I had a high school friend of my younger son staying with us last week. He attends wash u and described a campus that feels socially divided between the full-pay students and those on financial aid, like himself. He thinks the social divide there is exacerbated because WUSTL offers nicer dorms at a higher rate. As a freshman and sophomore, he was in a dorm filled with financial aid students because it cost around $2000 less than a room in a nicer dorm. He said the fin aid kids are also less likely to join expensive frats & sororities, or not join at all because they can’t afford them and don’t want to accrue more debt for either the more experience room or the frat experience.
Consequently, his friends are mainly those on financial aid. This year, he’s rented an apartment with kids he met in his dorms. Oddly, the high school friends with whom he’s attending WUSTL are no longer close friends because they, as full pay students, opted for the nicer dorms and the frats/sororities. He said they live in a different social sphere and lost touch, and he clearly felt badly about that. He definitely expressed a sadness about the social distinction on that campus. Not sure if he would have attended if he knew ahead that it would be like this. I told him that I think everyone on campus loses in this situation. It made me wonder how fin aid kids at Harvard and Princeton feel/think about the secret/eating clubs. How much of an impact do they have on socially dividing the student population?
In any case, I would advise kids who want to socialize and to make friends with people of all sorts of backgrounds to research whether the colleges on their list offer two-tiered priced dorms, and at least ask on campus visits how this impacts the social life of students.
If you care that much about socioeconomic diversity, you want not only a college where all the dorms are priced the same but also one where students live in the dorms all four years. If students can move off-campus, variety in housing prices is inevitable.
^Good point. At Clark U they said students often move off campus because Worcester is cheap, but it’s a very SES diverse school.
I believe all the Ivies require on campus living, and I think it’s unusual for elite schools to have tiered housing costs, so this is one factor which wouldn’t affect most elite colleges’ social dynamics.
This is incorrect. For example, Cornell not only does not require it, they also don’t guarantee on-campus housing for upperclassmen.
At some schools, and again Cornell is my example, they’re moving off campus because they can’t be sure they can get housing on campus (and in many cases, they prefer off campus in any event). What off-campus housing they choose is very much affected by their budgets, though.
While I agree it’s always nice to have “uniform” housing / board plans, you can’t stop people from being rich.
When my D graduated, she and I were walking around campus and taking pictures in particularly lovely spots. We ran across a friend of hers who was also posing for pictures. Except the photographer was a professional photographer that had been flown in from Seattle for the week (put in hotels, fed, etc) to document all the festivities.
Good for them! Not going to waste one minute of time fretting that there were richer people than us. Yawn.
“It made me wonder how fin aid kids at Harvard and Princeton feel/think about the secret/eating clubs. How much of an impact do they have on socially dividing the student population?”
If the movie The Social Network is at all accurate, there is an impact.
Harvard certainly doesn’t require living on campus, but it prides itself in making the residential colleges part of the total experience, so very few people actually do move off campus (about 150 including those who live in the Dudley Coop which cooks its own meals but is owned by Harvard.) I do think colleges that have different rates for different kinds of housing end up dividing kids into economic ghettos.
Jym626, SculptorDad is referring to the post made upthread by Al2Simon, in which Al2Simon correctly pointed out that if WorryHurry’s goal was to get his kid to an elite to “hobnob with the upper class,” WorryHurry is ALREADY in the top slice of income if he is able to be full-pay for his kid (which he is).
@jym626 , OP has expressed that a main reason that she would pay for IVY but not less elite schools is that IVY provides chance to connect with kids from real powerful family, which will lead her son to move into the higher class where he wouldn’t have to worry or budget his kids’ private education expenses as OP has to.
Knowing nothing about how the upper class networks, I am wildly guessing that it would be easier to do that within the right subgroup, than with the entire student body.
I wish we would all stop going back and forth about the presence of the wealthy at elite schools.
Half the time it’s out and out resentment – they get in unfairly through legacy and development, they act all snotty when they pull out their designer handbags to pay for their Starbucks, which clearly means that they are superficial and obnoxious because you can tell that from how someone pulls out a wallet, they isolate themselves in fancier campus or off-campus housing and they think they are All That just because their parents - not them - were successful. Those jerks!
And the other half the time it’s, as the Raspberries sang many years ago, “Oh! I Wanna Be With You!” – please let me go to school with you! I’ll befriend you for your connections, hope you take me to Monaco in your private jet, and look for your daddy to hand me the keys to the hot internship or executive suite.
But can your child, even if full pay, really hobnob with the truly upper crust? Will they have the resources to drop $100 for sushi dinner one night, jet off to Ibiza for a break or the cash to cough up for the $2,000 Super VIP concert tickets to Governor’s Ball? Because that’s what its like to be part of that crowd.
Well, yes and no. There is that crowd, but there is also a wealthy crowd that is low-key and you wouldn’t know it until you actually know it.
Sample of one, my kid had a fraternity brother who was the son of a celebrity you’d all immediately recognize. I googled the mother and her net worth is supposedly $40 MM, which isn’t the stratosphere but it sure is more than me :-). Her salary is $11 MM (she is in a field where her contract would be relatively public news). The kid wore the same jeans and t-shirts as everyone else, didn’t entertain in any grander style, and the only way you’d know was if you happened to know his mother’s name (her professional name is a different last name from the kid’s).
There’s a stereotype among the lower classes that wealth always manifests itself in “let’s sleep in Gucci pajamas and jet off to Ibiza for the break” and that’s not necessarily so. There’s also a stereotype that some markers which are just standard issue upper middle class denote “wealth” - like, oooh, she’s carrying a Coach bag and wears Tory Burch sandals, she must be rich, rich, rich." Uh, no.
Oh please. My extremely wealthy roommate was as down to earth as the come. Her family was well established society in her hometown. It never crossed my mind to use her parents as my connections to the future. Not one time.
As adults, we keep in touch. And you know what? We live very similar lifestyles…very similar. Because you know…not all wealthy folks flaunt their wealth.
For some reason posters here believe that children of rich and powerful all behave like Paris Hilton.
This is Ivy League. Personal accomplishments are valued so the son of the CEO scores goals and the daughter from the Forbes list writes for a magazine, etc…
Of course they accomplish things. I think the word flaunt isn’t appropriate. Much of the extremely wealthy aren’t living their lives to impress others. It’s just the way they live. Frankly, they don’t care what you think. And yes, they can be and often are nice and smart people. But, they don’t need to watch their budgets and they frequently don’t. Of course there are exceptions and there are different levels of wealthy.
