<p>I'm starting grad school next year so we're not entirely in the same boat. But I chose Princeton over Cornell (my alma mater). If you went to Cornell, you'd actually be very surprised at the caliber of students there. Princeton attracts the very very best. Cornell attracts very high achieving students but nowhere in the same ballpark as Princeton.</p>
<p>Oh and ranking of engineering programs is pretty unreliable. Does anyone in their right mind think Purdue is a top-5 school? They're ranked there though. So many of my professors, in engineering, got both their ugrad and grad degrees at Princeton.</p>
<p>@ piccolo:
Agreed. But averages are an indicator of the student body strength. On aervage, Princeton students are a much higher caliber than Cornell students. Both represent elite student bodies, but there does exist a disparity.</p>
<p>Since I started this thread I wanted to give an update. After visiting during the preview, I found that students were super friendly and down to earth. I no longer am worried about people being snobby or elitist. I recommend everyone visit b/c I'm really glad I did.</p>
<p>It's silly to stereotype a whole school. At preview, the kids I stayed with were really nice and (obviously) very intelligent but the vibe I get from the school is a little on the snobbish side. It's really the eating club scene that kind of turns me off. And also, there's a lot of moderately to highly preppy people there, though that hardly describes everyone. (Racially, there's a lot of diversity, however).</p>
<p>I'm surprised that someone that visited Princeton actually kept that impression of snobbiness or elitism about the school. I was worried about that, especially coming from a rather low-income, hispanic, first-generation to college background (basically the complete antithesis of an elitist). The students were incredibly down-to-earth, friendly, yet brilliant. You can tell they're intelligent, of course, but you wouldn't know how remarkably brilliant these students are without directly asking them of their achievements. They were humble, helpful, and excited to help us little prefreshmen around. There was a lot of economic, intellectual, and ethnic diversity, and unlike other places where people tend to group into segregated socioeconomic clusters, Princeton seemed rather well mixed, which is very, very cool. I found it fantastic, and I did not even expect to like it.</p>
<p>Were there some people that probably sounded rather snobby/preppy/elitist? Yeah, I suppose, but I never even directly talked to any of them, and you can find people like that at a California or Florida community college quite easily. You will find arrogance and snobbiness no matter where you go. I'd rather the elitist/snobby/arrogant people at least have some basis for their ridiculous self-worth! :) For the record, I don't care about eating clubs: it just sounds like a way more sophisticated form of a fraternity to me, and not everyone even joins them. Not all of them are even exclusive!</p>
<p>But in all honesty, I really think everyone should visit the school before making this sort of assumption: almost everyone I've seen that has visited the school is surprised by how friendly and down-to-earth the students are--sw_haldar is definitely an exception.</p>
<p>I agree with JoeTrumpet. I come from a very similar background and found Princeton to be amazing. All the people that took time to hang out with me and show me around were extremely welcoming and down to earth. Like Joe said, there will be snobby people no matter where you go. I really did not get the vibe that a large majority of the students were snobby/preppy/elitist at all and enjoyed my entire weekend there. As for the eating clubs, I also agree that they were just like more sophisticated forms of fraternities. I found all the people in the eating club I partied at to be very nice and welcoming. I went to Capp for a party and it was great. None of the people were snobby and I managed to meet some of the nicest, most down to earth intelligent people ever.</p>