What sort of programs/services do the rich use to get ahead?
May 8, 2017 3:05 PM Subscribe
I was reading this article on economic inequality and a Harvard professor was quoted as saying:
"Smart poor kids are less likely to graduate college than rich dumb kids because of advantages that are available to them."
Besides the obvious money -- what are these advantages (not limited to school, but career too)?
Since merit isn't enough, what else can "the rest of us" do to try to bridge the gap? What kinds of programs, support or services do "rich dumb people" use to push ahead?
Since merit isn't enough, what else can "the rest of us" do to try to bridge the gap? What kinds of programs, support or services do "rich dumb people" use to push ahead?
Among others:
Family connections
Not needing to work during school term or summers
Being able to intern during summers
Alumni preferences for getting into college
Having the "right" clothes, accent, appearance for college, internship, and job interviews
posted by lazuli at 3:09 PM on May 8, 2017 [12 favorites]
Family connections
Not needing to work during school term or summers
Being able to intern during summers
Alumni preferences for getting into college
Having the "right" clothes, accent, appearance for college, internship, and job interviews
posted by lazuli at 3:09 PM on May 8, 2017 [12 favorites]
Ivy League "whisperer's" big promise to parents
Think Tank Learning is a prominent chain of college prep services in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up with one in my hometown, but I basically refused to pay money for it because I spent a lot of my high school life living on College Confidential instead. I did not have to have a part time job in high school, so I spent all of my free time obsessing over getting into college. These are not the actual 'rich legacy' kids like people talk about when it comes to Ivy Leagues, but a great deal of the clients are from upper middle class East Asian and South Asian families, usually with 1st, 1.5, or 2nd generation kids. When I read the college essay samples that they provided, I thought they were well-written technically, but lacked the heart of people who were really feeling their experiences.
posted by yueliang at 3:10 PM on May 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
Think Tank Learning is a prominent chain of college prep services in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up with one in my hometown, but I basically refused to pay money for it because I spent a lot of my high school life living on College Confidential instead. I did not have to have a part time job in high school, so I spent all of my free time obsessing over getting into college. These are not the actual 'rich legacy' kids like people talk about when it comes to Ivy Leagues, but a great deal of the clients are from upper middle class East Asian and South Asian families, usually with 1st, 1.5, or 2nd generation kids. When I read the college essay samples that they provided, I thought they were well-written technically, but lacked the heart of people who were really feeling their experiences.
posted by yueliang at 3:10 PM on May 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
I also recently went to a hack-a-thon, where the UI/UX designer who advised us on our app told us that her daughter was going to be interning at a professor's lab at my alma mater, as a high school junior. They also are from my hometown. The level of education, wealth, network access, communication savvy, transportation, and living privilege to be able to do that is inaccessible for most people.
(As a caveat, I always rolled my eyes in high school when I had classmates who did that in high school. Mostly out of petty jealousy, but also because legitimately I didn't know that was even an option until after those summers were over. Even amongst my own public high school, the levels of ambition and knowing what to do and which programs to go to was really, really tough and startling. And then I met people from actual private schools, and the level of resources they had was intense. I learned how to read the resource pages of elite private high schools and universities from this experience.
This experience is contrasted with a good friend of mine who came from poorer areas of Long Beach, who didn't even know how to prepare for the SAT, or what a-g requirements were, or how to get into a UC or CSU. Not any less intelligent, just incredibly less prepared. Structural inequity is so real.)
posted by yueliang at 3:15 PM on May 8, 2017 [28 favorites]
(As a caveat, I always rolled my eyes in high school when I had classmates who did that in high school. Mostly out of petty jealousy, but also because legitimately I didn't know that was even an option until after those summers were over. Even amongst my own public high school, the levels of ambition and knowing what to do and which programs to go to was really, really tough and startling. And then I met people from actual private schools, and the level of resources they had was intense. I learned how to read the resource pages of elite private high schools and universities from this experience.
This experience is contrasted with a good friend of mine who came from poorer areas of Long Beach, who didn't even know how to prepare for the SAT, or what a-g requirements were, or how to get into a UC or CSU. Not any less intelligent, just incredibly less prepared. Structural inequity is so real.)
posted by yueliang at 3:15 PM on May 8, 2017 [28 favorites]
What kinds of programs, support or services do "rich dumb people" use to push ahead?
It's not that "rich dumb kids" are enrolling in programs that help them along that poor kids could use if they knew about them. It's more a combination of cultural literacy and comfort with academic culture and families that enable pushing their child through college.
Late or misfiled paperwork might seem like a school-ending error, but most people comfortable with organization bureaucracy will find out how to get the problem smoothed over. Taking a semester off to get one's academic life in order might seem like "dropping out," but someone with an understanding of bureaucracy will remain aware of the process for returning (including maintaining financial aid) or what conditions someone can be readmitted if they are "asked" not to come back the following semester. A poor student unaware of what college is like might see such bumps in the road as insurmountable impediments to finishing.
Another issue is parents. Rich parents have no dependence on their children and will view their job to get their child through college. Many children from poor families will be obligated to return home to help with siblings, sick relatives , or to keep the family business afloat, returning us back to the issue of how to make sure to go back to school after an interruption.
Things like financial aid are systems meant to serve poor students but designed around the skill set of upper middle class people.
What I think universities should do in order to better serve the population of first-generation college students would be to streamline the financial aid process: paperwork should be minimal beyond their parents' tax returns. Simple "flowcharts" of what to do in terms of getting through any interruptions or slowdowns in education are needed, along with liaisons specifically for those students that are aware of those students' needs and to answer questions about "how do I fix this?" that wealthier students wouldn't even think to worry about.
A more controversial initiative would be to inculcate students with a sense that their primary obligation is to themselves to finish their education and secure their future and not to feel obligated deal with any crises at home that may be short term compared to their need to graduate.
posted by deanc at 3:28 PM on May 8, 2017 [33 favorites]
It's not that "rich dumb kids" are enrolling in programs that help them along that poor kids could use if they knew about them. It's more a combination of cultural literacy and comfort with academic culture and families that enable pushing their child through college.
Late or misfiled paperwork might seem like a school-ending error, but most people comfortable with organization bureaucracy will find out how to get the problem smoothed over. Taking a semester off to get one's academic life in order might seem like "dropping out," but someone with an understanding of bureaucracy will remain aware of the process for returning (including maintaining financial aid) or what conditions someone can be readmitted if they are "asked" not to come back the following semester. A poor student unaware of what college is like might see such bumps in the road as insurmountable impediments to finishing.
Another issue is parents. Rich parents have no dependence on their children and will view their job to get their child through college. Many children from poor families will be obligated to return home to help with siblings, sick relatives , or to keep the family business afloat, returning us back to the issue of how to make sure to go back to school after an interruption.
Things like financial aid are systems meant to serve poor students but designed around the skill set of upper middle class people.
What I think universities should do in order to better serve the population of first-generation college students would be to streamline the financial aid process: paperwork should be minimal beyond their parents' tax returns. Simple "flowcharts" of what to do in terms of getting through any interruptions or slowdowns in education are needed, along with liaisons specifically for those students that are aware of those students' needs and to answer questions about "how do I fix this?" that wealthier students wouldn't even think to worry about.
A more controversial initiative would be to inculcate students with a sense that their primary obligation is to themselves to finish their education and secure their future and not to feel obligated deal with any crises at home that may be short term compared to their need to graduate.
posted by deanc at 3:28 PM on May 8, 2017 [33 favorites]
Part of the idea of privilege (and the corresponding ideas of institutionalized racism/sexism) is that certain things are just easier and you don't even know they're easy because they seem normal to you. I taught college at a community college where a lot of the kids were 1st generation college students and part of our jobs, as teachers, was to work with them on these soft skills to help them stay in school and take advantage of things like counseling, physical and mental health care, tutoring, withdrawing and finishing later, etc.
I saw a lot of students who were super bright who would have some sort of issue in their extended family (a sick relative as one example) and it completely would derail the kid who was a support network person (and maybe a financial support network person) for a family with very few other resources. So the big thing is not just your resources but how much you have to support other people who may be dealing with compounding issues like health and money and structural inequality. A dumb rich college kid often isn't like the only person with a car (for example) who might suddenly have to take an aunt to twice-weekly chemo treatments.
But as far as things that an average kid could do, yueliang has some great examples. Other things just include being miserly about all your money options to minimize future debt. Go to the library and read test prep stuff, focus on practical skills that will help you get ahead, not just TED talk "big idea" stuff. Make connections like it's your job. Look for opportunities. Try to be agreeable (this is one of those problematic things about wealth is that it can just make people more ... relaxed which can translate into being easier to be around. This sucks and is unfair, but figuring out how to do basic level How to Win Friends and Influence People stuff is a learnable skill even if you hate it).
Be mindful of style issues and how they can affect stuff like this. I also work at a vocational high school (mostly with adults) and the kids in my rural community needed (and got) advice on things like "How to dress for business" and "How to do good in a job interview" Not like, again, these aren't things you can learn (and even stuff you can do on a budget) but they may not heave learned them from anyone and it's a very different set of skills to have a workplace ready wardrobe on a limited budget than it is to just walk into J Crew or LL Bean or Brooks Brothers or Macy's and walk out with a suit.
Just that idea of meta-messages, that the things you do send signals and that you're somewhat responsible to knowing that world of signals, is a thing that is a little more subtle (and learnable) but hard to focus on when you've got survival level stuff on your mind.
posted by jessamyn at 3:32 PM on May 8, 2017 [26 favorites]
I saw a lot of students who were super bright who would have some sort of issue in their extended family (a sick relative as one example) and it completely would derail the kid who was a support network person (and maybe a financial support network person) for a family with very few other resources. So the big thing is not just your resources but how much you have to support other people who may be dealing with compounding issues like health and money and structural inequality. A dumb rich college kid often isn't like the only person with a car (for example) who might suddenly have to take an aunt to twice-weekly chemo treatments.
But as far as things that an average kid could do, yueliang has some great examples. Other things just include being miserly about all your money options to minimize future debt. Go to the library and read test prep stuff, focus on practical skills that will help you get ahead, not just TED talk "big idea" stuff. Make connections like it's your job. Look for opportunities. Try to be agreeable (this is one of those problematic things about wealth is that it can just make people more ... relaxed which can translate into being easier to be around. This sucks and is unfair, but figuring out how to do basic level How to Win Friends and Influence People stuff is a learnable skill even if you hate it).
Be mindful of style issues and how they can affect stuff like this. I also work at a vocational high school (mostly with adults) and the kids in my rural community needed (and got) advice on things like "How to dress for business" and "How to do good in a job interview" Not like, again, these aren't things you can learn (and even stuff you can do on a budget) but they may not heave learned them from anyone and it's a very different set of skills to have a workplace ready wardrobe on a limited budget than it is to just walk into J Crew or LL Bean or Brooks Brothers or Macy's and walk out with a suit.
Just that idea of meta-messages, that the things you do send signals and that you're somewhat responsible to knowing that world of signals, is a thing that is a little more subtle (and learnable) but hard to focus on when you've got survival level stuff on your mind.
posted by jessamyn at 3:32 PM on May 8, 2017 [26 favorites]
Many children from poor families will be obligated to return home to help with siblings, sick relatives , or to keep the family business afloat, returning us back to the issue of how to make sure to go back to school after an interruption.
This is incredibly true - many of my first generation college student friends have had to withdraw or drop out because they didn't know or to anticipate the bureaucratic awfulness of the university, because they get caught in a maze of hell. Some of them have initially told me that they feel like they're idiots because "no one told them" when in fact it's the opposite, and that they just were not prepared or were not given proper guidance.
While for me, as a daughter of parents who came here for graduate school and had to navigate both university and immigration loops, I've been trained since I was a child to anticipate and ask proper questions from administrators and bureaucracy in order to anticipate problems, and to be assertive when it comes to getting needs met. But I also had to learn the proper 'polite language' to do so. But even then, I had hell to navigate with the mental healthcare system, which I definitely was not taught back in my K-12 system.
They also would have to keep sending money from their part time jobs back to their families in order for them to keep their apartments. (This is a side-effect of gentrification - many of the lower income families living in places with rapidly rising rents also have to get money from elsewhere, and sometimes it is their college going children.)
posted by yueliang at 3:32 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is incredibly true - many of my first generation college student friends have had to withdraw or drop out because they didn't know or to anticipate the bureaucratic awfulness of the university, because they get caught in a maze of hell. Some of them have initially told me that they feel like they're idiots because "no one told them" when in fact it's the opposite, and that they just were not prepared or were not given proper guidance.
While for me, as a daughter of parents who came here for graduate school and had to navigate both university and immigration loops, I've been trained since I was a child to anticipate and ask proper questions from administrators and bureaucracy in order to anticipate problems, and to be assertive when it comes to getting needs met. But I also had to learn the proper 'polite language' to do so. But even then, I had hell to navigate with the mental healthcare system, which I definitely was not taught back in my K-12 system.
They also would have to keep sending money from their part time jobs back to their families in order for them to keep their apartments. (This is a side-effect of gentrification - many of the lower income families living in places with rapidly rising rents also have to get money from elsewhere, and sometimes it is their college going children.)
posted by yueliang at 3:32 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
Upper-middle-class and rich parents know a lot more about the college application process, which means that they can help their kids take advantage of all kinds of opportunities. For instance, I have a friend who is very good at standardized tests, and she would have been eligible for National Merit scholarships if she had taken the PSAT. But nobody at her school told her she should take the PSAT, and her parents didn't know, so she never had a shot at all of those scholarships. Her parents also didn't know that the state flagship school was more prestigious than the directional state university that was nearest to her, so she only applied to directional state. She didn't know that she should apply to a bunch of different schools so she could compare financial aid packages and factor that into her decision. She didn't know that she might be eligible for financial aid at private schools, so she should apply to them even though the sticker price was unaffordable.
Increasingly, colleges are viewing financial aid as a recruitment tool: it's a way to improve their yield by luring particular students to their school. And it turns out that rich kids are more likely to be swayed by a good financial aid package than poor kids are, because poor kids often behave like my friend: they apply to one school, which is typically the closest public university, and then they try to figure out how to make the money work. Rich kids apply to 15 or 20 schools and then carefully choose between the places where they get in. And because of that, colleges are devoting more and more of their financial aid to kids who don't particularly need it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:39 PM on May 8, 2017 [15 favorites]
Increasingly, colleges are viewing financial aid as a recruitment tool: it's a way to improve their yield by luring particular students to their school. And it turns out that rich kids are more likely to be swayed by a good financial aid package than poor kids are, because poor kids often behave like my friend: they apply to one school, which is typically the closest public university, and then they try to figure out how to make the money work. Rich kids apply to 15 or 20 schools and then carefully choose between the places where they get in. And because of that, colleges are devoting more and more of their financial aid to kids who don't particularly need it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:39 PM on May 8, 2017 [15 favorites]
Some of the high prestige programs that are designed to help bridge low-income and underrepresented college applicants with high cultural literacy and savvy to getting into top rate colleges are these. There's a whole world of summer programs, scholarships, and competitions that a lot of people are not exposed to.
QuestBridge
Posse Foundation
TASP
posted by yueliang at 3:43 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
QuestBridge
Posse Foundation
TASP
posted by yueliang at 3:43 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
Another thing that rich kids get is second chances when they fuck up. They're less likely to get caught when they break the law, partly because their communities are less likely to be policed aggressively than poorer communities are. If they do get caught, their parents can afford good lawyers who can minimize the damage by, for instance, helping them plead to a misdemeanor rather than felonies that will limit job opportunities. In my state, it's sometimes possible to get a criminal record expunged, but it's a complicated process that is helped if you can hire a lawyer or are really savvy about legal stuff. If they have substance abuse problems, rich kids and young adults can often arrange to get treatment rather than enter the criminal justice system. If they have an underlying mental health issue, they are more likely to have access to treatment for it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:16 PM on May 8, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:16 PM on May 8, 2017 [19 favorites]
If you're white and have money and prestige and influence, your parents have similar friends, and you get more interesting summer jobs, internships, travel, camps, courses. You have the option of volunteering because you don't have to work at a fast food place. Your parents can hire a tutor when your work in an academic area isn't strong. Your parents use good grammar, there are a lot of books around. You are immersed in an environment where people are educated and have a higher set of expectations. Your parents, siblings, neighbors,
cousins, etc.
posted by theora55 at 4:19 PM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
cousins, etc.
posted by theora55 at 4:19 PM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
Besides the obvious money -- what are these advantages (not limited to school, but career too)?This is anecdotal, but one that I've been struck by is that well-off students are much more likely to unselfconsciously ask for things: deadline extensions, assignment regrading, grade changes, research jobs, required course exceptions, school funds to support their activities. Not all of them, of course - there are polite and shy kids among the wealthy, and brash kids among the working class. But the class difference has been pretty obvious in my limited experience. (I'm tempted to speculate on the reasons for this - there are some obvious candidates - but it would just be a guess.)
As a working class kid in college it never would have occurred to me to ask for a better final grade without having found an incontrovertible grading error, and I more or less just waited around doing good classwork until someone noticed me and offered me a research position. Showing up at the door of a professor you've never met and asking them to hire you (with pay) for a summer job would have never occurred to me.
Each individual event doesn't count for much, but it all adds up. If one out of every eight unmotivated "please raise my grade, I worked really hard" requests bumps up your score by half a letter, by the time you graduate it can make a real difference. If you ask thirty people a year for a research job and 5% of them say yes, you've got four different positions on your cv and plenty of recommendation letters by the time you graduate. By the end of college, the assertive student has had thousands of more opportunities to get lucky than their less assertive peers.
I'm not sure how to fix things. For those of us in a position to grant opportunities to people, trying to structure things to minimize the rewards for aggressive askers is one option, as is going out of our way to replace informal career-networking with more formal, advertised opportunities. But, until we figure out how to teach poor kids how to be more demanding (which is a dangerous choice for most of them in other contexts, unlike their wealthy peers), it's hard to overcome.
posted by eotvos at 4:22 PM on May 8, 2017 [45 favorites]
Expectations. I knew from a young child I was expected to go to university. Our family went through very bad financial crisis and a lot of my late teens we were technically poorer than 'poor' people since we couldn't claim unemployment and had no income at all. But I still lived in the middle class, it was expected I'd manage it. The lack of money didn't change the expectations of the socioeconomic class I lived in. Kids from long term low income backgrounds didn't have the same assumption that they'd get a degree eventually, they weren't surrounded by friends going to university. It probably helped that were I lived most people lived at home and went locally to uni so I was still around my friends even though I worked and they were students. I returned to study when my friends were starting full time jobs.
posted by kitten magic at 4:23 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by kitten magic at 4:23 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
Well, I can tell you about my experience as a first generation kid. A whole lot of it is simply knowledge about the college process. If your parents haven't gone to college, you miss a LOT of info that, try as they might, guidance counselors can't make up for.
First of all, I had no idea AP classes were even a thing until my senior year of high school. This was partially because I was homeschooled part of my sophomore and junior year, but even as a freshman/sophomore in a public school I don't remember being aware of AP classes. Or, if I was, I didn't understand the benefit they gave you. I didn't realize that they could 1) enhance your transcripts, and 2) reduce the number of credits you take in college. I only took one because I was afraid it would be too hard for me, when in fact I got an A in both that class and every other class I took that year. I suspect many other poor/first generation kids either aren't fully aware of AP classes, or are afraid to take them because they have to worry a lot more about grades than your typical rich kid, because for a lot of them, college is a ticket out that they can't afford to hurt their chances towards.
Then there came the ACT. I had very little understanding of what this test meant or how to prepare for it. My partner happened to have a workbook that I read for about an hour and that's it. I didn't understand what was going to be on the test or what to expect. Rich kids get entire summer-long classes dedicated to preparing for the ACT! I was lucky in that I was smart enough to get a good score anyway, though I suspect had I prepared more it could have been much better.
I also had no idea how college application was supposed to work. I decided on colleges by going to a college fair and listening to someone talk about how great their psychology program was. I then applied to that college. Just that one. No other ones. I figured if I didn't get in, I would apply to the state school (at the time I had taken a year and a half off for health problems so I figured another semester wouldn't kill me). I did get in, luckily, but I did zero college comparisons--I didn't even schedule a college visit. I did go up to visit once before I went, but it turned out to be during their fall break so no one was there and I couldn't see much of anything. It wasn't until afterwards I learned that most people visited every campus before deciding, and spent a lot of time and energy figuring out which college to go to. I really didn't understand that process at all.
Then when I was in college, I had very little understanding of what grad school was or how it worked. It took me probably two years into college before I figured out the difference between an associates, a bachelor's, and a master's (I did understand a PhD was the highest degree, but that's all I knew). I didn't find out the GRE existed until the end of my junior year. Rich kids also get tons of preparation for that. There was no way I was going to spend money on books or classes when I barely had money to pay for my medication, so I just got by with the default example tests on the website. And I didn't start preparing until way too late because, again, I didn't understand what it was or what was being expected of me.
Finally, applying to graduate school would have been a repeat of applying to college except I happened to have an amazing professor who specifically taught us how to apply to grad school as part of his class (it was an upper level psychology class, so he knew most of us were planning on going to grad school). Still, this didn't come until fall of my senior year--a couple of months before application deadlines. So while I did a lot more research, there were no campus visits, and I still struggled a lot through the application process. Most poor kids don't even get what I did.
So, basically, it comes down to just not knowing a lot of the things that are expected of you. Not understanding the process. It's not really much about specific services or programs. Sure, there's test prep. But other than that it just comes down to having a much more streamlined path. And I'm not sure how to change that, except perhaps more free open source information.
posted by brook horse at 4:31 PM on May 8, 2017 [22 favorites]
First of all, I had no idea AP classes were even a thing until my senior year of high school. This was partially because I was homeschooled part of my sophomore and junior year, but even as a freshman/sophomore in a public school I don't remember being aware of AP classes. Or, if I was, I didn't understand the benefit they gave you. I didn't realize that they could 1) enhance your transcripts, and 2) reduce the number of credits you take in college. I only took one because I was afraid it would be too hard for me, when in fact I got an A in both that class and every other class I took that year. I suspect many other poor/first generation kids either aren't fully aware of AP classes, or are afraid to take them because they have to worry a lot more about grades than your typical rich kid, because for a lot of them, college is a ticket out that they can't afford to hurt their chances towards.
Then there came the ACT. I had very little understanding of what this test meant or how to prepare for it. My partner happened to have a workbook that I read for about an hour and that's it. I didn't understand what was going to be on the test or what to expect. Rich kids get entire summer-long classes dedicated to preparing for the ACT! I was lucky in that I was smart enough to get a good score anyway, though I suspect had I prepared more it could have been much better.
I also had no idea how college application was supposed to work. I decided on colleges by going to a college fair and listening to someone talk about how great their psychology program was. I then applied to that college. Just that one. No other ones. I figured if I didn't get in, I would apply to the state school (at the time I had taken a year and a half off for health problems so I figured another semester wouldn't kill me). I did get in, luckily, but I did zero college comparisons--I didn't even schedule a college visit. I did go up to visit once before I went, but it turned out to be during their fall break so no one was there and I couldn't see much of anything. It wasn't until afterwards I learned that most people visited every campus before deciding, and spent a lot of time and energy figuring out which college to go to. I really didn't understand that process at all.
Then when I was in college, I had very little understanding of what grad school was or how it worked. It took me probably two years into college before I figured out the difference between an associates, a bachelor's, and a master's (I did understand a PhD was the highest degree, but that's all I knew). I didn't find out the GRE existed until the end of my junior year. Rich kids also get tons of preparation for that. There was no way I was going to spend money on books or classes when I barely had money to pay for my medication, so I just got by with the default example tests on the website. And I didn't start preparing until way too late because, again, I didn't understand what it was or what was being expected of me.
Finally, applying to graduate school would have been a repeat of applying to college except I happened to have an amazing professor who specifically taught us how to apply to grad school as part of his class (it was an upper level psychology class, so he knew most of us were planning on going to grad school). Still, this didn't come until fall of my senior year--a couple of months before application deadlines. So while I did a lot more research, there were no campus visits, and I still struggled a lot through the application process. Most poor kids don't even get what I did.
So, basically, it comes down to just not knowing a lot of the things that are expected of you. Not understanding the process. It's not really much about specific services or programs. Sure, there's test prep. But other than that it just comes down to having a much more streamlined path. And I'm not sure how to change that, except perhaps more free open source information.
posted by brook horse at 4:31 PM on May 8, 2017 [22 favorites]
Expectations - kids really live up (or down) to them. I am the first person in my family to graduate high school (going on to complete graduate school) and I have a severe learning disability that wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult. My children have the same learning disability and it has taken years, and tens of thousands of dollars, to get them diagnosed and an IEP put in place. There was a LOT of pushback from the schools (students with IEPs are more expensive to educate). Recently there was a letter sent home about my middle child, saying there was a meeting in such and such a date and it wasn't necesary for me to attend but legally they had to let me know about it. So I showed up. It was the school deciding what courses my son would take in high school (this was NOT mentioned in the letter). Because streaming (towards university, trade school, or basically high school drop out) begins in grade nine based on the courses chosen, it is incredibly important to start high school in the right stream that gives the student the most options. They were planning on giving him a mix of drop-out/trade school streamed courses despite his test score and past performance. Because I know the system, and because I was there, I advocated for him to be in the university stream and enrol him in the courses aimed at helping students with his specific disability succeed. The school, of course, knew about the courses they offer, but limit enrollment to students whose parents specifically advocate for them.
I live in an area of low socio-economic status and the assumption is many students won't even graduate, let alone go to university. So the educators aren't spending a lot of time giving the left-behind students the needed push in the right direction. The education system has a long way to go.
I homeschooled my eldest because I know the high school doesn't matter and she began University at 16. (And is getting praise for her advanced critical thinking skills, translated into marks in the 90s). Because I know the post secondary landscape in Canada very well I know what she needs for credentialism to achieve her goals. She also knows I have very high expectations of her and she is expected to meet them. I know many parents who are happy the school is basically a free babysitter and hope their kids get jobs at Tim Hortons (or, magically, hope they get good jobs without knowing there is a literal road map that needs to be followed).
posted by saucysault at 5:02 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
I live in an area of low socio-economic status and the assumption is many students won't even graduate, let alone go to university. So the educators aren't spending a lot of time giving the left-behind students the needed push in the right direction. The education system has a long way to go.
I homeschooled my eldest because I know the high school doesn't matter and she began University at 16. (And is getting praise for her advanced critical thinking skills, translated into marks in the 90s). Because I know the post secondary landscape in Canada very well I know what she needs for credentialism to achieve her goals. She also knows I have very high expectations of her and she is expected to meet them. I know many parents who are happy the school is basically a free babysitter and hope their kids get jobs at Tim Hortons (or, magically, hope they get good jobs without knowing there is a literal road map that needs to be followed).
posted by saucysault at 5:02 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
Best answer: I grew up in an upper-middle-class environment and then later taught at a community college for many first-in-family-to-college students, both rural kids and urban poor kids. A huge difference was simply exposure to "high culture." My mom wrote her college thesis on Prufrock and used to quote it at us in the car when we were little and she was feeling Prufrock-y. My dad taught me to read stock tables when I was 7 or 8 and I asked what he was looking at in the newspaper. I could ask my parents about things in the news I didn't understand. They had read most of the Western canon so if I was studying Shakespeare or Twain in high school they could talk about it with me. They read buzzy books. They took me to orchestra concerts and the Art Institute and so on. So when I went to college and someone was like, "This is just like the Arflebardy in Ulysses!" it didn't think twice about being like, "I have literally no idea what that is." Because I'd read, oh, 75% of the "important books," who cared if I hadn't read Ulysses? Confessing ignorance of a specific thing wasn't confessions that I was an ignorant or uneducated person. Or someone would be like "Infinite Jest is the best!" and I'd be like, "Eh, I really didn't like it," and I didn't worry that it would mark me as a philistine.
My students at the community college were not only frequently lost in discussions with high-culture references (because they feared showing themselves to be ignorant), but even when they knew what we were talking about, they were hesitant to speak up -- often for reasons as simple as they had no idea how to pronounce the names, and didn't want to look like morons in front of their classmates. Something as simple as making a point of spending a minute on pronunciation of proper names when we started Plato or Descartes, or joking about how we were going to pronounce it "Meletus" because I was not totally sure that was correct but that's how it came out in my accent, dramatically increased participation.
Anyway, it matters that teachers (and peers!) work to create an environment where students feel comfortable asking questions and expressing their ideas and tastes, even if they haven't been widely exposed to high culture. You only get exposed if people are generous in exposing you! But too often by college, people are using it for a social gatekeeping function.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:06 PM on May 8, 2017 [48 favorites]
My students at the community college were not only frequently lost in discussions with high-culture references (because they feared showing themselves to be ignorant), but even when they knew what we were talking about, they were hesitant to speak up -- often for reasons as simple as they had no idea how to pronounce the names, and didn't want to look like morons in front of their classmates. Something as simple as making a point of spending a minute on pronunciation of proper names when we started Plato or Descartes, or joking about how we were going to pronounce it "Meletus" because I was not totally sure that was correct but that's how it came out in my accent, dramatically increased participation.
Anyway, it matters that teachers (and peers!) work to create an environment where students feel comfortable asking questions and expressing their ideas and tastes, even if they haven't been widely exposed to high culture. You only get exposed if people are generous in exposing you! But too often by college, people are using it for a social gatekeeping function.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:06 PM on May 8, 2017 [48 favorites]
I grew up in a small town and though we weren't "not enough to eat" poor, I always knew that money was a source of worry. One of my parents went to college as a 1st generation student, and the other did not. I had very little sense of what I might be able to do in terms of a career. In my experience people could grow up to teach, work at the grocery store or the small newspaper, minister, farm, nurse, keep house, and not much else. I was considered bright and I knew I was expected to go to college, and my brightness and college alone were supposed to ensure my success. I floundered in college and finally picked a major that I knew I could finish easily, not sure what jobs I might find with it.
Once I did graduate, I had little idea of how to approach the job market. A few years after graduating a mentor sat me down with a newspaper and pointed out to me jobs that I could handle and what kind of money I should expect to be making. Both pieces of information were a complete surprise.
In my 30s I was diagnosed with ADHD. I often wonder what might have been different if I'd had diagnosis and treatment in high school or even earlier. I thought I was just naturally lazy and therefore I didn't try for things I was interested in but that I knew would be challenging, like psychology or biology.
I'm hardly a failure story but having spent time around people who had much more of a leg up I can see how I might have had, by now, a solid career and far fewer worries about my ability to fund my retirement or to assist my family financially.
posted by bunderful at 5:14 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
Once I did graduate, I had little idea of how to approach the job market. A few years after graduating a mentor sat me down with a newspaper and pointed out to me jobs that I could handle and what kind of money I should expect to be making. Both pieces of information were a complete surprise.
In my 30s I was diagnosed with ADHD. I often wonder what might have been different if I'd had diagnosis and treatment in high school or even earlier. I thought I was just naturally lazy and therefore I didn't try for things I was interested in but that I knew would be challenging, like psychology or biology.
I'm hardly a failure story but having spent time around people who had much more of a leg up I can see how I might have had, by now, a solid career and far fewer worries about my ability to fund my retirement or to assist my family financially.
posted by bunderful at 5:14 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
This boils down to "money", but it's a little more complicated, and important. It's not uncommon for affluent families to own more than one home, often renting the second one out as an additional source of income. When Junior graduates from college and needs a place to live, he can take over the rental. Not only does he not have to spend years saving for a down payment, he doesn't even have to make monthly mortgage or rent payments. Junior is free to choose a career that's not remunerative. Or, if he does choose a remunerative career, he can stack fantastic piles of money.
Or the parents can just buy him a new house. You know how in high school, rich kids all drive their fancy new cars to school on their 16th birthdays? Like that, only with real estate.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:40 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
Or the parents can just buy him a new house. You know how in high school, rich kids all drive their fancy new cars to school on their 16th birthdays? Like that, only with real estate.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:40 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
1. Implicit expectation that college and graduate school will be a done, you must go through it no matter what. Not having a degree was not an option, ever, contrasted with friends for whom it was a matter of maybe.
2. Parents reading to me from a super-early age, and filling the house with books, music, art, rewarding reading and education, and achievement. It was important and just got woven into the fabric of one's being to be high achieving.
3. Comfort around being a high achiever. That's what was expected, as intrinsically as you're expected to sleep and eat, you're expected to be a high achiever. There's a different kind of comfort around that idea.
4. A lot of what others above said, knowing how to ask so what you're asking for will be granted, knowing when and how to phrase things, knowing how to make connections, knowing how to study and what to study, we just knew these things growing up, which I now realize when I teach kids in college aren't obvious to a lot of kids. Knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy, academia etc. Connections helped, just the overall environment helped make a HUGE difference.
posted by greta_01 at 5:49 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
2. Parents reading to me from a super-early age, and filling the house with books, music, art, rewarding reading and education, and achievement. It was important and just got woven into the fabric of one's being to be high achieving.
3. Comfort around being a high achiever. That's what was expected, as intrinsically as you're expected to sleep and eat, you're expected to be a high achiever. There's a different kind of comfort around that idea.
4. A lot of what others above said, knowing how to ask so what you're asking for will be granted, knowing when and how to phrase things, knowing how to make connections, knowing how to study and what to study, we just knew these things growing up, which I now realize when I teach kids in college aren't obvious to a lot of kids. Knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy, academia etc. Connections helped, just the overall environment helped make a HUGE difference.
posted by greta_01 at 5:49 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm a first generation college grad from a working class family. I went to an Ivy. My grades were fine but the truth is that it was largely wasted on me for a lot of reasons, but primarily a few that have already been touched upon: I didn't understand Networking as a thing; I was never comfortable asking for anything (especially when so much had already been given); and I was always painfully, painfully aware that I did not Belong (culturally, as Eyebrows noted, as well as financially).
How do you address these issues, though? Honestly I don't know. You can tell a kid a hundred times but unless they've been steeped in it, it's going to be tough to absorb.
So: start working on them young. High school is probably too late.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:55 PM on May 8, 2017 [12 favorites]
How do you address these issues, though? Honestly I don't know. You can tell a kid a hundred times but unless they've been steeped in it, it's going to be tough to absorb.
So: start working on them young. High school is probably too late.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:55 PM on May 8, 2017 [12 favorites]
Quoting everything Uncle Ozzy said for truth. Almost the same story -- first generation college-goer, got into an Ivy, largely squandered the opportunity. At the time, I realized my well-intentioned parents had no idea what college was about, but mostly lacked the whatfor to figure out what it was about. I made it through, in part thanks to the support of wealthy friends who were too far in their privilege bubble to recognize I didn't belong and ostracize me, and in part thanks to my own bullheaded tenacity. I do wonder how different my experience would've been if I'd been a bit less super-shy-weird-smart-introvert and a bit more networking savvy. One of my classmates is now a famous Hollywood producer. Shrug.
posted by Alterscape at 6:06 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Alterscape at 6:06 PM on May 8, 2017 [6 favorites]
Two tiny ideas on what we can do to be helpful. One, my son's community college gives foster kids higher priority in registration, so that they can go first (or sooner). Since even with college parents my son had messed up registration and fewer classes his first two semesters, I can imagine that it's really hard to navigate the system without parental help. I do realize that kids in foster care are only a fraction of the poor kids in community college.
Two, my son's girlfriend went to a charter school for grades 9-12. While this charter was in theory open to everyone by lottery, and is a public school, there is a parent participation work requirement. This work requirement is a pain for a lot of families, but almost impossible for single parents or grandmas who are raising kids. I see an opportunity for maybe some retired people from a liberal congregation to step up and put in the school participation hours as sort of a scholarship thing to make it possible for a kid to attend who otherwise couldn't. (I don't know if the school would ever waive the hours. The theory is that parent participation raises educational attainment.)
posted by puddledork at 6:07 PM on May 8, 2017
Two, my son's girlfriend went to a charter school for grades 9-12. While this charter was in theory open to everyone by lottery, and is a public school, there is a parent participation work requirement. This work requirement is a pain for a lot of families, but almost impossible for single parents or grandmas who are raising kids. I see an opportunity for maybe some retired people from a liberal congregation to step up and put in the school participation hours as sort of a scholarship thing to make it possible for a kid to attend who otherwise couldn't. (I don't know if the school would ever waive the hours. The theory is that parent participation raises educational attainment.)
posted by puddledork at 6:07 PM on May 8, 2017
Loans are a huge one. Even if you're getting a very generous financial aid package, you'll almost certainly need some loans (at least to cover living expenses while in school). Loans need a co-signer. Many poor kids have absolutely no one in their family with enough credit to act as a co-signer. Not getting a loan, even just for a few thousand dollars to cover books and a rental deposit, can be the difference between graduating and not graduating.
posted by miyabo at 6:30 PM on May 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 6:30 PM on May 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
Loans need a co-signer. Many poor kids have absolutely no one in their family with enough credit to act as a co-signer.
Just FYI, federal Direct Loans do not require a co-signer.
It can be demoralizing being "a smart poor kid" on a wealthy campus. Not because people are overtly mean to you--but because it's just so hard to manage, all the time. My classmates went home for the week-long break in each semester, or they went somewhere fun, or they did something cool. I stayed on campus and heated up cans of Spaghetti-Os in a hot pot (takes a surprisingly freaking long time). I still have a vivid memory of the spring term my parents screwed up paying the bill and I had to go stand in a line outside the (at the time) very small bursar's office in a freezing January to get off the hold. It's harder to afford going to campus events like plays, even if they only cost $3, etc. That kind of thing can wear you down.
It sounds like Harvard and Yale have gotten a bit better about recognizing these problems: with sufficient need, you can, e.g., get free tickets to those events. But I doubt they've solved everything.
posted by praemunire at 6:49 PM on May 8, 2017 [7 favorites]
Just FYI, federal Direct Loans do not require a co-signer.
It can be demoralizing being "a smart poor kid" on a wealthy campus. Not because people are overtly mean to you--but because it's just so hard to manage, all the time. My classmates went home for the week-long break in each semester, or they went somewhere fun, or they did something cool. I stayed on campus and heated up cans of Spaghetti-Os in a hot pot (takes a surprisingly freaking long time). I still have a vivid memory of the spring term my parents screwed up paying the bill and I had to go stand in a line outside the (at the time) very small bursar's office in a freezing January to get off the hold. It's harder to afford going to campus events like plays, even if they only cost $3, etc. That kind of thing can wear you down.
It sounds like Harvard and Yale have gotten a bit better about recognizing these problems: with sufficient need, you can, e.g., get free tickets to those events. But I doubt they've solved everything.
posted by praemunire at 6:49 PM on May 8, 2017 [7 favorites]
I am reading a book on this now: Paying for the Party
posted by capricorn at 6:54 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by capricorn at 6:54 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I've taught at universities (in Australia, not the USA) that had primarily middle class or above kids, and at ones that have primarily kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who are the first in the family to go to university. The main difference I've seen is the confidence that lets the richer kids ask for what they need.
Students I'm teaching now (from the more disadvantaged backgrounds) will do things like try to open the electronic file for an assigned reading, find it doesn't load, and assume that they are too dumb to figure it out, or that their laptop isn't as good a laptop as required for the class, and will not say anything. I only learn that no one was able to open the reading when it comes to in-class discussion. At my previous institution kids would be emailing me to demand I fix it within minutes of trying to access it, and even if it was a problem with their device, a good number would make it my problem to try to troubleshoot it for them.
I had a number of students earlier this semester who initially got a zero for an online quiz, because the software didn't work for them, and they didn't realise they could email me and get me to provide it in a different format. (I only found out when I used the same software for an in-class assignment later in the semester, and wandered around the room asking why some students were sitting there doing nothing.) That literally never happened at the previous institution, and it's not (only) because richer students tend to have the most up-to-date software and hardware on their devices.
Richer students who failed a paper would more often than not try to request a review of the grade, and many of them would meet with me to get extra feedback about what they did wrong, extra help for the next one, etc. My students now will just disappear from the course, or they will email me with apologies for how much they 'suck' - without asking for help, assuming that I am mad at them.
My previous, richer students would ask many more questions in class. My current ones will just imagine that if they don't understand something, that's their problem. My previous students would demand make-up classes and exams if they missed things even for relatively trivial reasons; my current ones just take a zero and never tell me they had (for example) a life-threatening medical emergency that caused them to miss the exam.
Previous students would often want to meet near the end of a semester for advice on what classes to take next, or where to find related work after their degree. My current students don't ask for these sorts of meetings at all.
Then there the practical things others have mentioned (but I think they are actually less of a problem than the less tangible differences I just described): I surveyed my students this semester about their access to electronics (because the topic of the class is digital, and they are required to use devices for some of their work). 5% have no access to any electronic device of any sort - laptop, tablet, smartphone. 15% only have access to a desktop computer that is shared with other family members. Even more have no access to laptops, although they might have tablets or other devices that can be used for their assignments and in-class work, just not as easily. One student turned out to have been writing all her essays on her smartphone (which has a cracked screen), and she couldn't access half the electronic resources we provided because they don't work on her older OS. She hadn't mentioned it until I saw her typing away during class late in the semester and came over to see what was going on.
I have enough students at any one time who are nursing small babies that there is not enough room for all the prams in the lecture theatres. The vast majority of my students live with extended family and have family or carer obligations. Most have a part time job, and many have a full time job, on top of studying. The advice they get from their family members about how to do well in life is spectacularly opposed to strategies that actually work in universities or for white-collar careers.
posted by lollusc at 7:07 PM on May 8, 2017 [39 favorites]
Students I'm teaching now (from the more disadvantaged backgrounds) will do things like try to open the electronic file for an assigned reading, find it doesn't load, and assume that they are too dumb to figure it out, or that their laptop isn't as good a laptop as required for the class, and will not say anything. I only learn that no one was able to open the reading when it comes to in-class discussion. At my previous institution kids would be emailing me to demand I fix it within minutes of trying to access it, and even if it was a problem with their device, a good number would make it my problem to try to troubleshoot it for them.
I had a number of students earlier this semester who initially got a zero for an online quiz, because the software didn't work for them, and they didn't realise they could email me and get me to provide it in a different format. (I only found out when I used the same software for an in-class assignment later in the semester, and wandered around the room asking why some students were sitting there doing nothing.) That literally never happened at the previous institution, and it's not (only) because richer students tend to have the most up-to-date software and hardware on their devices.
Richer students who failed a paper would more often than not try to request a review of the grade, and many of them would meet with me to get extra feedback about what they did wrong, extra help for the next one, etc. My students now will just disappear from the course, or they will email me with apologies for how much they 'suck' - without asking for help, assuming that I am mad at them.
My previous, richer students would ask many more questions in class. My current ones will just imagine that if they don't understand something, that's their problem. My previous students would demand make-up classes and exams if they missed things even for relatively trivial reasons; my current ones just take a zero and never tell me they had (for example) a life-threatening medical emergency that caused them to miss the exam.
Previous students would often want to meet near the end of a semester for advice on what classes to take next, or where to find related work after their degree. My current students don't ask for these sorts of meetings at all.
Then there the practical things others have mentioned (but I think they are actually less of a problem than the less tangible differences I just described): I surveyed my students this semester about their access to electronics (because the topic of the class is digital, and they are required to use devices for some of their work). 5% have no access to any electronic device of any sort - laptop, tablet, smartphone. 15% only have access to a desktop computer that is shared with other family members. Even more have no access to laptops, although they might have tablets or other devices that can be used for their assignments and in-class work, just not as easily. One student turned out to have been writing all her essays on her smartphone (which has a cracked screen), and she couldn't access half the electronic resources we provided because they don't work on her older OS. She hadn't mentioned it until I saw her typing away during class late in the semester and came over to see what was going on.
I have enough students at any one time who are nursing small babies that there is not enough room for all the prams in the lecture theatres. The vast majority of my students live with extended family and have family or carer obligations. Most have a part time job, and many have a full time job, on top of studying. The advice they get from their family members about how to do well in life is spectacularly opposed to strategies that actually work in universities or for white-collar careers.
posted by lollusc at 7:07 PM on May 8, 2017 [39 favorites]
I would second everything above. I am a first generation university student who grew up in a solidly lower middle class neighbourhood. I did have the expectation in place that I would attend university and I had the "high culture" exposure because my parents made a particular effort to bring me to plays and concerts and we read a lot at home. My parents tried to prepare me as much as they could but there was a lot that was missed.
For me, what was missing was an awareness of the possibilities. I had no idea what economics was about, and didn't know how engineering was different from science. I only knew adults who had middle class jobs that didn't require a university degree, so I didn't even really know what I was aiming for. I had no one to help me make good choices.
I chose what school to go to (of the three local schools) based on the cost per credit and my commute time. I chose to go into science instead of engineering because science required 5 courses per semester and engineering 7 (I later found out that the course load was similar but some science courses contained a lab portion and the engineering ones were split into two courses). I did not even consider other avenues that I may have been interested in because I had not heard of those topics and didn't know anyone with a job in any of those fields.
I really didn't know about networking and I didn't know how far ahead of time that you should be planning for your next step. I kind of looked ahead a semester at a time and then panicked at the last minute as I was about to graduate and realized that I could not easily get a job with just an undergrad.
I also don't really know how to fix these issues and it makes me worry for my own kids since I don't think that I can help prepare them much more that my parents prepared me.
posted by heybearica at 8:19 PM on May 8, 2017 [9 favorites]
For me, what was missing was an awareness of the possibilities. I had no idea what economics was about, and didn't know how engineering was different from science. I only knew adults who had middle class jobs that didn't require a university degree, so I didn't even really know what I was aiming for. I had no one to help me make good choices.
I chose what school to go to (of the three local schools) based on the cost per credit and my commute time. I chose to go into science instead of engineering because science required 5 courses per semester and engineering 7 (I later found out that the course load was similar but some science courses contained a lab portion and the engineering ones were split into two courses). I did not even consider other avenues that I may have been interested in because I had not heard of those topics and didn't know anyone with a job in any of those fields.
I really didn't know about networking and I didn't know how far ahead of time that you should be planning for your next step. I kind of looked ahead a semester at a time and then panicked at the last minute as I was about to graduate and realized that I could not easily get a job with just an undergrad.
I also don't really know how to fix these issues and it makes me worry for my own kids since I don't think that I can help prepare them much more that my parents prepared me.
posted by heybearica at 8:19 PM on May 8, 2017 [9 favorites]
Quoting everything Uncle Ozzy said for truth. Almost the same story -- first generation college-goer, got into an Ivy, largely squandered the opportunity. At the time, I realized my well-intentioned parents had no idea what college was about, but mostly lacked the whatfor to figure out what it was about. I made it through, in part thanks to the support of wealthy friends who were too far in their privilege bubble to recognize I didn't belong and ostracize me, and in part thanks to my own bullheaded tenacity. I do wonder how different my experience would've been if I'd been a bit less super-shy-weird-smart-introvert and a bit more networking savvy. One of my classmates is now a famous Hollywood producer. Shrug.
I'm a second-generation college-goer, but my father was a first-generation college-goer, and we both went to an Ivy League school. I feel like I got all the right support to get *in* to an Ivy League school, but that's where the story (happily every after) ended. My father was a big proponent of "The Gentleman's B," because it got you through. Grad school was never a possibility to me; so the various machinations one needed to undertake to get into grad school were just completely invisible to me. I did end up later (8 years later) going back to school, so I had the grad school experience, and it was a huge contrast between how normal I found applying to and attending college vs. how not-normal I found applying to and attending grad school. I also feel like I missed out on a lot of college connections I could/should have cultivated, because my family's attitude was that getting into a good college was the final result. (To be fair, however, that also meant I didn't have to deal with a lot of the ridiculous parental pressure my classmates did, and that had advantages, too.)
posted by lazuli at 9:08 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm a second-generation college-goer, but my father was a first-generation college-goer, and we both went to an Ivy League school. I feel like I got all the right support to get *in* to an Ivy League school, but that's where the story (happily every after) ended. My father was a big proponent of "The Gentleman's B," because it got you through. Grad school was never a possibility to me; so the various machinations one needed to undertake to get into grad school were just completely invisible to me. I did end up later (8 years later) going back to school, so I had the grad school experience, and it was a huge contrast between how normal I found applying to and attending college vs. how not-normal I found applying to and attending grad school. I also feel like I missed out on a lot of college connections I could/should have cultivated, because my family's attitude was that getting into a good college was the final result. (To be fair, however, that also meant I didn't have to deal with a lot of the ridiculous parental pressure my classmates did, and that had advantages, too.)
posted by lazuli at 9:08 PM on May 8, 2017 [4 favorites]
The essay you want to read is Bordieu's, The Forms of Capital. All the things everyone has described falls under social and cultural capital which gets converted to standard capital. So you ask what "rich kids" have and that is various forms of capital besides cash. People are their network. All that tacit knowledge is part of the wealth that enables a student from a certain background to reduce friction in their transactions in multiple ways.
posted by jadepearl at 11:22 PM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by jadepearl at 11:22 PM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
I just happen to be acquainted with several people who have a combination of high education and high incomes and come from similar families. Things that stick out to me:
-Their parents spend a lot of time thinking of them and their education. They plan extracurricular activities, and even get them involved in things that may not always align with their beliefs in an effort to make them a more rounded person.
-The parents spend a lot of time actually working with the children and other times hiring people who can work with the children. I didn't know parents actually helped kids with homework, I thought that was a TV thing. A doctor I know actually sits down with her son to work with him for several hours a day.
-The parents are extremely well versed in what the children need to be doing and at what age. They also know a lot about their children's academic strengths and abilities and decide what to do based on those strengths/abilities.
-They have the added advantage of being role models. These children actually want to be like their parents. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I didn't want to be like anyone in my family at all. I spent a lot of time trying NOT to be like them, but other than that, I had no ideas.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 1:07 AM on May 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
-Their parents spend a lot of time thinking of them and their education. They plan extracurricular activities, and even get them involved in things that may not always align with their beliefs in an effort to make them a more rounded person.
-The parents spend a lot of time actually working with the children and other times hiring people who can work with the children. I didn't know parents actually helped kids with homework, I thought that was a TV thing. A doctor I know actually sits down with her son to work with him for several hours a day.
-The parents are extremely well versed in what the children need to be doing and at what age. They also know a lot about their children's academic strengths and abilities and decide what to do based on those strengths/abilities.
-They have the added advantage of being role models. These children actually want to be like their parents. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I didn't want to be like anyone in my family at all. I spent a lot of time trying NOT to be like them, but other than that, I had no ideas.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 1:07 AM on May 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
Access to mental health care. I come from the lower-middle-class at best and attended a private liberal arts college. My problems with alcoholism and depression became severe already in my second semester, and I had little to no knowledge of how I could combat this. There were free counselling sessions available at student health services, but students were limited to ten per academic year, after which point they would have to find a private therapist. I tried this once and wound up seeing a psychologist who was ill-suited for me and exceeded my budget even while under student health insurance. I did not have the resources, either financial or cultural, to try to find another.
This spiralled to the point that I was not able to finish college -- I had no chance of finishing my degree within the eight semesters that were covered under the scholarship that paid the bulk of the $30,000/semester tuition, and going on would have meant taking out untenable loans and trying to overcome my problems in a way that I was not capable of at that time.
posted by jeudi at 2:23 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
This spiralled to the point that I was not able to finish college -- I had no chance of finishing my degree within the eight semesters that were covered under the scholarship that paid the bulk of the $30,000/semester tuition, and going on would have meant taking out untenable loans and trying to overcome my problems in a way that I was not capable of at that time.
posted by jeudi at 2:23 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I saw the differences most clearly while in grad school. (Among my fellow grad students, the very direct breakdown was that some were sending money out of their stipends home to support family each month, while others were receiving money from their family.) The students I taught covered the gamut from extremely wealthy to poor, and the differences in preparation were huge.
In terms of specific programs, I'd note how much formal preparation for college the wealthy students tended to have. They had attended either elite private schools or spectacularly-funded public schools, with AP or IB courses, test-prep support, and the kinds of classes and electives that meant that they started college already having taken Latin or gone on trips to Europe. They were much more likely to have a letter from the university's disability support office, documenting their entitlement to things like extra test time. And when something went wrong (for example, an accusation of plagiarism), their family would swing into action, making phone calls and visits and in some cases hiring lawyers. As others have noted, they would contest grades and push back on any disciplinary action.
Those students came in knowing how to access professor's office hours, how to sign up for university-funded trips abroad, and what fraternity/sorority to join. If they needed GRE prep materials, they could afford it, and they also knew to show up when the school had informational sessions for things like grad school and applying to the Fullbright.
Their breaks tended to involve stories like "going backpacking in Peru" or "working for my uncle's talent agency in Hollywood," not "waitressing to help my mother make the rent." A lot of them were focused very sharply on getting the right internships, with the family support to be able to take an unpaid job in New York or London for months at a time.
They were great kids, very driven and very smart, but it was frustrating to see how much less preparation their poorer peers had received, and to see how it impacted their respective success.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:29 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]
In terms of specific programs, I'd note how much formal preparation for college the wealthy students tended to have. They had attended either elite private schools or spectacularly-funded public schools, with AP or IB courses, test-prep support, and the kinds of classes and electives that meant that they started college already having taken Latin or gone on trips to Europe. They were much more likely to have a letter from the university's disability support office, documenting their entitlement to things like extra test time. And when something went wrong (for example, an accusation of plagiarism), their family would swing into action, making phone calls and visits and in some cases hiring lawyers. As others have noted, they would contest grades and push back on any disciplinary action.
Those students came in knowing how to access professor's office hours, how to sign up for university-funded trips abroad, and what fraternity/sorority to join. If they needed GRE prep materials, they could afford it, and they also knew to show up when the school had informational sessions for things like grad school and applying to the Fullbright.
Their breaks tended to involve stories like "going backpacking in Peru" or "working for my uncle's talent agency in Hollywood," not "waitressing to help my mother make the rent." A lot of them were focused very sharply on getting the right internships, with the family support to be able to take an unpaid job in New York or London for months at a time.
They were great kids, very driven and very smart, but it was frustrating to see how much less preparation their poorer peers had received, and to see how it impacted their respective success.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:29 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]
Another difference is experience/comfort with talking to people in positions of authority. Not just answering "yes/no" to a supervisor - I mean discussion, casual conversation, and/or situations where you need to be recognized as an individual and maybe treated as a peer. Examples where this has an effect:
- College interviews
- Stating your opinion in class
- Talking with a teacher or advisor in a way that advocates for your own interests
- Correcting a teacher or supervisor
- Chatting with the boss when you're both in the same elevator
- Requesting anything special or different (disability services, internships, recommendation letters)
posted by cadge at 10:02 AM on May 9, 2017 [7 favorites]
- College interviews
- Stating your opinion in class
- Talking with a teacher or advisor in a way that advocates for your own interests
- Correcting a teacher or supervisor
- Chatting with the boss when you're both in the same elevator
- Requesting anything special or different (disability services, internships, recommendation letters)
posted by cadge at 10:02 AM on May 9, 2017 [7 favorites]
I thought of something regarding policing/criminalization: my best friend from high school went to a "directional" state college near our hometown, where her good friend was arrested and kicked out of campus housing for underaged drinking. So, for extremely normal 19-year-old behavior, she spent a night in jail and lost her housing (which also separated her from the campus community).
I went to a wealthy, selective private college and I can't remember ever seeing an actual police officer on campus. Security officers would very, very rarely break up dorm parties - there were stories about people getting in trouble for parties, but I never knew anyone personally, and it was always treated as an internal college matter. I do remember one classmate got kicked out of the dorms for smoking pot - the third time he was caught. He was also a dealer, but never got in trouble for it because the police were never involved and his room was never searched.
In retrospect, it was clear we were being set up for very different expectations about how our interactions with law enforcement would go based on class: the students at the state college were set up to expect to get punished strictly for any infractions, whereas those of us at the private college were set up to expect to be protected from the consequences of our actions, to have infractions "dealt with" internally by people whose motivation was to help us, not punish us.
posted by lunasol at 11:09 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
I went to a wealthy, selective private college and I can't remember ever seeing an actual police officer on campus. Security officers would very, very rarely break up dorm parties - there were stories about people getting in trouble for parties, but I never knew anyone personally, and it was always treated as an internal college matter. I do remember one classmate got kicked out of the dorms for smoking pot - the third time he was caught. He was also a dealer, but never got in trouble for it because the police were never involved and his room was never searched.
In retrospect, it was clear we were being set up for very different expectations about how our interactions with law enforcement would go based on class: the students at the state college were set up to expect to get punished strictly for any infractions, whereas those of us at the private college were set up to expect to be protected from the consequences of our actions, to have infractions "dealt with" internally by people whose motivation was to help us, not punish us.
posted by lunasol at 11:09 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
It's already been mentioned above, but don't underestimate the power of the obvious:
proper grammar. Use double negatives and you'll hear doors clang shut from here to Japan.
posted by BostonTerrier at 12:49 PM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
proper grammar. Use double negatives and you'll hear doors clang shut from here to Japan.
posted by BostonTerrier at 12:49 PM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
It's worth pointing out that there's nothing objectively more correct about "proper grammar." It's a set of social conventions, and is based in large part on avoiding the use of forms that are stigmatized for social reasons.
What is one way a pronunciation or grammatical construction becomes stigmatized? When it becomes associated with a group that is, itself, stigmatized: minorities, the working class, women--and so on.
It's not just that the middle and upper classes use "proper grammar" because they have more educational opportunities and have therefore learned it better; it's that their language is is the basis of what is considered "proper" in the first place.
Education can teach people whose native variety is more divergent from "proper grammar" how to accommodate, but it's still an additional burden. And can have a very broad range of effects, from very early on -- from low self esteem, to feeling alienated in school, to doing worse in subjects because they're taught in a different variety than the one they speak natively.
The fact that "proper grammar" is expected in educational and professional settings is one way the poor are institutionally disadvantaged.
And this idea is somehow very radical, even among the left, who are taught to value proper grammar as a component (and signal) of intelligence and education -- despite it being one of the basic, foundational results of sociolinguistics. It's very unlikely things will change anytime soon.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:19 PM on May 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
What is one way a pronunciation or grammatical construction becomes stigmatized? When it becomes associated with a group that is, itself, stigmatized: minorities, the working class, women--and so on.
It's not just that the middle and upper classes use "proper grammar" because they have more educational opportunities and have therefore learned it better; it's that their language is is the basis of what is considered "proper" in the first place.
Education can teach people whose native variety is more divergent from "proper grammar" how to accommodate, but it's still an additional burden. And can have a very broad range of effects, from very early on -- from low self esteem, to feeling alienated in school, to doing worse in subjects because they're taught in a different variety than the one they speak natively.
The fact that "proper grammar" is expected in educational and professional settings is one way the poor are institutionally disadvantaged.
And this idea is somehow very radical, even among the left, who are taught to value proper grammar as a component (and signal) of intelligence and education -- despite it being one of the basic, foundational results of sociolinguistics. It's very unlikely things will change anytime soon.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:19 PM on May 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
Limbo covers a lot of these concepts that rich and upper-middle class kids learn just from their environment that working class and poor kids don't.
posted by chiefthe at 3:46 PM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by chiefthe at 3:46 PM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
"Another difference is experience/comfort with talking to people in positions of authority. "
When I was five and in kindergarten I cornered my school's principal and told him my VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS on the reorganization of grade levels that was going on (they were moving 6th grade out of elementary and into junior high). I don't even know why I cared and my opinions were clearly garbage, but I was 100% convinced that my opinion was important AND that adults in positions of power should listen to it. And maybe even more to the point, the principal listened very gravely to my garbage 5-year-old opinions and talked with me very seriously about them. This doesn't necessarily happen with kids from less-privileged backgrounds. Part of this is parenting -- upper-middle-class parents (in the US) raise their kids to think dissent and discussion is really important and are willing to argue with their kids even if they still make a fiat ruling in the end. Working-class parents are more likely to exercise parental authority to make kids stop questioning them -- which is entirely adaptive, as working-class jobs are more likely to require acquiescence to an arbitrary regime. This is really well-studied by anthropologists of parenting in the US. (Upper middle class parents aren't necessarily more likely to ALLOW certain behaviors, they're just more likely to allow their kids to argue about the rules, which turns out to be important for dealing with bureaucracies.)
That was a really big difference I noticed when I was on school board: kids from the wealthier side of town felt much more comfortable expressing opinions and expecting them to be taken seriously by adults. Kids from the poorer side of town were much more hesitant to express their ideas, even though they often had really great ones. I served on a committee that addressed STDs in our county, including its transmission among teenagers, and there were teenaged representatives from the various high schools. The kids from the "better" (wealthier) high schools had a lot of opinions they weren't afraid to share (they were the bright kids who were involved in everything who were used to formulating opinions even if they didn't know a whole lot on the topic), but the kids from the poorer high schools had much better ideas and a much clearer understanding of the issue (because they were super-passionate about it), but needed a lot of encouragement to speak up.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:26 PM on May 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
When I was five and in kindergarten I cornered my school's principal and told him my VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS on the reorganization of grade levels that was going on (they were moving 6th grade out of elementary and into junior high). I don't even know why I cared and my opinions were clearly garbage, but I was 100% convinced that my opinion was important AND that adults in positions of power should listen to it. And maybe even more to the point, the principal listened very gravely to my garbage 5-year-old opinions and talked with me very seriously about them. This doesn't necessarily happen with kids from less-privileged backgrounds. Part of this is parenting -- upper-middle-class parents (in the US) raise their kids to think dissent and discussion is really important and are willing to argue with their kids even if they still make a fiat ruling in the end. Working-class parents are more likely to exercise parental authority to make kids stop questioning them -- which is entirely adaptive, as working-class jobs are more likely to require acquiescence to an arbitrary regime. This is really well-studied by anthropologists of parenting in the US. (Upper middle class parents aren't necessarily more likely to ALLOW certain behaviors, they're just more likely to allow their kids to argue about the rules, which turns out to be important for dealing with bureaucracies.)
That was a really big difference I noticed when I was on school board: kids from the wealthier side of town felt much more comfortable expressing opinions and expecting them to be taken seriously by adults. Kids from the poorer side of town were much more hesitant to express their ideas, even though they often had really great ones. I served on a committee that addressed STDs in our county, including its transmission among teenagers, and there were teenaged representatives from the various high schools. The kids from the "better" (wealthier) high schools had a lot of opinions they weren't afraid to share (they were the bright kids who were involved in everything who were used to formulating opinions even if they didn't know a whole lot on the topic), but the kids from the poorer high schools had much better ideas and a much clearer understanding of the issue (because they were super-passionate about it), but needed a lot of encouragement to speak up.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:26 PM on May 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
A 2015 book at my university library that covers much of what's above (cultural capital, signaling, leisure) is "Pedigree : how elite students get elite jobs," http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/926820298. It's an academic book (Princeton U. Press), but more more readable than most. It got some attention, e.g. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/04/how-elite-students-get-elite-jobs.html.
posted by Ellenalexia at 7:13 AM on May 10, 2017
posted by Ellenalexia at 7:13 AM on May 10, 2017
Just FYI, federal Direct Loans do not require a co-signer.
And federal-backed loans in the US often don't cover enough to pay tuition + room&board, which was what knocked quite a few folks from my high school back out of college midway through, but now with added loans to pay.
For people whose parents can't pay outright, the current system often assumes your parents will give every last possible dime. If they won't, you're stuck, although "stuck" is a bit too soft of a word there.
posted by talldean at 8:06 AM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
And federal-backed loans in the US often don't cover enough to pay tuition + room&board, which was what knocked quite a few folks from my high school back out of college midway through, but now with added loans to pay.
For people whose parents can't pay outright, the current system often assumes your parents will give every last possible dime. If they won't, you're stuck, although "stuck" is a bit too soft of a word there.
posted by talldean at 8:06 AM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
I really love the comic oceano posted, because it helps remind me to be vigilant and aware of my class privilege and just how many invisible affordances it has given me. There are reasons why my 1st generation college peers have dealt with such a different life than mine.
posted by yueliang at 2:14 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by yueliang at 2:14 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
A few years ago, I read a memoir by a working-class woman who was the first in her family to go to college. She went to an expensive private college on a generous scholarship. When something happened and she lost her scholarship, she dropped out, and that was it for her college education. She didn't find out until much later that she could have transferred her credits to a different school and finished there. It's often these kinds of unarticulated things that can trip people up. I was once defendant in a lawsuit that hinged, in part, on a certain piece of paper. That piece of paper was invalid for several reasons, but one of them was that the two people who signed it witnessed each other's signatures. They were young, and grew up in urban poverty. They'd most likely never taken out a mortgage or executed a will or any of the mundane little legal actions of the middle class. If they had, they'd have known they couldn't witness each other's signatures. But they didn't.
A fascinating and insightful book on this subject is Meaningful Differences in the Experiences of Young American Children, published in 1995. If you've ever heard something like, "middle-class kids hear half a million more words in the first five years of life than poor and working-class kids," this observational study is probably where that tidbit came from. The researchers look at family structures, discipline, views on the role of children in the family, attitude toward authority, and so on. It's fascinating and worth reading if you're interested in this topic.
posted by Orlop at 9:37 PM on May 14, 2017 [5 favorites]
A fascinating and insightful book on this subject is Meaningful Differences in the Experiences of Young American Children, published in 1995. If you've ever heard something like, "middle-class kids hear half a million more words in the first five years of life than poor and working-class kids," this observational study is probably where that tidbit came from. The researchers look at family structures, discipline, views on the role of children in the family, attitude toward authority, and so on. It's fascinating and worth reading if you're interested in this topic.
posted by Orlop at 9:37 PM on May 14, 2017 [5 favorites]
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