ABSTRACT
There are many identities intersecting with first-generation status related to race, class, gender, and sexuality. There is also citizenship status, urban or rural background, and visible or unseen disabilities. First-generation college students might be veterans, parents, foster children, and more. The key factor to first-generation status is that being first-generation is not an accident of birth, but a marker of multigenerational, hereditary inequalities flowing from parents to children. Campuses can provide a welcome, hostile, or indifferent reception to first-generation students. First-generation students often have the ability, likely activated since youth, to teach themselves things. First-generation students can be rough around the edges, but they cover far more ground in their achievements, having had to struggle just to get to the starting line.
