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"A new report from the Boston Globe says that low-income students who attend Ivy League colleges on full scholarships sometimes have a difficult time fitting in."

"There is a profound and widening excellence gap: a measurable difference between lower-income and higher-income students who reach and remain at 'advanced' levels of academic performance. It's not just that rich kids test 'advanced' at a higher rate; the problem is that kids who test 'advanced' and are poor tend to backslide the longer they stay in the public schools, don't graduate at the same rate as other smart kids and don't go on to graduate school in comparable percentages."

"College students in need would continue to have access to state grants under a compromise lawmakers reached Thursday over how Nebraska should use its lottery proceeds over the next five years. If the deal survives two more rounds of voting by the Legislature and is approved by the governor, it would essentially hold funding steady for the Nebraska Opportunity Grant, which provided an average of about $1,000 to nearly 16,000 students enrolled in Nebraska colleges and universities last year."

"Low-income college students have challenges beyond tuition, room and board. They can have trouble paying for food. A group called First Generation Low Income Partnership, or FLIP, is trying to change that."

"Socioeconomic integration is a more significant factor in the success of low-income students than all the academic efforts and school resources combined. Low-income students perform better and can close the achievement gap with their more affluent peers when they attend low-poverty schools."

"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."

"Catharine Hill, who became president of Vassar in 2006, has a background in economics focused on college accessibility. One of the biggest changes she made was to dedicate more funding to need-based financial aid. In 2007, she also moved the school back to a need-blind admissions process, meaning that a students' financial background is not a factor in whether they are admitted. The school worked with Questbridge, a nonprofit organization that connects motivated low-income students to selective colleges."

"Amidst our platitudes and promises of equity and justice, there are some pretty clear-cut reasons why low-income students are dropping out, failing out, or never even starting college. And although there is no silver bullet, it becomes painfully hard to throw our hands up in the air in the face of so many simple and solvable barriers."

"In the latest of a series of studies, a research organization has found that many students in middle-class schools in Michigan fail to meet or exceed proficiency standards. The study is titled 'Not as Good as You Think: Why Michigan Parents Should Be Concerned about Their Local Schools,' and is authored by Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute. He says middle-class students often fare no better than their counterparts in low-income, urban public schools."

"Atlanta city officials say they're planning to offer a federally-supported program to provide meals to low-income children during summer break from school."