Family on the faculty

But Thatcher Foster ’14 sees him quite differently.

“He and I are bros,” Foster said. “It’s kind of cool.”

Foster, the son of art and archaeology professor Hal Foster, started college with many similarly close relationships, having spent time with faculty and staff for most of his childhood.

“They are just people to him,” the elder Foster said. “For years he’s played basketball with [Dean of the Faculty] David Dobkin, for example, and he’s just David to Thatcher.”

This familiarity with both campus life and the academic world often eases the transition into college life for children of professors, for whom education is heavily prioritized. And students whose parents are on the Princeton faculty experience an added advantage, though they also face the risk of being cast in their parents’ shadow.

Alexandra Kasdin ’14, whose father Jeremy Kasdin ’85 is a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at the University, spent a lot of time on campus when she was growing up. This helped her feel comfortable at Princeton, which, years later, became one of her top choices when applying to colleges.

“When I think of college, I think of Princeton because it’s the only college experience I ever had,” she explained. “Princeton is my favorite place on earth ... because of the amount of experiences I’ve had here. Because it’s like home.”

Though the application process has become extremely competitive for all applicants, status as a faculty child is considered in the admission process, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said in an e-mail.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince.’ Donate now »

It does not, however, serve as a guarantee. “We inevitably turn away some children of faculty who have excellent qualifications,” Rapelye said. She added that admission statistics for faculty children applicants are not available because they are not collected.

Anne Hall, co-director of college counseling at Cate School, a boarding school in California, said she thinks applying as the child of faculty is a large advantage at selective colleges.

“There’s no question that unless faculty children are gigantically below the bar, they’re going to get in,” she said.

Hall said she thought that universities give preference to children of faculty as a show of good will to their professors, who could receive higher salaries if they worked in the private sector rather than in academia.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“They’re saying, ‘Your investment here is important to us, so we want to do everything for you that we can, whether it’s giving you housing or admitting your children,’ ” she explained.

“It’s a commitment in the world of academia to help,” said Pamela Fetters, director of college counseling at The Lovett School, a private school in Atlanta. “Historically, professors don’t make the kinds of salaries that professionals with similar educational backgrounds would make. I think there’s a recognition of that.”

Despite the advantage, faculty children sometimes worry about how others may perceive them if they attend the institutions that employ their parents. The experiences of some Princeton faculty children show why these concerns exist.

“There’s a series of questions people ask me at Princeton,” Kasdin said. “Do you live in Princeton? Did you go to Princeton High School?”

After answering “yes,” Kasdin said she always gets the same follow-up question: “Does your dad work here?”

“There’s always this perception or judgment that people immediately make,” she explained.

However, Fetters said she felt that any resentment toward faculty children based on preferential admission is minimal. “It isn’t really a big deal, because probably fellow students would have stronger feelings about legacies than they would about children of faculty,” she said.

But even as some perceive a preference for faculty children in admission, many are qualified in their own right.

“The children of faculty come from homes where education is valued, and as a group they are exceptionally qualified,” Rapelye said.

Foster echoed this sentiment. “It was definitely a big deal to do well in school,” he said. “I was very motivated.”

Children of professors at other universities reported a similar emphasis on education in their homes. Kristen Davila ’11 recalled that her father, an accounting professor at the University of Southern California, tried to teach her trigonometry as early as the third grade.

“I learned how to read when I was very young and was advanced in math — probably because my dad was excited about teaching me things,” she said.

Math and science were also emphasized for Vinayak Venkataraman ’11, whose parents are both engineering professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology. When he was growing up, Venkataraman said his mother bought him science kits and was “very into the science fairs.”

“My parents pushed me to do very well, and the areas they preferred I challenged myself most [in] were science and engineering,” recalled Venkataraman, an electrical engineering major.

A parent in the academic world can also serve as an additional mentor to approach for help with academic questions or difficulties, from high school to college.

Foster remembers his father “butchering” his papers in high school, while Venkataraman has approached his father, who has written a book on the computer programming language Matlab, for help on the subject in his engineering classes.

Venkataraman said he also looks to his parents for advice in choosing classes. “They’re better able to assess by reading the syllabus whether I would get something out of the class,” he said.

Davila consulted her father when she was changing her concentration from comparative literature to Near Eastern studies midway through junior year. “Being able to talk to someone who knows me very, very well — and thinks like a professor — was helpful,” she said.

But students whose parents are in academia said they are careful not to ask for too much help.

“I don’t ask for help on problems and stuff,” said molecular biology major Kunle Demuren ’11, whose father is a mechanical engineering professor at Old Dominion University. “I feel like I might get more than I need.”

Having a parent on the Princeton faculty, however, might give students a more difficult time breaking away from family life at college.

“To be right there on the same campus where your mother and father works — that can just add an extra layer to your own difficulty creating a separate identity from your family,” Fetters explained.

Having friends recognize a parent as a distinguished academic can also be surreal. “I’ve bumped into people who are like ... ‘Your dad’s this big time guy!’ ” Foster said. “It’s weird, because he’s my dad, but he’s actually also this other guy.”

But Foster said he is still happy with his father’s presence on campus. “I’m ecstatic I came here,” he said. “And it’s kind of fun bumping into your pops every now and then.”