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Proprietary trading firms are usually limited partnerships that put their own capital to work in the markets, rather than the capital of their clients. Some of these firms also function as market makers, or liquidity providers to the capital markets. Prop trading firms are different than hedge funds, which generate returns based on their fund size and benchmark performance. In terms of compensation, prop trading firms often pay a base salary and a very lucrative performance bonus. Turnover, however, is rather high at these firms, since these firms do not often tolerate shoddy performance. In addition, newer firms often require a contribution of capital from traders who wish to join, from about $10-20,000. In return, these firms often offer substantial leverage and training. Many times, the training is well worth the experience if it is given for free. Aspiring traders though need to be wary of firms that charge excessively for training.[ad#ad1]For those interested in prop trading, here are the best:Advantage Futures – Advantage is a clearing member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, The London Clearing House, The Clearing Corporation as well as a non-clearing member of Eurex and Eurex-US.Allston Trading – Allston Trading, LLC, is a premier market maker in worldwide financial exchanges. We trade hundreds of different stocks, bonds, futures, options and other financial instruments in over 30 exchanges.Archelon Group – Archelon LLC is an options market maker and proprietary trader of exchange listed options, futures and equities in the US, Europe, and Korea.Assent – Assent is a national equities trading firm that currently serves hundreds of traders across the country.Avatar Trading – Trading services for individual traders and large trading groups.BOSS Trading – A Chicago-based proprietary trading group with a strong background in intermarket relationships and spreads, from both a fundamental and technical standpoint. Primarily focusing on European market hours, BOSS Trading has over 7 years experience in trading electronic debt, equity, and commodity futures.Bear Capital Partners – Established in 2004 by a young team of industrious trading professionals, Bear Capital Partners has quickly evolved within the financial world; developing recognition as an incomparable, resilient force among Wall Street’s most elite organizations.Belvedere Trading – Belvedere Trading is a proprietary trading firm specializing in equity index options.Blue Capital Group – Blue Capital Group is a privately held futures and options trading firm based in Deerfield, Illinois.Breakwater Trading – Breakwater is an agile, focused, proactive organization that strives to integrate technology with intelligence and market vision.Bright Trading – Bright Trading, LLC is a professional, proprietary stock trading firm. We have hundreds of independent traders who trade from dozens of locations throughout the United States. In addition, our “Bright-At-Home” traders enjoy the benefits of proprietary trading from the comfort of their homes.Broad Street Trading – Broad Street Trading is a private equity trading firm formed to manage and trade it’s own funds.Capstone – Trades, equities, commodities, fixed income and money markets around the world. Offices in London, New York and Chicago.Chicago Trading Company – Chicago Trading Company (CTC) is a proprietary market making firm and is recognized internationally as a leading provider of pricing and liquidity on all U.S. derivatives exchanges.DRW Trading Group – The DRW Trading Group is an aggressive, dedicated organization engaged in many different aspects of the trading industry, including market making and proprietary trading. Offices in Chicago, New York and London.DV Trading – DV Trading is a proprietary trading firm that executes on all major North American and European futures exchanges in a variety of asset classes.Dimension Brokerage – Dimension Brokerage, LLC is a full service trading firm specializing in providing trading services to professional traders.EchoTrade – ECHOtrade is a professional trading firm dedicated to the needs of the serious, off-floor trader.Eldorado Trading – Eldorado Trading, LLC, is a proprietary trading firm that capitalizes on global fixed income markets— CME Eurodollars, CBOT Treasuries, LIFFE Euribor—by being the leading innovator of the electronic trading world. The founders of Eldorado have been trading electronically since the inception of screen trading in the early 1990s, giving the company an edge as transactions migrate from open outcry in the trading pits to electronic trading on the screens.First New York Securities – Premier principal trading firm with over 200 employees in NY and London. Phenomenal training program (18-24 months). Looks for highly motivated applicants.Fusionary Trading – Fusionary uses a synthesis of the wisdom of the ages and time-tested tools to help you make more money in less time.Futex Trading – Futex was set up by traders who had been open-outcry trading on the LIFFE floor since 1990. In 1998 when the LIFFE floor was migrating onto computer screens Futex traders were one of the first to establish a professional computer based trading floor.GETCO – GETCO is a privately-held, electronic trading firm dedicated to enhancing liquidity and efficiency in the world’s financial markets.Gelber Group – Gelber is a unique service provider for the individual professional trader, professional trading group, or institution. We have an unwavering focus on technology management and service, as we seek to expand our access to liquid electronic markets around the world. Gelber Group maintains the philosophy that clear communication and interaction bring successful trading results.Genesis Securities – Genesis provides a fully customizable, state of the art DMA platform Laser for the sophisticated trader.Geneva Trading – Geneva Trading is a proprietary electronic trading firm located in Chicago, Illinois USA and Dublin, Ireland. Focus is on electronically traded futures and equity markets in the USA and Europe.Goldenberg, Hehmeyer & Co. (GHCO) – Futures, Options, Trading, Hedging. Professional Trading and Brokerage at the next level.Group One Trading – Group One is one of the largest proprietary options trading firms in the country started in 1989 by five successful options traders.Hold Brothers – Proprietary Online Stock Trading.IMC Financial Markets – The IMC Group is a global financial organization with a presence in Amsterdam, London, New York, Chicago, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Zug.Infinium Capital Management – Infinium Capital Management is a proprietary capital management firm with offices in Chicago and New York. Founded in Chicago in 2001, our firm was built by a core team with decades of experience in trading, software development, and financial modeling. The founders share entrepreneurial pasts, having built and sold a variety of companies and technologies both in and out of the financial markets.Intelligent Market Trading Company – The Intelligent Market Trading Company is a Chicago-based proprietary trading company with the core focus of applying cutting edge technology, and trading techniques to the problem of floor traded and electronically traded derivative securities.International Trading Group / DE Trading Corporation – Privately held proprietary trading firm in the northern suburbs of Chicago.Jane Street Capital – Jane Street is a quantitative proprietary trading firm that brings a deep understanding of markets, a scientific approach, and innovative technology together to trade profitably in financial markets. Jane Street doesn’t seek outside investment and doesn’t have customers. Founded in 2000, Jane Street is 190 committed people in New York, Chicago, London, and Tokyo.Jump Trading – Jump Trading, LLC is a proprietary trading firm, focused on trading index futures, options, and equities. Because we are not a brokerage firm, we do not have clients. Revenues come solely from trading Jump’s proprietary account.Jump Trading is a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). Jump is also a non-clearing member of the European Exchange (Eurex).Kershner Trading Group – Since 1993, Kershner Trading has been built on the idea of shared success. We are a classic proprietary trading business providing full service, support and capital to our traders, including state-of-the-art proprietary technology applications with direct access to US markets. Our traders currently trade in our Austin, Tx office, however we are always interested in hearing from groups of successful traders in other locations. Member NASD, SEC registered.Kingstree Trading – Chicago prop trading firm that at one time reputedly did one third of the volume in the e-mini S&P.Lion Pride Trading – Lion Pride Trading is a global private equities, options and futures trading firm that empowers its traders with significant trading equity, lightning-fast execution software, and unparalleled access to international markets and exchanges and also provides timely worldwide news and information.Liquid Trading – Specializes in high frequency, quant traders. Based in Europe.Marex Trading – MAREX Financial is an Independent Broker Dealer offering worldwide coverage of Commodities, Financial Futures and Options and FX Markets.Marquette Partners – Marquette Partners is a leading liquidity provider to the world’s largest derivatives exchanges. As an early pioneer in electronic futures trading, Marquette has successfully developed individuals to trade on exchanges throughout the globe, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, Eurex, Euronext-Paris, Euronext-LIFFE and Borsa Italia.Nico Trading – Nico Holdings LLC is a proprietary trading firm. We make markets and take positions 24 hours a day. We are active in exchange-traded and over-the-counter markets, including spot and derivative contracts.Optiver – Optiver is an international proprietary trading house dealing mainly in derivatives, shares and bonds. The firm has expanded from a few Amsterdam based market makers to a global arbitrage group with subsidiaries in Chicago and Sydney.Peak6 Trading – One of the largest equity options market-making firms in the U.S.Refco Trading Services – Based on REFCO’s acquisition of MAC Trading Services, LLC a London based electronic trading company; REFCO Trading Services was established, which has commenced operations in North America. Now part of the Man Financial Refco Division.Reverb Capital – Reverb Capital is making itself heard from the epicenter of Chicago’s Financial District. Focused on “high frequency” trading in the equities, futures and options markets, Reverb is a proprietary trading firm that beats to a different drum.Ronin Capital – Proprietary trading operations covering a variety of markets including equity securities, government bonds, corporate bonds, and related derivatives on global exchanges and electronically.SKTY Trading – SKTY Trading was founded in 2002 as a market making firm in EuroDollar options on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Since inception, SKTY has expanded its focus to include multiple products on several exchanges.SMB Capital – SMB Capital, LLC is a privately owned investment partnership engaged in day trading NYSE and NASDAQ equities.Schonfeld Group – Schonfeld Securities, LLC pioneered the short term trading industry when it began operations in 1988. It is one of the largest U.S. proprietary equity trading firms in terms of number of traders and volume traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ.Simplex Investments – Chicago based off-floor proprietary trading firm focused on the active trader.Spot Trading – Spot Trading is an off-floor trading firm specializing in equity options.Susquehanna International Group – Based in Philadelphia and focused on market making, proprietary trading, private equity. Looks for entrepreneurial traders with experience.Swifttrade – Global Securities Trading.The Archelon Group – Archelon LLC is an options market maker and proprietary trader of exchange listed options, futures and equities in the US, Europe, and Korea.Tibra Capital – A global prop firm specialising in market making and arbitrage.Title Trading – Title Trading is privately owned proprietary trading firm. Title traders trade the firm’s capital on several US stock markets: NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX.Tower Hill Trading – Tower Hill Trading is a leading proprietary trading firm based in downtown Chicago. We offer a superior working environment, the opportunity to learn from the best, state of the art technology, extremely competitive payouts and access to substantial trading capital.Trade Vision Capital – Trade Vision Capital provides its customers with the highest end order entry software available. It is the only software to receive the NASD’s platinum certification.Tradebot Systems – Tradebot Systems provides liquidity to the stock market.Transmarket Group – TransMarket Group LLC is a global private trading and investment company. Provide risk capital and market access to individuals for the purpose of trading the global financial markets. Employees trade all global exchange listed derivatives, equities, commodities and selected cash markets.Vankar Trading – Professional management of trading systems. Divisions in North America, Europe, and Australia.WH Trading – WH Trading LLC is a proprietary futures, options and equities trading firm headquartered in Chicago, IL. Founded in 1994, WH Trading currently serves as a primary liquidity provider on the floor of the major Chicago futures exchanges and also as an exchange designated Lead Market Maker for electronically traded products in a variety of asset classes.Wasserman Capital – At Wasserman Capital our passion is trading and training others how to trade. Wasserman Capital has a proven apprenticeship program that leverages the same historically proven methods that successful traders have been using for over 100 years. Our training program provides the trading expertise and hands-on coaching necessary to help turn your passion for the financial markets into your career.Wolverine Trading – Wolverine is headquartered in Chicago and has offices in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and London.World Trade Securities – WTS Proprietary Trading Group LLC, is a privately owned proprietary trading firm based in NYC, New York and a member of the CBSX and is SEC registered.Xerxes Trading – Xerxes Trading represents the Morristown, NJ Office of Hold Brothers Online Investment Services, LLC (member FINRA-SIPC).Zmarc Partners – Specializes in electronic futures and commodity trading with all major international trading exchanges.RANKINGS: Jane Street, DRW, SIG, Optiver, Spot, Transmarket, Wolverine, Peak6, Jump Trading, First New York.Here is a comprehensive list of firms in the U.S.:Advantage FuturesAlaron TradingAllston TradingAngle GroupArchelon GroupAssentAvatar SecuritiesBarkley TradingBear CapitalBelvedere TradingBenchmarq TradingBlue Capital GroupBoss TradingBoston CabotBreakwater TradingBright TradingButtonwood Group TradingCago TradingCaliber Financial ManagementCapital Traders GroupCarlin GroupCapstoneCheiron TradingChicago TradingChimera CapitalCoastal Trade SecuritiesConsolidated TradingCornerstone Trading GroupCurvalue Financial Services GroupCy GroupDarwin Capital TradingDayson CapitalDavis SecuritiesDimension Trading GroupDimension Capital PartnersDRW Trading GroupDV TradingE-BrokerageEcho TradeEldorado Trading GroupEpiphany TradingEquitrade FinancialEquity Trading CapitalEvolution CapitalExcel TradingFirst North American TradingFirst New York SecuritiesFCT Group of CompaniesFlat Iron TradingFusionary TradingFutex GroupGator Trading PartnersGetco, LLCGelber GroupGemini CapitalGenesis SecuritiesGeneva TradingGolden BeneficialGoldenberg, Hehmeyer & Co. (GHCO)Golden MarketGroup One TradingGuardian TradingHarrison Trading GroupHanley GroupHarrison Trading GroupHLV CapitalHold BrothersInfinium Capital ManagementIntegra CapitalInternational Trading Group/ DE Trading CorpIMC Financial MarketsJane Street CapitalJC Trading GroupJump TradingKC-CO IIKershner TradingKeystone TradingKingstree TradingLast Atlantis CapitalLeague TradingLion Pride TradingLiquid TradingLynx CapitalMadison Proprietary Trading GroupMako GlobalMBH TradingMJL PartnersM&N TradingMAREX TradingMarquette PartnersMazel TradingMotive CapitalNexis CapitalNico TradingNext Level TradingOptiverOpus AtlantaParamount Equity PartnersPeak6Platinum Plus TradingPrestige CapitalPrism Trading GroupQuestradeRefco Trading ServicesRemata TradingRemote Day TraderRho Trading SecuritiesRML TradingRiverbank CapitalRonin CapitalRosenthal Collins GroupS&B CapitalSaxon FinancialsSchonfeldSDV LLCSemper Fi TradingSharmac CapitalSimplex InvestmentsSMB CapitalSMW Trading CompanySoldier CapitalSperling EnterprisesSpot TradingStar Alliance Capital OneSwift TradeT3 CapitalTibra CapitalTitan SecuritiesTitle TradingTower Hill TradingTrade Vision GroupTraders CapitalTrading RMTransact FuturesTransmarket GroupTriton TradingTrillium TradingTrinity CapitalTuco TradingYourika CapitalXerxes TradingVan der MoolenVankar TradingVTrader GroupVelez CapitalWasserman CapitalWescott GroupWolverine TradingWorld Trade SecuritiesZinc TradingZ-Marc IIHere is a comprehensive list of firms in Europe:Argo TradersCandlestick Trading CompanyCFT FinancialsCustom House CapitalDubai Professional Trading GroupElite DerivativesEnigma Trading ServicesFutex GroupGlobal Exchange TradingGHF FinancialsHeron FuturesKyte GroupLeague TradersLondon Capital GroupMercury FinancialMET TradersMTA TradeNevis TradingOSTCPropex DerivativesPyne TradingSaxon FinancialsSchneider GroupSeuqoia CapitalSigma DerivativesTCA MarketsTradeLinkTrader HillTraders Clearing AllianceTrading PlacesTriniti FinancialTurtle FuturesTXL TradingHere is also a ranking for those interested of the top 25 prop trading firms:1. GETCO2. Five Rings Capital3. Jane Street4. Hudson River Trading5. Jump Trading6. Optiver7. SIG8. DRW9. IMC10. Tower Research11. Spot Trading12. Tibra13. Allston Trading14. Madison Tyler15. DC Energy16. Louis Dreyfus Commodities17. Flow Traders18. Timber Hill19. First New York Securities20. Chicago Trading Company21. TransMarket22. Consolidated Trading23. Group1 Trading24. Trillium25. Wolverine

Q. Is it true that some students at Brown University get food stamps because they’re smart enough to be attending Brown but are broke?A. Low income students at Brown are offered full scholarships that cover tuition, room and board. Their meal plans are covered by the Brown scholarship. They do not need, nor are they qualified for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Food Stamps. The above statement is not true.What is it like to be poor at an Ivy League school? - The Boston GlobeAlejandro Claudio can eat whenever he wants at the Ratty, the campus dining hall, because his meal plan is covered by his Brown scholarship. During his first semester, friends looked at him like he had five heads when he said he’d never tasted falafel, kebabs, or curry. He had immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 8. “Growing up in a poor family, we ate the same thing every night: rice, beans, and chicken,” he says.Am I Eligible for SNAP?What is it like to be poor at an Ivy League school? - The Boston GlobeThe son of an MBTA bus driver from Jamaica Plain, Harvard sophomore Ted White helps lead the First Generation Student Union, pushing for a better understanding of challenges financially disadvantaged students face.DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFFBy Brooke Lea FosterAPRIL 09, 2015WHEN ANA BARROS first stepped into Harvard Yard as a freshman, she felt so out of place she might as well have had the words “low income” written on her forehead. A girl from Newark doesn’t belong in a place like Harvard, she thought, as she marveled at how green the elms were, how quaint the cobblestone streets. Back home, where her family lives in a modest house bought from Habitat for Humanity, there wasn’t always money for groceries, and the world seemed gray, sirens blaring at all hours. Her parents, who immigrated to the New York area from Colombia before she was born, spoke Spanish at home. It was at school that Barros learned English. A petite 5-foot-2 with high cheekbones and a head of model-worthy hair, Barros found out in an e-mail that she’d been accepted to Harvard — a full scholarship would give her the means to attend. “I knew at that moment that I’d never suffer in the way that my parents did,” she says.She opted for a single her freshman year, because she felt self-conscious about sharing a room with someone from a more privileged background. “All you see are class markers everywhere, from the way you dress to the way you talk,” says Barros, now a junior sociology major, as she sits in a grand, high-ceilinged space off the dining room in her Harvard College dorm. During her freshman and sophomore years, Barros hesitated to speak in class because she often mispronounced words — she knew what they meant from her own reading, but she hadn’t said many aloud before, and if she had, there had been no one to correct her. Friends paired off quickly. “You’d get weeded out of friendships based on what you could afford. If someone said let’s go to the Square for dinner and see a movie, you’d move on,” she says. Barros quickly became close with two other low-income students with whom she seemed to have more in common. She couldn’t relate to her peers who talked about buying $200 shirts or planning exotic spring break vacations. “They weren’t always conscious of how these conversations can make other people feel,” she says. In a recent sociology class, Barros’s instructor asked students to state their social class to spark discussion. “Middle,” said one student. “Upper class,” said another. Although she’d become accustomed to sharing her story with faculty, Barros passed. It made her uncomfortable. “Admitting you’re poor to your peers is sometimes too painful,” she says. “Who wants to be that one student in class speaking for everyone?”For generations, attending an Ivy League college has been practically a birthright for children of the nation’s most elite families. But in 2004, in the hopes of diversifying its student body and giving low-income, high-achieving students a chance at an Ivy League education, Harvard announced a game-changing financial aid campaign: If a student could get in, the school would pick up the tab. (Princeton was the first Ivy to offer poor families the option, in 1998; Yale followed Harvard in 2005.) Families with incomes of less than $40,000 would no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of their student’s education. (In recent years, income eligibility has increased to $65,000, with significant grants awarded to families that make up to $150,000.) Having since been adopted, in one form or another, by all the Ivies, this “zero family contribution” approach opened the gilded doors of top colleges for many of the country’s most disadvantaged students. The number of students awarded a Pell Grant — financial aid of as much as $5,700 given to those with a family income of up to 250 percent of the poverty line, or about $60,000 for a family of four — is considered the best indicator of how many are low-income. At Harvard, where tuition, room, and board is estimated at $58,600, the Pell is a very small part of a student’s financial aid package. Last year, 19.3 percent of eligible Harvard students were awarded a Pell, an 80 percent increase since the admissions policy began 11 years ago. At Brown University, 15 percent of students get a Pell, and at Yale, 14 percent do.But receiving a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, while a transformative experience for the nation’s poorest students, is only the first hurdle. Once on campus, students report feelings of loneliness, alienation, and plummeting self-confidence. Having grant money for tuition and fees and holding down jobs, too, as virtually all of them do, doesn’t translate to having the pocket money to keep up with free-spending peers. And some disadvantaged students feel they don’t have a right to complain to peers or administrators about anything at all; they don’t want to be perceived as ungrateful.“IT’S TOTAL CULTURE SHOCK,” says Ted White, a Harvard sophomore. White grew up working class in Jamaica Plain and graduated as valedictorian (he was one of the only white kids in his senior class) from New Mission High School in Hyde Park; his father is an MBTA bus driver. From the start, the Harvard campus didn’t seem built for a kid from a background like his, he says. Classmates came in freshman year having started businesses or nonprofits (usually with their parents’ resources, he says) that could make even a top student wonder if he belonged. “The starting place for all of us isn’t really the same,” he says. White appreciates, for example, that Harvard gives low-income students free tickets to the freshman formal, but they have to pick up the tickets in a different line from everyone else. “It’s clear who is getting free/reduced tickets and who isn’t,” he says — a situation a Harvard spokesperson says the school is working to remedy. At times, White wondered if he’d made the right choice going to Harvard, even if he saw his matriculation, like many low-income students do, as his one shot at leaving his family’s financial struggles behind for good.RELATED LINKSMaribel Claudio makes the sign of the cross on her son's head before he heads back to Brown.View GalleryPhotos: Class distinctionsRead: How did colleges become country clubs?Stephen Lassonde, dean of student life at Harvard College, says first-generation students have it particularly tough because they’re wrestling with their identities, like all students, while simultaneously trying to transcend their socioeconomic backgrounds. “As much as we do to try to make them feel included, there are multiple ways that their roommates and peers can put them on the outside without even intending to,” he says.Today, White, a sociology major, is vice president of Harvard’s First Generation Student Union, an advocacy and support network seeking to create positive institutional change for students whose parents never attended a four-year-college; Barros is the president. To hear them talk about it, the union has become a haven for Harvard’s poorest students, even if “first generation” doesn’t always mean poor. Low-income kids claimed the term when they realized how much easier it was to admit they were struggling partly because they were the first in their family to go to college, and not simply because they were poor, says Dan Lobo, who founded the union in 2013. Raised by Cape Verdean immigrant parents in Lynn — his dad cooks and his mom waits tables at hotels near Logan — Lobo spent a few tough years “trying to transition to Harvard.” After having dinner with two classmates in similar circumstances who also felt like an “invisible minority” on campus and struggled to make friends and keep up academically, Lobo decided to “come out” as a low-income, first-generation student and organized the First Generation Student Union. Urging others to talk more openly about how their background influenced their college experience, he sought to create a community that could advocate for change on campus. “At the time, no one was talking about first-gen issues at all,” says Lobo, who has since graduated (with highest honors) and works for a nonprofit that helps students of color get into elite private high schools. “It’s like Harvard was committed to admitting underprivileged kids, but then we got here and they didn’t know what to do with us.”Freshman Alejandro Claudio navigates a different world at Brown. “If I fail, I’m going back to poverty, to working in a factory,” he says.DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFFAs at Harvard, low-income students at Yale and Brown have suggested administrators could do more to help them develop a sense of belonging. And they, too, have been organizing — Undergraduate First Generation Low Income Partnership sprang up in 2014 at Yale. At Brown, three students, including a Mexican-American kid from California named Manuel Contreras, started 1vyG, the Inter-Ivy, First Generation College Student Network, in January 2014. Contreras’s group organized a three-day conference this February that brought together students and administrators from other schools to share information and learn from one another. “Brown wasn’t made for students like us,” Contreras, a cognitive science major, often tells fellow members, “but we have to make it ours.”All the groups are seeking greater visibility on campus: a more open dialogue about what it means to be a first-generation student at an Ivy League school, dedicated staff to serve as support, and a list of best practices so Ivies can use their abundant resources to ensure their most disadvantaged students are as equipped to succeed as other students. If the infrastructure at an Ivy League school assumes everyone comes from a certain socioeconomic background, as some first-generation students say, then change needs to come at an institutional level. Dining halls at some schools, for example, close for spring break, though some students can’t afford to leave campus. While tuition, room, and board may be covered. some universities tack on a “student fee” ranging from a few hundred to as much as a thousand dollars, an amount that can be devastating to those trying to figure out how to pay for books.Rakesh Khurana, dean of Harvard College, grew up in Queens as the son of a teacher in the Bronx. “We have to do a better job at making sure every student feels comfortable here,” says Khurana, who recently organized a task force to that end. In December, Harvard appointed two first-generation liaisons — one in the office of financial aid, the other in the office of career services — to help ease the transition for students. In January, Jason Munster, a first-generation low-income graduate student in environmental sciences and engineering from Maine, was named Harvard College’s first “first-generation tutor.” If you’re poor and struggling, Munster is the person you can go to for help. With an undergraduate degree from Harvard, Munster is also the campus liaison for the Harvard First Generation Alumni Network, founded around the same time as the First Generation Student Union.Still, students complain that Harvard worries too much about singling out first-generation students — the administration has been hesitant, for example, to offer them a specialized “bridge” program in the summer before their freshman year. Khurana waves the accusation off, saying that as a college Harvard is still figuring out how best to help. “I told the task force to imagine that we can create the best environment possible for these kids — no constraints,” he says. “What is the ideal? Can we create relationships earlier in their experience rather than later? Can we streamline certain forms of financial aid? It’s our goal to close this gap as quickly as possible.”ON A SUNDAY in mid-January, 18-year-old Alejandro Claudio has just packed up his duffel bag at his family’s first-floor apartment in a run-down triple-decker on Waldo Street in Providence’s West End. A crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary sits on the porch; next door is the Cranston Street Rescue Mission, a soup kitchen. It’s just a 15-minute drive across the city back to school after winter break, but to Claudio, dressed most days in his Brown sweat shirt and Red Sox cap, Brown is worlds away from the neighborhood where he grew up. On campus, his “perfect world up on the hill,” he feels removed from the worries at home — how his mom, a day-care provider, and his dad, a welder, are going to make their rent or keep their lights on. A political science, philosophy, and economics major, Claudio is well aware, though, that he must succeed. “If I fail, I’m going back to poverty, to working in a factory. I need to get good grades and get a job that pays well enough to help feed my family.”Claudio’s bright, windowed dorm room overlooks a grassy quad, and he can eat whenever he wants at the Ratty, the campus dining hall, because his meal plan is covered by his scholarship. During his first semester, friends looked at him like he had five heads when he said he’d never tasted falafel, kebabs, or curry. He had immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 8. “Growing up in a poor family, we ate the same thing every night: rice, beans, and chicken,” he says.Brown UniversityIt was at Providence’s predominantly Latino Central High School that Claudio, who would go on to be class valedictorian, decided he didn’t want a job in the fish factories where many of his friends’ parents worked. He believed he might actually escape the West End when he met Dakotah Rice, his coach on the debate team and an undergrad low-income student at Brown. They’d get together at a Burger King across from Central to talk about Claudio’s future and his chances of going to Brown. “He understood my background, and we’d talk for hours about how I could get in. He was like, ‘If I can do it, you can too,’ ” says Claudio. Now that he’s on campus, Claudio sees just how big a social gap exists between him and other students. It was easy to mistake other African-American and Latino students as coming from a similar socioeconomic background — but after striking up a conversation, Claudio was shocked to learn many were as moneyed as his white peers. At the first ice cream social, one student mentioned his dad was a lawyer and his mom a doctor, then asked Claudio what his parents did. When he told them his dad was a welder, the conversation ended awkwardly. Later in the semester, Claudio confided in a well-off friend that his mom was asking him for money to help pay bills. “I’m sorry,” the friend said, which made Claudio feel worse. He’s since stopped sharing his background so openly.After parachuting into a culture where many kids seem to have a direct line to prestigious internships through their well-off parents and feel entitled to argue with a professor over a grade, poor kids sense their disadvantage. Even if they’re in the same school as some of the nation’s smartest and best-connected young people, students’ socioeconomic backgrounds seem to dictate how they navigate campus. Research shows, for example, that upper-middle-class kids are better at asking for help at college than low-income ones, in part because they know the resources available to them. Disadvantaged students are accustomed to doing everything on their own because they rarely have parents educated enough to help them with things like homework or college applications, so they may be less likely to go to a writing center or ask a professor for extra help. Yolanda Rome, assistant dean for first-year and sophomore students at Brown, says many disadvantaged students have come to her in tears after getting a C on a paper. When she asks if they met with the instructor, the answer is typically no. “We’re working hard to change the campus culture,” she says, “so these students know that asking for help is not a weakness.”Anthony Jack, a resident tutor at Harvard alongside Jason Munster, is a PhD candidate in sociology studying low-income students at elite colleges. He says low-income students show up at his office every other week looking to vent about frustrations with campus life — or to ask a question they don’t know whom else to ask, like “How do I get a recommendation for a fellowship?” In his research, Jack looks at the experiences of both the “privileged poor,” low-income students who attend an elite, private high school before college, and the “doubly disadvantaged,” or students who aren’t familiar with the expectations and norms of elite colleges. His findings suggest that low-income students’ success on campus may be tied to the social and cultural capital they possess. For example, do they arrive with the same sense of entitlement as their more affluent peers, do they understand the importance of developing one-on-one relationships with professors to earn future recommendations?Brown is just a 15-minute ride from the apartment in Providence’s West End where Alejandro Claudio’s parents, Alejandro and Maribel Claudio, live.DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFFJack says that the privileged poor adjust more easily to the campus culture than the doubly disadvantaged. The latter see professors as distant authority figures and feel guarded in approaching them, whereas the privileged poor, like upper-middle-class students, find it easier to cultivate the relationship. “You’re worth a professor’s time,” Jack will tell many of the students he mentors.Does this reluctance to ask for help ultimately impact graduation rates? Perhaps not as much at an Ivy League school as elsewhere. Nationally, the graduation rate for low-income, first-generation students in bachelor’s programs is about 11 percent, but that number increases dramatically at Ivy League schools, where most of the financial burden is lifted from students. According to data collected by I’m First, an online community for first-generation college students funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, at Harvard and Yale, 98 percent of students from minority groups underrepresented in college will graduate with a four-year degree within six years; at Brown, it’s 91 percent.When recent Brown graduate Renata Martin first came to campus, she had no idea how poor her family was back in the Newark area, where her dad works as a pizza delivery driver. “Everyone who lived around us was getting their lights shut off — that was my normal,” she says. She used her campus health insurance to see a therapist for help with her identity struggles, but she couldn’t afford the $15 copays. Martin, who attended Brown on a $90,000 Jack Kent Cooke scholarship, says, “Brown assumes that all students can afford small extras like that, but we can’t.” During lean weeks, she’d stop in to see the campus chaplain to apply for funds to buy a book she couldn’t afford or a bus ticket home. “It’s really hard to ask for help,” she says. “But I had to get used to telling professors my story or I wouldn’t have gotten through Brown.”Beth Breger is the executive director of Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, a nonprofit that helps prepare 100 high-achieving, low-income high school juniors per year for college and the application process. Its students spend seven weeks on Princeton University’s campus to study leadership and attend seminars on things like writing, standardized-test prep, and campus life. They’re introduced to the resources that exist on campus, like the career center, where they can learn how to network and prepare for job interviews. “Our students are very capable of doing the work academically, but we help them with social and cultural aspects of school: why it’s important to meet with their academic adviser and professors, how to access a health center. We don’t want them to feel like taking advantage of these resources is a weakness.” Bridge programs with similar goals exist for incoming freshmen at Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Says Breger: “There’s a confidence issue with these kids. Many have never met a corporate lawyer or Wall Street trader. They don’t have a parent offering them a lens into the professional world. We try to broaden their perspective.”WHEN JUNIOR Julia Dixon steps inside the small cafeteria at Trumbull College at Yale, the short-order cook flipping hamburgers lights up: “Hi, Ms. Julia, what can I get for you today?” A man stacking crates of clean glasses says to the Southern-born Dixon: “Ms. Julia, it’s too cold for a Georgia peach today, isn’t it?” Wearing black-rimmed glasses and lipstick the color of Japanese eggplant, Dixon may be a long way from her childhood as the second oldest of 11 growing up on food stamps in rural Georgia. But she sees the dining room workers as family. In fact, when her parents rented a car and drove up to visit, they were nervous around Dixon’s friends — but they asked to meet the cafeteria workers. “Can you watch out for my baby girl?” her father asked the short-order cooks. That her parents reached out to dining hall staff on their one visit to campus, rather than a professor or faculty member, gets at the heart of the split identity Dixon has grappled with since her freshman year.She’s come to see herself as “Georgia Julia” and “Yale Julia,” and reconciling the two identities is complicated. Even her parents sense the change. On her second (and most recent) visit home in the three years she’s been at school, her father voiced concern at dinner one night that her education might cause her to drift away from them. “I don’t want you to be ashamed of us,” he said. At first, Dixon wouldn’t talk to her parents about what she was going through at school — a tough class she was taking, how much money she had in her bank account. She’s since realized that the only way to stay connected to them is to talk openly about her problems, even if most of what she’s experiencing is foreign to them.Poor students may feel out of place at an Ivy League school, but over time, they may feel as if they don’t belong at home, either. “Often, they come to college thinking that they want to return home to their communities,” says Rome, the Brown official. “But an Ivy League education puts them in a different place — their language is different, their appearance is different, and they don’t fit in at home anymore, either.”Ellie Dupler, a junior global affairs major at Yale with wavy, reddish-brown hair and silver hoop earrings she picked up in Turkey on a Yale-funded trip, lived in a trailer with her single mother in northern Michigan until she was in the sixth grade. In high school, she took a public bus two hours each way to a better public school than the one in her hometown. She’s on a tight budget when we meet at Blue State coffeehouse in New Haven. “I’m waiting for a check from financial aid, so I’ve been skipping some meals,” she says. Even so, Dupler says Yale has given her a false sense of financial security. “Frankly, the longer I’m here, the less that I feel I identify with having a low-income background.”Along with working three jobs, she’s on the school’s ski team — her mom operated the chairlift at a resort near her hometown, and Dupler could ski for free. When she shared her background with some of her teammates, they were surprised. “I would have never have known you were low income,” one told her. Her best friend, who is from a wealthy suburb of New York City, helps her out when she needs it, though Dupler says she’s quick to repay her. Dupler thinks she’s been able to blend in more easily at Yale than some other low-income students because she’s white. “Typically, unless I disclose my background in some way, I’m assumed to be just like most of the other white students who grew up upper middle class in a perfect house in the suburbs,” she says. She likes seeing herself through other students’ eyes. Maybe it’s even convinced her that she can live a different kind of life.Still, graduation looms, and she worries about making it without the security of a Yale scholarship. “I feel like here I’m moving up the socioeconomic ladder. But when I graduate, will I slip back down?” As a result, she says, she’s become obsessed with her career. “My friends joke that my aspirations change weekly.” She’s currently set on getting a graduate degree in law and public policy and eventually a career in international relations.Julia Dixon says she tries not to see money as the most defining element of her identity anymore. Yale has shown her a life where dinner conversations don’t revolve around overdue bills. She’s using the time to think about her future — without worrying about the financial means she needs to get there. “Money is something I’ve learned to disassociate from. Maybe I see these four years as my chance to dream.”Brooke Lea Foster is a writer in New York. Send comments to [email protected] THE NUMBERS38% — Share of undergraduates at four-year schools whose parents did not attend college1 in 10 — Number of people from low-income families who attain a bachelor’s degree by age 25 (half of the people from high-income families do)4.5 million — Number of low-income, first-generation students enrolled in post-secondary education, about 24 percent of the undergraduate populationSources: US Department of Education; Russell Sage Foundation; the Pell InstituteBROWN GROUP BRINGS FIRST-GENS FROM MANY CAMPUSES TOGETHERBy Emeralde Jensen-RobertsEsther Maddox from Princeton, Jasmine Fernandez from Harvard, and Kujegi Camara, also from Princeton, attended an open dialogue session at Brown’s 1vyG conference for first-generation students in February.GRETCHEN ERTLA new group at Brown brings first-gens from many campuses together to agitate for change.On a frosty Saturday morning in February, more than 200 students, some wearing sleek business suits, file in to Brown University’s C.V. Starr auditorium. As they wait for the day’s program to start, they sit in small, chatty packs, picking at blueberry muffins and sipping coffee from paper cups. Some take selfies with friends, later tweeted and hashtagged “1vyG2015.”Hailing from Brown and 15 other schools, some Ivies and some not, the students and more than 20 college administrators are here at the invitation of 1vyG, a first-generation student network launched last year at Brown. 1vyG’s founders, juniors Manuel Contreras, Jessica Brown, and Stanley Stewart, have been studying the obstacles that first-generation students like them face at Brown, and the three-day conference, believed to be the first of its kind, is a natural extension of that. Are students at other schools dealing with the same challenges, and how can they share information to help improve campus life for all?The weekend’s workshops are geared to fostering discussion between first-generation students and administrators and to boosting students’ coping skills on campus and beyond. Sessions include Navigating Class and Culture on Campus, Building a Career as a First-Gen, and Coaching College-Bound Students to Succeed.Contreras comes away from the event determined to repeat it. “At bare minimum, we’re going to be an annual rotating conference,” he says, with different schools playing host. Additional ambitions at Brown include setting up a textbook lending library and establishing a mentorship program to connect incoming students with current first-generation upperclassmen and alumni.The ultimate goal remains constant: keep pushing schools to broaden their view and keep encouraging students to find strength through their shared experience. “I want first-gens to be connected, [to] feel happy and that they belong,” says Contreras. “You may be the first, but you’re not alone.”

Q. How can a veteran get into an Ivy League school?A. There is an organization of veterans in the Ivy League. There are several articles in newspapers and magazines.The Ivy League Veterans CouncilConfessions Of A Vet Who Went To HBSVeterans and Ivy League (A salute to Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia)Ivy League and Veterans (Reddit)Why Don’t Top-Tier Colleges Care About Enrolling Veterans? (2013)Rice University Veterans Education Benefits (not Ivy League, but well regarded), Military at Rice (Military Scholars Program - full cost of attendance scholarship for veterans in the Jones School of Business)The Ivy League Veterans CouncilABOUT MEMBERS CALL TO ACTION SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONSContact Us Veterans in the NewsVeterans in the Ivy League: Students Seek to Up Their RanksBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSNOV. 1, 2016, 7:33 A.M. E.D.T.PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It's not easy to find military veterans in undergraduate programs at most Ivy League schools.Harvard has only three in its undergrad liberal arts and sciences school. Princeton, just one.Students from the eight Ivies hope to change those kinds of numbers. They see a chance for institutions to diversify and for veterans to get an education that will help them become leaders.Nov 3, 2016Where Are Veterans at Our Elite Colleges? (NYTimes)The tally noted just two veterans among undergraduates at Duke, one at M.I.T., one at Pomona and zero at Carleton.“These schools all wring their hands and say, ‘We’d love to have more, but they just don’t apply,’ ” Sloane said. “That’s what offends me. These schools have incredibly sophisticated recruitment teams. They recruit quarterbacks. They fill the physics lab. They visit high schools. How many visits did they make for veterans?”Sep 7, 2016Marine Corps Partners with Columbia University (Military.com)Columbia University recently announced that eligible Marines planning to exit the U.S. Marine Corps will for the first time have formalized, national program to access a top-tier undergraduate education. Through the Leadership Scholar Program, a partnership developed by the U.S. Marine Corps and leading colleges and universities, qualified Marines are identified by their commanding officers and are then shepherded through the college admissions process on their respective Marine Corps bases.Aug 26, 2016The Nonprofit Helping Veterans Get Into The Country’s Top Colleges (Task & Purpose)Army veteran Sang Ra never thought he'd go to an Ivy League college until he connected with the nonprofit, Service to School.Aug 21, 2016Lima Charlie Team Spotlight: Mike ConnollyOur VP of Communications did an interview with Lima Charlie News on his involvement there. Give it a read!Aug 21, 2016Posse Foundation Announces New Veteran PossesWe’re excited to have our THREE newest Veterans Posses at national headquarters in New York for Pre-Collegiate Training! These Scholars will attend Dartmouth, Vassar College and Wesleyan University in the fall. http://www.possefoundation.org/veterans ‪#‎PosseVetsLead‬Jul 21, 2016Confessions Of A Vet Who Went To HBSOver five years ago, I began taking the steps necessary to attend business school. I took the GMAT, arranged my letters of recommendation, filled out applications, wrote essays, and did my interviews over Skype or phone from Iraq.Jul 21, 2016Veterans Groups Seek a Crackdown on Deceptive Colleges (NYTimes)WASHINGTON — Some of the nation’s largest veterans and military organizations sent letters last week to the Veterans Affairs Department asking it to crack down on colleges that prey on veterans by charging exorbitant fees for degrees that mostly fail to deliver promised skills and jobs.Jul 3, 2016As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law School Brought Me Face-to-face With Radical Inequality (HuffPo)“I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale.”Jul 3, 2016Veterans Deserve a Chance in College, Not a Free Pass (NYTimes)MY six years in the Marine Corps taught me the importance of learning the basics...Jun 18, 2016Confessions Of A Vet Who Went To HBSBY: MARTIN PETERS ON JULY 07, 2016 |5 COMMENTSThis article was contributed by Service to School, a nonprofit that provides free application assistance for veterans transitioning from the service to undergrad, MBA, and JD programs. Service to School has helped over 300 veterans into the nation’s top undergraduate and graduate school programs.Over five years ago, I began taking the steps necessary to attend business school. I took the GMAT, arranged my letters of recommendation, filled out applications, wrote essays, and did my interviews over Skype or phone from Iraq.First, a little background. At the time I matriculated in 2012, I was a 30-year-old West Point 2004 grad, eight years on active duty in the infantry with four deployments, and was (and still am) married, with three dogs. I graduated from Harvard Business School in May of 2014 and started work with Boston Consulting Group in September of 2014.My thoughts involve some MOTO (Master of the Obvious) statements about school and life. Hopefully, though, some of my thoughts are something you, the reader, may not have thought about. I’ll add the disclaimer that everyone’s experiences are unique (and mine in particular are based heavily on HBS). Still, for what they are worth, here they are — with the up-front thought that my MBA experience was a great one and I would do it again in a heartbeat.SCHOOL SELECTIONStrive to get into a top 10 MBA program (HBS, GSB, MIT, Darden, McCombs, Kellogg, Booth, Tuck, UPenn, Fuqua, Ross, etc.). An MBA from a top 10 program is certainly worth it, but I question the return on a non-top 10 program because many top firms specifically recruit at the top schools.GET TO SCHOOL A MONTH EARLYHBS started in late August. My wife, Megan, and I arrived in the beginning of the month and immediately linked up on Facebook with the HBS 2014 Boston Admit group, whose membership swelled as school got closer and people began moving to Cambridge. Megan and I began meeting and hanging out with people throughout the month. When I went to school the first day, I already knew 60-70 people by name, both in and outside of my section. Also, I maintained relationships with most of that summer crew because we met prior to the pressures of school and other social commitments. Meeting fellow classmates, then, was novel and not overwhelming like the first couple months.DEFINITION OF SUCCESSThe Army makes it very easy to know when you have been successful in its eyes — you are promoted, you get the next position, and/or you get a thank-you from your soldier. On the wall of every company and above CP are the institution’s definitions of success — the chain of command. Leaving active-duty changed that. In business school, the definition of success is much more ambiguous. Certainly, in large corporations there are well-established measures of success, but outside of those, success takes many forms and is truly dependent on the person. No longer is an easily acceptable definition provided. It is up to YOU to create your own personal definition of success.LACK OF CAMARADERIEYou read and hear about it: When people leave the military, they miss the camaraderie. It’s true. During my first couple months at HBS, I missed the intense friendships that come with having intense shared experiences (deployments and field problems) toward a common goal. For soldiers who were only in for three years or who never deployed, it may not be an issue. But for someone who went to West Point and then served eight years on active duty with four deployments, it was an issue. Initially, I felt many of my relationships were skin-deep, and I was always putting up a perfectionist front. Slowly, over time, I developed a core group of friends, yet the majority of what I call my “vacation friends” were primarily veterans. We simply had the most in common.WHAT VETERANS BRING TO THE CLASSROOMHere is what veterans bring to the classroom: leadership, real-world experience, and exposure to the military.The Army provides leadership experiences at extremely early stages in a soldier’s career. At 23, I was leading an infantry platoon in Afghanistan with an area of operations the size of Rhode Island. My final assignment was as a headquarters company commander of 250 soldiers during our deployment to Iraq. An infantry buck sergeant, or team leader, has more direct leadership experience than the majority of my business school classmates. It is not entirely their fault, because the industries many of my classmates come from (at HBS, one-third finance and one-third consulting) simply do not provide direct leadership opportunities early in their careers. During an informal survey of my 90 section mates, I learned that two-thirds of the class never had a direct report (subordinate) and the majority of the remaining third had from one to five direct reports. Only myself, another veteran, and one other classmate had ever led more than 15 people.The second great thing vets bring to the classroom is experience in an organization where not everyone has a college degree. Think about it. Many of my classmates, if they came from a consulting or finance background, went to undergrad and then to work at top-tier firms (the typical pipeline to HBS), and their only interaction with a person without a college degree was at grocery stores with cashiers or restaurants with waiters. Army veterans have worked with a wide variety of people who have varied backgrounds. It broadens your perspective and understanding.Finally, most of my classmates, unless they have parents or siblings in the military or are veterans themselves, have very little knowledge of the military outside of Hollywood or the news. With an all-volunteer military, it is simply something they do not think about. My classmates were keenly interested in hearing about the military. For some, I was the first person in the military they ever spoke with (which blew my mind). A Chinese student in my section wrote an email at the end of the first year to all the vets in my section stating that we had changed her view on the American military because she had been taught that we were all automatons. It made me feel good.Harvard Business School graduation for the Class of 2016INTERNATIONAL DIVERSITYI felt that HBS oversells its international diversity. I got the feeling the majority of international students were “international” in passport only. They had gone to American universities for undergrad, worked for American companies, and would be going back to work for American companies following HBS. While brilliant, they brought little “international” diversity to the table.RECRUITINGTry your best to identify early, if not before school, what industries you would like to recruit for. Narrowing your choices will save you a lot of time during recruiting.INTERN APPLICATIONSI’d limit your job applications to about 10. If you are applying to more than 10 companies, I don’t think you have properly done your research and it will show during the interview. I applied to eight companies during recruitment, and even that was a lot to keep track of. On one of my interviews, I had had no time to research the company or network and it definitely showed.Expect to get dings (rejections), even when you’re applying from Harvard. For high-performing individuals, it will be the first time you may have been told thanks, but no thanks. Expect it. It builds character.EXPLOIT YOUR STATUS AS A STUDENTExploit it when making phone calls and visits with alumni, potential employers, and others. Most people will give you a minute if you are a student. After graduation, you are just another dude/dudette.GRADESThe sooner you stop worrying about them, the better and more stress-free your experience will be. At HBS there is little transparency and the grading system to me was very subjective, with 50% of your grade based on class participation and 50% based on a case exam. You receive little to no feedback on either grade until you receive them a month after taking the exam. By then, you have stopped thinking about it.Coming from West Point, where I studied to a degree that amazes me a decade later, not worrying about grades took some getting used to. You need to understand why you are at business school. If you want top honors, crush it. If you want to develop yourself personally, learn a new hobby, or try new things, crush it. In the decade since West Point, I learned that there is more to life than grades (not an excuse to sham, but I don’t have the single-minded academic drive that I once had at West Point).VETERAN STATUSRid yourself of any form of veteran entitlement that seems to have crept up. You cannot rest on your laurels. Your veteran resume with its accompanying experiences will assist greatly in getting that first interview with companies, but after that you must prepare for the interview and then perform during your internship.HOUSING (HBS SPECIFIC)On campus or off campus, it doesn’t matter. If you are off campus, try staying within a mile of campus and you won’t miss anything. The main social scene at HBS revolves around the campus and Harvard Square (and club parties in downtown Boston if you choose to do them). If you live off campus, get a bike.CLASSESAt HBS, your first year is all required curriculum (RC) so you have no choice in what you take. Your second year (EC), you choose your courses. Take some time to plan your schedule. Talk with current second-year students and look at course reviews. While I was happy with my course selections and thought the allocation system to get into them was equitable, I wish I had done a little more deliberate planning on what courses to take.My favorites second-year courses were The Coming of Managerial Capitalism, taught by Professor Nicholas (a history-like course and Professor Nicholas was awesome); Business at the Base of the Pyramid, by Professor Michael Chu (interesting course that took a while to gain steam/catch my interest, but the last half was enlightening); and The Energy Business and Geopolitics, taught by Professor Maurer (I want to go into the energy industry post-BCG and this course was absolutely fascinating).Harvard Business School – Ethan Baron photoWORKLOADIf you went to a service academy, do not stress about the workload. I found the academic workload at Harvard underwhelming compared to West Point. All the books, all the blogs, blah blah, stress how busy it is. I was never as busy on any single day at HBS as I was at West Point, hands down.Your first month you will be busy as you learn the ropes, but after that your busy-ness is primarily a factor of your priorities and is mainly self-induced (how much stuff you voluntarily pile onto your academic load). I did Reserve drill, volunteered weekly at a local school, mentored a Harvard ROTC cadet weekly, helped out with the MIT ROTC program a little, continued my long-distance running routine (I did 3.85 marathons while at HBS … at Mile 22 ruck marching with cadets when the bombs went off and they closed the course), and took a photography class at the New England School of Photography in addition to the normal academic workload at HBS.My priorities at HBS had changed from my single-minded focus on academics at West Point to realizing that academics are only one aspect of the HBS/life experience.Also, whenever I felt busy, I thought of my classmates with three kids and my woe-is-me party ended immediately.PARTYINGI thought Army lieutenants partied hard after a deployment. Then I went to HBS. Be prepared for a large social scene.Ignore Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and realize early on that there are club/section parties/get-togethers on most evenings. It is all about priorities. If your priority is partying, then you have found your home in business school. But if you have other priorities, don’t worry about not going out every night. At the end of the day, going out drinking with section mates is not some mind-blowing, nirvana-attaining affair that will make or break your experience. It’s just getting drinks with people.For HBS, the key parties/events to attend are: RC Halloween Party, RC Priscilla Ball, RC Newport Ball, RC Holidazzle, the EC Gala, and section retreats. Anything else I would pick and choose going to.AGGRESSIVELY SOCIALBusiness school people are what I would call “aggressively social.” Sometimes it is overwhelming, but it makes it easy to meet people.RESERVES WHILE AT SCHOOLI continued to serve in the Army Reserves while at school, and I am one of the few who is staying in post-HBS, for a couple of reasons: 1) I transferred my remaining GI Bill benefits to my wife so she could attend school; 2) I am more deeply appreciative now of the privilege of being able to put the uniform on as opposed to when I was on active duty and took it for granted; and 3) If not me, then who?While at business school, the one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer did not provide any issues. Units post their drill schedules in advance for the coming fiscal year, so I knew well in advance of every weekend when I would be gone and when my annual training was set. Did I miss some parties or trips? Yes, but after a month at business school you realize parties are a dime a dozen and trips/treks occur at an uncanny frequency. My Reserve unit worked with me to conduct Rescheduled Training (RST) for the summer internship, so during my first-year spring break, instead of going to *insert X exotic destination*, I went to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, to knock out my drill requirements. This enabled me to stay in Dallas, where I was interning, the entire summer instead of flying back to Massachusetts. Further, Boston Consulting Group pushed my internship up two weeks ahead of the primary summer intern cohort so I could attend my unit’s active training (I finished my internship on a Friday and reported that Saturday for active training). You work it and make it happen.The main positives of staying in the Reserves at school are: 1) Personal pride and satisfaction; 2) They help you stay grounded and get outside the business school bubble; 3) You have a steady, though small, income coming in (two years of O-3/O-4 Reserve pay comes out to under $20,000 net free of taxes so that is $20,000 in debt I do not have); and 4) Health insurance that was cheaper than the school’s option. The main drawbacks are that it takes time (though manageable) and your experience will vary with your unit — just like active duty, some units are good and others are a drag.If you are staying in the Reserves, I recommend that you interview your unit.Talk with the commander and get a feel for his/her leadership style. You select the unit you want to go to, so if the commander gives you a bad vibe, look for another unit.Ask for the drill, AT, and mobilization schedules. Check the drill schedule to see how many MUTA 5’s (Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday), or MUTA 6’s (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Saturday, Sunday, Monday) they have. Make sure their annual training is in August (most units’ ATs are), which is workable with an internship versus a June or July annual training. See where they are in the ARFORGEN cycle to make sure you won’t get called up in the middle of school!If possible, stop by a unit for an hour or two during their BTA to see what they actually do.Ask the unit and commander how much work they expect you to do outside of drill weekends. Some units/commanders expect a significant amount of work outside of drill. It varies tremendously with units, position, ARFORGEN cycle. For many reservists this will make or break the Reserve experience.Manage your expectations … it is not active duty infantry anymore.TRANSFER OF GI BILL BENEFITSArmy Reservists can transfer their GI Bill benefits to their dependents. You incur an extra four years of service on the date of transfer. The process was extremely simple to do online. I transferred mine during the spring of my second year, but I wish I had done it immediately upon leaving active duty so that 18 months of the four-year commitment would have been my time at HBS. I plan on serving beyond the four years, but it is nice serving at my leisure versus serving because of a contractual obligation.With this, my wife is attending the University of Michigan to get her Master of Architecture degree “for free” and we get the housing stipend as well ($1,578 a month).ENJOY ITDon’t fall prey to cynicism. Enjoy the experience. It goes by ridiculously fast.BE HUMBLEOne of my main goals coming from HBS is to do well in the business world, yet *knocking on wood* regardless of the amount of success I may have, I want to remain humble.“You can’t help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can — and you should — try to pass the days between as a good man …” — Sam Damon from Once an EagleIf you made it this far, get after it.Author Martin Peters is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and served eight years on active duty as an infantryman with four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, concluding his time as an HHC commander. Following active duty, he attended Harvard Business School and joined the Boston Consultant Group as a consultant. He continues to serve as a major in the Army Reserves, training battalion- and above-level staffs, and is passionate about veterans. Martin is an ambassador for Service to School and has successfully assisted several veterans applying to MBA programs. Martin is married, has three dogs, and currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.Veterans and Ivy LeagueA Salute to Cornell, Dartmouth, and ColumbiaMarch 15, 2015Ivy Coach salutes Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University for their outstanding track record of supporting our troops. It is to be commended.As you may know, Ivy Coach is deeply committed to helping America’s veterans and current members of our military (which also can include veterans) gain admission to the colleges of their dreams. It’s work we’ve been doing for years and it’s some of the most fulfilling, rewarding work we do. We are so proud of the many veterans across highly selective college campuses whom we had the privilege — and that’s precisely what it is — to work with in the admissions process. But we are also aware that we have a voice in the admissions process and we’d be remiss not to raise it to commend Ivy League institutions that do right by veterans and shame other Ivy League institutions that we don’t believe properly support our troops. Just because all Ivy League institutions are “Yellow Ribbon” does not mean they are all equally supportive to veterans. Being “Yellow Ribbon” simply means they have agreed to contribute some money towards tuition costs. As an example, while not an Ivy League school, Johns Hopkins University contributes $1,000 annually per student. That’s not going to cut it. But back to the Ivy League…Cornell University, we salute you! The Post 9/11 G.I. Bill offers only a certain amount of money towards annual tuition ($19,200 for private universities and $8,900 for public universities). Cornell covers the remainder of the tuition (making them “Yellow Ribbon”). They welcome these brave men and women into their schools as though they are any other students pursuing college degrees. And that’s exactly how it should be. Cornell University has earned an ‘A’ in our book. They’d get an ‘A+’ if they didn’t have a cap of 100 veterans whom they can have on campus at a time under the “Yellow Ribbon Program,” a cap that also includes dependents (not just the troops themselves).Dartmouth College, we salute you! It’s all love from us for this fellow “Yellow Ribbon” university. With respect to veterans, you are the crown jewel of the Ivy League. Dartmouth College supports our troops and may the world know it. Dartmouth College covers the full cost of tuition that is beyond the funds from the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill. And they have no cap on the number of veterans they admit each admissions cycle. Dartmouth doesn’t have to do the right thing. But Dartmouth chooses to. Dartmouth College has earned an ‘A+’ in our book. Other Ivy League colleges may say they support our troops but Dartmouth speaks softly with one very big stick.And Columbia University, we salute you, too! You may not cover the full cost of tuition, contributing $8,000 annually per student. But maybe it’s because you admit so many vets! And you admit all of these vets through your General Studies Program. This way, their numbers don’t hurt your “US News & World Report” ranking. It’s a creative workaround and we salute you for this workaround because it means more veterans studying on your campus. For this, we’ll give you an ‘A.’ Columbia, you deserve it.But that’s just about where the love fest ends. Check back soon to find out what we have to say about the remaining Ivies’ admissions policies towards our troops. It won’t be all puppy dogs and ice cream.And, veterans, this is a terrific tool to use to measure a university’s “Yellow Ribbon” contributions against another.Ivy League and Veterans (Reddit)drlovespooge 1 year agoI'm in a SEC university right now, and honestly the childish behavior of the student is killing me. I'm 23, USMC vet making great grades, and have been looking into Ivy League (Dartmouth, Cornell) schools in the hopes of finding more academic rigor with a little more serious atmosphere.Does anyone have any experience, or currently enrolled in any top tier institutions who could give me some insight?I'm a Marine veteran at Columbia university. Columbia has by far the largest population of veterans, and provides the most support. We have just over 400 undergrads who are vets, which is about 4% of all the undergrads in the school. The other Ivies have a handful each. Brown and Dartmouth each have a dozen or so. Yale and Cornell about half that. Princeton and Harvard have 1 or 2 at most.At Columbia we have a very active Veterans group called Milvets (check us out on Facebook www.Facebook.com/CUMilvets and Twitter @Milvets) that does social events, hosts speakers, organizes career info and recruiting events, and throws a big Marine Corps Birthday Ball-style gala every year.As others have stated, the biggest change transitioning from a lower-tier school is the increased workload, particularly reading. I personally find the other students to be noticeably smarter and more mature here. I've made friends with a lot of traditional-age students and found them to be very driven.Some stuff you should be aware of:-Several of the Ivies have special application processes for nontraditional students; people like Veterans, retired professional athletes, Olympic figure skaters, etc. Applying through these is a higher chance of admission than what the overall admission stats would lead you to believe. They like the diversity having interesting people attend brings to the school. The ones who have programs like this are: *Columbia - school of general studies (note, this is just an administrative division, not a separate school like Harvard Extension School. GS students are "real" Columbia students, are in the same classes, and earn the same degree) *Yale - Eli Whitney Scholars Program *Brown - Resumed Undergraduate Education (RUE) program *Penn - (I forget the name. Will edit later)-Also, several other top schools have a partnership with non-profits which feed them Veterans. Service to School is a nonprofit that sets you up with a mentor already attending the school who helps you through the application process. They have a partnership with Yale, Cornell, MIT, Columbia, and a few others that will get you a garenteed interview with admissions and get your application to the top of the pile. Dartmouth also partners with a nonprofit called the Posse Foundation, which creates a cohort of ten Veterans who the school admits as a group, and then those ten serve as a pre-made peer support network.-A third nonprofit, the Warrior Scholar Project, does couple-week-long seminars at various too schools, including Ivies like Yale and Harvard, to teach Veterans skills to succeed at top schools. It is all-expenses-paid, food and lodging provided, and you get to see what the Ivies are like in person. WSP alumni have a good record of getting accepted to top schools afterward.Jim_Nebna 1 year agoI am an Army vet that transferred into Cornell. What kind of info are you looking for?drlovespooge 1 year agoOverall impressions and such. Also the challenge of the classes. I'm worried that classes are easy here, but I will struggle at a more difficult school. Also, curious about admissions and veteran resources around the university.Jim_Nebna 1 year agoIt was a great experience. Almost all of the classes were excellent. A few were not. I did well at my prior school and my first semester after transferring was very rough. You will have to adjust to the workload. Depending on your major, reading multiple books, having several problem sets, and/or writing multiple papers per week is not out of the norm.I found transferring to be pretty straight forward. I started in 2008 and resources were basically non-existent. It was the same at my prior school as well. By the time I had left the VA rep was telling me about programs I had never heard of.drlovespooge 1 year agoWow, how were you able to stay afloat while transitioning? I mean my workload now is a joke, so that's going to be interesting.Jim_Nebna 1 year agoDiscipline and between my then wife's stipend, and the GI Bill, I did not need to work. Which depending on where you wind up can be a challenge.I would highly suggest getting to know some of your current or prior professors. Do an independent study with them or build some rapport other than "He was in my class". Everyone who applies will have a good GPA. Having a good GPA, showing that you have already been successful at another school, and good reference letters will greatly increase your chances.bruceholder84 1 year agoI understand. I chose online classes because I'm not great at biting my tounge and could see this being an issue in a traditional classroombrianwillneverdiejarhead 1 year agoHey u/drlovesspooge, I'm a USMC vet and am the president of the student group at Columbia. We've got a vibrant community of 400+ enlisted vets. Definitely recommend it. The academic rigor and serious atmosphere are both here, but we have our share of childish behavior. Happens at every college. I'm headed to the Student Veterans of America conference in Orlando but can answer any questions you may have and connect you to some great organizations that help vets apply to top schools. Will DM you my emailroost9i 1 year agoI had a similar experience at my state Uni. It was the worst in the first year and tapered off a lot towards my junior year when the insincere fell out. But you just have to expect it. Even in my senior year there were classmates just wasting their parents' money.MFW: "Am I the only one around here that wants to graduate!"The best classes were the ones where I could find other disciplined people to form study groups with.akamustacherides 1 year agoI started off like you, went to state school and was making the dean's list with little effort. The maturity level of the students didn't bother me because at the end of the day it was me and my performance I had to face. Into my third year I started dating an attorney with a prestigious education and she convinced me that I would be better off at a different school. I transferred to a school in the northeast, it was more of a challenge, it gave me more opportunities because it had more clout, and the student body was more serious. The difference now is that I am paying off bigger student loans than if I would have stayed in the state school.jbow808 1 year agoI went to a Top 50 school that offered a great program for non-traditional students, since I graduated it's become an on-line only program.Most of my cohorts in the program where in their late 20's to early 40's and coming from a community college where I was surrounded by mostly 16 - 20 year olds who texted and surfed the web during lectures. Students tend to take academics more seriously of they're footing the bill.As far as rigor goes, the program was on par with the "traditional" offerings at the school and no one knows I was in the special program unless I tell them.I even recall hearing a professor or 2 saying they preferred teaching to older students, since they know how to think (as opposed to just wanting the answers for the final exam), are more engaged in classroom discussions, and generally more respectful of their time and experience.IntendoPrinceps 1 year agoMarine buddy of mine is at Dartmouth, and he hates it. Everyone in his program is super young, and he comes home whenever possible and has taken many breaks from school. There isn't a real city nearby so the only young adults are grad students, according to him, and they mostly socialize with each other.My friend is an extrovert and very sociable, so it's not like he stays at his apartment all of the time. He even joined a frat but that didn't help much.harDCore182 1 year agoTuck MBA is my dream. Heard grad life is better than undergrad there.cwood74 1 year agoWent to Harvard for a masters program college kids are still kids. I went to a party school for undergrad and it was a noticeable difference in terms of difficulty and attitude but nothing like the military.drlovespooge 1 year agoWhat kind background did you come from when applying? I'm thinking about graduating from here, but going to a top tier school for my JD/MBAcwood74 1 year agoI went for computer science my grades were at the low side for top 20 around 3.8 GPA. What really saved me was letters of recommendation from employers and volunteering on open source projects. The top schools seem to care about someone that is really focused and dedicated to being good at one thing instead of mediocre at everything. I met people they turned down later that I would have considered a much better candidate than me.gijose 1 year agoI'm a junior at Brown, and I know for certain that the school has an interest in attracting more veterans. Brown has its own thing going—totally open curriculum, weird grading scheme, very liberal students—but it's a top-tier school and has a backdoor application for "non-traditional" students. If you have any questions PM me and I'll try to answer them.fezha 10 months agoBrown really wants more vets. This is true. In the cracks of the internet, I found a PDF detailing Brown's struggles to attract and connect with Vets. They even acknowledged other Ivies were attracting vets, but they couldn't.To be honest, I believe it's location. Brown is all the motherfucking way in Rhode Island. If prostitution was still legal in Rhode Island I would apply there...hahahah.....haha......yeah.talab 10 months agoConsidering the population density in the northeast is among the highest in the nation, I don't think location is really an issue. My theory is that it's more about the political climate — I've seen the studies suggesting political ideologies in the military are varied, but in my experience, the military is a very conservative organization — because Brown is among the most liberal campuses in the country. I also think that among enlisted personnel there's a culture of inferiority. People I served just don't see themselves being "smart" enough to study at Brown or any other Ivy, which is unfortunate.LEM413 1 year agoI'm not a vet, but I'm a Tufts University graduate, and one of my good friends who graduated with me is also a USMC vet. They have a program for non-traditional students called the REAL program (http://uss.tufts.edu/undergradEducation/academics/real/), which is basically just a separate admissions process. Other than that, you're a full-fledged Tufts student able to enroll as either a liberal arts or engineering student. As far as the specifics of the admissions process itself, u/beltayn88 can provide more insight into that, since he went through it personally.Tufts is definitely a school that attracts a particular kind of student, in that pretty much everybody is very academically motivated but not competitive in the way that you see in Ivy League schools. I wouldn't have traded my experience there for anywhere else. Their dean has stated that they want to recruit more veterans to attend as well.Why Don’t Top-Tier Colleges Care About Enrolling Veterans (2013)?By Wick SloaneNo veterans here?Photo by Glen Cooper/Getty ImagesThis article originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed.If you can believe it, the number of undergraduate veterans at the nation’s self-proclaimed most highly selective colleges is significantly fewer than we reported in 2011. The total this year: 168*. The * is because, again, too many of these colleges, the 31 invitation-only members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), don’t know. The number may bounce again.“Disgraceful and absurd” is what I called the 232 total veterans in 2011. By comparison, the total number of veterans and dependents of veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill rose from 555,329 students in 2011 to 646,302 in 2012. From 232 to 174 to 168—with the nation at war and 118,784 total undergraduate seats at the 31 COFHE colleges.Lost for synonyms, I asked Andrew Bacevich, retired U.S. Army colonel and author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, to describe the pitiful count of veterans at selective colleges. Bacevich is an eloquent critic of all of us—we, the people—for letting 1 percent of the population bear the nation’s military burden—fighting, deaths, and wounds.“Here is an issue where the nation's most prestigious institutions should demonstrate some leadership,” Bacevich said. “With a very few admirable exceptions, they have failed to do so. That failure is nothing less than shameful.” (Listen to Bacevich on The Colbert Report and on Moyers & Company.)Some colleges had been including the combined totals of both veterans and veteran dependents and family members using the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill in their count of veteran students. In 2011, Cornell University reported 48 veterans, with just one confirmed veteran this year. Duke University reported 22 veterans in 2011 and one this year. Rice University originally reported having 27 veterans last year but then amended that number to one veteran last year and one this year. Northwestern University reported 45 undergraduates who are either veterans or dependents, with the administration relying on a student group to sort out the details.Lows for 2013: Yale University, two. Princeton University, one. Williams College, zero. Swarthmore College, zero. Harvard University—which did not reply to last year’s survey—reported 19 veterans this year but did not clarify whether that number includes dependents. The 27 veterans that Stanford University originally reported turned out to include dependents, and the administration hasn’t clarified the number yet.Highs: University of Pennsylvania, 35. Georgetown University, 25—with 81 total traditional and nontraditional undergraduates, including veterans and active-duty military. Johns Hopkins University, 23. Washington University in St. Louis, 20. University of Rochester, 16. Dartmouth College, 14—one down from last year.“Veterans can’t do the work,” an Ivy League president told me a few years ago.Again, there have been too many evasions and excuses and circumlocutions for one column. Yale President Peter Salovey didn’t think the question of why Yale has just two veterans was worth much time. Or Columbia, which again proclaimed unquestionable success with “about 300” veterans in its School of General Studies program. (This is separate from its main undergraduate college, Columbia College.) Or Columbia, again, declining to reply to the following questions: “Why can’t veterans get a degree from Columbia College, too?” and “What is the endowment of Columbia College versus the endowment of the School of General Studies?”Two years ago, Vassar College President Catharine Hill and Posse Foundation founder Debbie Bial created a program to encourage veteran enrollment. Yet of all the COFHE colleges, only Wesleyan University has joined the program so far. Why are so many prestigious schools reluctant to enroll veterans?“Veterans can’t do the work,” an Ivy League president told me a few years ago. (This was not at a press event or in an interview, so I won’t out the individual.) But many other university administrators begged to differ.“Generally devaluing the demonstrated abilities of the men and women who commit to national service is as ugly as the coarsest racism, sexism, etc., that presumably this same leader wouldn't be caught dead expressing. For shame,” said Jon Burdick, the University of Rochester’s dean of admissions and financial aid. “Anybody who wants to say that should be required to provide proof—including proof that guiding enrolling veterans to success on their campus would be a greater burden than the significant efforts they voluntarily make in guiding their underrepresented minority students, varsity athletes, and legacy children of major donors.”“I don’t see any evidence of that,” said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. “The average veteran entering college is in his or her late 20s or early 30s; many have been through a very intense experience serving overseas, and all have incredible training from the military. The workload at a highly selective college or university, while different, may seem easy to them! And unlike the typical 18-year-old first-year college student who comes straight from high school, veterans have had a number of extra years to consider their future and decided that they really want to go to college now.”Swarthmore College had zero veterans enrolled this year, and the reply from President Rebecca Chopp joined the chorus of the usual excuses. The Swarthmore situation troubles me on two counts: First, I don't see how institutions that benefit from so many federal programs and policies, from Pell Grants to research funding with generous overhead to tax-deducted donations and a tax-free endowment, can neglect the young men and women we have all sent to war. Second, working with returning veterans is part of what I do as a Quaker. Incidentally, Quakers founded Swarthmore in 1864.I wrote to Chopp:Williams, where I went, has zero veterans, has no spiritual or moral traditions. Trustees there refuse to discuss or wonder why I am asking. I can't give that pass to Swarthmore. I don't need to list to you, I know, why Swarthmore would seek a higher standard than Williams. The usual obfuscation is that a college would be happy to take veterans but none are applying. We both know that a college would need to recruit this population. And we both know, I think, that selective colleges, especially those as wealthy as Swarthmore, have exactly as many of certain types of students—soccer players, chemists, oboists—as they choose to have.Chopp’s reply:We are geared in our work toward undergraduates in the age range of 18-22 and that fact sometimes makes choosing us less likely for older veterans. In recent years we have been focused on the children of veterans and we have at present seven children of veterans enrolled, which is a part of the support that veterans and their families seek and need. The community colleges and the large state and research universities are better able to enroll large numbers at once.My rebuttal: Preposterous. For more than a decade, the U.S. has been a nation at war. Focusing on 18- to 22-year-olds is a decision by Swarthmore, not the hand of fate. Until the wars are over and the veterans healed, Swarthmore, a Quaker college, could decide to welcome and accommodate 100, even 200, veterans. Would Swarthmore accept a tax on its endowment to support veterans at community colleges? An institution supported by federal aid and tax policies shouldn’t relegate 18- to 22-year-olds to war with no responsibility to support those students on their return.Chopp: “We are only able to enroll smaller numbers given our class size and the commitment to a broad range of access to the liberal arts experience that we exercise.”In the eyes of Swarthmore, then, students of talent who have chosen not to serve their country are equal in diversity to those who have?Chopp: “In our history the largest numbers of veterans we accommodated came after the Second World War, as many who were our students before enlisting in that war returned. Those numbers are less likely in this modern era.”“Less likely”? With 646,302 veterans and dependents using the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Swarthmore made room for just seven dependents and no veterans.Top CommentThis doesn't surprise me for undergrads. If you're the type that will normally get into an Ivy League college, you're probably the officer type, not the type to enlist at 18. More...214 Comments Join InStill, I did find some good news. This year, Stanford’s summer school will include a program for up to 20 veterans to build their academic skills. That’s the result of several years of advocacy by William Treseder, a Marine combat veteran and Stanford graduate via community college. (Treseder says he came upon the summer school idea in one of my columns.)And through the Posse program, Vassar enrolled 11 veterans this fall and will enroll as many each year in the future. Wesleyan, a COFHE school, has also signed on. “We found that it was a real challenge to ‘go it alone’ as a single institution,” said Wesleyan’s Roth. “We were impressed by Posse’s veterans program and felt that joining forces with them was the best way to enroll more veterans every year.”