Looking ahead - LACs vs. small universities

JHS
Thu, 08 May 2008 15:30:21 +0000

Re preppiness: As a lifelong preppie, I can tell you that (a) “preppie” means different things to different people, and covers a lot more ground than many people imagine, (b) “preppie” means different things at Northwestern and Georgetown than at, say, DePauw university, or Choate, (c) there are tons of undergraduates at the University of Chicago who went to prep schools, and (d) yes, on any reasonable definition Northwestern and Georgetown are at the very least “preppier” than Chicago, even though Chicago may actually have a similar or higher percentage of prep school alumni.

It’s important to recognize, however, that you can’t exactly project from 9th grade to age 20 with any precision. People who are socially uncomfortable at 14 or 15 may be very different by the time they are 19 or 20 [raises hand], and people whose intellectual interests seem limited to A&F vs. J. Crew at 14 or 15 somehow manage to become intelligent, capable adults. Kids sort themselves out a lot when they go to college, but not with any huge degree of precision, and practically any decent college (by which I mean hundreds of them) is likely to have plenty of students who are enough like any other particular student to qualify as potential friends/colleagues.