<p>ColdWind, could you please stop saying that Princeton has issues with elitism? How do you know? Did you go to school there? Did any of your children go to school there? My anecdotal experience of Harvard from my brother, sister, and the kids from my children's high school is that it is highly competitive, lonely, and full of legacy athletes. My anecdotal experience of Yale is that it is full of anxious girls who study hard. Oh yeah and Gossip Girl kids like to go there.</p>
<p>Luckily I don't trust my anecdotal experience over the broader data.</p>
<p>If you want the first hand experience of a Princeton parent who is also African American see if you can PM Drosselmeier, a parent on the forum.</p>
<p>Alumother: I know several current & a few former students at Princeton. I have visited & dealt with administrators at Princeton. If you are unaware of these issues, often associated with the eating clubs, then past posts on CC may help inform you. I am sorry that you don't like my understandings, but you are free to post your own opinions. I will respect your opinions even if I disagree. Please do not be so sensitive as this forum is for the free flow & exchange of information & ideas. For other sources on Princeton's elitism, the typical college guides can be helpful. Believe it or not, others experiences & perceptions can differ from your own.</p>
<p>ColdWind, the issue is that you're not really providing helpful information. Your posts advising against Princeton appeal to two things: the fact that you know a few people at Princeton, and its elitist reputation.
The first reason is hardly worth taking into consideration. Every school will have its share of elitist or unhappy students - Princeton is certainly no exception. The fact that you happen to know a few unhappy kids or students that you just don't like isn't a good reason at all to make statements against the school. If you're going to make posts like that, you have to give real reasons why you think it's a worse learning environment than Yale or whatever school you're comparing it to. Simply saying that you know certain people isn't good enough on its own.
Secondly, appealing to Princeton's supposedly elitist nature is misleading. While it's true that Princeton was fairly elitist in the past (as were Harvard and Yale at the time), that reputation is no longer accurate.
It's especially strange that you insinuate that Alumother is unaware of this sort of issue, given that she was a member of a bicker club herself, and currently has a daughter at Princeton. As she, and many other current students and recent alumni, will attest, the eating club system is NOT particularly elitist. Many posts on CC in the past by informed people (with first hand experience) say that the eating clubs are actually quite open.</p>
<p>The issue, I think, is not that you're posting your opinions. The issue is that you're being deliberately misleading and posting information that is either irrelevant or untrue.</p>
<p>disclaimer: I'm a current junior at Princeton, and so my opinion will obviously be a little biased...</p>
<p>I've also got a son there now:). And he's a fairly quirky type. If you read my long post on Princeton you will see that one of my son's prime goals in choosing a college was to find somewhere with real diversity. His hallmates and classmates have met that goal and more.</p>
<p>I'm aware of the issues of perception you refer to. I am simply pointing out that those of us with a deeper history with Princeton have personal experience of the institution's evolution over time. And I'm not sensitive, just annoyed at the odd impunity people feel in calling Princeton elitist when they may never have set foot in New Jersey.</p>
<p>Let's all pile on Harvard and call it deathly competitive. Let's all pile on Yale and call it attenuated with a febrile intellectualism. Or else let's be clear these are three phenomenal educational opportunities with slightly different feels, sizes, locations, and emphases. Huh? What do you say?</p>
<p>Google Shirley Tilghman. Google Cornel West. Google Teach for America. Just for starters.</p>
<p>To add to what quirkily and Alumother have said, I'm a senior who is not part of an eating club and who almost never goes to the Street. I have some mixed feelings about the clubs, and especially about the bicker process, but I don't think they've detracted from my Princeton experience at all. </p>
<p>There are a lot of clubs with very different atmospheres, and a person who doesn't like the upper-crust feel of Ivy might be very happy with the counter-culture types in Terrace or the fairly low-key group at Colonial. I might also add that the widespread nature of the clubs argues against their elitism; the clubs are a big part of campus culture mainly because rather than just having a super-elite organization ala Yale's secret societies, we have a lot of different options that meet the needs of a wide range of students. Of the ten clubs, half are totally non-selective and only two have a reputation for being at all "elite." </p>
<p>I didn't join for several reasons, and yes, one of them was money. But my main consideration was that my closest friends didn't join either, and in the end of the day, that is what determines most students' decisions. There are people I would have been closer to had I joined. There are people I am closer to because I didn't. There are also people I would have been closer to had I joined a particular on-campus group, and people I met because I joined a different one. That's how it works at college.</p>