The Daily Princetonian
Thursday April 3, 2014
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Being First Part Two
Street staff writer Jennifer Shyue takes an in-depth look at some personal experiences of first-generation college students at Princeton
For this two-part series, Street spoke to five first-generation college students about their experiences at Princeton. In addition to being first-generation, some of the students are also first-generation Americans; others are not. One is not American at all. They hail from places as close as Brooklyn, N.Y. to as far as Espartinas, Spain. Their majors range from psychology to operations research and financial engineering, and they dream of everything from reforming education policy to traveling into space.
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hawon Jackson ’15 and Ana Maldonado ’16 have three more years of college left between them, but they, too, will be the first in their families to graduate from a four-year university. Both Jackson and Maldonado are active contributors to the Princeton community and campus discourse. Jackson is currently serving his second term as USG President, and Maldonado is the community service and outreach chair of the University’s Quest Scholars Network chapter, a resource for students affiliated with QuestBridge finalists around the country. Jackson and Maldonado are both QuestBridge scholars. QuestBridge is a program that helps students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges succeed in the college application process. According to its website, “QuestBridge connects the world’s brightest low-income students to America’s best universities and opportunities.” Since its founding, the organization has matched over 5,000 students with 35 of the nation’s top universities. Part of QuestBridge’s mission is to “revolutionize the way leading colleges and universities recruit talented low-income students, and the way these students approach their educations and futures.” Jackson and Maldonado’s perspectives on their time at Princeton thus far offer insight into how their unique experiences and backgrounds influence their approach to participating in the Princeton community — and their plans for the future Both Jackson and Maldonado were invited to participate in the Freshman Scholars Institute before their freshman years, a voluntary program targeted at helping certain groups, including first-generation college students, successfully transition to the college sphere. Although Jackson ultimately did not attend, the program does foster a sense of community within the group of participants and allows them to refine their academic goals, according to Diane McKay, FSI’s director and Associate Dean of the College. “I would also say that many of the first-gen students with whom I have worked feel a sense of connectedness to others, and they have a desire to serve communities beyond the immediate community,” McKay said. “They
are aware of the sacrifices that were made on their behalf, and the, feel a sense of commitment to improving the lives of others. I hope that we find ways to highlight these really positive qualities of first-gen students.”
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hawon Jackson, who is from University Park, Ill., attended Illinois Math and Science Academy, a boarding school in Aurora, Ill. He decided to go to boarding school instead of staying in his hometown for high school because, Jackson said, “My home high school wasn’t of a high quality, and I wanted a better education.” In his senior year, when he applied to QuestBridge, he ranked Princeton as one of the schools he was interested in. “I did not expect to be matched at all in December, and I was very, very excited and pleasantly surprised when I got an email saying I was matched with Princeton,” he said. The full scholarship that is guaranteed with every QuestBridge match through the National College Match program was a huge boon for Jackson’s family, he said. “It was a huge relief for my family because they didn’t have to worry about paying for me to go to college,” he said. Jackson, however, did not know his family qualified as low-income until he applied for QuestBridge. “I didn’t even realize we were low-income because my mom and dad always did a good job making sure my brother and I had everything we need,” he said. “QuestBridge generally says, ‘Oh, if you’re under $60,000 for your income, then you probably qualify.’ I was like, ‘Mom, do we qualify for this?’ She was like, ‘Oh baby, we definitely do. Go ahead and apply.’ ” Nevertheless, Jackson believes that being low-income has influenced his Princeton experience more than being first-generation has. “I don’t know if being first-generation has impacted my experience as much as being a low-income student, though the two are definitely related,” he said. Even so, he said, “[My parents] instilled the value of education in me at a very, very young age, and they knew that even though they didn’t complete college, that wasn’t an excuse at all for me not to go.” After finding out about his acceptance to Princeton, Jackson learned of the Wilson school and decided he wanted to concentrate his studies on
public policy. His upbringing inspired his focus on education policy. “When I compare my home community and that high school to the type of education I received at my boarding school, I noticed a lot of disparities,” he said. “It was always sad to me that it was the minority population, both in terms of race and class, that did not receive a high-quality education.” Jackson hopes to become an education policy adviser for the government or a nonprofit.
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na Maldonado is also a Quest Scholar. In her hometown of Santa Ana, Calif., she said, over 90 percent of students in the public schools are Hispanic, and a majority of the city’s inhabitants live under the poverty line. Her own parents are natives of Mexico and never received a formal education. Her father taught himself to read; her mother, who is deaf, never learned to read, write or speak sign language. “Both my parents don’t have any education,” she said during an interview. “It’s kind of awkward for me when they ask, ‘What is your parents’ level of education?’ And the lowest they have is high school, and I’m like, ‘Well, they didn’t even go to high school. They didn’t even go to school to at all.’ ” Maldonado first heard of Princeton in elementary school, she said, when her class flew to the East Coast through the generosity of the principal at a Princeton elementary school. In the first week of her freshman year of high school, she said that she walked into the counselor’s office and asked, “I want to get into Princeton. What do I need to do?” When Maldonado was matched through QuestBridge with Princeton in the December of her senior year, she was surprised and thrilled, as were the teachers and counselors who had served as her mentors. When she told her father she had gotten into a school across the country, however, he had the opposite reaction. “He just flat-out did not talk to me for the rest of the day,” she said. Her father tried to persuade her to attend the University of California, Irvine because it was a 15-minute drive from their house, she said. “I was trying to explain it to him: ‘Dad. If someone were to give you a Ferrari, and it’s free, and someone gives you, I don’t know, a Honda Civic, and it’s not necessarily free — maybe you have to pay a grand or two — which
Percent of admitted first-gen students in the Class of 2018
Princeton
13.8
Penn
12.0
Brown
18.0
Dartmouth
12.4
MIT
17.0
Williams
16.0
Georgetown
12.0
one would you take, Dad?’ ” Maldonado recalled. “He still didn’t really get it.” Eventually, he came around, Maldonado said. She participated in FSI the summer before her freshman year and felt more or less prepared to tackle Princeton academically. What she was less prepared for, however, was the tug she felt from her life back home. “The hard thing for me, freshman year, was balancing between life here and life at home. For the most part, [my life] was life at home,” she said. Sources: princeton.edu, The Daily “The first semester, Pennsylvanian, Brown Daily Herald, my dad was unemployed, so it was now.dartmouth.edu, MIT News, constant, ‘Okay, williams.edu, The Hoya see if there are any jobs, submit my application.’ ” Her father called often, she said, as therapist. did her sister, at times seeking help Maldonado is active within the with finals when Maldonado was Quest Scholars Network on campus studying for her own. and recently attended the second an“That was mainly the biggest strug- nual First-Generation College Student gle, having to answer the phone, be- Summit at Amherst College. She noted cause I can’t just ignore it, and hav- that there are initiatives other colleging to sleep late because I have to do es have instituted, such as a winter homework, or just because my sister is coat fund and a day when professors on the phone with me until one in the who were also first-generation wear Tmorning,” she said. shirts that identify them as such, that On campus, she has found faculty she would like to see at Princeton. She mentors who have helped her make also questioned the fact that the Uniimportant decisions, such as switch- versity’s expectation for student coning out of the premed track and de- tributions increases each year, when ciding to major in psychology. When the difficulty of a student’s course Maldonado decided to leave behind load also increases with each year. her life-long goal of becoming a docOverall, she would like for there to be tor, her father struggled to understand more open conversation about the exher reasoning. periences of first-generation students. “That’s the problem, when you grow “None of us are telling our stories up and you’re first-gen, the only jobs so that people can feel sorry for us. you know are being a doctor, being a You shouldn’t feel sorry for us belawyer, being a teacher, possibly be- cause we’re here — we’re at Princeton. ing an engineer. But most of us don’t We did make it,” she said. She added think of other things like going to later, “We didn’t get in here to just grad school,” she said. ”I told him, serve as diversity. Yes, we got in also ‘[Being a doctor is] my number two because of that, so that we do bring and I don’t want to go for my number diversity. But what’s the point of gettwo if I want my number one.’ ” She ting in for diversity if no one wants to plans to become a family or couples’ talk about it?”