LEAST PREPPY Private Colleges?

[twomules]

<p>Thanks for clarifying the current slang usage. I knew my daughter was using it in a different way but couldn’t figure it out.</p>

[Ricebunny]

<p>Hampshire College is a pretty safe bet.</p>

[Clendenenator]

<p>Rice is pretty un-preppy when compared to its peers; although its not quite as far in the other direction as some of the schools listed so far.</p>

[z7xfla]

<p>MIT was brought up, but what about CalTech?</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>agree w/ Cal Tech</p>

<p>updated list</p>

<p>Antioch
Bard
Beloit
Cal Tech
Carleton
Colorado College
Deep Springs
Earlham
Grinnell
Hampshire
Harvey Mudd
Knox
Macalester
MIT
Northeastern
Oberlin
Occidental
Pitzer
Pomona
Reed
Rice</p>

[3togo]

<p>Smith and Barnard both seemed un-preppy to me. </p>

<p>In the past Mini did a great analysis and came up with “The Entitlement Index” … which measure things like the % of kids receiveing Pell Grants and the % of kids receiving financial aid. The schools with more kids receiving Pell Grants and Financial Aid seem to typically be less preppy … while any number based list is not fool proof … it certainly provides some schools to check out and other schools that might be more preppy than expected. The listing is in the archives … and I unfortunately do not know how to search in the archives. Can anyone help me out here?</p>

[3togo]

<p>hmm … here’s a little bit on the entitlement index and LACs … </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/113963-non-preppy-lacs.html?highlight=entitlement+index#post1396872[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/113963-non-preppy-lacs.html?highlight=entitlement+index#post1396872&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[3togo]

<p>hmm … and here … look at posts 57 & 58 … again the numbers do not tell the whole story but they may raise questions about some schools or bring some new schools into play … <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/11033-rich-kid-schools-4.html?highlight=entitlement+index#post164958[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/11033-rich-kid-schools-4.html?highlight=entitlement+index#post164958&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>I’m having problems with searching archives…but the google search feature yielded this 2004 thread w/ a Mini post on Entitlement Index:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/3326-small-liberal-arts-colleges-universities.html?highlight=entitlement+index[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/3326-small-liberal-arts-colleges-universities.html?highlight=entitlement+index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Mini’s post #15:

Here’s 49 fine liberal arts colleges, ranked by 1) how small a percentage receive any need-based financial aid; 2) how large a percentage of students come from private schools (often, but not always prep schools), and 3) Subtracted out, what percentages of students are on Pell Grants, meaning their families likely earn less than $40k/year. In other words, the entitlement index. Take out the urban ones (double**), and you have a list. Target the northeast ones if you like (single *)… You can get a great education at any of them, and probably 150 more.</p>

<ol>
<li>Davidson 119-6 113</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 113-3 110</li>
<li>Trinity 119-13 106* </li>
<li>Bates 108-9 99</li>
<li>Middlebury 105-8 97</li>
<li>Kenyon 105-8 97</li>
<li>Williams 104-9 95*</li>
<li>Colby 100-7 93*</li>
<li>Connecticut 102-11 91*</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 103-13 90</li>
<li>Bowdoin 98-10 88*</li>
<li>Furman 96-9 87</li>
<li>Skidmore 98-13 85*</li>
<li>Haverford 96-13 83*</li>
<li>Wesleyan 96-14 82*</li>
<li>Amherst 96-16 80*</li>
<li>Whitman 88-9 79</li>
<li>Swarthmore 91-13 78*</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 87-9 78*</li>
<li>Barnard 95-18 77*</li>
<li>Pomona 89-12 77</li>
<li>Colgate 86-10 76*</li>
<li>Scripps 88-14 74</li>
<li>Dickinson 85-12 73*</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 82-12 70*</li>
<li>Vassar 81-12 69*</li>
<li>Colorado 85-17 68</li>
<li>Lafayette 76-8 68*</li>
<li>Hamilton 82-15 67*</li>
<li>Denison 79-12 67</li>
<li>Wellesley 80-16 64*</li>
<li>Bucknell 75-12 63*</li>
<li>Gettysburg 74-12 62*</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 76-15 61*</li>
<li>Carleton 71-10 61</li>
<li>Union 75-15 60*</li>
<li>Oberlin 76-17 59</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 71-15 56</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 65-12 53</li>
<li>Macalester 65-15 50</li>
<li>Bard 68-20 48*</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 68-21 47*</li>
<li>Depauw 59-13 46</li>
<li>Smith 70-24 46*</li>
<li>Occidental 69-27 42</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 66-26 40</li>
<li>Grinnell 53-13 40</li>
<li>Centre 57-18 39</li>
<li>Wabash 38-19 19

</li>
</ol>

<p>hence, going along with the theory that preppy is correlated with Entitlement Index, the “least preppy” schools would tend to be at the bottom.</p>

[chaucers_pal]

<p>OK - are we talking culturally? I mean, come on - some of these schools, like Trinity, Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst are the essence of prep style and culture. </p>

<p>Ooops - I forgot - hard to measure style/culture. Taking this all too seriously :-)</p>

[jrpar]

<p>I don’t think Smith is preppy.</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>I found Mini’s 2004 thesis on his Index on this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/11033-rich-kid-schools-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/11033-rich-kid-schools-2.html&lt;/a&gt; ; and have posted the first (on LACs) of his two posts below, with his second post on national universities in a moment.</p>

<p>

Here are the two posts - note that they deal with the years 2002-2003:</p>

<p>I began this inquiry because I was simply trying to find a way to quantify the experience of my daughter. She visited a number of small liberal arts colleges and, despite similarities in academic programs and resources, admissions policies (at least on paper), and even perceptions of URMs on campus, she felt huge differences in campus “feel”, not all of which were easily attributable to school policies or locations (except as they impacted who attended.) </p>

<p>It was simpler for me to see the difference. Having attended Williams back in the Paleozoic Era, but coming from a far lower economic bracket than the overwhelming majority of students, I remember the differences in the way many students perceived the world, (what I think of as their inner sense of “Entitlement”), and their actual experience of it: the kinds of cars they drove (and whether they had cars at all), the clothes they wore, the discretionary income they had on campus, the sports they participated in, where they went for winter and spring break, the kinds of summer jobs they had (and whether they carried an on-campus job at all), how well traveled they were, whether they were fluent in other languages, whether they assumed they could afford expensive professional schools after college. There were also differences in alcohol and drug use (theirs tended to be higher, but no fixed rule), and academic preparation (theirs tended to be better, but no fixed rule.) As we visited campuses, I was still able to perceive these differences (and better able to describe them than I could then.) I received a GREAT education at Williams, for which I remain thankful to this day, but I can’t make believe that I didn’t feel those differences while I was there.</p>

<p>So I wondered whether these differences could be quantified or indexed. And they can, of course. The first difference is whether students attended private schools. Now of course there are many kinds of private schools: elite boarding schools, religious day schools, private academies (especially in the South, many of them initially set up to avoid integration, but having long outlived that purpose, and offering excellent educations). But what they all have in common is that (for the vast majority of students) families pay for them. It is a big commitment.</p>

<p>The second difference is whether students received any need-based assistance (grants or loans) from the institution. Today, there is often a vast difference in experience between a student coming from a family that can afford $168k for four years of college education, and a student coming from the average American family, income $43k, with total assets of around $55k (plus house, if they have one.) To imagine that this wouldn’t find expression in student attitudes would be strange. Students are not to blame for them (hey, there’s nothing necessarily worth blaming!) – all I am trying to do is find a way to quantify experience.)</p>

<p>So, for what it’s worth:</p>

<p>ENTITLEMENT INDEX AMONG 50 “TOP” (according to USNWR) LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES</p>

<p>The first number represents the percentage of students who were admitted from private schools. The second number represents the percentage of students who do not receive need-based financial aid from the institution. The final number is the “Entitlement” (“preppy”) Index score. Numbers are taken from the most recent Princeton Review.</p>

<ol>
<li>Davidson 52/67 119</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 40/73 113</li>
<li>Trinity 57/53 119</li>
<li>Bates 48/60 108</li>
<li>Middlebury 45/60 105</li>
<li>Kenyon 46/59 105</li>
<li>Williams 46/58 104</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 48/55 103</li>
<li>Connecticut 48/54 102</li>
<li>Colby 40/60 100</li>
<li>Skidmore 40/58 98</li>
<li>Bowdoin 43/55 98</li>
<li>Furman 39/57 96</li>
<li>Haverford 39/57 96</li>
<li>Amherst 44/52 96</li>
<li>Wesleyan 44/52 96</li>
<li>Barnard 47/48 95</li>
<li>Swarthmore 40/51 91</li>
<li>Pomona 40/49 89</li>
<li>Whitman 30/58 88</li>
<li>Scripps 37/51 88</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 34/53 87</li>
<li>Colgate 30/56 86</li>
<li>Colorado 30/55 85</li>
<li>Dickinson 38/47 85</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 31/51 82</li>
<li>Hamilton 40/42 82</li>
<li>Vassar 34/47 81</li>
<li>Wellesley 37/43 80</li>
<li>Denison 30/49 79</li>
<li>Lafayette 32/46 76</li>
<li>Oberlin 34/42 76</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 38/38 76</li>
<li>Bucknell 26/49 75</li>
<li>Union 27/48 75</li>
<li>Gettysburg 30/44 74</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 27/44 71</li>
<li>Carleton 25/45 71</li>
<li>Smith 26/44 70</li>
<li>Occidental 30/39 69</li>
<li>Bard 30/38 68</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 38/30 68</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 30/36 66</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 20/45 65</li>
<li>Macalester 34/31 65</li>
<li>Depauw 17/42 59</li>
<li>Centre 21/36 57</li>
<li>Grinnell 13/40 53</li>
<li>Wabash 8/30 38</li>
</ol>

<p>Incomplete data from Holy Cross and Rhodes. Tie-breaker is percentage of students who do not received need-based aid.</p>

<p>If you’ve visited a lot of these campuses, you’d likely not find many surprises in this data. The only clear generalizations to be made are that, on the whole, midwestern schools do not seem attractive to private school students (or they simply aren’t accepted – which I find unlikely), and southern schools (with the exception of Agnes Scott) offer (or need to offer) significantly less than average in terms of need-based aid. One caveat that must be attached to the data is that some schools (some that I know of for sure are Bard, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Macalester) offer merit-based aid to significant portions of their entering class (as much as 10%) – some of those students, upon receiving the merit aid award, no longer qualify for need-based aid, and hence wouldn’t appear in this picture.</p>

<p>This data picture as always is incomplete. While it reflects “entitlement” on the campus as above, it does not reflect the impact on campus feel of low-income students. A school could offer lots of rather small “need-based” grants to attract students away from the competition, without really changing the make up or feel of the campus. (Macalester has a reputation for doing this – whether it is just or not, I have no idea.) One way to correct for that is to subtract the percentage of students on Pell Grants (with family incomes below 35% of the national average) from the total. All of a sudden, the extremes become more extreme, and the picture (I believe) more clear.</p>

<p>Numbers Represent the “Entitlement” Index minus Pell Grant Shares:</p>

<ol>
<li>Davidson 119-6 113</li>
<li>Washington and Lee 113-3 110</li>
<li>Trinity 119-13 106</li>
<li>Bates 108-9 99</li>
<li>Middlebury 105-8 97</li>
<li>Kenyon 105-8 97</li>
<li>Williams 104-9 95</li>
<li>Colby 100-7 93</li>
<li>Connecticut 102-11 91</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 103-13 90</li>
<li>Bowdoin 98-10 88</li>
<li>Furman 96-9 87</li>
<li>Skidmore 98-13 85</li>
<li>Haverford 96-13 83</li>
<li>Wesleyan 96-14 82</li>
<li>Amherst 96-16 80</li>
<li>Whitman 88-9 79</li>
<li>Swarthmore 91-13 78</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 87-9 78</li>
<li>Barnard 95-18 77</li>
<li>Pomona 89-12 77</li>
<li>Colgate 86-10 76</li>
<li>Scripps 88-14 74</li>
<li>Dickinson 85-12 73</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 82-12 70</li>
<li>Vassar 81-12 69</li>
<li>Colorado 85-17 68</li>
<li>Lafayette 76-8 68</li>
<li>Hamilton 82-15 67</li>
<li>Denison 79-12 67</li>
<li>Wellesley 80-16 64</li>
<li>Bucknell 75-12 63</li>
<li>Gettysburg 74-12 62</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 76-15 61</li>
<li>Carleton 71-10 61</li>
<li>Union 75-15 60</li>
<li>Oberlin 76-17 59</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 71-15 56</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 65-12 53</li>
<li>Macalester 65-15 50</li>
<li>Bard 68-20 48</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 68-21 47</li>
<li>Depauw 59-13 46</li>
<li>Smith 70-24 46</li>
<li>Occidental 69-27 42</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 66-26 40</li>
<li>Grinnell 53-13 40</li>
<li>Centre 57-18 39</li>
<li>Wabash 38-19 19</li>
</ol>

<p>Make of the data what you will. It is just data. I may get around to the national universities later.

</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>Mini’s 2nd 2004 post on Entitlement Index for national universities.</p>

<p>

So, to continue….</p>

<p>Again, I don’t have a particular ax to grind with these numbers (unlike the Pell Grant share numbers, where I did – I think schools would be better schools if they had greater economic diversity.) I am just finding a way to quantify that portion of campus “feel” that might be attributable to students’ feelings of entitlement (which, as previously, makes itself felt in everything from cars on campus, to winter and summer vacations, to sports played, to expectations of being able to afford expensive professional schools upon graduation.)</p>

<p>Entitlement (“preppy”) Index for 50 “Top” (according to USNWR) National Private Universities</p>

<p>First number represents percentage of enrolled students who came from private schools. Second number represents percentage of enrolled students who receive no need-based financial aid from the institution. Tie-breaker is the second number. Numbers taken from most recent edition of Princeton Review:</p>

<ol>
<li>Georgetown 53/59 112</li>
<li>Notre Dame 50/60 110</li>
<li>Yale 47/60 107</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 40/62 102</li>
<li>Tufts 43/59 102</li>
<li>Univ. of Penn 43/58 101</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 40/60 100</li>
<li>Brown 40/60 100</li>
<li>Princeton 45/54 99</li>
<li>Duke 34/64 98</li>
<li>Boston College 40/58 98</li>
<li>Emory 35/62 97</li>
<li>Washington U. 39/55 94</li>
<li>Dartmouth 38/53 91</li>
<li>USC 39/51 90</li>
<li>Georgia Tech 18/71 88</li>
<li>Harvard 35/52 87</li>
<li>Northwestern 27/56 83</li>
<li>Stanford 28/54 82</li>
<li>Brandeis 30/52 82</li>
<li>Lehigh 31/46 77</li>
<li>NYU 31/44 75</li>
<li>Case-Western 30/45 75</li>
<li>Univ. Chicago 30/44 74</li>
<li>CalTech 19/43 62</li>
<li>MIT 28/28 56</li>
<li>RPI 21/29 50</li>
</ol>

<p>Schools for which I have incomplete data are Rochester, Tulane, Cornell, Columbia, Rice, CMU, and Wake Forest.</p>

<p>No huge surprises in the data here. The Catholic colleges have relatively high percentages of students from private catholic high schools, but note that they are also high in percentages of students receiving no financial assistance. Unlike in the liberal arts index, the southern private universities do not show particularly high levels of private school kids (there goes that hypothesis) – their high entitlement indexes are based on the fact that fewer than 40% of students receive financial assistance – in other words, parents are well-heeled. Yale has a very high preppy index – there’s just no two ways about it. The tech schools are at the bottom of the list – they take a large majority of public school kids, and they give them lots of money.</p>

<p>As in the previous note on liberal arts colleges, I modified the index to reflect the percentage of low-income (Pell Grant recipient) kids on the campus (subtracted from the entitlement index), to see if this made any difference. It does – the differences between schools become more pronounced (Pell Grant share information from Mortenson, Postsecondary Educational Opportunites):</p>

<p>Modified Entitlement Index (Reflecting Pell Grant Shares) for 50 Top Private National Universities:</p>

<ol>
<li>Notre Dame 102</li>
<li>Georgetown 101</li>
<li>Yale 97</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 92</li>
<li>Princeton 92</li>
<li>Tufts 92</li>
<li>Penn 91</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 90</li>
<li>Brown 90</li>
<li>Duke 88</li>
<li>Boston College 87</li>
<li>Washington U. 86</li>
<li>Emory 82</li>
<li>Dartmouth 80</li>
<li>Harvard 80</li>
<li>George Tech 74</li>
<li>Northwestern 73</li>
<li>Stanford 70</li>
<li>Brandeis 68</li>
<li>USC 66</li>
<li>Lehigh 64</li>
<li>Case-Western 61</li>
<li>Univ. Chicago 61</li>
<li>NYU 57</li>
<li>CalTech 47</li>
<li>MIT 44</li>
<li>RPI 31</li>
</ol>

<p>A couple of things immediately stand out – first of all, besides having very high levels of entitlement, the top 3 schools on this list also have very low commitments to low-income students. The tech schools have very high commitments to them. </p>

<p>I think this list would likely mirror quite well the experience of students on campus, or a careful observer/applicant visiting. There would, however, be one exception – USC. Someone on another forum asked how it could be that USC could have such a high Pell Grant share, and yet it seemed like ‘everyone was driving a Beemer’ (or some such)? The answer is here: while USC gives financial aid to a relatively small percentage of students (49%) more than half of it goes to Pell Grant recipients – meaning very, very large grants-in-aid to more than a quarter of the student body. In other words, it is likely a bifurcated campus – with very high levels of “entitlement”, and also a very large percentage of low-income students. It might make for very exciting classrooms!</p>

<p>Again, data is just data. Make of it what you will.

</p>

[Hindoo]

<p>Didn’t Antioch close down this year?</p>

[Muffy333]

<p>There are very few true preppies left; and I think we all graduated from college many years ago.</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>totally agree Muffy…probably revealing too much here, but I recall when the disco era hit, I was well positioned for the club scene because the jitterbug was my standard dance mode from prior prepdom the meaning of preppy has most certainly morphed since then.</p>

<p>Hindoo-- yes, I believe Antioch has now closed…heard something about them trying to regroup after bankrupsy, but don’t know where that stands.</p>

[Muffy333]

<p>Papa Chicken - lol, my favorite preppy is Barbara Bush the elder.</p>

[Erin_s_Dad]

<p>Antioch is shutting down while talks continue with an alumni group. The group offered $12.2M for the school’s assets but $6.2M of that was over five years while the school wanted it all up front. The trustees intend to reopen by 2012 or sooner.
[Antioch</a> trustees, alumni agree to discuss plan for shutdown](<a href=“http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/gen/ap/OH_Antioch_Closing.html]Antioch”>http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/gen/ap/OH_Antioch_Closing.html)</p>