There are a number of students from poor backgrounds, including children of undocumented immigrants, that do well enough in high school to earn themselves a full scholarship to an Ivy League school. But once they discover everything else isn't handed to them on a silver platter, they become despondent.

These incoming students are shocked that tuition doesn't cover every expense and have come to the hard realization that nothing in life is free. Without extra money, many of them steal extra food from the cafeteria or take pictures of individual pages of textbooks so they don't have to purchase them. Some even have to skip Starbucks to send a little money home to their parents.

The Washington Post spoke with several students in this so-called predicament in its sympathetic story. One of them, Lizzette Delgadillo, is a junior at Columbia University. 

“New York’s very expensive. I’m happy. But financially, it’s pretty hard," she said. "If you want to have some sort of social life, you have to pay for that, too."

According to the report, her father plays trumpet in a mariachi band and her mother cleans houses.

The Post contrasts students like Delgadillo with the rich kids who usually attend Ivy League universities. Sometimes the pressure to live like them is too much. This phenomenon is what the rest of us call reality. But this is becoming more of an issue for these schools as they continue the push to diversify the student body. 

One student had to stay on campus while his rich classmates traveled during spring break and he complained, "It’s kind of gross to live off peanut butter and jelly for a week." This "injustice" spurred him to meet with Harvard administration and encourage - that is, force - them to arrange meals for him at local cafes and to further lobby to feed other students who can't afford to leave for vacations.

Lizbeth Peña has also been attending Columbia for the last three years. Her father is a landscaper who brought her to the United States from Mexico when she was seven to became permanent residents. Her struggles at college include buying used textbooks, avoiding Starbucks, restricting how many movies she sees, choosing free museum trips over Broadway shows, and eating a lot of Nutella and bread. When she runs out of money, she swipes extra bananas and apples on her way out of the cafeteria.

Rafael Ramirez is an economics and political science major from the Bronx that takes pictures of textbooks because of his financial situation. From WaPo:

“I’ve sometimes had to choose — all right, am I buying a textbook or getting something to eat?” Ramirez said. “I always choose food.”

Recently, Ramirez took screen shots of a textbook with more than 500 pages so that he could avoid buying it, a mind-numbing maneuver that can take hours on a computer. He has done it more than once. “It’s not bad,” he said. “You get into a rhythm.”

When he decided to come to Columbia, Ramirez said, he didn’t realize all the things he might need to pay for out of pocket. Playing rugby cost about $100 per semester, but fortunately he got financial aid from the team. There was a Latin dance team with dues of $30 to $40 a semester. “Not huge,” Ramirez said. “But it starts adding up.” An expense he deemed most worthwhile was joining a fraternity, which cost $1,300.

The report notes the many times in which these top-tier schools have, and continue to make, concessions to offer more and more to these students. But it does little to satisfy them, as their idea of a full ride meant a free ride.

“Things that you don’t think about are extremely expensive. It’s not a full ride," Delgadillo said in stunned realization.