My daughter is applying to college this fall. We are looking for a school which has a lot of nice, friendly, inclusive (of others) kids and which doesn’t have a lot of entitled, spoiled kids. I know you can find your niche at most any school, but certainly different schools have different vibes and attract different types of kids. Anyone know anything about any of the above schools? Thanks!!
With a thread title and OP like that … the responses should be most entertaining.
None of these schools strike me as having a reputation for elitism.
And which USC?
You mean the University of Spoiled Children, as UCLA students call it? 
Or are you referring to South Carolina?
Southern California
Although USC had the “University of Spoiled Children” and “University of Special Contacts” reputation decades ago, it now has the fourth or fifth highest percentage of students on Pell grants out of USNWR top 25 national universities (23%). However, UCLA students may still see it that way in comparison to UCLA itself (37%).
For comparison, the percentage of students on Pell grants is lower at the other schools in the original list:
21% Syracuse
14% Delaware
13% Tulane
13% Wisconsin
Google New York Times Some Colleges Have More Students from the Top 1 Percent for an article from January 18, 2017. The paper has a pay wall, but readers can look at a small number of articles online for free. That’s a good place to start, as a way of addressing your valid concerns. You are correct there are terrific kids at all schools, AND some can have very stronger cultures that might not appeal to your daughter and would compel her into finding her niche, which can certainly be fine, but perhaps is not the best way to approach finding a school . . . choosing one where one hopes to find a niche outside the mainstream.
We have some experience with this. I know a student very well who attended a top national university that appears in this article, did very well, made friends, but transferred to an excellent public university for reasons similar to the concerns you express. Generally speaking, expensive national private universities that do not offer significant financial aid/merit aid to a broad spectrum of students will, as a result, have very affluent student bodies and will be susceptible to the types of things you are trying to avoid. Also generally speaking, I’d say public universities, including the top-ranked ones (Michigan, UNC, Wisconsin, several UCs, William and Mary, etc.), will generally be more diverse, especially when socioeconomic diversity is considered. Also, many excellent private schools give aid to lots of students and are able to build diverse classes.
Good luck!
Tulane and USC have around 13% of its student body that comes from the top 1%. That’s okay for a private school, but it’s much higher than the typical public university.
U of Wisconsin-Madison (1.6%), U of Delaware (4.1%). Syracuse has 8% from the top 1%.
The so-called “elitist” schools (something of a pejorative since plenty of kids from wealthy families want their schools to be more diverse and enroll more low-income students) tend to be–wait for it!–the elite private schools: Washington U, Colorado C., Trinity C., Washington & Lee, Colby C., Bucknell C., and so on.
Most of the “elite” schools, including Ivies, have at least 15% of its students coming from the top 1%. Delaware’s 4.1% is pretty high for a public flagship, which as @TTG notes tend to be much more diverse. I attended a CTCL LAC that has 3.7% from the top 1%.
I don’t know. There are certainly colleges where you can feel the prep school/boarding school/wealthy family vibe, but none of the colleges the OP has listed are in this category. There will certainly be some of these types at USC, but USC also has 22% that come from the lower 60% of wage earners (families earning under 65K per year).
I’d never heard “Special Contacts” only “Second Chances” though that’s an even more outdated stereotype. However, I would tend to characterize the (handful of) kids who went to USC from our NorCal HS as more privileged than the ones who chose a UC. But it’s an obvious choice for an OOS kid who wants to go to college in SoCal and has a low EFC when there is no need based aid for them at the UCs. So I’d be interested in how the mix of rich and poor kids differs between in-state and out-of-state USC attendees. And probably there are differences between freshmen and transfer admits too.
Combining these with the Pell grant percentages, it looks like USC has the most SES diversity out of all of these schools, with the highest from the top 1% and the highest with Pell grant. Wisconsin may be more concentrated in the upper middle class, with the lowest from the top 1% and lowest with Pell grant. Tulane appears to have the highest upper SES skew, with highest from the top 1% and lowest with Pell grant.
Truly down-to-earth kids? Try your own local community college and your own state’s directional public Us.
Opinion of a (former) Pell Grant recipient at a top private university – a high percentage of Pell Grant recipients doesn’t necessarily suggest there isn’t a disparity in student experience. Big cities like LA can get pretty expensive if you go off campus to have fun, as is off-campus housing. For example, UCLA students with bigger budgets can afford to live much closer to campus than students commuting from home or relegated to, say, Palms or Culver City for cost reasons.
If you want to study socioeconomic cohesiveness on a college campus, you should also consider things like the percentage of students living on campus, the accessibility and reliability of public transit (or campus shuttles), the cost of living in the area (how much does it cost to go out to dinner with friends or to do a weekly happy hour?), and the cost of events on campus. Elite colleges like Swarthmore often make all events on campus free to students, whereas that is not the case everywhere; $20 for a music concert here and $15 for a play there can add up.
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I appreciate all of the insightful feedback. Very helpful! Anyone know anything about the general reputation of the schools’ student bodies?
Read “the Yale Daily News’ Insiders Guide to Colleges”. Gives perspective from the students’ viewpoint.
I don’t know about the others, but I’m applying for UW-Madison and have visited the campus several times. I wouldn’t consider it elitist academic-wise. It’s a good school for academics, but the student body doesn’t really portray that, in my opinion. My friends have gotten in with ACT scores of just 25. It’s a school that’s huge on drinking and parties and athletics, and it has huge pride. It’s not very safe, 1/4 girls have reported sexual assault there. And it’s not super diverse, but the students there are fairly liberal and appreciate diversity.
The thread title and OP reminded me (in reverse) of this classic thread from days gone by http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/688821-should-princeton-be-dd-choice-if-i-want-her-to-hobnob-with-snob-kids-p1.html
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It’s not reliable to assume that poor kids aren’t materialistic or even “entitled”, or that rich kids are the opposite. I recommend that if you find a college that seems to fit your needs on paper (somewhat regardless of the demographics), then go on an overnight visit and judge the atmosphere for yourself.
In light of the schools listed in the thread title, and the original post, maybe the best places to start looking would be among your in-state public universities?
Parent of recent UW alum. Wisconsin is not an especially diverse state, outside of the cities, and with about 60% of the undergrads being Wisconsin residents, that means the overall undergrad student body is not as diverse as a public flagship for instance, in parts of California. At the same time, there is a fair amount of socio-economic and cultural diversity at UW, in the sense that first gen kids who had not left their small hometown until they came to Madison, are attending UW. Minnesota residents make up about another another 15% or so of the student body, and the remaining 25% comes from everywhere else, plenty from Chicago suburbs but also from east and west coast. Broadly, kids at UW are mostly “Midwest nice.” In our experience, one of the big “markers” of affluence on a college campus is whether, and what kind of, car a student has on campus. Having a car at UW is not a popular option because parking is pain and in bad weather, students can hop a free bus running a circuit throughout campus – so you aren’t aware of economic stratification based on what kind of car somebody has. My kid was in greek life, which is around 10% of the undergrad student population. For those 3000 or so kids in greek life, that is the core of their social experience, but they are pretty irrelevant to the rest of campus. UW is known for a “work hard play hard” mentality, and game day is something to behold, but it is not generally a place where one is acutely aware of economic differences.
@jym626 That thread was crazy! My favorite part was the boy who chose Princeton because they fed him as opposed to MIT where he was chased by the giant beaver. =))