When Lauren Chandeville arrived on campus for her freshman year at the University of Michigan,

she was struck by how wealthy all her classmates appeared to be.

Just wealthy in ways that I couldn't even imagine.

Nice cars, fancy clothes, very connected and powerful parents.

Lauren had grown up in Warren, Michigan, a suburb just north of Detroit.

And her family was working class.

She was proud that she'd piece together scholarships, grants, and a few small loans

to attend a top school.

Yet even though she'd landed fair and square on the elite campus, something felt off.

From the beginning, I knew that I was a first-gen college student.

I knew that I was different from my peers in the sense that like my you know,

my parents are doctors or lawyers or politicians and my experience was different from them.

When Lauren was a junior, the university's student government put out a campus

affordability guide.

It was written with the average U of M student in mind.

It's worth noting that the average student, they have a family income of about $150,000 per year.

A lot of the advice was like, fire your maid or sell your car to say of some money.

That advice?

It didn't go over very well with the low-income students on campus.

I was frustrated by this guide.

I was seeing other people who were frustrated by it.

So she thought, let's make our own guide.

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