SIPA STORIES: Low-income at SIPA and the Ivy League: finding a place in elite institutions

This article is the first of a multi-part series on the experiences of low-income students at SIPA, including stories from Casidy Cunningham, Kelsie Greene, and Ejona Bakalli.

By Kat Sewon Oh (MIA ’23)

I was born and bred in Flushing, Queens and I am the daughter of Korean immigrant grocery store owners. My parents immigrated to New York City in the late 80s, braving long days and nights with no language help or physical protection in an unpredictable city. But they worked hard, and in our best years, I was proud to be in the higher end of the low-income bracket in New York City, maybe pushing the lower end of middle-class.

The pandemic, however, forced my parents to close their beloved store, and now they live on limited social security benefits. With minimal work-study income, I still contribute to the mortgage, utility bills, phone, and internet. With the great burden of graduate tuition, I save up using Medicaid and public transportation so previous savings from my old job can cover the rest of our family’s expenses.

I earn $15 per hour at my work-study job, where I am only able to work eight hours per week, so that’s $480 per month. But then I have to account for public transportation, and since I take the train to Queens three days a week, it’s $7.75 for each off-peak ride, $10.75 for rides during peak hours, and $5 over the weekend — in other words, $49.75 per week. But then the round-trip bus to my partner in New Jersey three days a week is $4.50 times six, and add to that my monthly MetroCard of $127, so I’m paying $434 per month just for transportation. That leaves me with $46 to spare for the month, and that’s only if I work all my hours. If I get a day off because I need to study or my boss has no work, then I lose hours to record.

Let me insert a disclaimer about my privilege, since privilege comes in Venn diagrams and not unilateral spectrums. My parents were proud to purchase a home a decade ago — a huge upgrade from their tiny one-room apartment in Jackson Heights, which we squeezed into with my uncle and aunt. The money my parents saved had been dedicated to my higher education, which they unfortunately had to redirect towards paying our remaining mortgage once our store closed, so I am instead dependent on federal loans and scholarships to attend SIPA at my parents’ reluctance. I am blessed to have a supportive family, and I realize that many low-income households do not share this privilege. The narratives of others come with struggles that I cannot relate to, nor will I try to fit myself into. I want to make clear that my story is unique thanks to my upbringing, and I do not represent all low-income individuals in the United States. 

The reason I share my story is not to paint a sob story for my friends to pity me. This has been my reality for two and a half decades, and my reality is what has made me the friend that people know and love. 

I want to instead illustrate a stark contrast between what I’ve noticed SIPA claims as low-income and what actual low-income students face on a daily basis. I overheard a professor on a fellowship committee deny so many applicants on the basis that, “as soon as you give students something, they think it’s an entitlement.” 

We have seen our student board, the SIPA Student Association (SIPASA), distribute insensitive — even if well-intentioned — emails and surveys that account for us as statistics rather than individuals in order to appeal to an administration that has failed to respond in the first place. We are desperately running in a hamster wheel, trying to move upward in unforgiving institutions that penalize us for not having enough money or connections. 

Years ago, my aunt, the main gossip of the Flushing Korean community, did her research to find highly rated public schools for us to live near during my formative years. This effort gifted me the opportunity to attend Stuyvesant, one of New York City’s specialized high schools. At Stuy, 43% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch assistance, so considering that my family had our own house, I thought I was rich.

But once I started attending Yale for college, that was the first time I thought, “I don’t belong here.” Checking library books out to rich legacy children with personal connections to unpaid internships was only one of my five work-study jobs. Coming to SIPA was not a shock to me; it was simply round two of trying to get a degree at an institution that doesn’t want me. 

My parents’ mentality was always, “Let’s not burden our child with poverty, and at the very least let’s never go hungry.” Thanks to our grocery store, my parents consistently brought home high-quality produce and expensive food products that, according to my mom, “all the rich white ladies buy,” while they secretly ate expired food off the shelves to not waste their inventory.

My first struggle with hunger was in 2012, when our store went up in flames due to leaking gas that our landlord failed to repair. Suddenly, my parents were going hungry to make sure I had one more meal to power through another sleepless night at Stuy. With my fear of losing food scraps, I developed a binge eating disorder that wrecked my health and amplified my guilt, plaguing me with thoughts of whether I could have saved money instead of buying an extra slice of pizza.

At SIPA, my scavenging habits continue, using my dining plan to pack three servings of food in a to-go container to bring home so that my parents don’t have to buy more groceries. I suffer from cognitive dissonance and weight gain as I study human rights to try to save the world, while also figuring out how much to tightly pack for my next meal. 

I haven’t bought any new clothes in the last two years. I reuse my high school and college clothes for class and outfits from my old job for professional events. I steal hoodies and T-shirts from my partner when I need to switch up my wardrobe. My down coat from Black Friday two years ago is falling apart, but I’m hoping it lasts me another winter until I graduate and make money. Not too long ago, I attended a networking event with a far too old blazer, carefully hand-washed and ironed by my mother. It was only after the event that I realized my one pair of professional boots had completely fallen apart. When my partner asked what I wanted as a gift, I requested a pair of good shoes to last me another three years. 

SIPA and other elite institutions also instill and emphasize the guilt of being poor. I have to complete a stack of documentation just to prove my need for financial assistance. That guilt translates to my daily life when I feel the need to explain myself to avoid judgment for buying new skin care products or a K-pop album. Self-care is considered a luxury, and when everyone knows you’re poor, you’re side-eyed for partaking in said luxury.

All of this is amplified for me as a mentally disabled queer woman of color. I struggle with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and I identify as a pansexual genderqueer woman. Sometimes it is tiring to explain my identity when all of these definitions are a quick Google search. I suffer from endless emotional labor simply for existing. 

Yet poor culture is weird. Unlike my constant urge to calculate every cent of my own spending, low-income students just spot each other for meals and coffees, with zero expectation of getting anything back.

If there’s anything my poor friends and I have learned from our various backgrounds, it’s that our relationships last far longer than money. We believe that money will even out over time, but our bonds will strengthen and we will overcome yet another obstacle together. 

Kat Sewon Oh (MIA ’23) is studying Human Rights and Humanitarian Policy with concentrations in Gender and Public Policy and East Asia. Coming from a background of social services and nonprofit work, she hopes to pursue a career in operations and human resources at NGOs focusing on the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights.