posterX

You're missing the point. It's up to each person to visit and see if they agree, not for you or anyone else to tell them that every single college out there is exactly identical in regards to how students interact, even in the face of different residential systems, exclusive clubs, class sizes, campus geographies, etc. The reality is that colleges are very different and it does indeed affect how people of different groups interact with one another.

Where do the 60-70% figures come from?

- "In 2005-2006, 63% of all Yale undergraduates received financial assistance of some kind" (Yale Admissions website)

- "About 90 percent of students attending The University of Iowa receive some form of financial aid" (Iowa admissions)

- "Two-thirds of all undergraduates receive some form of financial assistance" (Harvard admissions)

I could go on and on for pages with these, but there's no need. Numbers like this won't tell you anything. They're all over the place because they're all measured differently, CDS form or not. My point is only that the numbers you cited above clearly do not give any indication of the level of socioeconomic diversity in anyone's freshman class -- even if you assumed they were accurate comparisons between the schools in terms of percentages of people on aid, which they aren't even close to being, they still would not account for the magnitude of aid awards or the percentage of students who are receiving larger awards versus smaller awards.