The lives of low-income students at Ivies

The Boston Globe is taking a look at what life is like for low-income students at Ivy League schools. 

In 2004, in an effort to create a more socioeconomically diverse student body, Harvard began offering low-income students full financial aid packages if they were admitted into the school. This followed similar actions taken by Princeton in 1998 and was followed by Yale in 2005. Similar "zero family contribution" plans exist across all the Ivies, giving students who would not otherwise be able to attend the school because of financial reasons the opportunity to do so. 

A full scholarship, however, does not translate to feelings of comfort at these elite institutions. "Once on campus," reports the Globe, "students report feelings of loneliness, alienation and plummeting self-confidence" due to the challenges attributed to their economic status, such as having to maintain a job in order to keep up with their "free-spending peers" is one example. 

Easing low-income students' transition into these schools has become an important task for both administrators and students. Harvard sophomore Ted White, who comes from a working-class background, described the experience of being at Harvard as a "total culture shock." He is now the vice president of the Harvard College First Generation Student Union, which is "an advocacy and support network seeking to create positive institutional change for students whose parents never attended a four-year-college." 

Similar programs have been started at Yale and Brown, with the Undergraduate First Generation Low Income Partnership established at Yale in 2014 and 1vyG, a network for first generation students at Ivy Leagues. 

The Globe chronicles the experiences of low-income students Alejandro Claudio, Renata Martin, Julia Dixon and Ellie Dupler, explaining the ways their finances affect not only their school experiences, but also their sense of self. When Dixon visited home during her junior year, her parents expressed concerns over way her Ivy League experience had changed her. "I don't want you to be ashamed of us," her father told her. 

Read the full story at The Boston Globe.

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