Despite the barriers and obstacles first-generation students face when applying to college, the number of these students entering the UW continues to increase.

First-generation students, who are typically from low-income backgrounds, are the first in their families to attend college or a university, and they made up 34 percent of the UW’s class of 2010.

Creating a sense of community for these students is a major goal of the Dream Project, an outreach program which pairs college students with high school students to help them through all the steps of the application process, from finding a school that fits to perfecting the personal essay.

Stanley Chernicoff, the director of the program, compared going to college to traveling to a foreign country for those students who have not been a part of the academic culture while growing up.

“It’s a different feeling if you grow up in a family where it is always expected that you will attend college than if you are the first person in your family to attend,” he said.

Projects like the Dream Project offer a link between students with different backgrounds.

“[We] are always conscious that not everyone knows the process that you need to go through to get here, and we spend a lot of time educating those people,” said Sheila Edwards Lange, the vice president for minority affairs and diversity.

A large part of the difficulty for first-generation students, Lange said, comes from a lack of self-esteem. “Oftentimes [first-generation students] don’t know how to market themselves, because they haven’t been taught,” she said.

Lange, a first-generation student herself, remembers the daunting task of filling out all the forms and getting everything in on time.

“My mother had no idea what forms I needed and such, so I had to figure a lot of it out on my own and with guidance counselors,” she said.

These gaps in knowledge are the reason that the UW focuses so much effort on outreach programs for first-generation and low-income students.

Alula Asfaw, founder of the Dream Project and a first-generation student, really wanted to do something about the elusiveness of the application process.

“I understood that a lot more people go through what I had gone through: trying to make the transition between high school and college and not have anybody to help you through it,” he said.

The outreach programs aim to stop this feeling of being alone, but first-generation and low-income students still face hurdles that not everyone encounters.

“I think that the kids, after they finally show up … have to overcome the fear and doubt that they are good enough,” Chernicoff said. “They’re heroes.”

[Reach reporter Celia Hunko at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]