{"id":139,"date":"2012-05-11T13:21:15","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T17:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/?p=139"},"modified":"2012-05-25T14:24:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T18:24:44","slug":"mary-a-2nd-generation-college-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/2012\/05\/11\/mary-a-2nd-generation-college-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary: A 2nd Generation College Student"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary is the child of two immigrant parents from California. \u00a0She is currently a sophomore at Vassar College, a highly selective private four-year college in Upstate New York. \u00a0My research (see my blog post “Attainment of Higher Education for Immigrants: What Exactly is Possible?) concludes that access to private colleges is severely restricted for many children of immigrants. \u00a0I recently sat down with Mary to discuss her educational trajectory and see what factors enabled her to attend such an esteemed postsecondary institution. \u00a0My questions are in bold<\/strong>\u00a0and Mary’s answers are in plain text.<\/em><\/p>\n

Are both of your parents immigrants?\u00a0 If so, where are they from and when did they immigrate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Yes, they both are.\u00a0 My dad immigrated about twenty five years ago and my mom immigrated about twenty years ago and they\u2019re both from Mexico.<\/p>\n

Do your parents have college degrees?\u00a0 If so, from where?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. Neither of them.<\/p>\n

Do you have any siblings?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, two brothers.\u00a0 Older and younger.<\/p>\n

Are they in college?\u00a0 If so, where?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No.<\/p>\n

Did you attend public or private school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Private school.<\/p>\n

How big was your high school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s small.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a hundred and seventy five students in total.<\/p>\n

What was the ethnic make up of your high school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was mostly minorities.\u00a0 Maybe like two or three white people in my class.\u00a0 But it was like Blacks, Latinos, Tongans.<\/p>\n

Did your high school implement \u2018tracking\u2019 in terms of its courses\/policies?\u00a0 If so, what track were you in?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0 We had AP courses and we ahd different levels of math, that\u2019s the first one I know.\u00a0 It\u2019s advanced math, then regular, and then people who need help with math.\u00a0 I was in the AP track.<\/p>\n

Were there other children of immigrants in your track?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>I was in the top and advanced classes in all subjects.\u00a0 Half of {children of imms] were in the advanced ones and half were in the lower.<\/p>\n

Were there a lot of children of immigrants in your school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, I\u2019d say about 90% of the population, at least.<\/p>\n

What did your school offer in terms of resources to help you search for and apply to colleges?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We had a high school counselor, about one for every forty students.\u00a0 She was definitely working with us individually, helping us know which colleges to apply to and which ones she recommends.<\/p>\n

What types of schools did other children of immigrants in your high school attend?\u00a0 Liberal arts colleges?\u00a0 Public universities?\u00a0 Community Colleges?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of them went to Stanford. \u00a0Others went to Community College.\u00a0 Others went to public institutions\u2014UCLA, Yale.\u00a0 It was all over the map, definitely.<\/p>\n

Did you participate in a college prep program?\u00a0 Was this run through your school or privately?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We had a class called College Readiness.\u00a0 It was a class where we had to do a lot of writing how college teachers would want us to write.\u00a0 Just like the resources we need to apply to college, what resources we need to get, preparation for the SATs, and ACTs.\u00a0 The whole period was dedicated to filling out applications, later filling out the FAFSA.<\/p>\n

Did everyone have to take that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it was a requirement so everyone had to take it.<\/p>\n

How big was that class?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They only offered two classes and it was about 25 students each.<\/p>\n

What types of colleges\/universities did you look at?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I looked at schools all over the map.\u00a0 For my [high] school we have to apply to reach, safety, and target schools.\u00a0 So I definitely applied to safety schools, the ones I knew I could get into.\u00a0 Not community colleges, but like Mount Saint Marys.\u00a0 UC Merced.\u00a0 Everyone who applied got in.<\/p>\n

So did you look mostly at smaller colleges?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0 I liked the smallness of my highschool.\u00a0 I liked how teachers focused their time on individuals.\u00a0 I visted the big schools like UCLA and UC Berkley and it was humongous, so I didn\u2019t see myself there.<\/p>\n

Why did you choose Vassar?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mainly because of financial aid.\u00a0 I liked that it was in New York, I\u2019ve neve been here before.\u00a0 I thought it would be a great experience to go across the country to a small liberal arts school.\u00a0 I liked that it was small and there were no requirements.<\/p>\n

Was financial aid an important factor when looking at schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For everyone in my high school, yeah.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mary is working towards a degree in Sociology. \u00a0She plans on studying abroad in Europe next fall.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary is the child of two immigrant parents from California. \u00a0She is currently a sophomore at Vassar College, a highly selective private four-year college in Upstate New York. \u00a0My research (see my blog post “Attainment of Higher Education for Immigrants: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[33366,33365,522],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-children-of-immigrants","tag-higher-education","tag-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/children-of-immigration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}