<p>There are plenty of well to do kids at most state flagships, despite what one might think from cc.</p>
<p>“Does the east coast have a rich/snobby vibe??”</p>
<p>If we’re talking about the Northeast, which you seem to be, then I’d have to say based on my personal experience…yes it does. Of course, my experiences consist of living in a wealthy town in suburban NJ and going to a boarding school in Connecticut, which are obviously going to be more rich/snobby than average, but I have been spent time in enough different places to say that, in my opinion, the Northeast definitely has a more pretentious attitude. It’s not just about the money - people can be rich without being snobby - but I think the snobbery is more present in this region. I spend a lot of time in one of the wealthiest areas of Florida and have never met nicer people, so that leads me to believe that the Northeast, although not necessarily more rich, is more focused on wealth.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to draw conclusions on entire regions based off of the few places I’ve lived, but this is just the vibe I’ve gotten. The pretentiousness of New England is actually the biggest reason that I’m looking at colleges in other areas of the country.</p>
<p>Good luck!! Remember that regardless of whether this stereotype is true, you will find both great people and complete morons at every school.</p>
<p>My wife and I graduated from Wake Forest and our two daughters are at Harvard.</p>
<p>In our experience, the Southern private college experience was far more rich-kid focused than that at Harvard. The country club crowd at Wake was well-defined and ostentatious. There are obviously some very wealthy students at Harvard, but the campus culture doesn’t seem to support flaunting it.</p>
<p>i didn’t get a chance to read through this whole thing, but…U Rochester is conservative? how so?</p>
<p>This is like asking, do all the kids in California surf and do pot?</p>
<p>The answer is, no.</p>
<p>the top national and liberal arts colleges tend to have great financial aid and so have smaller proportions of snobby, rich kids. State universities also have a lower proportion of rich kids.</p>
<p>If you want high proportions of rich snobby kids try schools that are prestigious but do not offer need blind and full need financial aid. WUSTL, USC, NYU and a few others fall in this category.</p>
<p>But kwu is correct, half the student body comes from rich families and you have to deal with it.</p>
<p>Here’s my stab at ordering the list from Most Preppy/Snobby to Least:</p>
<p>Haverford, by an Aspen mile</p>
<p>Weslyan
Brown</p>
<p>Carleton - Minnesota Preppy = Brand new Sorrels</p>
<p>Macalester - Minnesota Preppy wouldn’t register on the New England scale
Grinnell - Iowa is much the same as Minnesota</p>
<p>Rochester - More NYC and seemingly every kids’ second choice school
Boston University - More Long Island than preppy
Northeastern - Still get the vibe of their commuter school roots</p>
<p>I grew up in the allegedly down-to-earth Southeast and have lived in allegedly snobby and pretentious New England (metro Boston) for the last 6.5 years. I’m going to disagree with the people in this thread saying that New Englanders are comparatively snobby and pretentious. A little less polite on the whole, IMO, and annoyingly aggressive drivers (those might be metro Boston things specifically), but not snobby or pretentious. Snobby and pretentious individuals exist in all regions, and down-to-earth people exist in all regions, and I’m not convinced that the Northeast, or New England, have more of the former and fewer of the latter than the Southeast.</p>
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<p>Yes, this is it, exactly. The school’s academic reputation and selectivity have gone up like rockets, and the current students have never known the school as anything but a very reputable major research university, but the inner-city-commuter-school roots exert a very strong influence on campus culture.</p>
<p>I go to one of the schools on your list (Wesleyan), and I’ve NEVER had the experience of “many of his floor-mates were suprised he didn’t own a ski-home,” or anything close to it. More of my friends are on financial aid than not, at least half went to public schools. I’m friends with a few true prep-school types (Exeter, Choate, etc.), and with most of them you would never be able to guess they went to that kind of school or had that kind of money. For the most part, if you go to Exeter and even bother to apply to a “hippy” school like Wes, there’s a reason. </p>
<p>Another example: I’m decently good friends with the son of these people: [2</a> Board of Trustee Families Give $22M to Wesleyan](<a href=“2 Board of Trustee Families Give $22M to Wesleyan”>2 Board of Trustee Families Give $22M to Wesleyan). I had no idea he was rich at all until he once bought a group of his friends a really nice dinner for fun. I had no idea his family was anything near THIS rich until they donated. Far from being preppy or snobby, he was kind of socially awkward, and the last remaining goth kid in all of Wesleyan. </p>
<p>I am actually only friends with one person who acts the way your friend was describing, in terms of not understanding other lifestyles, but she’s very nice/not judgmental about it (just a little more open than others about her second home, etc). And, more importantly for you, basically all my other friends are absolutely astonished by how wealthy she is. </p>
<p>Of course, that’s just my experience. I’m sure that there are some social circles at this school (and most schools) where wealth matters. But they are pretty easy to avoid (never experienced it Freshmen year, where there wasn’t choice in who you live with), and on the whole most people are pretty sensitive and almost everyone is really nice. </p>
<p>So, basically, I would encourage you to visit the schools you get into and feel the vibes for yourself, not make wide judgement based on where the schools are located.</p>
<p>I really think some of you are doing the OP a terrible disservice by introducing unfair labels of snobbery on schools that might actually suit her very well. As a New Englander who is going to one of the schools you have labeled preppy/snobby and who can afford to pay for college, I bridle at the stereotype that well-to-do college students are socially exclusive and look down on everyone else. We’re just as nervous about making friends as you are, and anyone with any dignity would refrain from flaunting whatever good fortune they might be blessed with. This kind of badmouthing and prejudice is PRECISELY how you create class distinctions; it is entirely self-imposed. There are nice people and jerks everywhere from all walks of life. If you think you can be successful socially by avoiding a change of comfort zone because you fear judgment, you’re missing out on a lot of great people.</p>
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<p>Extraordinarily well said. I don’t find the East Coast any snobbier than anywhere else. I find it faster paced and more intense, but that’s different from snobby. And most people everywhere are somewhat provincial about their own regions of the country.</p>
<p>Rich =//= snobby. The perception that a rich person is by default snobby says more about the person making that leap than it does about said rich person.</p>
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<p>What’s “to deal” with? Seems like the only problem is someone who is jealous of what someone else might own / wear / have. </p>
<p>I had heard some tales about GWU being populated by “rich kids who flaunted their wealth.” We just toured there. Oh, dear, there were some Burberry scarves and Coach handbags. Whoop-de-doo. That’s not “flaunting wealth,” those are scarves and handbags. What does that say about the kid again? Absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>If anything, I think wealth is considered something to NOT talk about in the Northeast. My son goes to one of those fancy LACs and if anything, they practically dress in rags! Nobody talks about money at all. Whereas at some of the schools in the South we looked at, people dressed up in a much fancier manner. However, that is not to say that the kids in the South are snobby, they just dressed more nicely. I personally don’t care if kids dress in ratty jeans or Lily Pulitzer sundresses. And yes, all kinds of very down-to-earth people live in the Northeast.</p>
<p>So zazzle (if you’re still reading this), what do you think?</p>
<p>Can we please get past labelling the northeast as snobby; the south as racist; the midwest as narrowminded; and the west as flaky and start regarding people as individuals?</p>
<p>From the kids I know at Haverford, your Bloomington friend’s description is as accurate as the portrayal in the movie Breaking Away of IU kids as rich, preppy snobs who sneer at Bloomington kids as “stonecutters”.</p>
<p>“Can we please get past labelling the northeast as snobby; the south as racist; the midwest as narrowminded; and the west as flaky and start regarding people as individuals?”</p>
<p>The stereotypes of Southerners, Easterners, and Midwesterners are clearly unfair. But if you think Westerners aren’t flakey, you obviously haven’t been there.</p>
<p>[By the way, I’m the guy in the white shirt walking on the sidewalk with a short young lady in the Breaking Away scene where the Cutters car is going backwards alongside the frat boy’s Mercrdes.]</p>
<p>I think using the word snobby reflects more on the oversensitive user than the object. I find that people who like to make this distinction are often insecure and either small minded or not very worldly.</p>
<p>You will find all types of people at college, and you can pick and choose your own friends. My daughter found Brown students to be pretty low key and laid back excepting where academic ambition is concerned. Someone warned her about all the well off kids, but this was never something she mentioned or found anything to blink at. She is a California casual type person. Her friends were made based on mutual interests and, later, her major subject colleagues. (full disclosure: she did get to stay at a friends villa in Italy once.)</p>
<p>I’m particularly amused by the characterization of Haverford as “preppy” and “snobby” and even (by one poster) “conservative.” This is a Quaker school, the oldest such in the country, and although no longer formally affiliated with the Religious Society of Friends it’s still characterized by its commitment to core Quaker values of personal integrity, community service, and a commitment to peace and social justice. That makes it, on a political scale, one of the most liberal schools in the country; and those values are widely shared among the student body. And class snobbery is distinctly at odds with those core Quaker values as well. Almost to a person, the Haverford students and alums my D and I have met have been some of the most decent, upright, down-to-earth, non-pretentious, but quietly intellectual people we’ve ever come across; almost diametrically opposed to “class snobs.” It goes with the Quaker culture, and with the vibe of the place.</p>
<p>That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of kids from well-to-do backgrounds, but no more so than at other top LACs. Roughly half the kids at Haverford are on need-based financial aid (52% of freshmen, 48% of the student body as a whole). That’s roughly the same as Wesleyan (50% of freshmen, 48% of student body), Amherst (51%/53%), Williams (50%/49%), or Swarthmore (49%/47%); and a higher percentage than Bowdoin (41%/43%), Bates (46%/43%), Colby (40%/37%), Colgate (32%/33%), Hamilton (41%/41%), or Trinity (43%/39%).</p>
<p>And believe me, as a Haverford full-pay dad-to-be (my D will enroll there in the Fall), not all full-pay families have vacation homes in the mountains. Far from it. Some of us will be digging deep into our life savings and tightening our belts at home just to scrape together tuition.</p>
<p>I actually had a serious convo about this while visiting a small, elite, LAC in New England- with a mom of an alum. Sometimes it will be hard. Not the “omg they have the new IT bag!!111” hard, but the “I’m working, and working, and I have so many loans, and I’m so stressed, and no, I can’t party/go out for drinks/buy a lobster, I’m sorry, but I have to sit it out (again).”</p>
<p>But I told her that I felt like this wasn’t limited to the school or region. I was more likely to run into ‘quiet old money’ on the EC than I was in Tempe or Scottsdale- where “New money” is often more snobbish, flashy, and about competing. “I’ve got Daddy’s credit card!” kids exist everywhere, and it’s not just the EC.</p>
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<p>While I see your point, I know plenty of girls who carry those handbags, and admit to loving the designer bags, and their money, and wanting a good income- ‘because they’re used to a certain lifestyle’, and brag about how little times they repeat wearing an outfit- because they have that many clothes. </p>
<p>If nothing else, the attitude can be mildly annoying and conceited. ‘dealing’ with economic differences is as I mentioned- it’s not just about not being able to afford something fancy- it’s having to pass up trips/fun events/time with friends because you can’t afford to, and having ‘less’ is just hard sometimes.</p>
<p>Bclintonk–I would agree with you about Haverford. When I took my child on a tour there, it did not seem snobby at all to me. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic, inner-city young woman from Las Vegas who had found at Haverford a million opportunities to grow and shine and try new things. She had come from a poor background, but she obviously felt treasured and nurtured in the Haverford community. I also think there’s something special that goes on at those Quaker schools. Sometimes you can get a bad gateway experience that doesn’t reflect what actually goes on at a school.</p>