<p>I've heard quite a few people say that one of Princeton's many attributes is its "social gentility". When comparing Princeton to Harvard and Yale, I've also heard people say Princeton has more "social gentility". I'm curious as to what they mean by that. Do they mean that most students are well-bred, polite, refined? Or do they mean something else?</p>
<p>Also, if they do mean that, is it just a false stereotype of the students or does it hold any truth?</p>
<p>Your supposition is correct. Princeton has always had a reputation of being the most elitist ivy, mostly due to its eating clubs, last ivy to take women, etc. </p>
<p>From my experience, I’m an applicant, but I have many friends who go there or went there and I would say students are more “refined” than the average college student but they still are college students. Fitzgerald and Stover’s era is long over.</p>
<p>Love Princeton, but that is such a wishy washy phrase, to the extent that it sounds like a euphemism.</p>
<p>Just another outdated stereotype. Its the same pool of students competing for spots at HYPSM.</p>
<p>^That’s what I figured, but someone on here said that the different stereotypes/personalities associated with each school might influence certain people to choose one over another and therefore keep these stereotypes/personalities alive. i.e. The preppy, “refined” cross-admit might pick Princeton due to feeling more at home there, et cetera. So I was just wondering if that seemed to be true when you look at the student body.</p>
<p>I’m really reluctant to believe that there are significant differences in the overall student body or mood on any of the HYP campuses. They’re all elitist, because when your acceptance rate is <10% you are that by definition. But I have trouble imagining that you’ll find really preppy kids at Princeton, really competitive kids at Harvard and really laid back kids at Yale, or whatever the arguments have been over the years.</p>
<p>I don’t have any experience with any of these schools, though, so maybe I’m talking through a hole in my head.</p>
<p>Randomly select twenty students from each of the country’s ten leading universities. (You define “leading”.) Invite them all to a party and ban name tags or any mention of which college they attend. You would have an impossible task in identifying the alma maters of each. Clothing, conversational styles, friendliness, records of accomplishment–none of these will help you. Some will be witty and sharp-edged. Others will be buffoons. Some will be shy and awkward. There will be athletes, artists, aspiring politicians, scientists, engineers and finally . . . the merely dazed and confused. You’ll find faces of all hues, sexual orientations of all types and dreams of every sort. Each of the top schools in the country is seeking the same types of students. While there may be some self-selection based on areas of interest and the relative strength of departments at different schools, you’ll find far more commonality than differences. The stereotypes are very dated and the arguments for self-selection based on such stereotypes are just silly.</p>
<p>The days of F. Scott Fitzgerald are long gone at Princeton. Dink Stover no longer roams the courtyards of Yale. Thurston Howell III has sailed away from Harvard and is resident on Gilligan’s Island. It’s time to move on. A new age has dawned.</p>
<p>We have found our savior.</p>
<p>Ah, okay. It’s weird then, that a lot of people seem to–even to this day–cite differences between the student bodies of one school versus another, and that many cross-admits choose based on the supposed characteristics of the student body! (I’ve heard quite a few people choosing Stanford, for instance, over Harvard because Stanford’s student body is more “laid-back and supportive” or choosing Yale over Princeton because Yale’s students are more “happy and outgoing” or whatever the case may be. Do you think they were just buying into stereotypes or what?) Oh, well. An overall refined/sophisticated student body at Princeton would be pretty neat, IMO, but I’m sure there are plenty of sophisticated people at any of the top schools anyway.</p>
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<p>Yes. How could they not be given that they’ve spent no time at these schools as actual students?</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that the first step in this process involves the universities choosing the students. The vast majority of top students will apply to multiple top schools (regardless of stereotypes) and will then be accepted at only one or two of them. (There are relatively few students who are lucky enough to receive acceptances from all and even dual acceptances are less common than one might think from reading CC.) Stereotypes they may have had prior to admission will all be forgotten after that first day on the campus of the school that admitted them!</p>
<p>A much greater factor limiting students’ selections is the existence of early action programs (like those at Yale and Stanford) and early decision programs (like those at many of the other Ivies). Students accepted under the binding programs have no choice after their acceptance (unless it is based on a claim of insufficient financial aid). Perhaps due to lethargy or perhaps due to genuine excitement, the students who are accepted into the non-binding programs (like SCEA and REA) are less likely to go to the trouble of applying to other universities, resulting in yield rates higher than 80% even for the non-binding programs. Increasingly, the students who apply to one of these early programs do so strategically, trying to guess which one might be most likely to admit them. I think they are not much concerned about stereotypes at that point. A student who, later in the spring and under different circumstances, might not have believed Yale or Stanford or Columbia or Penn or (?). . . was the best school for him or her, becomes a complete convert after receiving the acceptance letter in December and that is fine.</p>
<p>As between Stanford and other leading schools in the northeast, weather, however, is certainly a criterion for self-selection!</p>