The OP isn’t asking about public schools.
A great piece about the diversity mission commitment need based aid at many of the top LAC’s https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2015/12/20/diversity-at-top-colleges-heres-the-proof/#342f326c6d3f
As a result of this commitment, while LAC.are only 4% of all schools, they make up a much larger % of the only ~40 schools in the US that are need blind and meet 100% of demonstrated need:
Barnard College (need-aware for transfer students)[6]
Boston College
Bowdoin College (need-aware for transfer students)[7]
Brown University (need-aware for international and transfer students)
California Institute of Technology
Claremont McKenna College
College of the Holy Cross
Columbia College, Columbia University (also meets full need for “eligible noncitizens”) [8]
Cornell University[9]
Dartmouth College
Davidson College
Duke University[10]
Georgetown University (need-blind for all applicants)[11]
Grinnell College
Hamilton College[12]
Haverford College
Harvey Mudd College[13]
Johns Hopkins University[14]
Middlebury College
Northwestern University
Olin College[15]
Pomona College
Rice University[16]
Soka University of America[17]
St. John’s College (Annapolis/Santa Fe)[18]
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Michigan (in-state students only)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill[19]
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania (also applies for Canadian and Mexican students)
University of Richmond
University of Rochester (also applies for Canadian and Mexican students)
University of Southern California[20]
University of Virginia[21]
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College[22][23]
Wellesley College
Williams College
@doschicos - My point was to look at the % of public vs private school students enrolled at the NESCACs
@wisteria100 My comment wasn’t directed at you but the general shift on this thread which has mentioned public schools many times which isn’t part of the OP’s question.
That does not mean that all of those schools admit that many students from low income families. A school can be need-blind for individual applicants, but use a set of admissions criteria that tip the admissions toward those from high income families. Also, “meet 100% demonstrated need” can result in large variations in net price at different schools, due to different definitions of “need”.
@ucbalumnus, here’s a great piece that tells the story. The % of lower income families and the commitment to diversity at these schools is very significant - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/25/sunday-review/opinion-pell-table.html.
There are far more large public universities with much lesser commitments to lower income families and to greater diversity.
@wisteria100 , a lot of the BS have close to half their class received FA, so public/private might not be as good an indicator as one might think.
But does elite mean rich? Where, at the 3 schools being considered, does a kid with piles of money spend it? I feel like the money issue can be a bigger problem at urban schools where kids are going out to eat or to clubs or shopping - without money, you’re stuck at home. I’m not saying that it can’t be awkward when everyone is flying to the Carribbean for vacation and you’re taking the bus back to somewhere cold, but on a day to day basis, how does this elitism manifest itself at these schools?
Or does it mean clique-ish? OP, it’d be helpful if you could tell us what the environment is that you’re hoping to avoid?
At all these schools, there are a lot of kids who are on teams, and each team is a bit of a family. They’re maybe not cliques, but they are groups of kids, who even if they don’t really like each other, are logging in a lot of hours together. I think that can have a big impact on environment.
Which group of very wealthy, highly selective schools is the least snobby? It is an oxymoron.
The stats referenced speak for themselves. The schools of interest, or their advocates here, pride themselves on being “need blind” and willing to “meet 100% of financial need.” Yet they admit the wealthiest cohort of students in the world along with a smidgeon of “below average”, from an economic viewpoint, students. Those schools are bastions of elitism - that is part of the point of the desirability of getting in. However, if I am looking at the charts correctly, it appears that these schools (to the extent they have a hand in outcomes) generate downward economic drift much better than upward drift.
When one starts near the top of the SES scale (as probably around half of the NESCAC students do), there is plenty of room to move down, but less room to move up, despite inherited advantages that improve such students’ chances of at least staying near the top of the SES scale (compared to those starting lower trying to move up to that level).
As stated above, regression toward the mean would be virtually statistically inevitable from either extreme.
@WISdad23, take al look at the follow-up article as it will give you more insight regarding declining diversity at many large public universities https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/opinion/sunday/the-assault-on-colleges-and-the-american-dream.html
@Chembiodad Your list seem to have omitted Amherst, which is the most economically and racially diverse of the elite LACs. It is need blind and guarantees full need, and is one of only five schools that does so for international applicants as well.
@WISdad23 If you check the data more broadly, you will find that exactly the same is true for many private universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. All of these schools have “downward economic drift”, as you define it. This is most likely because they start with such low numbers of students in the Bottom 20%.
Conversely, the most impressive examples of “upward drift” appear to be at regional state universities that start with high numbers of students from the Bottom 20%. For example, Cal State Dominguez Hills gets 22% of students from the Bottom 20%, but only 11% of graduates are there at age 34.
I unreservedly salute the work done by schools like CSUDH or Texas-El Paso. But given the choice, I probably wouldn’t recommend them to a student over Princeton or Bowdoin, regardless of the “drift measurement”. Of course, that’s just one subjective opinion; others may disagree.
@ThankYouforHelp, my only thought is that it was omitted from my cut and paste as I agree that it is definitely need blind and meets 100% of demonstrated need, and is also the most diverse, along with Pomona, of the most selective LAC’s.
Amherst is also one of the very few schools that has replaced all loans with scholarship grants,
Delete
According to the [latest statistics](Degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by control and classification of institution and state or jurisdiction: 2015-16), there are 469 private baccalaureate colleges in the US compared to 406 private master’s universities and 118 private research universities.
@Chembiodad I read the article, but like many NYT’s articles opinions, I don’t buy all of it. First, California is a complete mess - they are bankrupt, can’t afford their pension system, support a small nation of illegals, and are criminalizing “mis-pronouning” people in the process coining new words for ther collective lunacy. Many other state systems are shifting resources. In Wisconsin for example the Madison campus is a flagship campus with much higher selectivity than regional campuses. the regional campuses are all over the state and very affordable allowing students to live at home or live more cheaply in order to afford tuition which is highly subsidized. The article implies, without offering any solutions, that states should simply spend more money to subsidize colleges more. But it is the subsidization of college that is the primary driver of its inflation.
The OP was asking about NESCAC schools. My point, put more succinctly, is that they are all flagships of elitism almost by definition. Their “economic diversity” is token. I am not complaining about it because I think it is fine - nothing wrong with country clubs. The main reason relatively or truly poor people want to go to those schools is to more rapidly move up the socioeconomic ladder.
My comment about the downward economic drift at elite schools was meant to point out the obvious: the outcome of the student is more dependent on the student himself (zeself for Californians) than on presumed “privilege,”
If I were looking for down-to-earth students I would not look to NESCAC schools. Maybe University of Wisconsin Black River Falls.
@warblersrule wrote:
That may be true, if you are citing the Carnegie definition of a primarily undergraduate institution. But, very few of those baccalaureate colleges are LACs in the classic sense. Most are business/technical schools with vestigial liberal arts tracks (think Bentley prior to its change in name.) The number of small colleges with robust offerings in the liberal arts and hard sciences is <200 and probably growing smaller as we speak.
@WISdad23 it sounds like, when you say, “down to earth,” you mean “Real Americans”
Rolls eyes.