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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband was rural and first generation.  I think part of it is that it's significantly harder to navigate the system or find someone who knows how to navigate the system in those contexts.  [b]The college counselors at those rural schools don't know the ins and outs[/b] and being rural you have to travel a lot farther to find the mentorship programs and similar other kids get.

First generation kids are also more likely to drop out and feel like they don't belong in college. This happened to my own mom who was first generation, she was devastated and felt.like she didn't fit in college because of a couple Bs.  She didn't have the context to understand she was doing great.  She took a semester off and was going to enroll in a local school and that counselor there set her straight and sent her back to her college.  That counselor at the regional school saved my mom's education.[/quote]

I definitely got a boost when I was applying because of my rural location (and this was twenty-five years ago), and yes. My high school counselors saw maybe one student a year who was interested in a school more selective than our in-state flagship which accepted like 50% of in-state applicants. It was doable; I have supportive parents and it was after the internet was a thing, so it was doable, but I was on my own there. My parents had no idea that colleges were selective, even if you were smart, and my counselor's role was basically just to send transcripts and do schedules (we didn't have separate college counselors). It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years when I learned that colleges care about extracurriculars, for example.

I don't know what my college got out of it, but I'm glad they did it.[/quote]

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