olumbia’s undergraduate application asks students to list “the titles of the films, concerts, shows, exhibits, lectures and other entertainment you enjoyed most in the past year,” assuming that all students have had access to these amenities. Up until the 2017-18 admissions cycle, Stanford asked a similar question: “What were your favorite events (e.g., performances, exhibits, competitions, conferences, etc.) in recent years?” Though the wording of this question is arguably less exclusive, the same problems found in Columbia’s question may arise. How is a student from a rural town without so much as a movie theater supposed to answer this question? Or one who can’t afford to access these pieces of entertainment? Does the information gained from this question justify the number of First-Generation and/or Low-Income (FLI) students discouraged from applying because they feel that this school probably isn’t the one for them?
It’s no secret that FLI students must overcome many barriers throughout the college application process. We commonly discuss how elite universities unintentionally exclude students from low-income and first-generation backgrounds through mechanisms such as application fees and through inaccessible advantages such as test preparatory courses. These institutions often attempt to combat this through a holistic application review process. However, there may be more nuanced influences that prevent FLI college acceptances before students even submit their application.
Jeffery Rodriguez ’20, who is a student staff member at the FLI office, ASSU executive cabinet’s FLI Community Outreach Director, the FLI Office’s Advocacy Co-chair, and a leader of the FLI Conference workshop committee, expressed that although students theoretically have equal access to college applications, first-generation students don’t necessarily have equal access to information that’s relevant to them. “We think everyone is on the same playing field, but [colleges]prioritize equality rather than equity,” said Rodriguez.
Josè Heredia, the College Information Specialist at East Palo Alto Academy High School (EPAA) expressed that students keep this in mind when deciding where they will apply. “We have students who aspire to apply to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and other Ivy League Schools, but behind it all, they feel that Stanford will be very expensive and competitive to get in so not too many end up applying,” Heredia said. “They also feel that they don’t want to put a burden on their parents of how much it costs to attend schools like Stanford so they decide to apply more to the UCs or CSUs. Their parents don’t have that kind of money and they know it.” EPAA is a small public charter school in the Sequoia Union High School District with a minority enrollment of 100% and 88% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch during the 2016-17 school year, according to U.S. News.
FLI students may also hesitate to apply to elite institutions because they’re afraid they won’t belong. Rodriguez said, “When I applied I thought, ‘Am I going to meet people like me? Not necessarily [people who]look like me, but [people]who have shared similar experiences with me?’ At Stanford, I didn’t know the answer because I thought, ‘Everyone says it’s a rich people school,’ and to a certain extent, it is.”
A study published in 2017 by The Equality of Opportunity Project found that of Stanford’s class of 2003, 52% of students came from families within the top 10% of income. Granted, Stanford’s current demographic is likely more diverse than this, but these findings illustrate why high school students’ perception of Stanford as a “rich people school” is valid.
Like the example from Columbia’s application mentioned earlier, application questions can be unintentionally biased against students from FLI backgrounds. For example, Stanford asks you to “Name one thing you are looking forward to experiencing at Stanford.” This question may seem simple enough, but how is a first-generation student who has little knowledge of student life and can’t afford to visit campus supposed to respond? Yes, there are online resources, but they may not be as helpful as visiting in person or talking to people with college experience. PrepScholar, an online college preparatory service, says on their website that “Virtual tours and photos can only take you so far, and descriptions of colleges may be biased to promote it. The best way to get a genuine sense of the place is to explore it in person,” and that the knowledge and experience you gain from visiting a school “can serve to fuel your excitement and enthusiasm about a school, which may empower you to produce an even stronger application.” Granted, this question does allow evaluation of whether a student genuinely wants to attend Stanford specifically, but it’s questions like these that require more effort and skill from disadvantaged groups than they do for others.
Another, perhaps contradicting, part of the college application FLI students struggle with is applying to colleges with a holistic review process. Holistic reviews take multiple factors into account, such as one’s socioeconomic context and personality. Although the holistic review process attempts to combat systemic barriers that may make a disadvantaged student seem like an unqualified candidate in comparison to their peers, the holistic review process can be extremely emotionally draining for FLI students. Since applications with a holistic review require contextual information, they invite students to open up and be vulnerable. The applications then may make assumptions about students’ openness and willingness to share.
“Every single person I know who was FLI didn’t necessarily want to show all this stuff about their lives, including the trauma, their experiences, and all of these things that are deeply personal,” Rodriguez said. “But, others and myself included, felt that that was the only way that they would get in.” Students feel as though these experiences bring context to their application and demonstrate characteristics that compensate for items such as test scores or extracurriculars that may be lacking.
“You tell them about all of your experiences and you hope to dear God they accept you. Because otherwise, you put yourself out there—you put your trauma, your thoughts, your feelings, your whole person into an application and for that to be rejected is not something that feels good.” Rodriguez explained. “Even if you do get accepted, it still oftentimes doesn’t feel good because you’re like ‘Well, I just put something deeply personal about myself out there. Someone read it. They saw me for who I am but they’ll never know me and they’re someone I’ll never know.’ It feels icky and weird.”
This painful process has a negative effect on students not only as they receive their admissions decisions, but as they’re applying for scholarships as well. “During the scholarship application process, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to do that. I was already rejected by these people, why put myself out there again?’” Rodriguez said.
Of course, the holistic review process is also encouraging, since students aren’t dissuaded from applying just because they may fall short academically. Jennifer Rolen, Assistant Dean & Associate Director of the FLI office, stated that she helped UC Santa Cruz with admissions one year, gaining familiarity with the holistic process. Although she said that it’s a step in the right direction, she expressed that holistic reviews don’t completely counter the nuanced challenges FLI students face during the application process. “I think the holistic way of looking at things is a healthier model. I think there’s probably more healthy ways to keep looking at it and that we need to keep digging to be able to be more representative of the folks who aren’t getting seen,” Rolen said.
On the other hand, students who do share very personal experiences in their applications are commonly met with feelings of guilt or the thought that they were only accepted to an elite university due to pity. Rodriguez expressed that when some FLI students ask to see their application documents through a FERPA release, it seems as though the school’s admissions officers saw them in a negative context and “not in a celebratory way.” He said students can feel a strange pressure to be grateful for the adversity they have faced and to see it as “good because it got us in and it’s something that’s helped us get to this place.”
It seems as though there’s a disconnect between the intentions behind holistic reviews and the unintended consequence of students feeling as though their adversity helps them get accepted. Rolen, however, hopes that “you feel very valued because you’re here and they want you to be here because this is where you should be. There’s no mistake here. So what, you didn’t get a perfect score? We want you, not your grades.”
Heredia expressed that although this process can be painful, it’s necessary for students to go through it in order to give application officers context. “Yes, some students find themselves in this situation a lot and they are just trying to show where they are coming from in terms of their related experience or as to why some things happened or didn’t happen. At the end of the day, the university [representative]needs to know and understand who is this student applying and why some things are just not there,” he said.
Granted, Stanford has made steps towards being conscious of creating an image of an application that is inviting to all. For example, in 2018 Stanford announced that it would no longer release application numbers in order to prevent students from being discouraged from applying due to the school’s daunting admission statistics. In a 2018 statement for Stanford News, Provost Persis Drell said, “By focusing on the admit rate, talented students who would thrive at Stanford may opt not to apply because they think Stanford seems out of reach. And that would be a shame.” Additionally, by revising and excluding questions such as “What were your favorite events (e.g., performances, exhibits, competitions, conferences, etc.) in recent years?”, Stanford makes its application increasingly accessible and inclusive.
Nonprofits like Matriculate provide excellent resources for disadvantaged students, and they’re a great way for Stanford students to get involved. Matriculate is a non-profit that provides high-achieving, low-income high school students with remote college guidance counseling through college students from elite universities. Madeline Kerner, the CEO and co-founder of Matriculate, said in an email to Stanford Politics that the organization is the “perfect chance for college students to roll up their sleeves, support other students, and put positive pressure on the system to accept and support diverse communities of low-income students from across the country.” The Matriculate Fellowship at Stanford launched in 2018.
Although these programs are a step in the right direction, they’re not enough to completely counter the systemic barriers students face and the nuanced message that FLI students don’t belong at a school during the application process. Stanford has made progress in being inclusive and thoughtful about how FLI students interact with the application, but there’s still more to be done. For instance, do we just have to accept the fact that in order for FLI students to be seen, they have to go through an emotionally exhausting and painful application process?
Jennifer Rolen expressed that schools across the nation are attempting to be more FLI-friendly and that they’re all growing together. “It just takes one for it to happen at other places. Sometimes it’s Stanford, sometimes it’s Harvard or Princeton or whoever. As long as it’s happening, that’s what matters,” she said.
As we grow together, however, we need to provide an application that neither dissuades FLI students from applying nor inherently puts these students at a disadvantage. “Stanford decides every year who they want to be here,” Rodriguez said, “and yet that decision has oftentimes already been made before someone even types the first letter in their application.”
Sierra Burgon, a sophomore, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics.