Low Income Support Letter: Fill & Download for Free

I have a lot to say about this scandal, one that involves Yale University. But before we start, let me introduce myself.Hello, my name is Camila, and I’m a grad student at Yale. I’m also a low-income student, an international student on an F1 visa, and a first-generation college student.Those labels I just listed should not be relevant. They weren’t for me while I was working as a midwife in Chile. But those labels are given to you the minute you apply to an Ivy League university. You check the boxes that baptize you as “Latinx”, “Low-income”, “First-Generation”, “Immigrant”, and you do so with the conviction that these things matter. Because these universities tell you that it matters. You go to their sites, you read their admissions page, and you see “Diversity and Inclusion” plastered all over the place. Diversity is their goal, and their mission is to protect it.It is no surprise then that when you apply, you do so with new-found hope. A letter of acceptance from an Ivy League university has the power to change everyone’s life, but when you are a minority, when you are low-income, when you are an immigrant, its weight is far more significant, and its potential to change your life is absolute, not just for you, but for your entire family as well, if only you can graduate.Academics is no issue. If you’re applying to an Ivy League university under those circumstances then we can safely assume you’re smart. You have earned the merits you proudly list in the hopes that they will recognize your potential and overlook your financial limitations. And they do. They come to you with wonderful tales of how they will support you if you’re a worthy candidate, and you believe them.The path isn’t easy, but you move forward because this will change your life for the better. You work hard, harder than other privileged students. You give up your soul with a signature to take on loans you would never be able to repay if you don’t get that golden degree, you parade yourself in front of donors that might want to give money for scholarships that will allow you to pay for food and shelter. You beg, you cry, and you plead for assistance that would keep you from going hungry and protect your family from selling everything they have to give you an opportunity that people like you just don’t get.And you do all this while renouncing sleep to study for tests, while budgeting every single thing you buy and reducing your expenses to the absolute minimum. You can only afford one meal a day sometimes, and your head hurts because your brain is eating up all those calories to keep you focused, but you do it. You persist because you have to. Your great grandparents, grandparents and parents didn’t have this opportunity, and now that you have it, you can only fight like hell to honour them.But there is a price to entering a school that’s used to having the offspring of the rich and famous among their students. They will ask for supplies you can’t buy and have no consideration for those who can’t afford it because that never even crossed their minds. They will suddenly increase your costs of tuition and just assume you’ll be able to pay for it. They will demand more and more money from you and ignore your cries for help. 100 dollars more, 1000 dollars more, 15 thousand dollars more seems like a joke to them, a small sum you can take from your allowance, or that might as well be laying around forgotten inside the pocket of some expensive Canada Goose jacket.This has been the reality of my experience at Yale. My dream quickly became the most isolating experience of my life, one where I’m barely able to make ends meet, barely able to afford food, barely able to put a roof over my head, all while getting good grades and passing all my classes (and I’ll be damned if I don’t, since this program has no remediation and they have already kicked out about 10 students even though the academic year hasn’t even ended). I have had to reduce my meals to a single one a day to purchase books my program demands I buy instead of just borrow from the library (they come with online quizzes that they make a part of your final grade), and have had to stop my parents from putting our family home for sale just so I can cover the sudden increases in tuition (15 thousand dollars) that the university revealed once the program had already started.When you are a student like me, with all those labels attached, you fight 10 times harder to keep up with your peers. I was already behind even before the race started, and it doesn’t matter how many meetings I’ve had (21 and counting) and how many people I’ve reached to seek help (I lost count), help is just “not available”. A university that’s rich has told me time and time again that there’s no help for me. They throw tons of food away every day, yet told me they cannot allow me to take leftovers home because I cannot be fed for free. They have looked at me as I repeat my story and told me that my situation is complex, but they cannot give me any “preferential” treatment. If you were poor you should not have come here, they have said to me with nicer words, and then they go to bed and sleep peacefully, lying time and time again that diversity is important and that they will do everything in their power to protect it.Scandals like this break you. They break your resolve and consume your faith. They dehumanize you, reduce you, humiliate you. They might as well be laughing at your face and it would be just as painful. Because this is nothing more than a massive “Fuck you” to all low-income students who have given everything for an opportunity that some of your peers got as a gift delivered on a gold platter from mommy and daddy.But I’m glad this has come out. I’ve cried too much and for too long while members of the faculty looked at me with pity only to do nothing about it, I’ve experienced the ugliest face of this university first-hand, and I can only hope that the dent this scandal will put on their pristine image will force them to do what the sorrow and despair of one of their students didn’t: Develop plans to support low-income students and minorities they have ignored and forsaken for far too long.IMPORTANT NOTE: I have edited this answer to add that another user on Quora, Kim Scheinberg, set a GoFundMe campaign to help me: Click here to support Help Camila graduate from Yale organized by Kim Scheinberg This answer was not written with that intention but words cannot explain how moved I am by her incredible gesture, and by everyone who believes in me and wants to help. Thank you!UPDATE: Donations have been coming in from complete strangers who want to help. Words cannot explain how grateful I am for your gesture, but even if I’m able to cover the extra costs of tuition, I will not stop meeting with faculty and staff, and talking about my experience until it (hopefully) reaches the president. Sharing my story, making some noise and maybe even be allowed to share things I’ve learned during the process might just bring some hope to people like me in the future. I have created a plan, and your donations won’t stop me from fighting since I’m not just doing it for myself. Thank you for reading

He should admit that he is an incompetent fraud, apologize to the country for a vicious and mendacious campaign, beg forgiveness for the false and squalid promises he made to his low income supporters, and finally, submit a humble letter of resignation from the office for which he is clearly unsuitable.A man can dream…Thanks for the A2A.

Yes, there are. I got admitted to Stanford’s class of 2022 in the early cycle 5 weeks ago. I am an Egyptian student, so I guess this qualifies me to answer your question.To make things clear, when I applied to Stanford, I didn’t have the slightest doubt about my decision. I was going to get rejected.The Mighty Stanford (also known as the farm) is the most selective US university out there.Here’s why:1- Every year Stanford receives 40 - 45 thousands applications of which it admits approx. 2 thousand making their acceptance rate the lowest in the US, 4.69%!2- Acceptance rates for international students are even lower. Since Most US Universities, Stanford and MIT included, have self-imposed quotas, usually in the 9–11% range, on international students, meaning that they can’t comprise a large percentage of the incoming class, I knew that admission will be even harder still - as if it wasn’t already a catastrophe.3- I didn’t think I had any special hooks. I am not a refugee with parents from a low-income, impoverished background and I wasn’t an elitist kid either. I didn’t rank internationally in any sport or instrument, didn’t publish a gazillion research papers, and didn’t win a prestigious contest like ISEF, IPHO, IMO… etc. To be honest though, I did have my fair share of awards, but I thought they were not enough to demonstrate my initiative, passion, and drive.4- I tried to console myself with the fact that my scores were in the Stanford range and that compared to my environment, I have made use of the resources I had and all that cliche stuff BUT NOOO!! I opened college confidential , a website that has a forum for students applying to college in the US, and started looking at the stats of other international applicants. I was overwhelmed by the amount of international accolades they had or the number of startups they sold! For example, one Indian kid with a 1530 on the SAT and 4.0 GPA (similar to me so far) had started and sold a startup for 120k $ (far more than my feeble startup that is yet to generate money) over the summer and had developed more than 5 award-wining applications (not even in my dreams at that point) that were already generating revenue on Google Play and the App Store. And guess what? He was asking about his chances! Soon enough, I was sure I had no chance.But I applied anyway.And on December 15th, 2017, I received this.Needless to say, I was exponentially more baffled than you’re right now. I can almost say that it hasn’t sunk in just yet. Hopefully it will when I go there InshAllah :)Now to the important part: what made me stand out?I don’t know, and you’ll probably never know. Scores and GPA are never enough, and University needs change every year. I may never know what made me stand out, but as the admissions committee puts it in the acceptance letter: “You are, quite simply, a fantastic match with Stanford.” It probably is nothing more and nothing less.Moral of the story: APPLY! The only way you guarantee rejection is by not applying. I was lucky enough to have someone support me when I thought I couldn’t make it and barely pressed that submit button. The first step towards standing out is applying. The rest is just a mix of numbers, words, and a ton of luck!Good Luck :)