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A review by bites_of_books
The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students by Anthony Abraham Jack
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
The personal impact of this book for myself is massive. I was a recipient of the Questbridge scholarship to attend Scripps College with basically a full ride. Coming from a low income household to a private, liberal arts college, was a challenge in ways that I didn't even register at the time.
The Privileged Poor highlights the challenges that students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and enter elite institutions with little to no preparation for what they will face. These challenges aren't just academic, they are cultura, financial, and even related to mental and physical health. I loved that this book features the stories of real student experiences while explaining how various policies by elite institutions try to help but sometimes fail to do so.
The author also goes on to mention how he was able to give these perspectives to the institutions that he was investigating in order to make a difference for current and future students. While this book was published in 2019 and I graduated in 2016, I felt validated with a lot of what he writes about and it also gave me language to be able to express how I felt during my college years. It definitely gave me a lot of food for thought and reflection.
I am looking forward to reading his other works and hopefully institutions, parents, and students (prospective, current, and prior) can read this book to be able to gain that perspective and be able to make students' experiences better.
The Privileged Poor highlights the challenges that students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and enter elite institutions with little to no preparation for what they will face. These challenges aren't just academic, they are cultura, financial, and even related to mental and physical health. I loved that this book features the stories of real student experiences while explaining how various policies by elite institutions try to help but sometimes fail to do so.
The author also goes on to mention how he was able to give these perspectives to the institutions that he was investigating in order to make a difference for current and future students. While this book was published in 2019 and I graduated in 2016, I felt validated with a lot of what he writes about and it also gave me language to be able to express how I felt during my college years. It definitely gave me a lot of food for thought and reflection.
I am looking forward to reading his other works and hopefully institutions, parents, and students (prospective, current, and prior) can read this book to be able to gain that perspective and be able to make students' experiences better.