As Buddy Otis, dressed in a black cap and black winter jacket, sits at a table in the Holmes Student Center, staring out at the bus turnaround, he doesn’t take time to ponder how he to got to be where he is today.

Otis’s family comes from a place whose residents rarely go to college: the Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago. But he didn’t let that stop him from becoming the exception. After working his first year out of high school, he enrolled at NIU.

“No big deal. I thought about it,” he said of being a first-generation college student. “It’s just college to me.”

The sophomore nursing major is one of a large group of NIU students whose parents didn’t attend college.

“Each year, about 35 to 40 percent of students who start as new freshmen at NIU are first-generation students,” said Dan House, director of institutional research for Finance and Facilities.

Nationally, 15 to 25 percent of college students are first-generation, according to studies conducted in recent years.

Admissions director Bob Burk has noticed the high percentage of first-generation students.

“We reflect our region, and NIU serves Illinois and our region,” he said. “Our CHANCE program also serves students who are educationally disadvantaged. By definition, these students are almost all first-generation college students.”

The CHANCE program at NIU assists students “whose pre-college education has not fully enabled them to take maximum advantage of their potential and the opportunities of higher education at NIU,” according to its Web site.

College graduates, on average, make more money than those who have never gone to college. NIU may be attractive to first-generation college students because of its relatively low tuition rates, proximity to Chicago and its large low-income population.

A 2005 National Center for Education Statistics report said first-generation students are at a “distinct disadvantage in gaining access to postsecondary education,” and those who do make it into college “have difficulty remaining enrolled and attaining a degree.”

The study found that 68 percent of students whose parents graduated college received a bachelor’s degree or higher, while only 24 percent of first-generation students did.

But Otis plans to beat the odds again. He hopes to graduate from NIU, becoming the first member of his family to do so. And even though he doesn’t see his “first-generation” status as anything out of the ordinary, Otis said someone close to him was delighted by his decision to attend college.

“My mom was happy,” he said.