Beyond Admission

The New York Times released its “Most Economically Diverse Top Colleges” list in September, and Grinnell ranked second for its commitment to recruiting students from every income bracket.

As a first-generation, third-year student, I have no doubt that Grinnell’s Offices of Admission and Financial Aid deserve this high praise, but it is imperative to remember that support for low-income and first-generation college students must exist beyond admission and financial aid practices. Admission staff members cannot create further economic diversity once a class has arrived on campus. At that point, our entire institution must provide exceptional support to preserve economic diversity until graduation.

Nationally, 89 percent of low-income, first-generation college students in the United States do not finish their degree in even six years, with 25 percent dropping out after their first year. Grinnell’s retention rate for both first-generation and low-income students is much higher than the national average, and four-year graduation rates for all students remain high. When controlling for factors of race/ethnicity, first-generation status, and gender, Grinnell’s Office of Analytic Support and Institutional Research recently found no statistically significant difference between graduation rates of students in the top and bottom income quartiles.

Many factors contribute to this relative success, including the fact that it is much more difficult to fall through the cracks at a liberal arts school with 1,600 students than at a public university with 30,000.

But we cannot measure the experience of economically diverse students at Grinnell simply via retention rates. Grinnell must intentionally support low-income and first-generation students during the four — or more — years between accepting an offer of admission and receiving a diploma. We must also ensure that these students have the same quality experience during their time on campus as their non-first-gen, non-Pell-eligible, non-low-income peers.

I know this from personal experience. I applied to Grinnell not only as a first-generation student, but also as part of a Grinnell legacy. My two older brothers are alumni — Adam in the class of 2011 and Andy, class of 2013. In fact, my first year on campus was concurrent with Andy’s fourth and final year. We actually lived across Eighth Avenue from each other — I was in Loose Hall, and he was in Lazier Hall.

I attribute much of my success at Grinnell to the guidance Adam and Andy so eagerly provide me. I not only learned about the College from their lived experiences, but their knowledge served as my entire understanding of American undergraduate institutions. However, that support does not negate the fact that prior to my senior year of high school, no one in my family had completed a four-year degree.

Despite the tremendous help my brothers provided me, I still struggle with what I now know are common experiences of first-generation students. Last spring I found myself crying in meetings with my professor and a fellow first-gen admission counselor because I felt so stifled by factors I attributed to my own inadequacies. I reached out for help because I had hit a point where I felt incapable of performing academically — but I should have reached out for support much earlier in my Grinnell career instead of waiting until the end of my fourth semester.

One problem has already been solved. Before this year, Grinnell’s first-gen community met annually in April — a time that was far too late to provide support to students who may be struggling to complete their classes. Thankfully, this academic year is seeing an entirely new approach to support for these students, which bolsters the first-gen community.

Programming is starting earlier and occurring more often so that students can form relationships with members of the College community who can help them handle issues earlier in the semester and help them extinguish larger fires later on. This is far more beneficial than hearing retroactively about support systems that might have been critically important if they had been aware of them months, or even semesters, earlier.

College-sponsored programming is only a first step to community-building, though. As Grinnellians, we pride ourselves on our openness, yet we are still extremely incapable of having candid conversations about class outside academic settings. Even then, our discussions revolve around denouncing others’ classism, while avoiding commenting on our own class.

The Grinnell College community as a whole needs to ask more questions about how it can support low-income and first-generation students. How can our campus create more allies? How can we create an environment that enables productive discussions about economic diversity? Only together can we support the incredible economic diversity that our Offices of Admission and Financial Aid have been able to provide.

I am dedicated to reaching out to alumni, staff, faculty, and current students to share their experiences in order to support other students like myself in any way possible, because we all deserve a mentor and support system like the one I have found in my brothers. I implore any first-generation Grinnellian to join the Facebook group Grinnell College First Generation Students and help support, or be supported by, the community of first-generation Grinnellians.