Helping Others Find Their Path

Salman Khan, Ph.D.’25, doesn’t have regrets about his college experience; there are just things about actually applying to colleges he wishes he knew then — things he’s spent the last 15 years working to teach others.

“It really dawned on me that this whole process really mattered toward the end of my senior year as I started hearing the names of all these other colleges and places where other people had gotten accepted to,” says Khan, who attended Rutgers University — one of the only two schools to which he applied.“

Khan was a good student in high school, but he felt unsupported by the system. The more he looked into the admissions process he realized how many things can go wrong, especially for students mainly navigating the process on their own: A lackluster letter of recommendation. Paperwork mistakes when submitting the FAFSA. A misunderstanding of what makes you an attractive student to which schools. Even what it means to accumulate AP credits before you graduate.

“My parents always said, ‘Do good at school.’ But they didn’t know. They were new to the country, they didn’t understand how the higher education system works. They also didn’t go to college. That was the best they could do, in some respects, which I appreciate,” says Khan. “But the system also has to support students and go beyond that.”

Just trusting the system will take care of you rarely provides the best results, he says. And once he was in college, Khan learned his experience was far from unique: A lot of students don’t understand how important the process of applying for college and the loans that finance their education are to their long-term success.

While still at Rutgers, Khan started helping students from first-generation, low-income backgrounds apply to college. Supporting one student in particular through the process changed the trajectory of his own educational journey.

“I’d take my undergrad classes, go and help him apply to college, sort of in my free time, and he ends up getting into Yale and gets the Gates Millenium Scholarship,” says Khan. “And I was hooked. I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m making a difference in this person’s life.’”

By then accepted into Duke University’s law school, Khan decided to switch gears and explore education more deeply instead. He earned his master’s at Stanford, even working for the admissions office there as an essay reader to see “how the sausage is made” when it comes to student applications. As he researched economics and education policy, he earned a Strategic Data Project Fellowship at the Center for Educational Policy Research at Harvard University, which first brought him to Cambridge. He later applied to the Doctor of Philosophy in Education Program offered jointly by Harvard's Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and HGSE, which enabled him to continue his research.

“Harvard has such wonderful connections,” says Khan. “I’m super grateful for the experience I’ve had here. I’ve been able to access faculty, do great research, and meet with people. You have so many resources to be able to succeed.”

Researching at Harvard, says Khan, gave him the chance to work with some of the brightest economic minds “at the cutting edge of this work,” noting the work of Professors Bridget Terry Long, Tom Kane, and Susan Dynarski, and Associate Professor Peter Blair. Khan was also able to serve as a teaching fellow for Harvard economist Raj Chetty during his time at Harvard.

“A lot of my research, what ties it all together is to think about policies and how we can improve things for students at scale,” says Khan. “I’m someone who really uniquely cares about policy. I’m not studying these policies for the sake of writing the paper. I really do care about the lived experiences of students and policymakers and what they’re thinking about.”

Khan’s Ph.D. dissertation focuses on how universal FAFSA policies impact student outcomes, and how changes to Pell Grant eligibility impacts student inequality. Though his work is largely quantitative, Khan learned how policymakers in states like Louisiana and Connecticut make big decisions and explored changes that positively impact students en masse.

A key component of Khan’s work is access to quality data, something at Harvard he was able to get through programs such as a Partnering in Education Research (PIER) fellowship and an Equity Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School.

“I got access to really incredible data to answer those questions [of how to improve student experience at scale],” says Khan, also citing a fellowship with the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid department. “That was probably one of the reasons I was able to answer these questions with such precision.”

Khan says he’s hoping to remain affiliated with HGSE as a visiting fellow. His postdoc will keep him close by at the National Bureau of Economics Research in Cambridge, where he’s hoping to study the impact of a program to give Pell Grants to incarcerated students.

Looking back, Khan said his six years in Cambridge has had moments of joy but also unexpected challenges. He had two of his four children during his time in the program, and his “incredible” wife has worked hard to support his family as it grew. Khan says Harvard’s student union was an essential resource, as well as the cohort that nominated him to lead them to the commencement stage.

Khan was also in the first year of the Ph.D. Program when COVID hit. In an effort to build up community among his classmates, Khan started Research and Refreshments (R&R), a series of Ph.D. student-only meetings where people could bring ideas and give presentations to help their research projects.

“I think building community beyond your discipline within education is so important,” says Khan. “The R&R space has been a tremendous space for that.”

Khan is thrilled the R&R program will continue following his cohort’s graduation, as three students will take over its operation. True to his nature, Khan managed to find another way to take his own experience and help create something that will help the students who will come to Appian Way after him.

“I tried to be a good university citizen,” Khan said. “It’s nice to sort of be recognized for trying to be an active member of the community and trying to build community on campus.”