^I sent my B personality, kindest-person-I-ever-met, social-justice hyper-aware S to Columbia, and he did NOT fit in there. Took him ten years to graduate (long story), but never felt at home in Type A world. He’s out there now helping humanity at a wonderful, very moderately paying job and definitely never fit with the IB folk. (well, actually, right now he’s at at protest march, but, yeah.)
You folks do realize that every single ivy league school has kids who major in anthropology and linguistics and classics and comparative literature and sociology who have zero interest in banking, right?
This thread has taken a bizarre turn.
I know young people who are graduates of the much maligned Columbia who work in Homeless Advocacy organizations and social justice organizations. Out of my kids friends from HS who went to ivy league colleges, I know exactly one who is in finance- private equity specifically- and he volunteers at an organization which helps undocumented immigrants access the human services to which they are entitled (and there are some, particularly city funded programs). The rest of them work for universities and hospitals and museums and a few in K-12 education-- both as teachers and in Ed reform type organizations.
You guys really live in an alternative universe where every kid at Columbia goes off to become a CEO of some earth-polluting/strip mining/proletariat exploiting company.
To the OP- there are a wide range of colleges where your D will find her peeps. I think starting with the social justice angle is a red herring. Start with her academic interests, geography, etc. and then weed downwards. Otherwise the mostly helpful folks here are going to barrage you with “Quakers are pacifists” and “Smith isn’t as elite as it used to be” and all sorts of non-actionable comments.
Why is it that when someone asks about a college which is 50% Greek everyone chimes in that this means that 50% are not… whereas if someone notices that a certain college has 50% pre-professional kids (and I don’t think the number is nearly that high at Columbia) we forget about the other 50%?
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@Blossom–I’m only describing my S’s take on his experience there. Sure, not everyone there is going into IB or heading off to Yale Law. Just saying it seemed like that to him.
@JHS --let me clarify. I do know you are very familiar with and like Wes. What I meant was saying my D transferred there to find like-minded people, which she couldn’t find in Generic U, which seemed to be contrary to your previous point that similar students are everywhere.
I definitely didn’t mean to imply you didn’t appreciate what Wesleyan is. And I stand by the idea that the OP’s D might also want that kind of atmosphere for solidly strong reasons (if not Wes then other less selective but like-minded kinds of schools.)
The first widespread use of “SJW” as a pejorative for left-leaning political/social activists started mainly in online blogs/forums run by/dominated by conservatives and right-leaning apolitical folks.
While I have seen a bit of that leaking into older massmedia like cable/broadcast TV news and radio, that came later and is still not as widely disseminated there.
That’s also been my own observation as someone who still frequents the campus on occasion to this day, took grad classes there, have friends who are grad/undergrad students there, and have known dozens of undergrad/grad alums…especially those from the '90s to the present.
While there are some who would be kindred spirits of OP at Columbia, most I knew who were remotely like her(even those who aren’t as active/passionate about activism vibe as with Oberlin, Wesleyan, or Antioch tend to find it very disappointing when the rubber meets the road.
Take my word for it: here in New York City where irony often trumps sarcasm, and in light of the past week or so, the term "social justice warrior " is no longer a pejorative.
Not necessarily. As a life-long New Yorker who still lives here, that’s not universally the case with all…especially if the term is uttered by strangers/older generations without a demonstrated history of showing support for the social/political activism or worse, a demonstrated history of belittling/being dismissive of that activism.
In short, YMMV depending on individuals, groups, and individual social contexts even here in NYC.
My son is very liberal for our area (I am the opposite). Like you we are from the South. He looked at going North to some very liberal schools, and our view was that he might find he wasn’t quite as liberal as he thought he was. Just something to think about.
I acknowledge that the thread has wandered-- but going just a little farther: it’s interesting to me how “warrior” has changed over the years. it used to be the mascot of Syracuse University. Now it describes social justice seekers and even women that are fighting breast cancer (they have warrior themed t shirts for that) and who knows what else. Our kids, off to college, have to understand all the implications of these words, inflammatory or otherwise. I don’t envy them and I wish the OP’s daughter good luck!
Sometimes I think what a college seems like is just a matter of what crowd you accidently fall into. The Harvard I attended seemed to be full of musicians and artists mostly from middle class families. I didn’t know one IB type. My older younger brother had a bunch of comp sci nerds for friends. Younger brother ended up hanging out with the large gay crowd at Adams house (though he’s straight). Sometimes I don’t think we went to the same college at all - amusingly the only class we all took was a drawing class.
THIS is something to think about…though I think it mainly applies to schools which are heavy on the progressive-left social/political activism in their respective student cultures like my alma mater Oberlin, Wesleyan, Antioch, etc.
Then again, not all students from the south find that to be the case.
Most of my undergrad classmates from religiously and politically conservative parts of the midwest/south found Oberlin to be quite congenial to their personal perspectives and were glad to finally find kindred spirits they weren’t able to find in critical mass numbers or sometimes at all.
I’ve also known several southern/midwest transplants from the most conservative parts of their respective regions who were very happy to permanently relocate to the urban NE.
One example is a research scientist and musician friend from an exceedingly conservative part of rural Texas who won’t hesitate to debate random religious/political conservatives who pop onto current events discussions on FB posts and is very effective in doing so precisely because during his childhood/adolescence/teen years he was surrounded by neighbors/K-12 classmates who used those very same talking points/arguments and thus, very familiar with their weaknesses/omissions.
Another are the cousins who spent their adolescent/part of teen years in rural Mississippi…one permanently relocated to the Mid-Atlantic from undergrad onwards while the other moved back, but opted for a job where he travels 6 months out of the year.
My daughter’s BFF, a card-carrying feminist/humanist/liberal, went to college at McGill, and was somewhat stunned to find herself falling naturally in the center-right of the political spectrum there.
It seems the farther north you go, the further to the right it turns out you were when you started.
@EarlVanDorn That is true
I think when the term, social justice warrior, was first coined it implied a certain disdain for hyperbole, i.e., that the warrior was tilting at windmills, or something that was imaginary, or that even, if real, could not involve stakes that were very high. No one thinks that way anymore.
Canada is far more aligned politically and socially with European ideals than most of the U.S. I do not think it has anything to do with latitude. It has much more to do with the U.S. being quite isolationist overall, despite having come a long way in many social justice issues. Canada has far more in common with the UK, Germany, France and Holland than any place in the US, IMO.
I won’t delve into politics because I don’t want OPs thread to be shut down, but I am not at all surprised that @JHS D’s friend was not quite as liberal as she thought she was at McGill. (I base my knowledge on having spent many years living in Europe and knowing many Canadians and spending a lot of time there. Not that I am an expert, of course 
)
Um, zuh? I mean, for a while it’s mascot was “Saltine Warrior” (replaced because racism), the teams have been been Syracusemen, Orioles, or Orangemen.
http://www.syracuse.com/orangesports/index.ssf/2004/05/origins_of_orange_colors_nicknames_and_mascots_of_syracuse_sports_over_the_years.html
Canada does not seem to have as much of a racist or anti-immigrant movement like all of the other countries mentioned above. Perhaps they spent all of their culture war energy on English / French language issues.
We have learned recently that there is definitely a racist, anti-immigrant fringe in Canada.
@ucbalumnus , maybe, maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it’s more aligned with the U.S.
Every country has a racist, anti-immigrant fringe. And we are now a million miles from OPs original topic.
Despite the chants masked protesters, most people who want to limit immigration are not racist.