<p>Students at most top universities, especially liberal arts colleges, seem more rich than smart. Coming from a very low social background, I feel uncomfortable around "those types." Tech schools attract more lower class students, but I feel as uncomfortable around autistic people as I do around rich people.</p>
<p>Are Chicago students less snobby and more intellectual than students at other top schools?</p>
<p>more "rich" than "smart" ??? And you are basing this on???
"I feel uncomfortable around "those types."" I feel as uncomfortable around autistic people as I do around rich people."
Which type? rich or smart? You think lower class = more autistic?
Boy, do you have a whole bunch of misconceptions and preconcieved notions! Chicago students are SMART, and not nearly as snobby as you seem to be.</p>
<p>To rephrase your concerns a bit, let me break it down into segments:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Private, top-tier colleges are expensive. The people who can afford these colleges are usually biased towards the wealthy. You will find your fair share of rich kids no matter where you go to school, if you are looking at private and top-tier colleges.</p></li>
<li><p>Even though kids at Chicago are or might be pretty wealthy, you wouldn't know it. Displaying your "bling" (your car, clothing, dorm room accessories, jewelry, etc) is hopelessly out of taste here, and most of us who do come from wealthy backgrounds (ahem, me) come to the school in part because they are disgusted with that show-off culture. Your roommate might be an Egyptian Prince or a real estate heir, but you'd never know it.</p></li>
<li><p>Whenever I go out with my friends or whenever we do dorm trips, we make them as cost-friendly as possible. This doesn't have to do as much with the rich stooping down to the poor or whatnot, but rather a sensitivity to the fact that things in general are expensive and not everybody has lots of money to spend. My friends and I don't discuss our financial situations or our aid packages or lack thereof (further proof that if somebody was rich, you wouldn't know it), but I do know some of my friends do work/study or have other on-campus jobs. If you're anything but the richest of the rich, or rather, your parents give you gobs and gobs of spending money without discretion, money and finances are a sort of universal concern, and you will not be alone in budgeting yourself and whatnot.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>"but I feel as uncomfortable around autistic people as I do around rich people"</p>
<p>Ah, but people are people, and part of an education is learning to relate to all types. You may well encounter extremely highly functioning autistic / Aspergers types, and people of all SE classes that will challenge your conceptions of how people behave. The prince that lived in my son's dorm last year was really pretty low key about it.</p>
<p>My son is on finaid, works a term-time job and summer jobs (no gobs and gobs of money from this mom, LOL). Although there are some twits at Chicago, they would seem to be in the extreme minority. </p>
<p>Angryteen, I don't blame you for being concerned about class distinctions. They are issues at some colleges; walking through the student parking lots at some of the LAC's that we visited was pretty amazing. From what I have read, and from the discussions I have with with my son, this really doesn't seem to be much of a problem at Chicago.</p>
<p>Students can be snobby about their intellectualism. When taken to an extreme, it can be very obnoxious.</p>
<p>Few students are snobby about wealth. Some students come from very wealthy backgrounds, and some students come from very poor backgrounds. Everyone on campus recognizes these differences. Some students aren't afraid to reference their background, while others avoid the topic completely. I know pretty much how all of my friends stand financially because they're my friends and as friends we talk and complain about all sorts of things, including money.</p>
<p>Chicago students overall tend to be pretty frugal, pretty unconcerned with brand names and such, and pretty sensitive to others' backgrounds. </p>
<p>To be honest, you are going to need to overcome your preconceptions in college. I don't know any UChicago students from wealthy backgrounds who harbor similar thoughts about poor people in the same way you do about the rich. I am from an area of a very high "social class," though my parents never wanted to be very involved in that culture and pretty much stay out of it. (They do not give me spending money, by the way--though many students who likely aren't as well off financially do get spending money from their parents. You can even see this around the parents' boards.) My area has old families were last names mean something; there are golf clubs, yacht clubs, and country clubs; people and families grew up together and are inter-mingled; celebrities in music, politics, sports, and business blend in with everyone else; cocktail parties and dinners are expensive, classy, but altogether normal social events; children are often raised to be classy, smart, and sophisticated--many take over their fathers' businesses; etc. My friends have something of a general idea of this, and I have a general idea of their backgrounds. I have friends whose yearly payment for school (before the Odyssey Scholarships) amounted to half of a good summer's earnings. </p>
<p>People come from different circumstances, but--as Ohio_Mom said--they're all people. You seem to base your notions of people who come from different circumstanes off of TV shows, stereotypes, or a fear of the unknown. Some of my best friends in college are very poor and/or come from very poor areas. It doesn't matter. As long as both sides are respectful of differences and potential sensitivities, there shouldn't be any problems.</p>
<p>my uncle was autistic... how did you get the idea that low class=autistic? or more importantly, how did you get into uchicago?</p>
<p>The OP was NOT equating lower class to autism, he was playing on the nerdy nature of tech schools. Jaysus.</p>
<p>AngryTeen, I have the same issue and I'm going to one of THOSE schools. However, when I came to America from Europe, I had that exact dead-set attitude on finding stereotypically fat, stupid, politically ignorant people I now only slightly feel towards being so close to very very wealthy ones. I was proven completely naive, immature, and plain wrong when it came to Americans - yes, class is about so much more than stereotypes, but even with the rich kids I know today I've realized cultural differences and power inequalities isn't something either of us chose. We're both stuck in the system; I try and simply have an open mind to fitting in wherever I am, even if my political views are very critical of the lifestyle some lead, the system they benefit from, and the political views they use to justify this system.</p>
<p>It really, really comes down to not judging a pig before you've let it out of the sack and tumbled around with it a little.</p>
<p>Frrph and Ohio Mom, thanks for your level-headed responses.</p>
<p>Corranged, I know that it all depends on the person, etc.,. etc., but there's a reason you went to Chicago instead of Georgia State (even though there are people you'd like, etc., at Georgia State): people choose schools based on averages. And I'm no different.</p>
<p>Your post comes off as a little silly (although it kind of reminds me of how I felt before I hit college and learned that all my pre-conceptions, valid as they seemed to me in high school, were pretty worthless). But you raise a valid, and interesting, point - higher-level education is inherently biased towards the well-off. Parents tend to give their children the best opportunities that they can afford, and it wouldn't be too broad a generalization to say that expectations of success are much higher for children of well-off parents, thus creating the motivation to do well.</p>
<p>So how does a socially-conscious person justify their decision to attend a school that 99% of people in the world can only dream about? A teacher I had in high school explained it in a way that helped the guilt factor: Your opportunity to attend a school like Chicago is a golden one, and you had it handed to you as much as you earned it. Whatever you consider to be a "low social background," it doesn't change the fact that the option of attending the school is still open to you, something that would have never happened 100 or even 50 years ago. How can we justify being handed this incredible opportunity? By taking full advantage of it and using it to make the world a better place. A Chicago education puts anybody in a better position to change the world for the better, for a great deal of people. I feel less bad about exploiting my advantageous socio-economic position if I can eventually give it back to other people who never had the opportunities I did. </p>
<p>This isn't all high-minded talk, either. One of the most basic principles of economics - and, remarkably, something that almost all economists actually agree on - is that education is one of the most valuable resources an economy can have. The net external benefits of education are enormous, meaning that it helps far more people than those who directly consume it. The more educated the participants in an economy become, the more jobs they create, the more total wealth enters the country, and the more everybody's total standard of living increases. </p>
<p>To answer your question with more information specific to Chicago: I haven't encountered much of a snobbishness at all, ever. Kids have money, yes, but it's much more the case that they're working jobs to earn it. You rarely see the kid who just tosses his parents' credit card around, and everybody hates that guy anyway. I can't speak for other schools, but many kids at Chicago seem to know that they've won the social-class lottery as far as privilege goes; there are a lot of service projects that go on, charity work, Habitat for Humanity trips, etc. and not a lot of flaunting of wealth or anything like that. Most kids are just normal kids whose parents can afford to send them to college after carefully saving money away for 18 years.</p>
<p>Good post, Jack.</p>
<p>What do you mean that students pick schools based on averages? What kind of averages are you talking about? As Jack said (I thought about discussing this in my first post and decided not to), college is expensive, and attending an elite college is an amazing opportunity. It is easier for people from higher economic circumstances to raise their children to hope to attend such a college, both in terms of the children's previous educational opportunities, importance placed on education and college in particular, and the parents' ability to pay. At state schools (non-flagships), this tends to be diminished somewhat since the schools are often easier to get into, are less expensive for in state students, offer varied vocational programs, and allow the student to remain in state. Students at difficult, expensive, non-vocational institutions far from home tend to have more money. Nonetheless, one of my best friends is extremely poor. Most of my friends are middle-class. Some are on the lower side of that spectrum, and some are on the higher end of that spectrum. A couple students I know come from very affluent areas or communities. The vast majority of students work during the year and/or during the summer and spend money carefully. I have never seen a student flaunt his wealth.</p>
<p>sorry fellow responders but I think the OP asks a very legitimate question.</p>
<p>I agree that Chicago students do not flaunt their wealth. I think the grad students have something to do with this, as many of them are quite poor, being independent of their parents and such. And the grad students do influence undergrad life.</p>
<p>Chicago also seems to attract a different kind of student than some of its peers. For example, I never cease to be amazed at the difference between Northwestern and Chicago. Northwestern students look like they are going to a J. Crew photo shoot. Chicago students look like they just came from a Goodwill sale.</p>
<p>There are campuses that stratefy by income to a surprising degree. For example, several Ivies are known for their lack of mixing between the prep school alums and the public school alums. A few years ago, I worked at Harvard and heard one dean level staffer talking about his experience as a financial aid awarded undergrad at Harvard. A generation later he still has vivid memories of the snubs he perceived from some groups of fellow undergrads. Another friend, a more recent grad of Brown, had a similar experience. </p>
<p>So this stuff is real. Maybe not at Chicago, but found at a lot of other places.</p>
<p>hmmm... your reflections are the opposite of what I would expect. Schools like Harvard and Amherst have the financial resources to allow many low- and middle- income students to study there, while in the past, Chicago has given lackluster FA packages to students. Though I've never been a student at Harvard, I somehow imagine it to be a lot more diverse socioeconomically than Chicago, and I think I usually equate socioeconomic diversity with tolerance, respect, and appreciation.</p>
<p>Sometimes one has to be careful and consider not only the environment of the school but also the school's surroundings. My friends at Columbia and NYU talk about the divide that incidentally occurs between the rich and the poor-- the rich kids go to restaurants and clubs that outprice those who can't afford it, thus creating tensions between the have and have-nots. Chicago isn't the cheapest place in the world, but Hyde Park is extremely reasonable, as are Chinatown and other restaurant destinations.</p>
<p>unalove,</p>
<p>let me say that you confuse economic diversity with (1) social class diversity and (2) social stratification within a college. Let's deal with social class diversity first. Harvard, with its generous financial aid, can afford to attract lower income students. But, based on data I've seen, they don't attract many lower class students. And they don't admit all that many lower income students either. Much of their generous financial aid goes instead to families that are quite middle to upper middle class. Now, looking at (2), even with a mix of incomes, they still have a great deal of social stratification. Many of the wealthier prep school kids are part of social networks that began years before college, through summer camps and such.</p>
<p>So a college can have reasonable economic diversity but still lack social class diversity. And even with diversity, it can be stratified. Having a diverse population does not necessarily lead to more mixing or greater tolerance. Just look at any diverse high school, and see the black lunch table, the latino corner, the russian area, the israeli table and so forth. My own D went to one of these schools. Diverse? yes. Mixing it up? Not at all.</p>
<p>Sorry Newmassdad but Unalove couldn't be more on target.</p>
<p>First, to get the numbers straight: Your vignette is only that. Harvard - certainly in part because of their sinfully large endowment - attracts as economically diverse a class as any in the country. Fully 2/3 of the student body receives financial aid. 26% of this year's entering class will pay nothing under their new policy to fund 100% of costs to those with family incomes below $60,000 per year. Chicago cannot do this with only strong (but not sinful) resources. I don't doubt that they wish they could.</p>
<p>Secondly, no one can question Chicago's diversity and the school's tendency to attract a student body for whom discussions about "the mall" are much more likely to center around 1960's anti-war gatherings in DC rather than the Gap, Abercrombie, and food courts. But I'd be careful not to feed into the OP's misguided fears and, in the process, disparage other colleges and promote stereotypes. Harvard IS incredibly diverse. Brown DOES recruit a liberal-minded study body overlapping applicants a good deal with Chicago. Half of Northwestern’s campus is on financial aid and fewer kids there originate from prep/private HS’s than almost any top uni in the nation. As far as LACs go, I’d caution again to avoid stereotypes. Carleton, Swarthmore and Reed - like Brown - significantly overlap applicants with Chicago. They attract equal numbers with financial need and are at least as well known for their student’s aversion to food courts.</p>
<p>Interesting comments. A few things:</p>
<p>1) Financial Aid numbers mean very little-- it takes quite a bit of wealth NOT to qualify for financial aid, so seeing that 66% of Harvard's class receives financial aid just means that 66% of the class is not of the upper echelons in income. The 26% figure, families earning under $60,000 dollars, is more telling.</p>
<p>2) I agree with you completely, newmassdad, that simply the fact that there is diversity does not mean that there is mixing. Maybe I didn't make clear that that was one of my points in my earlier post. I would venture to say that the mean family income at Chicago is higher than that at Harvard, but I would also say that there is less social stratification between classes at Chicago than there is at Harvard. Harvard does have the uberrich and the uberlegacies; they are what pay for that tuition-free 26%. As corranged said earlier, Chicago students sometimes suffer from intellectual snobbery, but they do not suffer from money snobbery.</p>
<p>3) I have a hard time thinking about economic diversity/tolerance without bringing up racial diversity/tolerance. Though Chicago's percentages of URMs could be higher, my friends who are in racial minorities feel completely at home here. One of my friends says that's because he feels that kids at Chicago don't care about your heritage or where you come from, but rather what you think and talk about. As a result, Chicago kids of different backgrounds find common ground even among differences.</p>
<p>
[quote]
26% of this year's entering class will pay nothing under their new policy to fund 100% of costs to those with family incomes below $60,000 per year.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>From this one concludes that 26% of the class have family incomes under $60,000? yeah, right. </p>
<p>For those that may not have figured it out, one can have a family income much higher than $60K per year and still get 100% financial aid.</p>
<p>Harvard's own reporting estimated that 15% benefit from the policy (i.e. have family incomes below 60K).</p>
<p>So, wbwa, get your facts straight before you attack. My vignette was only one example used to illustrate the personal nature of these problems. If you don't think H has a problem, fine. You are entitled to your opinion. But it is not consistent with the experience of a lot of folks who went there. </p>
<p>Look, in the end, all some of us are saying is that campus culture varies. And keep in mind that what attracts a lot of folks to the elites is that they seem, well, elite. Chicago does not have that "elite" feel.</p>
<p>Sorry Newmassdad, but even after your protestations these still sound like stereotypes and broad conclusions drawn from narrow vignettes to me:</p>
<p>“Northwestern students look like they are going to a J. Crew photo shoot”</p>
<p>“… at Harvard. A generation later he still has vivid memories of the snubs he perceived from some groups of fellow undergrads”</p>
<p>“Another friend, a more recent grad of Brown, had a similar experience.”</p>
<p>In addressing the original post, I offered – and again offer - my voice in support of others arguing that Chicago is a diverse and unusually welcoming community generally devoid of class distinctions. But AnotherAngryTeen should understand that no campus is perfect in this regard and his concerns are overly broad. Fortunately, elite schools that remain hierarchical in this stereotyped way are very much the exception. Not he but those he fears in his post represent a marginalized minority on most campuses and are easily avoided. It also seems he needs to understand that rich and snobby are not synonymous any more than rich and intellectual are mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>wbwa,</p>
<p>I see. You don't like data. You don't like illustrations or examples. You do like your own opinion, though.</p>
<p>To put some data on the observations, in 2005, when Harvard said 15% percent would benefit from their new policy, the MEDIAN family income in the US was $46,000! 53% of all families received less than $50,000 per year. Since the Harvard cutoff was $60,000, one can estimate that greater than 60% of american families were eligible for this generous policy, yet these same folks make up about 15% of Harvard's student body.</p>
<p>Does this have an impact on campus culture? You be the judge. I can tell wbwa that I spent quite a few years on the Harvard Campus, and even more years living nearby.</p>
<p>A bit of a change of topic--</p>
<p>one of the many things that turned me off from Yale and Harvard was the fact that George W. Bush went to both of them. I know that Bush is one person among thousands and thousands of graduates since his time, but I didn't like the idea that idiots from wealthy families were brought into these elite schools on piggyback. Even though I could imagine myself as a student without having ever come across a legacy family, I was a bit displeased that about half of the Harvard admits from my wealthy, competitive high school were admitted based on money and legacy. So-and-so's parents donated a room; so-and-so's uncle is on the board of trustees, etc. In the Yale alumni magazine, it's not uncommon for alumni to write in and mention their Yale genealogy that spans over many, many generations.</p>
<p>Chicago is not venerated enough nor old enough for families to associate with the school strongly in that way. I know one person who was accepted to the school based on family affiliation and money. One.</p>
<p>unalove, just be polite, and friendly, warm and caring, and don't hold your eating utensils like a shovel - you'll do great and probably love your school.</p>