Low-Income Students at Elite Colleges Speak of Facing Pressures and Alienation
Jasmine Miller, who grew up in Tennessee and graduated from Harvard in 2013, has some illustrative anecdotes to explain how low-income students at elite colleges get subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that they aren’t like their classmates. An Ivy League economics professor, for example, might try to elicit a discussion by asking, "How many of you were raised by nannies?" And a low-income student is bound to get a party icebreaker like "Where’s your favorite place to go abroad?" Ms. Miller provided those anecdotes to give perspective to a select group of elite-college presidents and high-level administrators during a symposium here on Thursday at the headquarters of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which gives what it calls the nation’s largest academic scholarships to roughly 250 high-performing, low-income students each year.