After reading about GW campus culture, I encountered many complaints about the snobbery of old-money northeastern kids and how their opulent lifestyles alienate students of more humble backgrounds.
I’m a latino from Miami (SHOCKER!) and would euphemistically describe myself as lower-middle class.
Would I feel socially disenfranchised at GW?
“Old-money northeastern kids” go to Harvard and other Ivies, not GWU.
It is your choice if you let yourself be envious of more affluent kids.
Sorry if I came across a little insulting, but I admittedly have a slight disdain for people who are born into wealth and have not worked for it. It is not their fault but in my personal experience they tend to be a bit spoiled and out of touch with the plight of the average American, although not always.
I am very accustomed to being around affluence, I don’t envy it. Where I live there is a balance of wealthy, middle class, and poor families. Suburban Miami is very patchy in that regard.
My point is that I don’t really hang out with the wealthy people I know because I often can’t afford to partake in the same activities as them as often as them.
I don’t want to be stuck somewhere where the majority of people expect everyone else to be able to spend indiscriminately to have a good time.
Yes, Uni is for education, but I don’t plan on not having any fun at all.
I’ve heard this as well… like a million times. If you go down past threads, you’ll see a lot of stuff about this. Some GWU students even made a video called “**** GWU students say” and a large number of the jokes were related to what you refer to as “snobbery of old-money northeastern kids” (although I don’t think ALL the snotty kids come from the northeast).
Thanks for that, I just saw the video.
I still haven’t had my question answered though.
Is it really that bad? I mean to the point that it could ruin my experience there?
I think that most of the wealth at GW that you hear about is ‘new money’ not the old-money types you mentioned. My son attended on a large financial aid package and never was really bothered by those type of show-offs and never felt inferior. Some of his closest friends and roommates were wealthy but it never really came up because they were all quite normal down to earth people.
I’ve heard about this too, but don’t worry, everyone finds their niche. I live like 40 minutes away from GW, and know lots of kids that go there. While there is a decent amount of these “rich snobby kids” there’s also a decent amount of middle class and lower income students. Like I said before, you’ll find your niche.
Every school has a crowd of rich snobby kids, and GW isn’t any different. It’s just that since its in Foggy Bottom + pretty expensive, everyone has started assuming that only rich kids can go there, and thus they dominate the social scene there. 100% wrong. You’ll meet rich kids, poor kids, partiers, non partiers, all types of people, so don’t worry about being miserable. I’m 100% sure you’ll find your crowd regardless of which college you go to. Good luck! 
Being poor doesn’t confer intrinsic virtue.
While there are plenty of rich kids at GW, there are just as many kids from middle class families. I had zero issues finding such students while attending there a few years back. Don’t worry, there aren’t that many rich kids. Even for those that ARE, I’m sure most will be too busy with school work to go out of their way to make you feel inadequate.
@GMTplus7 “Being poor doesn’t confer intrinsic virtue.”
Your’e right, it most certainly does not, nor was I implying that it does.
As a matter of fact, in an Aristotelian sense, both wealth and poverty would more likely implicate vice than virtue.
That reputation has been around a long time. There are wealthy students, but they are not all snobs who spend freely. My daughter graduated from GWU in 2012. Freshman year she had 4 roommates. One (from Miami, not the northeast) had a $500 a month allowance from her parents, which shocked my D who got by with minimal spending money. She found plenty of kids like herself there, her best friends were from the clubs she joined. She did know someone there who did not fly commercial, only private jets, but that was not the norm.
there are a bunch of really rich kids but they are the minority. the majority of undergrads at GW are on at least some form of financial aid. frankly I don’t think it should really be a big factor in your decision making, it won’t make a big difference in your experience
I just visited GW with my son and we both really liked it. Are there any resources out there that could show the amount of aid that’s offered to an incoming freshman student based on case studies?
@Elias1Lucy2 I don’t think there are any case studies available on the topic. I think your best bet would be to scroll through the ‘Class of 2019’ thread here (there’s quite a few pages, so I’d start from the back and work forward) and see what the different students were awarded. I saw quite a few getting between $15-25K/year. It’s not always possible to know their family’s financial standings, however.
I have this anecdote. We did not file for financial aid, but received an unexpectedly generous merit scholarship (25). Our friend completed the CSS, which showed need (the FAFSA showed very little need). They received a generous merit award and enough other compensation to take them within $8000 of the COA. The bulk of the money was in grants. There was also a work study component and a student loan of $4k/year. I should point out that our friend and my student are high achievers, so I believe the college was generous in an attempt to attract them.