There are a huge number of colleges that were household names to me way before I met a single person who actually graduated from them. At the top of the list were Harvard, Yale, Princeton and UCLA. For some reason the same paradigm just doesn’t hold for LACs and the confused look you are apt to get when you say, “My son is interviewing at all the WASP colleges” proves my point.
I can’t imagine that the term “WASP” was created by someone who actually liked those schools. Either way, the term is conveying another message that makes me turn the other way while trying to control my gag reflex. It certainly does not communicate “collaborative, tolerant and inclusive.” They could have chosen “SWAP” or the cuter “PAWS” or the more neutral “WAPS” or “SPAW,” but they didn’t. What does that say?
I think it says you have a lot of free time.
And on another (controversial perhaps) note, the term “heavily greek” when used to describe a college will cause me to enter my D’s Naviance account and delete it from the interest list. Sorry, even if my D is smart enough and independent enough to generally avoid that scene, (a) it does not support our preference for collaborative and inclusive and (b) I just don’t want her and the GFs she will make to be subjected to the male chauvinist, misogynist and sometimes dangerous culture that often exists in a “heavily greek” environment. {Bracing self from storm of discontent}
I think you’re highlighting the reason people post…if there are attributes (like Greek) that you feel isn’t appropriate for your child, mission accomplished. We avoided Greek environments with one child, didn’t for another.
As for WASP and inclusion…I think it’s just easy to create. If you want a reason, they are in order based on US News rankings.
@SoccerMomGenie On this forum the references to Greek organizations are meant to mislead other readers. People wildly exaggerate this topic. Schools without formal Greek chapters often have groups and informal organizations that act very much like national Greek chapters.
Schools referred to as “collaborative” are still filled with socially and academically aggressive kids or social groups formed around sports or political beliefs that function like traditional fraternities and sororities. You have seen this recently on many campuses, Dartmouth for example. I have yet to see a Greek house take over the library and harass other students.
Top colleges aren’t camps or daycare.
WAPS would never fly in southern New England. Just sayin’.
lol, @circuitrider …. I looked up the WAPS acronym and this is what I found:
Acronym Definition
WAPS Weighted Airman Promotion System
WAPS Western Australia Police Service
WAPS World Alliance for Peace in Sri Lanka
WAPS World Alliance for Patient Safety (World Health Organization)
WAPS Winona Area Public Schools (Winona, MN)
WAPS Waste Acceptance Preliminary Specifications
Am I missing something else??
^It’s a homonym for an ethnic slur.
Or, “World Alliance for Patient Safety” may be problemlatic in southern New England.
Whey Acidic Proteins? I think you covered all of them. 
I think we are way off course here…
Learn something new every day! I suppose it’s a good thing I had never heard of that ethnic slur. It relates to one-half of my husband’s ethnicity and one-quarter of my kids’!
Though this year, they’d be “WASBMP” 
LOL yeah “waps” isn’t gonna fly in really any portion of the Northeast/East Coast or some serious sections of Chicago…
More directly – can you guys start a new thread about this?
Colgate and its quantitative economics program are highly regarded within the NYC financial community.
If you look at the Brookings “value add” algorithm it has a number of biases, one of which is schools in low cost areas that feed expensive metropolitan areas. Washington and Lee benefits from this bias as well. These are both very good schools for the right type of person- irrespective of their Brookings rank.
Colgate is probably not what the OP is looking for. Some of my daughter’s classmates loved it, but my daughter didn’t even want to stay for the entire tour.
Since we drove from the Boston area we had to improvise to try to salvage the trip. We managed to get to Hamilton in time for a tour which my daughter liked much more.