在美国名校念书的贫困生面临哪些挑战.docx

1、在美国名校念书的贫困生面临哪些挑战在美国名校念书的贫困生面临哪些挑战The Challenge Of Being Poor At Americas Richest CollegesShelling out $300 for one chemistry textbook. Jetting off to Budapest, Paris and Rome while studying abroad in Madrid. Grabbing a last-minute Amtrak ticket to Manhattan for a job interview during senior year. F

2、or many students at Americas elite colleges, these are as much a part of university life as pulling all-nighters and complaining about dining hall food. But for low-income students, these are not only unaffordable luxuries, but part of a topic that can be more taboo than sexual orientation: the size

3、 of their wallets. Much has been written about getting high-achieving, low-income students through the Ivy-covered gates of Americas top colleges. And indeed, the focus on improving the economic diversity of college admissions is needed; a recent Brookings study found that just 8% of low-income stud

4、ents applied to a “reach” school and just 34% of high-achieving students in this group attended one of the countrys 238 most selective universities. (The study defined low income as being in the bottom fourth, income-wise, of families with a senior in high school. For 2008, the year studied, low-inc

5、ome meant a family income below $41, 472.) Not surprisingly, while poor kids are underrepresented on elite campuses, the wealthiest kids are overrepresented. At Harvard, 45.6% of undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200, 000 in other words, incomes in the top 3.8% of all American ho

6、useholds. Yet for all the studies and attention paid to how to get more low income students onto Americas top campuses, theres little discussion (on or off campus) about what life is like for those students after they win admission. In a guest column for Duke Universitys student newspaper that recen

7、tly went viral, senior KellyNoel Waldorf addresses how isolating it can feel as a low-income student at an elite university. “Why is it not OK for me to talk about such an important part of my identity on Dukes campus? Why is the word “poor” associated with words like lazy, unmotivated and uneducate

8、d? I am none of those things, ” she writes. “Why has our culture made me so afraid or ashamed or embarrassed that I felt like I couldnt tell my best friends Hey, I just cant afford to go out tonight?” In a recent phone interview, Waldorf clarified that this isnt just a Duke-specific problem, but an

9、issue that exists across the country and is exacerbated by some of the wealth she and others see at Duke. “I was in a class once where a professor basically assumed that no one in the class had cleaned a house for money, and that wasnt true, ” Waldorf says. “Its sort of like an erasure of that popul

10、ation, ” she says. Beth Breger, executive director for Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), a scholarship organization that helps high-achieving, low-income students gain admission to Americas top colleges, says part of the problem stems from the fact that a majority of campuses are s

11、et up for your average upper/middle class student, one who comes to school with a certain set of “soft skills” that disadvantaged students still need to learn. “Setting up a bank account for the first time. How to make an appointment with a professor. How to ask for a recommendation letter. How to n

12、avigate support from a TA (teaching assistant), ” are things lower-income students need to learn, Breger says. And these knowledge gaps are just the tip of the iceberg. As anyone whos ever subsisted on ramen noodles for weeks on end knows, the effects of an empty wallet can pervade virtually every a

13、spect of life. Students I spoke with talked about how, despite full academic scholarships that cover tuition, room and board, difficulties arise with everything from affording on-campus student events (such as musicals or concerts), to missing out on Greek life, to eating alone in at the dining hall

14、 on a Friday night when friends are eating out somewhere they cant afford. Even something as simple as a trip to the laundry room can serve as a reminder of the income disparities. Christian Ramirez, a LEDA scholar who grew up in Queens and is currently a junior at Harvard, remembers a time during h

15、is freshman year when his mother came to visit and decided to help him with his laundry. They both noticed piles of clothing on top of the washing machines in his dorms laundry room and Ramirez realized that he had seen those exact same piles a week or two before. The realizationthat someone would s

16、imply forget to pick up his clothes took both Ramirez and his mother aback. “When I do laundry, I literally make sure I have every single sock and no piece of clothing is left behind, ” he says. “I personally cannot afford to replace them, he says. Clothes can be one of the most conspicuous indicato

17、rs of wealth, and more than one low income student noted the designer threads peers wear serve as persistent reminders of the wealth gap. Yasmine Arrington is a Jack Kent Cooke scholar the recipient of a prestigious scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, so named for the former Redskins ow

18、ner who left his fortune to high-need, high-achieving students who now attends Elon University, a southern school where guys favor khakis and many girls wear the preppy Lilly Pulitzer brand. Arrington remembers her reaction when she discovered what an average Lilly Pulitzer piece might cost. “I was

19、like, oh my goodness a dress for $200?” Arrington, an Elon junior, says. However, she says it doesnt get to her because she focuses on developing her own style for her own prices, which most importantly, makes her happy. “I dont feel deprived because it makes me more unique. My style is my style and

20、 no one else is going to walk in with my suede boots or jeans.” Nightlife offers its own set of dilemmas. Those whose wealthier friends dont mind footing the bill for a night out in the name of friend-group unity, perhaps find accepting such financial help can introduce a certain level of guilt. “If

21、 we go out, and friends are like, oh no, Im getting this, Ill pay for this, and then its like bah!” says Edith Carolina Benavides, a Jack Kent Cooke scholar who is a senior at Harvard. “I literally owe so much money to my friends, beyond owing them so much for their support and being there for me.”

22、Maureen Mahoney, the dean of the college at Smith College, and Barbara Cervone, president of the education non-profit What Kids Can Do both noted that medical problems particularly lagging dental care or undiagnosed learning disabilities can cause significant snags for poor students who might alread

23、y be reeling from the academic culture shock. Cervone remembers one high achieving student from the Dominican Republic who, in her freshman year at Wellesley, found she had several rotting teeth, which couldnt be fixed because the universitys health policy wouldnt cover it. After a petition to the c

24、ollege president, the policy changed and the student was able to get the care she needed and continue with her studies. But the situation highlights how proactive students have to be to procure the funds and care they might need. This proactiveness doesnt always come naturally, Mahoney notes, as man

25、y high-achieving students (low income or otherwise) have trouble asking for help when they need it. Assuming, of course, a low income student knows exactly what resources they need. Renata Martin, a Jack Kent Cooke scholar at Brown says that she never saw herself as “disadvantaged” while growing up,

26、 but coming to a school like Brown brought to light all the resources and opportunities she had missed out on, and missing out on even the simplest things like academic support resources or individualized academic attention can make it hard to look for them in a higher-ed scenario. “I think the hard

27、est part is not even financial its trying to know about most of the things that your peers know about, ” she says. “It can be isolating, going to a public high school with all these differences you dont think about until you go to an elite school where you stand out in many different ways.” Some col

28、leges, like Smith, and scholarship foundations, like LEDA, try to spread awareness of the academic and financial support resources available to low-income students. At Smith, this support includes a (limited) extra fund available to students in emergency situations, so if a family emergency arises a

29、nd a last-minute flight across the country becomes necessary, a low-income student can make the trip. Not all campuses or scholarship organizations offer this feature, so its important to check with the office of student life and/or the financial aid office to get a full list of student benefits and

30、 resources. While many of the students interviewed say that life as a low income student at an elite campus got progressively easier as they got older and carved out their own niches, Dukes Waldorf notes that her low-income status adds additional pressure to one of the more trying parts of senior ye

31、ar: hunting for a job or applying to graduate school. “I dont have money to pay for transportation for interviews. What if my phone gets shut off right before an interview?” she says. “A lot of the Duke population is not thinking about, is it difficult for my neighbor to job search because they dont

32、 have nice interview clothes?” To be sure, the solutions to these issues vary on a campus-by-campus basis. Some student career service centers like Barnards have a suit-borrowing program from which students without business-professional clothing can borrow a donated dress suit with their student ID, at no cost. Other campuses, such as UNC, have a stipend students can apply for that can help pay for interview clothes. Likewise, some colleges and graduate programs (William and Marys Mason School of Business is one) have stipends available for job-hunting transportation cos