Brown University Student Body President and Director of 1vyG Viet Andy Nguyen '17 announced in tonight's UCS meeting that he, UCS Vice President Tim Ittner '18, student body presidents, and low-income and first-generation student group leaders from ten other universities (including all the Ivies) have signed the No Apologies Initiative. The initiative's goal is that by the next application cycle, all application fees will be waived for all applicants from low-income households and those who will be the first in their family to attend college. The initiative is a product of both the Brown UCS and 1vyG. While both of these are Brown-localized organizations, the initiative stretches across the country (to Northwestern, UChicago, and Stanford) and calls upon every American university to make themselves equally accessible to applicants of all backgrounds.
A New York Times study recently revealed the gross overrepresentation of the upper class at elite universities, with more students representing the top one percent (more than $630K/year in household income) than the bottom 60 percent in 38 schools across the country, including Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown.In his personal and earnest letter, Nguyen recounts his own experience struggling with the pressure and embarrassment he felt while dealing with application fees as a low-income high school senior. Like Nguyen, many students face difficult choices and anxiety when faced with application fees, and unfortunately, many are deterred from applying.Though some application waivers are provided for low-income applicants, these are limited, and such students are unlikely to "spend" these waivers on elite universities with extremely low acceptance rates. Bowdoin College is one university that has already taken on this responsibility. According to Nguyen, the initiative has met little resistance thus far, and will hopefully succeed in spreading as movement, somewhat diminishing the lack of class diversity in higher education.
