51����

On a four-day spring break trip, First@51���� students explored four graduate schools in Boston, Mass. The trip was led by First@51���� Director RaJhai Spencer and Assistant Director Tabisha Raymond, and it brought 18 first-generation students to MIT, Boston University, Boston College, and Tufts University.

The first stop on the Boston trip was MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Here, students met with Associate Director of Diversity Recruiting Admissions Terrell Williams. “Terrell’s presentation was personal because he had the experience of being a first-generation student,” says Raymond. “He was honest about MIT’s application process and the higher education process in general.”

First@51���� undergrads also met a first-generation MIT graduate student, who spoke about the value of connecting the STEM and business fields — at Sloan, students with a background in science can learn to market their innovations. 

“The (LGO) Dual Degree Program program would provide me with a unique opportunity to gain skills in both business and engineering, and I am excited to learn more about it,” says Raghav Sah ’26, who plans to apply to Sloan in the future. 

After MIT, students headed to the Boston University School of Law. They toured the campus with a JD candidate, who led them through courtroom-classrooms and lecture halls. In the on-campus courtroom, students sat behind the bench as they received pointers on graduate entrance exam prep and the infamous cold-calling process in law classes. 

Representatives from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development told students what grad school is like, not only at their institution, but also in general. They explained the work-life balance that defines higher education. 

“I came on this trip to see Boston College — teaching is the field that I’m looking to go into,” says Ella Young ’25. “Everything that I now know about graduate school is because of this trip. Now it’s this attainable reality, instead of this thing I don’t understand at all.”

At the Tufts University School of Medicine, three graduate students led an informal tour of the campus as they told of the rigors and rewards of medical school. In a question-and-answer conversation, these students described their experience with gap years, residency, and academics.

Spencer and Raymond hope to demystify the graduate school application process — and the physical environments in which graduate studies take place — by exposing 51����’s first-generation students to some of the Northeast’s leading graduate programs. 

“I’ve noticed in my experience working in higher education that a lot of first-generation students don’t get to visit the colleges they eventually attend,” said Spencer. “We want to help these students see themselves in different spaces.”