Student Profile: Maddie Hidalgo

Written by: Kaylene Eyring

For most students, April is the season of receiving college acceptance offers and is full of excitement and some tears.  After working long and hard at applying, students are finally receiving feedback and choosing where their future will take them. 

First gen students add another layer of complexity when choosing a college–how they will pay for it.  Most first-gen students will not receive any monetary support from their parents.  In addition, many must sacrifice their dream school for the sake of staying at a more local and affordable institution, a decision that plagues them as they must choose between prestige and reality.  They choose between $100k debt from a more elite university or $30k from a state school. 

At The Reach Foundation, we promote value education. Quality education for the most competitive price. This is essential for first-generation students that do not benefit from the generational wealth that legacy college students have.  

This was the very difficult choice Madison Hidalgo faced when choosing what her future held. She received an acceptance from her dream school, San Diego State,  one of the most elite state schools in California.  She also was accepted to San José State, the local university in her hometown.  The decision was incredibly difficult for her as attending San José would allow her to live at home and continue helping her family, but San Diego was her dream. 

Ultimately, with The Reach Foundation’s encouragement and guidance, she decided to attend San José State and where she would graduate debt free.  Hidalgo is now a freshman majoring in Child Development with an emphasis on community. It was a hard choice. A tumultuous time that many take for granted. 

At first, she was hesitant to even consider San José State, but attending San Diego would have left her with almost one hundred thousand dollars of debt, and she would have had to work multiple jobs. Especially in Silicon Valley, the idea of prestige in an institution is valued above almost all else, even if it means taking out considerable debt. 

High schoolers are sometimes encouraged by their counselors to attend so-called ‘elite’ schools, even if they have to take out burdening student loans that would put them in debt for decades to come.  

Low-income first-gen students are at risk of defaulting on loans. Statistics show that 90% of those who default on student loans are from lower household income brackets. These students  lack parents who are a financial safety net should they be unable to pay back a loan.  In addition, most first-gen students and their parents are often confused by the financial jargon and complexities of student loans, signing documents without understanding the long-term ramifications.  

This is exacerbated by the fact that only 11% of first-gen students finish their degrees within 6 years, adding to the burden of debt. At The Reach Foundation, our mentors play a crucial role in advising students about debt.  Students are encouraged to find college options that minimize debt or look for opportunities that would result in a total of under $10k of debt for a bachelor’s degree.  

We thank our mentors for looking out for their student’s future 6 years down the road and coming up with college choices with little debt.  We applaud all of our students for being fiscally responsible and looking for “value” college options, even if it means forgoing their dream school.