I guess all the kids that want to rush the Greek system and get drunk land at places like WSU. None of that nonsense at “elite” schools.
@sevmom nor did I say that.
@sevmom In my experience, students at elite colleges can tackle both an active social life and hard studies. Many students at Tailgate States can’t, the partying consumes them — hence frequent 5, 6 and 7 years to finish an easy BA.
I’ve had a lot of co-workers who went to elite schools, and yet there they were, sitting next to me and doing the same job. I don’t remember them having intellectual debates that excluded me or the other non-elite college grads. Maybe they did it secretly.
@twoinanddone Are you friends with them outside of work? Same social circles?
Sure…because the first questions you ask before befriending someone is “gee…where did they go to college? Are they capable of being in my social circle because of their college?”
Right.
We live in New England. Plenty of elite and Ivy grads live here. They do NOT shun others who are not Ivy grads.
THAT is very insulting to the many really terrific grads of many elite schools who don’t give two hoots about where their friends attended college.
WSU is a weird place. It’s honors program is worth considering. Likewise, if you’re afraid you won’t get your major at UW, it’s worth considering (UW has significantly stronger students). That said, @MiddleburyDad2 is right, it has a significant number of party kids who are academically weak. Earlier, I posted about the Naviance information for Bellevue’s* four main high schools (International and Big Picture excluded). UW is significantly stronger than Western or WSU and, on average, WWU has stronger applicants than WSU does. One interesting thing about the scatterplot–WSU has a substantially broader range than WWU does. What does this mean? WSU does have a cohort of smart kids (presumably courtesy of the honors college or rabid parents) but it also has more than its fair share of “fat and slow” kids. While I’d agree it’s insulting, it’s definitely not clueless.
*I can’t generalize beyond Bellevue as most schools in the area don’t have guest access to naviance.
OKay, I’ll keep insulting and remove clueless. 
WSU does not have the same amount or concentration of high stats kids that an elite does. They have a diverse student body, typical of most public schools. And typical of real life.
@OldFashioned1 , In my experience, students at non elites can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I went to a public university, and not the flagship. My roommate was independently wealthy. She had a fancy car her freshman year. She went on great vacations, and never wanted for much. She was one of the most down to earth people I have ever known.
I never really knew how wealthy she was until many years later.
My point is…there are wealthy, and not so wealthy students at every college. So what?
The 4-year graduation rates tell a different story, @sevmom.
And the story often revolves around financial issues for many public schools kids. Publics take a wide range of kids, some better prepared than others. Of course, kids with higher stats and good financial support are going in have a leg up on graduating on time. Elites select for high stats kids that they feel will succeed and graduate on time . That is nothing new.
@MiddleburyDad2 , You ask “What is your familiarity with WSU besides what Google tells you?”
What is YOUR familiarity with every State U and Greek system when you state , “I’ve found that the Greek system at State U is a way for average people to feel above average somehow. A chance to feel like they are elite somehow. There is a lot of posturing on Greek row everywhere.” You seem to have an opinion on all the state schools you do not have a familiarity with, yet feel free to make general comments about them. You can’t possibly be familiar with every state school. Have you been to every State U that has a Greek system ?
Now you are saying the same thing to each other over and over. You have made your individual points and you are not going to change each others mind. Enough.*
Thank you, @fallenchemist. I agree.
There’s a greater concentration of wealthy students at elite private schools.
It’s one thing when most of the students come from middle class backgrounds and a handful have wealthy parents vs. the majority of the students coming from privileged backgrounds.
It was a definite issue for both of my kids. It is far more nuanced than the WaPo article cited by the OP – it is not really about money to buy text books or to fly home on breaks, but more of a day-to-day, ingrained thing as to social attitudes and expectations, and work ethic. It was very apparent to my D. from the time of her arrival at school… and 10 years out I can still see the evidence in the friendships she maintained from college.
It’s not a matter of money. It’s much more a matter of the role that money (and debt) plays overall in the person’s life.
I found the WaPo article interesting in that it profiled a Columbia student – and I know that the advantage of attending school in that urban setting for my D is that it was much easier for her to earn money than when my son attended a suburban LAC. Just a lot of employment opportunities for those who are willing to work. My DD sometimes had 4 or 5 part time jobs simultaneously, plus occasional odd jobs on top of it. Bartending/catering, babysitting, office admin work, etc. It was not at all difficult for my d. to earn money, not only to get by, but also to help fund summer internships and travel.
But there is a huge difference in attitude when a student has to work to earn the dollars for whatever it is they are spending that money on vs.a student who merely has to ask their parents, or doesn’t even have to ask because their parents area already sending more than enough to cover all their needs. And part of that difference is a degree of stress that the student who needs to depend on their own earnings feels pretty consistently.
It’s just an element of stress that exists in the lives of all people who don’t have a backstop of money in reserve to cover basic expenses – whether they are a student trying to make ends meet on campus, or a young adult whose next pay check is needed to pay the rent. And it’s not there in the lives of people who have substantial savings or sources of regular income not dependent on their own personal labor.
One way it directly impact the campus experience is simply the need to integrate a 15-20 hour work week (or more) with classes and a campus social life. The kids who need to be working simply have less time for play… and that creates a dichotomy of lifestyle that is often very apparent and never really goes away.
Sometimes. I was very good friends with a guy who had gone to Yale. He was always talking about his Yale days, how he’d gone to The Game, when he ‘lived in New Haven’, had his Yale mail sent to the office. We told him that we weren’t that impressed. Most of the time, he was a fun guy and we went for drinks and talked sports and were friends, but he really wanted us to be impressed with Yale and we really weren’t.
Another guy I was impressed by. He was like those in the OP article, very poor at elite schools, had been in the same program Duval Patrick was in to go to a prep school, then the program got him into Williams and then Harvard Law. He wasn’t bragging about it, just telling me his story of how he arrived in Williamstown on a bus, poorer than poor, and how hard it was for him socially and academically. He was very grateful for the opportunities. He was not at Milton but lived in a home with 12 boys and they went to public school. He said they were not accepted by the other students, did not become part of the big social circle of the town or high school, were not asked to their homes for dinner or the weekend at the beach house. He had no money of his own, but was taken to NYC for plays and art museums, to learn manners and culture. I would have been just as impressed with him if he’d gone to any college and any law school because he went so far with so little. Williams and Harvard were better for him because they were free. He knew he’d been accepted to elite schools and had his way paid because he was a very smart, very poor URM and affirmative action worked for him. He did not think he was smarter than the rest of us just because he’d gone to Harvard, and we all pretty much were in awe of the woman in our group who had graduated first in her class at Florida.
“One way it directly impact the campus experience is simply the need to integrate a 15-20 hour work week (or more) with classes and a campus social life.”
And this is another way that campuses can further integrate students. If the university can afford it, it can make work-study funds available for jobs/activities that a cross-section of campus wants to do anyway. Using Harvard as an example just because I know the details there the best, one of the choirs is hired by the university to perform at chapel services, so if you want to sing and you need a job, your EC can be your job. That choir is just as social and fun as the other choirs. Harvard uses paid rather than volunteer admissions tour guides (a policy I approve of for a number of reasons). They fund a lot of research positions, so you can make money working in a professor’s lab, which is something the rich kids want to do just as much.
They offer regular old jobs, too – dining hall, library, gym front desk, etc. – but the above options do a lot to normalize work. You can’t tell that someone is on financial aid from the fact that they have a job.
From what I understand, however, some of the elite privates also have a stratified social life where only some kids get into certain frats/sororities, eating clubs or finals clubs. Certainly, at Princeton there is a hierarchy of eating clubs. Do the very poor kids on full rides have as high a likelihood of getting into the top tier clubs as a legacy or the kid that is brought to campus in a fancy car?
Interesting, Hanna. But aren’t most of those jobs linked to work-study? I found that when my kids, who did not have work study, looked for on-campus jobs most were set aside for kids on FA.
“Do the very poor kids on full rides have as high a likelihood of getting into the top tier clubs as a legacy or the kid that is brought to campus in a fancy car?”
I don’t know. I do know that interest in participating in the clubs varies demographically. Princeton now includes average club dues in financial aid packages, which they did not do back in my day.
“But aren’t most of those jobs linked to work-study?”
Some are, some aren’t. There are non-work-study kids involved in all the examples I mentioned.