<p>if students are generally meeting each other for the first time ever, how do the “wealthy” students attract to one another? this is very confusing to me. is wealth characterized by the clothes students wear (Polo, J. Crew, LL Bean, Brooks Brothers, etc.)? or is it generalized that students who come from private schools are wealthier? or do students just come out and say, “Yeah, I’m rich. Are you? Ok sweet, let’s be friends then.”? can you please clarify this for me? how do students form these little cliques and niches when many of them have never met each other before, or have no prior knowledge of each other’s financial situations back home?</p>
<p>my family is pretty wealthy, and we’re blessed, but that doesn’t mean I only want to be friends with other wealthy students. i want a very diverse group of friends in the fall (religious, ethnic, socio-economic, etc.). is there a gap between low-income students and high-income students? if so, how big is it? is it easy to make friends with each other? or are the rich kids generally too snobby to intermingle?</p>
<p>probably something like: “i’m going skiing in vail this weekend, want to come?” or: “anyone want to come to paris with me for spring break?” it’s not an explicit thing at all. it’s usually just based on what people have or haven’t done with the resources they’ve had and currently have in college. i think some wealthy students know other wealthy students because they tend to do things that cost money. other wealthy students just like to read, watch movies, and shoot the ****. guess who’s experience will be more socioeconomically diverse? </p>
<p>i never found the rich kids too snobby (that is if i knew if they were rich, which i usually didn’t). usually it was us poor folk who were intellectual snoots. (kidding. sort of).</p>
<p>I don’t know that this would necessarily be an accurate assessment. Many friend groups at Bowdoin are very diverse and cross all sorts of divides. As everything on campus is free, money really doesn’t come up often or at all, and as 60% of students work (with only 40% of students receiving aid), there’s no way to know who’s on financial aid and who’s not.</p>
<p>That being said, at every school, people of similar backgrounds will tend to congregate at least to some extent, often because of the activities they pursue. For example, your screen name is “laxbro10,” indicating to me that perhaps you intend to play lacrosse at Bowdoin. As a varsity athlete, much of your time will be spent with your team and you will undoubtedly grow close to them and count them as (at least some of) your best friends at Bowdoin. Lacrosse is generally not considered a diverse sport: ethnically, regionally, or socioeconomically. It’s not very played outside of New England and cities and those schools that can afford to field teams are often wealthier public schools or private ones. As a lacrosse player, then, many of your friends would likely be white males from new england. Is that intentional? No. Is that exclusive? Not necessarily. I acted in a play alongside one lacrosse player, for example, and we had a fantastic time. We had quite a diverse cast and we all became very close. I lived on my first-year floor with another lacrosse player, and our floor was pretty diverse, as well. We were a tight floor (as first-year floors tend to be), and I know he counts as some of his closest friends some people with very different backgrounds than him.</p>
<p>All of this is not to say, by the way, that the lacrosse team is in any way biased (I’m just trying to respond directly to what I perceive to be your interest). In fact, the men’s lacrosse team along with the men’s hockey team have been at the vanguard of stamping out homophobic language in the locker room and on the field/ice. They didn’t do this because of any mandate from above but rather because some members of those teams are gay, and in confronting this diversity within their team, they have improved campus greatly (even calling out the teams they play against for using such offensive language).</p>
<p>I hope this has in some way answered the question, I kind of feel like I’m rambling…</p>
<p>When I visited I stayed in a chem-free dorm and everyone on that floor (from different backgrounds) was just really tight. I hope it’s like that throughout Bowdoin.</p>
<p>And I agree that because everything is on campus and free there is less of a divide between different socioeconomic groups.</p>