Best College for a Rich Student?

<p>OneMom, that's not true. While Brown was the last of the Ivies to adopt need-blind admissions, they've had the policy for about five years now:
<a href="http://financialaid.brown.edu/Cmx_Content.aspx?cpId=58%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://financialaid.brown.edu/Cmx_Content.aspx?cpId=58&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>SMU, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, W&L are all havens of class and academics, with Vanderbilt and W&L being a tier above the other two in academics.</p>

<p>SEC schools are generally filled with children of well-to-do Southern families, minus Florida and UGA to an extent as the Hope scholarship provides full tuition to most in state students that can gain admission. I went to a Southern boarding school at which far and away the SEC represented the conference attracting the most students with the Ivies coming a close second.</p>

<p>Are the Patriot League colleges colleges that would fit rich students in the way I mentioned in the thread-opening post?</p>

<p>USC. </p>

<p>Wealthy, pricey, private school + LA culture = Fun^10 for kids with a lot of money. </p>

<p>C'mon, people mentioning public schools? Harvard where most people don't even pay tuition? Stanford!? You guys are just naming schools that cost alot not schools that are fun for wealthy people. </p>

<p>Expensive private schools in the South, in New York, and in LA would fit that description.</p>

<p>Academy of the Arts in San Fransisco. That is where the girls on the Hills met. I have a friend who is going there next year to study.... fashion journalism.</p>

<p>tokenadult mentioned posh facilities as one of the criteria. I don't think Penn fits the bill there, with mediocre housing. The Claremont Consortium comes to mind, with some of the colleges there offering daily maid service and really top-notch dining services.</p>

<p>Penn on campus housing isn't the best but there are luxury apartments and other great off campus housing options for your rich student. I feel that a private school in a major city is best for a rich student. They can go clubbing wednesday-saturday, meet other really rich kids, have an airport a few miles away that will take them most anywhere in the world, and have good restaurants to eat at on the weekends. Schools like GW, Penn, NYU, Georgetown, Columbia, BC, Harvard, USC, Northwestern, and WashU come to mind. Schools in smaller cities/suburbs also come to mind like Princeton, Yale, and Brown.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Rice?? Nobody even talks about family income at Rice. I honestly have no idea what socioeconomic background my Rice colleagues came from, and nobody cared a whit, either. Vetoing Rice.

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<p>
[quote]
I disagree about Rice though. In Texas, SMU is supposed to be where the rich kids go to school. Tulane, University of Colorado and University of Vermont also have wealthy student bodies.

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<p>Ummm, the OP asked what is the BEST school for rich kids. I say Rice is waaaay better than SMU and Tulane...better education for the money, IMHO.</p>

<p>Quite dated but interesting long term Pell Grant (or lack thereof) analysis nonetheless: "The Gated Communities of Higher Education: 50 Most Exclusive Public and Private 4-Year Institutions" <a href="http://www.leg.mn/webcontent/lrl/pdf/gated.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.leg.mn/webcontent/lrl/pdf/gated.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I don't get you guys...OP says school where rich kids would be able to feel embraced, welcomed, mix with their own kind etc and you throw out every school ever known. Yes, I realize there are rich kids at state schools...there are also kids who get perfect SAT scores at Arizona State...does that mean that it's a school for people with perfect SAT scores? No. Every school has some rich kids in it, good for them, but the fact of the matter is that the extremely upper class in this country do not, on the vast majority, send their kids to state schools. If you're on the top of the social ladder you send your kids to andover/exeter/st paul etc. Lets check out where their graduates go??</p>

<p>Where Exeter/Andover grads went from 05-07 (minimum of 10). </p>

<p>Harvard (98) </p>

<p>Georgetown (66) </p>

<p>U Pennsylvania (66) </p>

<p>Yale (57) </p>

<p>Columbia (56) </p>

<p>NYU (49) </p>

<p>Princeton (48) </p>

<p>Stanford (47) </p>

<p>Dartmouth (46) </p>

<p>Cornell (46) </p>

<p>Brown (45) </p>

<p>Duke (40) </p>

<p>Tufts (39) </p>

<p>Johns Hopkins (38) </p>

<p>MIT (37) </p>

<p>Middlebury (33) </p>

<p>U Chicago (30) </p>

<p>Vanderbilt (29) </p>

<p>Trinity College (28) </p>

<p>George Washington U (27)</p>

<p>Anyone who thinks publics are "rich kid schools" has got to be kidding.</p>

<p>"Anyone who thinks publics are "rich kid schools" has got to be kidding."</p>

<p>Anyone who thinks that Exeter / Andover are the only places where rich kids go to high school has got to be kidding. </p>

<p>You never know who's wealthy. There were some quite wealthy families at NU; the wealthiest person I knew there was from Idaho and her father owned an international potato processing company. They had a chateau in France and a penthouse in Manhattan and a house here and a house there and an incredible lifestyle. Yet you'd never know, because she was just so-and-so from Buhl, Idaho.</p>

<p>Vanderbilt and SMU, seems like a lot of Southern universities</p>

<p>Hampden Sydney</p>

<p>
[quote]
If you're on the top of the social ladder you send your kids to andover/exeter/st paul etc.

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<p>Evidence for that statement? Are you an alumnus of one of those high schools? (I know two current Exeter students well and am acquainted with a few more parents from various states who have children at one or another of those boarding prep schools. The current Exeter student I know best is NOT rich in the sense of my thread-opening question, and is at Exeter on financial aid.)</p>

<p>I can't believe no one said Pepperdine. It's basically an "academic" country club in Malibu.</p>

<p>Old-money rich kids from the north would be most likely to attend NESCAC schools or perhaps ivies...Colby, Hamilton, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc. read the official preppy handbook. From the South - Hampden-Sydney, Sweet Briar, Washington and Lee, maybe UVa (the only public that could be classified as having a significant # of rich kids)</p>

<p>Nouveau riche kids, the children of the visibly super-rich...well anywhere really, but probably more urban schools with high price tags.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Various participants were kind enough to name quite a few different colleges, in order of mention, </p>

<p>Harvard (agreed and disagreed) </p>

<p>Columbia </p>

<p>Penn (agreed) </p>

<p>Princeton (agreed) </p>

<p>Yale (agreed) </p>

<p>Dartmouth (agreed) </p>

<p>Brown (agreed) </p>

<p>Cornell </p>

<p>NYU (agreed) </p>

<p>USC (agreed) </p>

<p>GWU (agreed) </p>

<p>Stanford (agreed)</p>

<p>Duke (agreed) </p>

<p>Georgetown (agreed) </p>

<p>Middlebury </p>

<p>Northwestern (agreed) </p>

<p>Michigan </p>

<p>Virginia </p>

<p>Vanderbilt (agreed) </p>

<p>Williams </p>

<p>Boston U </p>

<p>Boston C (agreed) </p>

<p>SMU (agreed) </p>

<p>Rice (disagreed) </p>

<p>Tulane </p>

<p>Colorado </p>

<p>Vermont </p>

<p>Emory </p>

<p>Florida </p>

<p>UIUC </p>

<p>Mizzou </p>

<p>Indiana </p>

<p>Kansas </p>

<p>Arizona State </p>

<p>Rollins </p>

<p>Sweet Briar (agreed) </p>

<p>Wake Forest (agreed) </p>

<p>Bryn Mawr </p>

<p>Wellesley </p>

<p>Bowdoin </p>

<p>Colgate </p>

<p>Trinity </p>

<p>W&L </p>

<p>Academy of the Arts in San Fransisco </p>

<p>Wash U </p>

<p>Tufts </p>

<p>Johns Hopkins </p>

<p>Hampden Sydney </p>

<p>Pepperdine </p>

<p>By the way, I think Alexandre well recognized what I was driving at, as did Hawkette in her comments annotating her much larger list of academically strong colleges. </p>

<p>Now, following up on that, among all the colleges mentioned, and especially among the colleges that Hawkette has identified as academically strong and LaxAttack09 has identified as appealing to prep school alumni, which colleges are the most congenial for POOR students? What would be a really enjoyable college for a student who has almost no money and who has to avoid being "gapped" for financial aid and worry about working while in college? Where could such a student find a compatible social life and affordable incidental expenses? What college would welcome that poor student in a social network that might include rich people?</p>

<p>Bentley. Richmond. Pepperdine. </p>

<p>(I actually did an "entitlement index" of this about five years ago, but only of so-called "top" private colleges - a combination of percentage receiving no need-based financial aid plus private school attendance minus Pell Grant recipients. </p>

<p>The top 10 liberal arts colleges in the entitlement index were:</p>

<ol>
<li> Davidson 119-6 113</li>
<li> Washington and Lee 113-3 110</li>
<li> Trinity 119-13 106</li>
<li> Bates 108-9 99</li>
<li> Middlebury 105-8 97</li>
<li> Kenyon 105-8 97</li>
<li> Williams 104-9 95</li>
<li> Colby 100-7 93</li>
<li> Connecticut 102-11 91</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 103-13 90</li>
</ol>

<p>The top 10 private universities in the entitlement index were:</p>

<ol>
<li> Notre Dame 102</li>
<li> Georgetown 101</li>
<li> Yale 97</li>
<li> Vanderbilt 92</li>
<li> Princeton 92</li>
<li> Tufts 92</li>
<li> Penn 91</li>
<li> Johns Hopkins 90</li>
<li> Brown 90</li>
<li>Duke 88</li>
</ol>

<p>I am sure there have been changes in the past 5 years, though not huge ones. Princeton will have fallen out of the top 10, likely replaced by Boston College.</p>

<p>maybe george washington university?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Now, following up on that, among all the colleges mentioned, and especially among the colleges that Hawkette has identified as academically strong and LaxAttack09 has identified as appealing to prep school alumni, which colleges are the most congenial for POOR students? What would be a really enjoyable college for a student who has almost no money and who has to avoid being "gapped" for financial aid and worry about working while in college? Where could such a student find a compatible social life and affordable incidental expenses? What college would welcome that poor student in a social network that might include rich people?

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Hard to say because the colleges with the poorest student bodies usually are nothing to brag about academically. Maybe something really alternative like Deep Springs College though.</p>