Privatization

Because this topic deals with a minority who already is at a disadvantage, it seems that everything is privatized. After reading many different articles and personal stories of students, I realized that many of them are misinformed and feel that money cannot be found in different places. For example, someone who is an immigrant and is applying to school may feel that to receive financial aid, you have to be a certain status. Automatically they are mentally discouraged to keep the process going. It hard once these aspiring students get in once they see how much disadvantage they have. Just like the comparisons made in Alexander and Hamilton's "Paying for the Party", students from these kind of backgrounds feel that they are out of place. They go on to say, "Eighteen isolates were from less privileged families, including all working class woman and lower-middle-class women on the floor and a few middle-class women" (Alexander and Hamilton 96). It is not necessary to emphasize that immigrant families tend to be of this class. It is hard to feel a part of something bigger when you already feel that the odds are stacked against you. With the privatization of higher education, it becomes harder for immigrant students to thrive in our education system.

Check Point

As I began to do research on my topic, I remembered that we were allowed to use primary resources. I began to think to myself what it feels to be born here and be a first generation college students from an immigrant family. It is easy to say that most of the stress I feel is because I have people who are expecting a lot from me. When I hear my mother or father talk to their friends who have sons and daughters the may be entering their first college class in the fall, they always begin to almost brag about my accomplishments. I've been fortunate to not have to pay out of pocket money since freshman year, but that almost adds more stress to me. So on one hand, being a US citizen almost makes the expectation to be that much higher.
On another hand, one of my best friends came to the States when we were in the second grade. His family made many sacrifices to get him here from Ecuador, as he came illegally. He has managed to legalize his status now, but after talking to him I noticed that our expectations are a little different. He told me that he acknowledges the many sacrifices his single mother has made to have him here and allow for him to have the most resources possible to make his success here. He used the words, "I feel that I owe my mother the biggest debt of them all, and that's opportunity." On the financial side of it all, he could not attend Rutgers Business School due to his temporary legal status. He was not offered financial aid and had to attend community college instead.
Overall it seems that we both have to juggle the our personal expectations. In the article linked below,  I was able to explore more of this conflict that many students in similar situations face. Its tough to not always feel that we can do better and that we have let someone down. Hopefully in the more research I do, I can find more solutions than problems.

http://jar.sagepub.com/content/30/3/271.full.pdf+html

Topic Proposal

With more and more immigrant families in the United States, the number of students who may want to attend college grows in those families. Some of those kids are children of immigrants, while others are immigrants themselves. The topic I'm deciding to do my research in has to do with the struggles a college student that is an immigrant or a child of immigrant parents may face. Whether these challenges be the price, the culture change, or the pressures of being the outbreak of the family, the challenges these individuals can sometimes cause for them to be over pressured.