Many students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are the first students from their high schools to have gone to an Ivy League college in many years. Robert L. Lowe '87-'88 believes he may be the first ever from his area--Chicago's South Side--to come to Harvard.

One reason for this is that many students from low-income families don't apply to expensive colleges, according to Fitzsimmons. Because they don't realize how comprehensive financial aid can be, these students are eliminated from the candidate pool before the selection process even begins, he adds.

"There is a waste of talent," Fitzsimmons says. "Students from such backgrounds ought to be considering the very best schools, and often they don't for all the wrong reasons."

Cutbacks in federal student aid programs over the past six years have amplified this problem, Fitzsimmons says. "What we start to see is a trend that has disturbed me. I think many economically disadvantaged students hear about some cutback in aid and they start thinking about not coming to college."

But Von Redden disagrees about the fundamental reason that low-income students don't apply. "A lot of people at my school--even possible candidates--didn't bother to apply because Harvard has that stereotype: white, elite and prep school."

Pressure Cooker

Persistent pecuniary pressure in a world that seems to be, comparatively, overflowing with privilege makes many needy students feel isolated, as if they don't belong and aren't understood by a wealthier Harvard society.

"I didn't feel deprived until I came here." says Susan M. Dynarski '86-'87, whose mothers' $15,000 salary is her family's sole support. "It would upset me when people would go out to dinner and I couldn't go with them. It takes getting used to students who have so much money they don't know what to do with it."

Isolation hits working-class students harder than other minority groups, according to Read. "Unlike race or gender, your economic background is invisible. Nobody knows, [and there is] no forum to talk about it. [At Harvard] it's presumed you have resources."

Read recalls one student who, during a BSC discussion, said, "It's nice to be in a place where students can understand what it's like when you have to buy a textbook in the morning, xerox it, and return it in the afternoon."

Some students react to their isolation by trying to hide the cause of the problem, according to Coughlan. "You come in and you don't want to be looked at as if you're different. You don't want to admit you're not wealthy," he says. "Maybe freshmen feel like they need to hide it."

"It's hard to express coming from a lower economic background because people tend to feel sorry for you," says Craig, who concentrates in history and sociology. "No one wants to evoke pity. It's easy to say you're different, but it's hard to say why."

"[Disadvantaged freshmen] may expect that everyone is a prototype, final club person. That's the perspective from the outside," says Lowe.

Von Redden believes these stereotypes are largely true. "I see a lot of white people that went to prep school," he says. "I see a lot of money."

By the time they are juniors and seniors, however, many low-income students say they have realized their initial impressions were inaccurate or at least exaggerated. Lowe, for instance, admits he once had the "pre-conceived notion that [Harvard] was a very white, very East Coast, very well-off school" but now he knows this isn't nearly as pervasive as he imagined.