Is Penn really full of rich snobs?

dustyr · April 3, 2012, 3:41am

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cbagzdad · April 3, 2012, 9:26am

By gum, I do indeed hope so. Poor snobs are so disagreeably boorish.

;-)

45_Percenter · April 3, 2012, 9:51am

Well, given that at least 40% of Penn undergrads are on financial aid, it’s certainly not “full” of rich snobs (however you define that). :rolleyes:

parentofpeople · April 3, 2012, 2:22pm

Not everyone at Penn is rich, and not everyone who is rich is a snob, so no, Penn is not full of rich snobs.

dustyr · April 3, 2012, 2:28pm

Just asking because a friend, Class of 2010, said Penn has a disproportionately high number of rich, fratty kids compared to other privates and referred to it as a “party school.” I didn’t have this impression until he mentioned this.

45_Percenter · April 3, 2012, 2:41pm

^ Less than 30% of Penn undergrads join a frat or sorority, most could definitely not be described as “rich” by most commonly accepted standards, and I assume your friend hasn’t attended other privates or studied the demographics of their student bodies, so I wouldn’t take that gross and unsubstantiated generalization very seriously.

dustyr · April 3, 2012, 2:45pm

My friend is in grad school at another private university now. He joked about how a lot of the girls at Penn got nose jobs before college. I used to think it was an academic, possibly nerdy university, until he told me all of this.

CrazyPluto · April 3, 2012, 4:10pm

All Ivy Leagues have a high proportion of rich kids

ttparent · April 3, 2012, 7:10pm

So, you are saying that you actually believe that this is true?

chrisw · April 4, 2012, 11:47am

Penn has a lot of rich kids (think about it… the super rich have much more access to the tools needed to get into selective universities, so it’s inevitable), but I never really ran into many “snobby” people. Sure, there are some, but they wind up self-segregating.

One of the interesting things about Penn is that financial aid isn’t just something that the university cares about; students care too. In all of the student groups I joined throughout college, there were required dues. And in all of those groups, there was financial aid available so that cost was never an object. The wealthier students paid dues and also donated hefty sums, and the poorer students paid what they could. It wasn’t very often that cost limited anybody at Penn.

Another interesting thing about Penn is that, as I went through, the education my peers and I received became a great equalizer. Poor students graduate with the same education as rich students at Penn, and so they compete for jobs based on merit (obviously, some of the better connected students have an advantage, but such is life). As a result, by the end of junior year and certainly by the end of senior year, family financial status became an even smaller issue, particularly for those students who decided to enter the workforce instead of pursuing advanced degrees upon graduation.

Cue7 · April 4, 2012, 12:33pm

Lets get out as much data as we can here.

Based on a CIRP study of freshman at Penn, here is some info about parental incomes:

28% of the class have parents earning $250k or more
10% of the class have parents earning 200-249k
11% of the class have parents earning 150-199k
16% of the class have parents earning 100-149k
11% of the class have parents earning 75-99k

This means about 65% of the class come from upper middle class backgrounds, and close to 30% of the class come from pretty high earners (250K+).

The Penn Data is locked by a password, but here’s a link to Northwestern’s data, which is publicly available and quite similar:

<a href=“http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/sspg/cirp/TFS_2011_PDF_PROFILE.pdf[/url]”>http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/sspg/cirp/TFS_2011_PDF_PROFILE.pdf</a>

These income breakdowns of course cannot point to how any students ACT (i.e. acting like snobs), but the data is what is - at Penn and other comparable colleges (like Northwestern), wealthy students form a huge chunk of the student population.

PhotoOp · April 4, 2012, 1:01pm

Does that mean 24% have parents who earn less than $75k? It would seem then that there is an equal amount of uber-rich and poor.

Cue7 · April 4, 2012, 2:02pm

PhotoOp, in a word, No. Here is the rest of the breakdown:

6% 60-75k
4% 50-59k
5% 40-49k
3% 30-39k
1% 25-29k
1% 20-24k
2% 15-19k
1% 10-14k
2% Less than 10k

For households, I believe those making around 30k or less are classified as poor, where those making 250k or more are in the highest income bracket, generally.

Based on this rough metric, this means 28% of the Penn class comes from the wealthiest bracket, and 7% of the class comes from the poorest brackets.

Certainly, there is not an equal amount of “rich” and “poor” on campus. Again, about 65-70% of the class hail from the very highest brackets, they just range from somewhat wealthy to very wealthy.

dustyr · April 4, 2012, 4:39pm

Thanks, Cue7. That’s “worse” than I thought. I went to a private university, too, but I don’t think the demographics were like that. TTParent, Yes, I do believe it. I’ve only known a few people who went to Penn but they all shared similar stories.

I realize that every private university has a disproportionately high number of rich kids, but every university has its own culture. Alums have told me that Penn is a rich kid’s party school.

45_Percenter · April 4, 2012, 5:06pm

Virtually ALL the top privates will have similar income distributions. But keep in mind that, like its peers, Penn devotes substantial resources to undergraduate financial aid–over $149 million this year, alone. And also keep in mind that about 1,000 members of Penn’s current freshman class, out of about 2,400 total, are on financial aid (meaning about 40%):

[A</a> Look at the Facts](<a href=“http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/paying/paying-pro-look-at-the-facts.htm]A”>http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/paying/paying-pro-look-at-the-facts.htm)

With one of the most generous undergraduate financial aid budgets outside of HYPS, including one of the few no-loan policies outside of those 4 schools and participation in low-income student recruitment programs such as Questbridge and the Posse Foundation (Penn was the first Ivy to join the Posse program), the overall income distribution of Penn undergrads is quite similar to–if not more diverse than–that at the other Ivies and top privates.

45_Percenter · April 4, 2012, 5:12pm

Well, as an alum myself–and one who is quite active in alumni affairs–I can tell you that for the vast majority of Penn’s 10,000 undergrads, it most cerainly is NOT a rich kid’s party school. And I can assure you that thousands of other Penn alums would heartily agree with me.

Cue7 · April 4, 2012, 7:46pm

I think this question relates less to actual income distribution - which is the same at virtually all top private schools (Northwestern’s and Penn’s income numbers were virtually identical), and the culture on a campus. Is conspicuous consumption and materialism valued on campus, or underplayed? Do discussions of attainment of material wealth permeate the feel of a campus, or not?

Such distinctions are highly subjective, and rely upon the impressions (and biases) of the observer. For one take at describing Penn culture by an individual who knows the school well, you can check out JHS’ observations in this thread where he compares UPenn to UChicago:

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1313593-upenn-v-uchicago-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1313593-upenn-v-uchicago-2.html</a>

Some of his relevant points:

"In general, Penn is a place with a lot of conspicuous consumption; Chicago is a place where conspicuous consumption would be a huge social faux pas. Even kids from well-to-do families and private schools here tend to experience a little shock when they go to Penn and see how willing some people are to throw money around. That’s not a worry at Chicago.

To this aged observer, there is a huge difference between how students dress and act on the two campuses. Especially women. To walk around Penn is to see a lot of makeup, carefully tended hair, jewelry, and designer clothes. Not on everyone, of course, or necessarily even a majority, but lots. And the general dressing standards – even for guys, who are slobs wherever you go – are several quantum levels higher. In other words, at Penn, people tend to dress like they care how they are dressed, and expect to be judged by others on that basis."

Again, take from that what you will. Like JHS, I’ve spent considerable time around both UChicago and UPenn, and I found his comments to be on the mark. Again, these are just one person’s impressions, though, and it deserves repeating that the top schools all have more in common than anything else. These are just JHS’ subjective observations, and they happen to mirror my own.

45_Percenter · April 4, 2012, 8:52pm

^ In the interests of full disclosure, we should also note that another wise and discerning poster on CC supplemented the above comments by JHS as follows:

Further, I think you’d agree that–at least traditionally–the predominant student culture at UChicago might be described as unique and a bit “quirky” vis-a-vis most top private universities (Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, etc.), the ongoing decline of which quirkiness you, yourself, have lamented. On the other hand, Penn is much more similar in this regard to other top schools (including, again, the other Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, etc.). I think you’d agree that–at least traditionally–Chicago is the outlier here in terms of top private universities (and LACs such as Amherst and Williams), and not Penn.

Cue7 · April 4, 2012, 9:13pm

45percenter:

Absolutely, UChicago used to have a “quirkier” culture and, as I noted, is now probably converging with other schools.

As all the top schools grow more homogeneous, the cultures will converge a bit. It’s more a case now of having different flavors rather than distinct entities.

At the same time, there are probably subjective distinctions that people find ring true to some degree - Swarthmore and UChicago have similarities, as do Williams and Dartmouth, and Penn and Duke, or Brown and Wesleyan.

Certainly, if a student is worried about “rich snobs” the statistics tend to show they are about as prevalent at Penn or Duke or wherever. As the income is about the same everywhere, the cultures then become more prevalent. Penn is certainly more similar to a bulk of the other schools than UChicago is (at this point - although this may change 5-6 years down the line).

At the same time, there are probably distinctions and different feels at say, Penn vs. Brown or Wesleyan vs. Penn. Ultimately, I think all of these schools have different flavors. They may not be as pronounced as the difference say, between UChicago and Wharton when I was in Hyde Park in the 90s, but they’re still there.

I tend to agree with JHS in that, if a student wants an atmosphere where conspicuous consumption is frowned upon, UChicago or Swarthmore may be more on one end of the spectrum, while Penn (from what I’ve observed) and some other schools may be on the other end.

The applicant just needs to keep in mind that the “spectrum” is growing narrower and narrower all the time.

45_Percenter · April 4, 2012, 9:30pm

And that students from all across the “spectrum” will find lots of like-minded students–in the hundreds if not the thousands–at just about all of these schools, including Penn.

Is Penn really full of rich snobs?

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