about LACs in general...

<p>I'm sorry if this comes out rude (i really don't mean it that way) but does anyone know of any competitive LACs whose majority of students are not preppy, upper-class white people? i know that sounds bad, but i've visited a bunch of New England LACs and coming from a public high school mostly populated with middle- to lower-class minorities, i feel really uncomfortable there. again, i really don't mean to offend anyone, so no flames please.</p>

<p>Guilford has more racial diversity than most. I wonder if public LACs have more economic diversity but that’s just a guess. Check out St Mary’s, Trunan State, New College, Evergreen. . .</p>

<p>wow,wow,and wow! this is the 21st century!</p>

<p>AFAIK, Amherst is the sole LAC that makes it a point to tout diversity as a defining aspect of its identity.</p>

<p>When the Dean of Admission and Financial Aid visited my high school in 2007, he was the sole university representative among those of Ivy League schools and the NESCAC schools to speak candidly and enthusiastically about the importance of diversity to Amherst; he was also the only one who stressed that Amherst had replaced loans with grants in financial aid packages.</p>

<p>The spirit and the presence are there, at Amherst, but much of it will be up to you to take advantage of your learning environment–this holds true wherever you end up.</p>

<p>Check out the midwestern LACs - very non-preppy. Macalester, Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, Kenyon, Beloit…There are quite a few that are academically as good as those in NE but have an entirely different vibe. The same could be said of the west coast LACs. Look into Pomona, Claremont McKenna and Reed.</p>

<p>The first “diverse LAC” that came to mind was Oberlin. Also, the Claremont colleges and Occidental.</p>

<p>Oxford College of Emory University is extremely racially diverse. They do have quite a few wealthy students, but the overwhelming majority are on financial aid.</p>

<p>Add Occidental to the West Coast LAC list. VERY strongly committed to ethnic and racial diversity. </p>

<p>Second that about midwest LACS: Oberlin and Carleton, for example, have long been committed to diversity and are schools with superlative academics and MUCH less social elitism. Very diverse and very tolerant schools. Several close friends, African Americans, attended Carleton and have raved about the overall high quality of their social and academic experiences.</p>

<p>On the East Coast, Haverford and Swarthmore are strongly intellectual, but deeply tolerant and diverse schools. Very different from the East Coast vibe OP is describing. Wesleyan in Connecticut is also a school with a very “chill,” non-socially elitist culture.</p>

<p>Amherst, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Pomona, and Swarthmore have student populations that are less than 50% white, although socioeconomic background does skew toward those from higher income families (based on Pell grant percentages).</p>

<p>The better known public LACs (e.g. Truman State, New College of Florida, Evergreen State, University of Minnesota - Morris, SUNY Geneseo) are predominantly white, although some are less skewed toward students of higher income families. Humboldt State (in California) is 54% white (with 18% Latino and 14% unknown), but with 43% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Perhaps the perception that studying liberal arts is kind of a luxury among those from lower income backgrounds or members of minority groups who may see a pre-professional degree as a better qualification that can override racial/ethnic/socioeconomic-background discrimination against them reduces the number of such students interested in colleges that focus on liberal arts.</p>

<p>I second Grinnell and Carleton as good diverse LACs. They offer the same solid education with a more, you might say, welcoming attitude towards everyone than the NE colleges. If you can get in, they are definitively worth the while.</p>

<p>I am not very informed about LACs. Could anyone comment which LACs are considered to be most preppy and least diversified?</p>

<p>To hzhao2004. Start your own thread!!!</p>

<p>From [url=&lt;a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”&gt;College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics]College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics<a href=“although%20it%20does%20not%20have%20a%20%22preppy%22%20category%20to%20check”>/url</a>:</p>

<p>Carleton is 68% white with 13% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Emory is 43% white with 23% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Grinnell is 59% white with 24% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Haverford is 68% white with 16% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Oberlin is 72% white with 10% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Occidental is 57% white with 25% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>Wesleyan (CT) is 56% white with 16% Pell grant recipients.</p>

<p>UCB, Where does College Navigator get its figures?
I didn’t check all of them, but Grinnell for one didn’t seem right so I looked at their website, which says “[Grinnell is] 13 percent international, 22 percent U.S. students of color.”</p>

<p>So assuming that the international students are half white / half people of color, that’s about 28.5% non-white, 71.5% white. </p>

<p>Grinnell’s a very good school and I wouldn’t discourage anyone from applying or attending, but I think in general that midwestern and rural colleges have more of a challenge achieving their goal diversity figures. </p>

<p>For the OP, for ethnic diversity I’d look at urban and suburban choices like Barnard, Swarthmore. All selective schools actively recruit high achieving minorities, and most have done well statisticaly, but the surrounding areas are still predominantly white.</p>

<p>For economic diversity (if that’s what you mean by preppy: even prep schools aren’t preppy anymore) I don’t see a big difference at any of the selective private schools, both small LACs and mid-sized universities. They all admit a mix of full pay and those on financial aid. There are some fabulously wealthy kids, some severely disadvantaged but most are smack in the middle-class middle.</p>

<p>Ironically, at the more rural isolated schools, you will get less of a sense of economic polarity as there is very little to spend money on.</p>

<p>^^I don’t think making a quarter of a million dollars a year is how the OP would define “middle-class”, but unfortunately with tuition exceeding the rate of inflation at most if not all NE LACs for the past thirty years, even families with comfortable incomes now require financial aid.</p>

<p>There’s a pretty good discussion on the Wesleyan CC discussion board dealing with the whole issue of “the missing middle” at expensive colleges: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/wesleyan-university/1344232-access-affordability.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/wesleyan-university/1344232-access-affordability.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>All of the following schools are either not preppy, diverse, or a combination of the two</p>

<p>Pomona
Carleton
Swarthmore
Haverford
Wesleyan
Vassar
Grinnell
Occidental
Colorado College
Whitman
Sarah Lawrence
Beloit
Macalester
Oberlin</p>

<p>Momrath, the Navigator gets its data from the schools Common Data Set, the same place your info originates. <a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/files/gc_cds_1112.pdf[/url]”>http://www.grinnell.edu/files/gc_cds_1112.pdf&lt;/a&gt; UCB’s numbers don’t include international.</p>

<p>I’m very happy with Earlham College. We don’t have a huge amount of domestic diversity (roughly 10% overall, including me, haha), but our student body is around 1/4 international students, from 82 countries and 6 continents. Some of them, as to be expected, are pretty well off. Most aren’t from wealthy backgrounds, though, and are here on scholarship.</p>

<p>As you’d expect, with a population like ours, elitism is close to nonexistent here - though being a Quaker college helps with that. :)</p>

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<p>If we look at Pell grants as a proxy for students from households in the bottom 40% of household income, we can see substantial differences between different schools in each category:</p>

<p>[Economic</a> Diversity Among the Top 25 Ranked Schools | Rankings | Top National Liberal Arts Colleges | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Economic”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)
[Economic</a> Diversity Among the Top 25 Ranked Schools | Rankings | Top National Universities | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Economic”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)</p>

<p>While Pell grant recipients appear underrepresented (relative to the US household income distribution) at all highly selective schools, there is a significant different between Smith (27%) and Washington and Lee (6%) among liberal arts colleges, and Columbia (26%) and Washington University in Saint Louis (7%) among larger private universities. Among the more selective public universities, there is a big difference between UCLA (37%) and University of Virginia (11%).</p>