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Colleges across the country have varying definitions of first-generation college students. In order to qualify as first-generation at Swarthmore college students must fulfill one of the three following criteria: have parents/guardians who have not graduated from a four-year college, have parents/guardians who only have some exposure to collegiate experience, or have parents/guardians who “graduated from college and universities outside the United States who have limited experience and knowledge of the college experience in the United States.” (Source). Swarthmore itself does not provide a definition for low-income students. The University of Pennsylvania defines highly aided students as those who have “family incomes below $65,500/year and an expected contribution to the cost of attending Penn below $4,500” (Source). 

Anthony Abraham Jack has theorized different qualifiers within the definition of first-generation college students such as creating contrasts between the “privileged poor” and the “doubly disadvantaged.” The former category encompasses first-generation students who have had private education and have become exposed to cultural and social capital early in their lives (source). The latter category includes first-generation students that have not had exposure to the social and cultural capital necessary to succeed in college. Additionally, other scholars (Patfield et al.) have also provided subcategories within first-generation college students. 

For this project, note that Swarthmore College’s data on first-generation college status is self-reported and incomplete. The closest parameter for low-income status is Pell Grant eligibility, but this excludes international FLI students and DACA/UnDACAmented students. Historically, it is difficult to track the existence of low-income students because Swarthmore has typically categorized all students with family incomes below $40,000 into one singular group, and can be difficult to compare to students today because of inflation.