I am a first-generation, low-income student at Brown University. Like, actually first-generation and low-income. Not in the appropriated “Let me check off a box indicating a minority status that doesn’t describe me so that I’ll get special consideration in admissions” way, but in the “My school’s annual tuition is over seven times what my mother makes in a year” way. Far less glamorous, I know, but at least it’s real.
During my college application cycle, I watched classmates “joke” about lying to admissions officers about how their parents never received a college education while writing from the comfort of their $1.5 million dollar homes about their “experiences” with financial troubles. If anything was poor here, it wasn’t their financial status.
While a suspicious number of self-proclaimed first-generation, low-income students spent time horseback riding in high school, I balanced two part-time jobs and continue to do so in college. And while these students were white-water rafting, I was starting a business to pay for my various educational programs that my family could not support. Before my second semester of college had begun, I’d sent hundreds of dollars to my family to fix the car, pay for groceries, or whatever else needed to be done that week. I’ve had to refuse medical treatment for co-pays not covered by insurance and I’ve scrambled to afford university charges for necessary things like laundry and printing services.
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Students flaunting supposed traumas and hardships is an all too popular trend in today’s cutthroat world of academic admissions. A 2021 survey conducted by Intelligent.com asked 1,250 white college applicants above the age of 16 if they had claimed to be a racial minority on their applications. An astounding 34 percent said yes. It’s even easier to claim poverty or first-generation status, with different schools having different interpretations of what these terms actually mean, and as applicants have found benefits in defining themselves as underprivileged, they’ve gone to shameful lengths to take advantage of a system that just wasn’t designed for them.
In January of 2022, Mackenzie Fierceton, accepted Rhodes scholar and student at the University of Pennsylvania, threw away her acceptance to the prestigious scholarship and possibly even her master’s degree following questions about her status as a self-proclaimed first-generation, low-income student. Investigations concluded that Fierceton—whose grandfather was a college graduate, had attended a private high school while being raised in an upper-middle-class household by her radiologist mother—had been “blatantly dishonest” in her applications to both Penn and the Rhodes Scholarship.
Fierceton was not the first, and won’t be the last, student to latch on to this complex identity—what’s anomalous is that she had her claims investigated. In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fierceton stated that she identifies as a first-generation, low-income student “based on Penn’s own definitions,” and she has a serious point there. At the University of Penn, first-generation, low-income students are considered those who are “the first in their families to go to college and/or who come from low-income households.”
The ambiguities—starting with and/or—hidden in that seemingly straightforward definition invite manipulation. Because there is no example of what low-income means, students are able to prey on Penn’s honor system, in much the same way that the HFDC housing program in New York City intended for low-income people has become a subsidy for young ones with little income but copious family wealth.
It’s not just Penn. At Cornell University, FGLI status is available to applicants who “believe that prior academic and social experiences have been limited due to socioeconomic status.”
Universities are at least as much at fault here as the applicants lying to them. How can you expect people to follow a rule that was never actually set? Short answer: you can’t.
At Brown, first-generation includes students who “self-identify as not having prior exposure to or knowledge of navigating higher institutions such as Brown who may need additional resources.” The university rejects establishing a rigid formula for defining this unique identity, instead providing vague suggestions that leave things open to individual interpretation, or manipulation. Is any incoming college freshman going to feel familiar with college culture at their university? Fear of the unknown isn’t just for the poor—thanks, though!
Attending an Ivy League university as a student of this background has been jarring. It has shaken up my perception of the world and shifted the way in which I view the people around me. In late August, I attended a pre-orientation program hosted by Brown that aimed to provide students with guidance on navigating the transition to college, educate them on issues faced by marginalized communities in the U.S. and encourage them to think critically about their own identities. Referred to as “The Third World Transition Program” and run by the Brown Center for Students of Color, the program was born out of “protests led by Black women and students in 1968 and 1975 [that] demanded the university provide better support and resources for them,” according to Brown’s website.
For a program initially constructed to provide resources for underserved people of color, the program consisted of a shockingly high number of wealthy, white, legacy students who presented me with the most outlandish understandings of identity I had ever heard. One boy told me that he was first-generation because his mother went to college outside of the U.S. His mother went to Oxford. Another girl told me that she was low-income because her dad makes $400,000 a year, and that’s “New York poor.” Each time another student offered ill-considered remarks on their background, I remember standing in front of them, eyebrows up and jaw dropped, thankful for the mask hiding my complete and utter disbelief. It was almost like clockwork: meet new classmate, ask about new classmate’s background, find out new classmate fails to comprehend or acknowledge their privilege, freak out, move on.
The reality of life as a first-generation, low-income student isn’t something I would wish upon anyone. It certainly isn’t something to be thrown around by schools effectively inviting students to use their story-telling gifts to make their stories fit that identity. Giving under-resourced students a chance is redistributing privilege, not a power-up for applicants to play or a way for schools to signify diversity without actually working to create it.
