Last month, I made a joke on social media about wanting a discount on a product because I’m a “broke college student,” as the expression goes. By the next time I checked my phone, I had received several replies: “you look like you’ve never worked a day in your life,” “daddy’s money pays for your college,” and “broke kids don’t go to Harvard.” I attend Harvard on full financial aid.
This experience forced me to reckon with my first-generation, low-income identity and the privilege of attending Harvard. In my case, being FGLI means that I have to navigate Harvard without the help of my family, that I come from a background of working to pay bills, and that I identify with a community on campus that has its own particular challenges. Many of my peers have similar experiences, often much less privileged than my own. On campus, FGLI students struggle with pressure to conform, challenges with their families, and even changes in their own identities over time. Attending a school as prestigious and elite as Harvard means that we are forced to address a new tension in our lives: the hardships of our past and the relative privilege of our present.
Defining “The Harvard Elite”
As students walk through the gates of Harvard Yard on their first day of freshman year, many are introduced to a culture that is not like what they experienced at home. Feeling the pressure to fit in, students who wear casual clothing or hold themselves differently in their hometowns may adjust their demeanor to conform. At least, that is how Will Dey ’23 describes it. In an interview with the HPR, he said, “I feel like I’m out of place, or posing, because that’s not really who I am. I feel like there’s a pressure to try and be a part of the Harvard elite.”
What defines said “Harvard elite?” Though Harvard meets the full financial need of all of its students, and 20 percent of Harvard families pay nothing for their students’ educations, only 55 percent of Harvard students receive any financial aid, which means that 45 percent of students live in homes with an annual income above $200,000. For some students who come from wealthy backgrounds, their spending habits differ, whether it be spending large amounts of money on furnishings for their dorm’s common room, eating out in the Square, or taking expensive vacations.
Regardless of students’ financial statuses coming into Harvard, by living in this community, all of us have access to this lifestyle’s mentality. Whether it be subscribing to wealth as a value and aim, or acquiring the resources to attain more wealth in the future, FGLI students may also choose to join the Harvard elite. In the meantime, however, they must face the fact that their backgrounds are often less privileged than those of many of their peers.
FGLI Life On Campus: The Price of Wealth
When they arrive on campus, FGLI students are thrust into a culture of wealth that most of them have never experienced before. This culture extends to the classroom, where many wealthy students have attended private school, received tutoring, and overall have more academic preparation than their FGLI counterparts. As Tabitha Escalante ’23 said, “There was a certain expectation of knowledge that [wealthier students] were coming in with and even sitting in section, the students would be popping off about knowledge that I had never even come across in my high school career. I remember sitting there at least once a week and thinking to myself, ‘I do not belong in this space.’”
Escalante’s sentiment is one with which Dan Lobo, an advisor at the Harvard Office of Career Services and founder of Primus (formerly known as the First-Generation Student Union) would also be familiar. He told the HPR that when he attended Harvard as an FGLI undergraduate, he felt like he “needed to start rejecting parts of my identity to fit in.” Those parts of his identity, the parts that did not match the image of eliteness at Harvard, were hidden away and replaced by perceived upper-class values.
To better fit in, Lobo started listening to NPR and paid more attention to his eating and exercise habits. Studies find that low-income communities have a higher density of tobacco retailers and fast food restaurants, less access to fresh foods, and built environments that often prohibit physical activity. Demographic reports also reveal that NPR listeners tend to be more affluent, and a majority have attended college. Thus, some FGLI students would consider NPR, healthy eating, and physical activity to be upper class privileges. While having access to more academic resources, healthier food, and athletic facilities is not a bad thing, it is important to consider some of the sacrifices that FGLI students make when they feel pressure to conform to certain activities or behaviors.
That pressure can extend beyond positive behavioral changes and have more adverse consequences. If all your friends eat out in the square every night or are planning an extravagant vacation to Europe for spring break, it’s natural to want to fit in. FGLI students are faced with a choice: conform to the Harvard elite, even at the risk of going into debt with reckless spending, or not participate, possibly isolating themselves from their friends.
FGLI Life Off Campus: Family Struggles and Beyond
“I remember going out with my parents, and all they were talking about was how annoying or upsetting the latest thing that our next door neighbor had done [was],” said Lobo. “I remember having this super dramatic, existential realization like, I am never going to be able to have an intellectual conversation with my parents. And that was depressing for me as an intellectual, realizing that I was just changing so much. Every day, I had something that I wanted to talk to my parents about, but it was like hitting this wall. … And so that caused a bit of a wedge of me feeling like my family didn’t have much value to add to my growth and development at Harvard.”
Gaps in academic experience with family quickly become a real problem for FGLI students. What may be a conversation intended to convey excitement for learning can easily turn into something that further distances students from their families. The wedge that Lobo talks about is real, and it starts when first-generation students leave for college. In his book, The First-Generation Student Experience, author Jeff Davis writes, “Many first-generation student families see college attendance as a place where a child leaves the family behind, for good or bad. … Non-first-generation students leave their families, too, of course, but because leaving for college has become incorporated into the family mythology, part of becoming a full member of the family, separation anxiety does not hit them nearly as hard.”
Even after college, this wedge can continue to grow. Lobo described a story in which he asked his sister whether she believed that he perceived himself as superior to her in light of his going to Harvard. She said that for a long time, she did. Lobo attributed this to having escaped the hardships of poverty while his family continues to face those issues. It may be the case that at some point, family members of FGLI students think they are not good enough for their Harvard student, widening the perceived gap in family experience. Lobo’s experience at Harvard has changed, too: “It is fundamentally harder for me to relate to FGLI students,” he said, “because I don’t have the day-to-day pressures of being low-income anymore.”
While Harvard alone cannot fix all of the challenges that FGLI students face, the institution can help lessen the burden. Ultimately, when all students come to Harvard, they want to find a space where they can belong without sacrificing their own identity to fit in. To make this vision a reality, Harvard needs to address issues surrounding income diversity, and the first step is to candidly acknowledge the problems. Furthermore, Harvard should fully fund and expand the First-Year Retreat and Experience pre-orientation program, which aims to ease the transition for low-income and/or first-generation students. For FGLI students themselves, an important step could be to acknowledge any family challenges that they may face and prepare to put the work into nourishing their relationships.
Though FGLI students experience changes at this institution, what doesn’t change is the persistence and grit that led us to Harvard in the first place. In high school, I worked to pay bills; at Harvard, I work to break the cycle of inequality that separates us from our peers. For myself and other FGLI students on campus, Harvard is a game-changing opportunity to create a better future. But we carry the weight of our entire communities, and the pressure to succeed accompanies every grade, every internship, and everything else that we do. Persistence and grit define FGLI students, even as we hide behind a facade of easy success. Harvard is incredibly diverse, both in privilege and lived experience, and we deserve an institution that is more responsive to our concerns and the unique challenges we face.
Image Credit: Flickr / pmckee