father had spent two years in England on the assembly line at Vauxhall Motors, a subsidiary of General Motors. They felt I had had enough exposure to the working class and wanted me to learn about upper-class England!
As a college student, I recognized the differences between my upper-middle-class peers a nd myself, but I lacked the language and cultural capital to fully understand and explain those differences. Years later, as a scholar and college administra tor, I sought to quest...