I在Wellesley的一天。超载的汽车拉到宿舍，父母和学生拖着塑料桶和滚动手提箱，衣服，床上用品和枕头的套管往往太小，无法容纳所有这些东西。父母迎接其他父母，团聚的学生尖叫和拥抱。家庭部队到露露书店或vil为他们的女儿的房间拿起更多的东西。海报挂;计算机连接到网络;手提箱和盒子被清空。然后有一个好人，有些泪流满面，有些没有。学生的年度开始了。

每个人都知道这次历史悠久的仪式，对吗？不必要。在大学举行Joy St. John的第一天。“我记得我的爸爸放弃了我，”Wellesley的入学和经济援助的院长圣约翰说。她坐在大学里的第一部成员，她参加了斯坦福，这可能是“去火星”，她说。新生年，她的父亲在加利福尼亚州的帕洛阿尔托，落下了她。

“我们在一天内从俄勒冈州开车，我们卸下了一切，”她回忆道。“他递给我洗衣篮，说'好吧，我会见到你。”他转过身来，然后赶到俄勒冈州。其他人的父母和他们一起出去玩，在那里，我独自和我的洗衣篮子。“

St. John went on to a successful college experience, though it was not without challenges. “The first day of Western Civ, when we went through the syllabus, half of the kids had read half the books already. And I’m thinking, I haven’t read any of these books yet,” she recalls.

今天，她在识别和将其他第一代学生达到Wellesley时享有她的领导作用。

“我们所承认的是，每个人都受益于成为各种社区的一部分，并体验多种观点，”圣约翰说。“在80年代和90年代，我们对从种族和民族角度来看多样性的重要性有一些非常重要的对话。这只是在过去的15年里，我们是一群选择性大学的社区 - 谈论社会经济多样性的重要性。“

圣约翰认为家庭对大学经历新的学生拓宽了教育谈话。“如果你在一个政治科学课上，你怎么回事，你有关于福利改革的谈话？”她说。“如果没有人在福利上，这是一个不同的谈话，而不是课堂上的一些学生获得公共援助。重要的是要意识到你不是在谈论'其他人。'你在谈论坐在你旁边的人。你意识到这些人分享了你的智力礼物和才能。他们就像你一样聪明。他们和你一样雄心勃勃。“

A Matter of Money

在2014年,28.6%的754545名学生used the Common Application to apply to college nationwide identified as first-generation—defined as coming from a family in which neither parent has a four-year degree. At Wellesley, 12 percent of students are first-generation, based on the same definition.

Many first-generation students also come from low-income families. According to data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, in 2014, median family income was $37,565 for freshmen whose parents did not attend college and $99,635 for those whose parents did. In the Ivy League, the gap is even more dramatic—the纽约时报reported that at Harvard, more than half of the freshman class in 2014 came from families making over $125,000 a year, including 15 percent with incomes between $250,000 and $500,000 and another 14 percent over $500,000. The family income of the 15 percent of freshmen who are first-generation was less than $40,000.

第一代学生都面临挑战ting to college and adjusting once they’re there. The College Board reports that high-school students whose parents did not attend college are more likely to delay college entry; they also report lower educational expectations than their peers as early as eighth grade. As a group, these students tend to apply to and attend less selective colleges that are closer to home. And they often begin college less academically prepared than other students.

Wellesley works closely with programs such as QuestBridge, Bright Prospect, MasterCard Foundation Scholars, and a variety of community-based and charter-school programs to identify promising students who may be unfamiliar with the college application process. These candidates may be first-generation, or students who come from low-income families or under-resourced communities.

“All of these students are under-represented in selective colleges and universities around the country,” says St. John. “It’s hard to make the claim that we’re training the future leaders of this country and of the world if we’re disregarding or excluding any one group. If our mission is to provide an excellent liberal-arts education to women who will make a difference in the world, we have an obligation to make sure that we’re developing female leaders who are relevant across various communities, both nationally and internationally. It’s hard to argue that all the leaders are going to come from one neighborhood, or one race or ethnicity.”

Wellesleyplus.

Once first-generation students arrive on campus, the College offers a voluntary program called WellesleyPlus to assist with the transition and build on academic strengths. WellesleyPlus groups may include first-generation college students, those from low-income families, and students from under-resourced high schools.

Wellesleyplus.students enroll in designated fall first-year seminars that aim to help them learn about and access the array of campus resources that may be unfamiliar. In addition to common coursework, students in WellesleyPlus are part of a first-year mentor group that guides them through the fall semester. They participate in weekly “success seminars” designed to build strong academic skills, and take part in a fall retreat and a winter workshop. At the end of the first year, students can apply for a career-exploration shadowing program for the month of June.

Last year, Ann Velenchik, dean of academic affairs and associate professor of economics, taught one of the WellesleyPlus fall seminars, about women in the American labor market. She says, “First-generation students’ backgrounds are different. There are, therefore, things they need help with that other students don’t need help with. Those things are generally not intellectual. They are navigational; they’re about how to make your way through this experience.”

Velenchik表示，她的学生带来了高度的能量和对班级的承诺。“关于第一代学生的很多对话，以及高度财务需要的学生通常是关于Wellesley在经济援助和支持方面给予这些学生的礼物。我认为我们需要相同地专注于这些学生为我们的社区带来的丰富。我认为有智慧和成熟度。我们的学生平均是极其国际化的;这个群体一般不那么少。但他们在理解方面更加成长，他们的责任在于 - 这是关于他们的。“

Dislocations

Even with support, the Wellesley experience can feel overwhelming. “A lot of the first-generation students the elite New England colleges are recruiting are not New Englanders,” says Velenchik. “It’s a long way to travel. It’s a big cultural dislocation. It’s a big food dislocation. There are a lot of dimensions in which this place is very far away.”

Serenity Hughes ’18 remembers experiencing that sense of dislocation when she moved into Tower Court as a first-year. “It was weird,” she says. “We’re in a suburb here. I’m from Chicago, and Wellesley looks a lot different from the neighborhood I grew up in. I’m still getting used to it, to be honest. It was weird—spooky—but it was amazing at the same time.”

Hughes came to Wellesley from Chicago’s South Side. Neither of her parents graduated from college, but her mother works in education as the office manager for the University of Chicago Charter School.

“I always wanted to go to college,” she says. “It was instilled in me. It was the one thing my mom and dad wanted to be sure that I did; it was a no-brainer.”

The sophomore says there were times in her first year when she wondered if she could stick it out. She’s a bit surprised, she says, that shedidn’tgive up. “I am a strong person. But I had numerous days when I thought, ‘This is too much. I want to go home.’ The Chicago public schools aren’t great, and though I attended a selective-admission school, I don’t think it adequately prepared me for Wellesley. And I was out of my comfort zone. I was expecting it to be hard, but I wasn’t expecting it to be as hard as it was. But giving up is the easy way out. If I had given up and gone home, that wouldn’t have solved anything.”

Finding a Network

“There’s a sense, I think, that everybody who comes to Wellesley starts at the same place. But it’s actually not true at all; what’s possible for you depends in part on what you think is possible for you. If you don’t know any of that, you need help in ways that other people don’t,” says Donald Leach, associate director of residential life.

2013年，艾德与若干同事合作推出Wellesley First Generation Network. “We’re trying to create structures and relationships that allow first-gen students to see, ‘Oh, that thing that is possible for my roommate, whether it be an internship or my junior year abroad, is possible for me, too.’ We’re trying expand the sense of possibility,” he says.

In March 2015, the network hosted the Third Annual First Generation College Student Summit, welcoming 200 students (including 35 from Wellesley) from 36 colleges and universities. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, first generation herself, sent videotaped welcoming remarks.

For Elizabeth Cho ’16, finding her feet at Wellesley involved connecting with the network. She’s now one of its two student coordinators.

“全部first years are a bit anxious and scared—and socially awkward, maybe—but I was trying hard to find a community of students who maybe understood my struggle a bit,” she says. Then, in the spring semester of her first year, Cho attended an organizational meeting for the network. “It was so awesome to see so many other first-gen students all in one room,” she recalls. “When we all started talking about our common experiences, that’s when it clicked: This is what first-gen identity is like. It transcends race. It transcends nationality and immigrant status—all those things.”

Cho came to Wellesley from Southern California. “My mom and dad are both immigrants. My mom is from Mexico and my father’s from Korea. Chino, the city I’m from, is very modest,” she says. Early in her high-school career, she was accepted into a college-readiness program, Bright Prospect, a nonprofit that connects lower-income, often minority students to resources like SAT-prep classes.

“Oftentimes, college recruiters don’t visit schools like the high school I went to, but they’ll go to the Bright Prospect office. A lot of the schools that they try to get students interested in are private, liberal-arts schools. And a lot of students who are first-gen, or who don’t know as much about the college process, or whose family doesn’t know about liberal-arts schools—you just don’t know how much financial aid you can get.” (See “Affordability and Access Through Aid,” below.)

The Elephant in the Room

作为第一代是一个无形的属性，可以让学生觉得更多孤立。为了实现可见性，第一代网络向教师，学生和员工提供明亮的红色“我是第一个”T恤，并要求他们在春季开放校园和5月1日佩戴它们。

Then there’s the matter of money. Karen Shih, assistant dean of intercultural education and advisor to students of Asian descent, was one of the first organizers of the network—and is first-generation herself. She says that first-generation students do manage to find each other, but at the same time can find it hard to develop a sense of belonging within the larger Wellesley community. “The institution’s identity is associated with status and wealth,” Shih says. “That disconnect is really uncomfortable for many of them. And it’s taboo to talk about class, but it’s the great reality.”

“这是许多房间里的大象，”艾德说。

安Velenchik说生活的主题by-side with affluence as a daily reality often came up in her class. “One of [my students] described it as the difference between being the people who sell their clothes online on the for-sale bulletin, and being the students who buy other people’s clothes online. One of my students bought a North Face, the long North Face puffer coat, from a girl who had three. She had a black and a gray and a brown. The coat my student bought had never been worn. Why would you have three? She bought it for practically nothing,” she says.

A Sense of Belonging

Cho说她逐渐向大学调整为大学。现在，“我在Wellesley的超级开心，但在我的第一年，我挣扎着，思考，Wellesley适合我。它适合我的需求。它给了我援助。我喜欢教授。我喜欢班级尺寸。我喜欢校园。但我想，我不适合Wellesley。“

Isabel Staccuneddu ’17, the other student coordinator for the First Generation Network, has also felt that way. Staccuneddu came to Wellesley from East Northport, N.Y. “My dad immigrated to Long Island in 1983 from southern Italy to find construction work,” she says. “He’s self-employed as a handyman now. My mother, a lifelong New Yorker, worked at Home Depot for 20 years, and is now a certified nursing assistant. My father has a middle-school education, and my mother finished high school.”

At Wellesley, she says, she has experienced what psychologists call imposter syndrome—the feeling that one is not really successful, competent, and smart, and may have been admitted by mistake. “As a first-year, I couldn’t believe the large percentage of my classes that were dedicated to group discussion. I didn’t think I had anything to contribute to class conversations. I found it difficult to ask for help, to approach professors, and to navigate academic resources. There had been a steady narrative of ‘You must work so hard,’ ‘Your parents are so proud,’ and ‘First-gen students are an inspiration,’ from my overwhelmingly not-first-gen high school. Going from being the obedient, high-achieving immigrant’s kid who confirms every assumption people have about the United States being a meritocracy, to needing help in all capacities adjusting to college was a huge culture shock.”

Staccuneddu补充说：“Wellesley这样的学院没有用第一代学生建造。教师，工作人员和同龄人比不是，人们进入Wellesley的一套类似的技能。似乎他们认为每个人都了解学生互动，没有人超出一些工作的工作时间，每个人都在受过教育的家庭中长大。学习如何存在于为精英设计的空间中，同时仍然持有自己的身份关闭是一个大量时间和支持的大承诺。这就是我们需要第一代网络的原因。“

家庭关系

For any student, adjusting to being away from home has some bumpy moments. For first-generation students, the fact that their families are unfamiliar with what college is like can add to that discomfort.

“There was a time my first year where I was calling my mom constantly, saying, ‘Oh, this is so rough,’” says Cho. Her mother, concerned, finally said, “Honey, if you need to come home, just come home, if it’s too much for you.”

Cho补充道，“我觉得从父母的一边，这太难了，因为他们不知道要告诉你什么。有时他们说，'只是尽力，'你知道吗？或者你会告诉他们你的课程，他们就像，“哦，好工作，继续学习。”但是关于去教授的办公时间的建议，或者有关进入这个网络机会的建议？他们不知道这一点。但我的父母绝对一直非常支持他们一直都是他们能够的。“

Staccuneddu说她也没有收到她父母的热情支持。“就像任何父母一样，他们希望我快乐，他们自己的经历表明他们认为学院是更美好生活的关键，”她说。“我的父母一直对我诚实，他们希望如何完成学业。许多人认为，低收入家庭不重视教育，但这不能从真相中进一步。我的父母喜欢Wellesley。虽然喜欢教师的研究和赠款机会是不熟悉的地形，但他们可以理解我在这里快乐和健康。“

安Velenchik对女性在美国的课程labor market, most students came from families in which both parents worked. “One parent staying home is a middle-class luxury good in the U.S.,” says Velenchik. “These students had a really clear sense—a sense that perhaps our other students don’t have—of what it’s like to work for a living in a job that doesn’t give you any intrinsic pleasure. That was a huge focus of the conversation: that to be able to do work that you love and get paid for it puts you in a very elite group on the face of the earth. [Students] from families where work was not always associated with fulfillment [brought] a really interesting perspective to the party.”

这是一个透视的staccuneddu认可。“我很欣赏在长大后观看我的父母在物理要求的田地里的非传统时间后，”我说。““我曾经遇到第一手我的教育是无意识的。”

After Graduation

Last year, the First Generation Network offered a panel about the transition from college to professional life. Rosa Fernandez ’07 was one of the speakers.

Fernandez和她的双胞胎姐姐在14岁时从多米尼加共和国来到美国，并在布朗克斯的家庭与家人定居。

“I went to a public school in the city for recent immigrant students who spoke no English. In my senior year, I went to my history teacher crying and told her I wasn’t going to college,” she says. “She looked at me and said, ‘Of course you are going to college.’ It was not something that I knew that I could do as an immigrant and a first-generation. I had no knowledge, and neither did my parents, about the application process or even what Wellesley was.”

但费尔南德斯填写了她的申请，并被竞争激烈的大学名单被接受，包括史密斯，哈维福德和Bryn Mawr。

“I had never left the Bronx,” says Fernandez. “But when I arrived at Wellesley, I just knew that I belonged there. It was the culture and how diverse, intelligent, engaging, motivated, and interested in the world the students were.”

When Fernandez toured campus, she saw banners that read, “Women who will make a difference in the world.”

“It sounds clichéd but it spoke to me because of my own history and how women had been so impactful in my life. The fact that it was displayed around campus helped me decide to come to Wellesley,” she says.

毕业后，费尔南德斯为纽约市教育部工作。“我希望其他孩子们从所有背景中拥有相同的机会，我必须实现我所拥有的所有事情，”她说。

She worked in a challenging and politically charged job that involved identifying under-performing high schools. Having received an M.A. from Columbia, she wanted to work on improving the transition from high school into college. She is now employed by the College Board, testing interventions and programs to help low-income, high-performing students apply to college and navigate the financial aid process—“All the things I know from experience,” she says.

“I recall so many of my college friends knowing how to go to professors’ office hours. That sounds so simple, but it isn’t—not for all students, especially if you come from public, under-resourced schools. It’s not the culture. But learning to ask questions and get help—those are skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life. It’s a learning curve that you have to do right away. Don’t give up!”

Serenity Hughes has no intention of giving up. “I don’t want to say first-gens are more eager than other people—but we don’t really have anything to fall back on,” she says. “And I don’t have parents who have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to support me. The only thing I can do is stay here and do my best. I am hungry for success. And it’s all on me.”