What if the hardest part of college isn’t the academics, but realizing that some of your classmates arrived knowing how college works before even setting foot on campus?
In my sophomore year at Smith College, I conducted independent research about differences between first-generation students and their peers in navigating college. I learned that for my first-generation and low-income peers, college can feel like entering a race already a few steps behind.
One first-generation student, Nadia, compared herself with classmates who had more opportunities before college, and said she felt like she was “playing a game of catch-up,” which had a cost. Nadia said the time she spent trying to get “on par” academically left little room for joining clubs and organizations, the very places where students often make new friends, meet mentors, discover opportunities, and begin to build their networks.
Another first-generation student, Kayla, mentioned being afraid to ask questions, a fear she connected to the pressure she felt as a low-income student. She recognized that this hesitation made it harder to form personal connections and reinforced her sense that she didn’t belong in some academic spaces. Meanwhile, another student, Rhea, who grew up in a university town with two college-educated parents, described feeling comfortable networking and turning to professors, friends, and family for connections. Hearing about their distinct experiences confirmed for me that the difference isn’t ambition; it’s familiarity.
Information about how to build relationships with professors, or make the most out of a college’s alumni network, is knowledge many first-generation students don’t have when they enter college. In my research, some students told me about discovering this late in comparison to their continuing-generation peers. Their stories signal something that I believe colleges too often overlook, which is that providing students with the same resources doesn’t necessarily give them the same access to those resources. If one group arrives on campus already knowing how to approach professors and opportunities, while another wonders whether asking for help will expose their sense of feeling behind, those resources can end up reinforcing inequality instead of reducing it.
The students I spoke to believe that colleges can help change that. They suggest that first-generation students might be better served by having peer mentors from the start, along with clearer information about academic and emergency funding, more transparency about pathways into research, individualized help navigating alumni networks, and more support identifying transferable skills from previous jobs.
As a first-generation student myself, I don’t want colleges to assume that we aren’t putting in the work to find and access resources, or that we lack ambition and drive. If anything, all of the students I interviewed were resourceful, hardworking, and already developing valuable skills, sometimes even while juggling academics with multiple jobs. What they often lacked wasn’t ability, but familiarity with the systems in place at college and the assurance that they too had permission to enter these spaces.
If colleges want students to thrive, they can’t just build more doors. They also have to ensure that every student knows they are welcomed and encouraged to walk through.
*All students’ names have been changed.
Beatriz Cazho Garcia of Amherst is a junior at Smith College majoring in government and minoring in neuroscience. All students’ names have been changed in this column for confidentiality.