<p>Interesting thread…</p>
<p>I went to college with two guys from extremely wealthy families. One you knew had mucho dinero from the way he talked and acted, the other one you only found out after getting to know him really well, and he never mentioned it.</p>
<p>Much like everything else, I guess it comes down to how they were brought up. Interesting, though, that the two of them did not get along very well and still don’t 30+ years later.</p>
<p>“My roommate’s family owned 600,000 acres in Montana and one of the world’s largest lumber mills. He moved into the dorm with two pair of jeans, two flannel shirts, and a 10 year old Subaru.”</p>
<p>Bandit true, but those were the happy hippie days</p>
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Thank you for saying that - that is the point I was trying to make from the beginning, when I wrote This culture clash between middle class kids and the very rich is a very real issue – however, I don’t think it has much of an impact on the student’s ability to adjust or make friends on campus… I don’t think this should deter your daughter or anyone else from attending an Ivy – but I do think it is something that is very legitimate to think about and to be prepared for." </p>
<p>I’m reiterating this because it seems to me that my posts keep getting misinterpreted, maybe because I’m too wordy that my point gets lost. I just think it’s something to anticipate and prepare for, just like we thought about the fact that it would snow in winter in New York, despited the fact that all the pictures in all the brochures depicted the east coast as being in a state of perpetual spring. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not a problem” would not be a very helpful response.</p>
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That’s true, but as a graduate of public universities, I have to say that there is a difference. It’s like my snow analogy above: my daughter’s experience in New York city is not the same in terms of snow and cold as the experience of kids at Carleton … there’s snow, and then there’s snow. </p>
<p>My primary experience when I went to a public university as a middle income student was in meeting so many students of lesser means – kids from blue collar backgrounds who were working and paying their own way through college. Yes there were rich kids too, but the typical (most common) kid was getting little or no financial support from parents, working, and paying their own way. Yes there were rich kids too – but they were atypical. </p>
<p>You mentioned that at public universities the class differences are often expressed in different living situations – private dorms, differential pricing of dorms, students who live off campus in condos or houses their parents have provided. That’s true: but the net result is that it reduces the “clash” of culture because then the kids from widely disparate circumstances simply don’t encounter one another. The university is a huge place – and if housing options are variable, then that functions as a kind of sorting hat that puts kids of roughly similar economic backgrounds together. </p>
<p>The problem with the elite school, for the lower income kid, is that she feels like she is the only one. Oldfort mentioned that his kids, being polite, know not to say that they “can’t afford” something but to say that they are “too busy”. You’ve noted that there are kids from families who make $250K who truly believe that they are “middle income”. There is a clash there, because what happens in that context is that the affluent kids are clueless. They simply have no idea what it is that the others can’t afford – and instead of there being a group of, say, 4 middle income kids and 1 rich kid (making it likely that the rich one will defer to the preference of the others) – the situation is reversed. The affluent kids in the group are all making plans and it never occurs to them that their friend can’t afford to participate. They may truly think that paying $25 for a meal in a restaurant or $30 for an event ticket is cheap. </p>
<p>I appreciate Oldfort’s childrearing philosophy – but I also think that a kid who tells the others that he is “busy” every time he is invited to participate in something that he can’t afford is soon going to be a kid with no friends, always left out… because the others have interpreted “too busy” as meaning, “Oldfortson doesn’t like hanging out with us - he’s always ‘too busy’ when we ask” … so they will quit asking. </p>
<p>I think there’s a disconnect between the parents who say their kids always say that they consider the needs of the poorest kids in their group and the reality that so many affluent kids are clueless about the challenges faced by kids with limited means. From the perspective of the student with lesser means, it’s embarrassing to always have to speak up or to be perceived as the odd man out every time plans are being made, and a lot easier to focus on finding friends from similar backgrounds than to consistently be walking the line between trying to keep up in the fast lane or always being the spoiler. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that the kids from disparate backgrounds can’t be friends, but it does create a barrier that gets in the way of some friendships.</p>
<p>"You’ve noted that there are kids from families who make $250K who truly believe that they are “middle income”.</p>
<p>The vast majority of the parents are college educated, too. Obviously, their education has failed them yet again.</p>
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<p>But, not if they BELIEVE they can’t afford it. That was the tack we took with out kids. After we “got money”, we always lived well within our means, because we soon learned that spending is a never ending cycle, there is never enough if your contentment comes from what you can buy. We also lived well within our means because we learned starting out, how difficult it is to live on a very modest income, and appreciated the freedom money gave us. We told our kids, no we can’t afford it, A LOT, and often when we actually could afford “it” - spending was not a lesson they needed to learn.</p>
<p>(This was all made easier by the fact the their school requires uniforms, a great equalizer).</p>
<p>Our daughter did not know until she went to college any rough idea of how much we made, and it was made very clear to her that extra spending money had to come from somewhere besides us. We allowed her a modest amount, really only enough for supplies and toiletries, and she has scrounged up the rest working.</p>
<p>Before she left for college, we had a talk about the needs of the poorest kids, as Calmom was describing, and that is when I realized we had done our job too well. I had to explain that she might not be the poorest person there. Of course, her frosh roommate was truly wealthy, so I think she still has suspicions that we are the poorest people around ;)!</p>
<p>Like Bandit, I have a D at Harvard. And like Calmom, I thought it would be important to be prepared for culture clash when our graduate of a rural, public, Title I (low-income service area) high school integrated into the Harvard student body. I have to say that the egalitarianism of the campus culture there has been a major surprise to me. Yes, my D can tell stories of flamboyantly wealthy classmates who can afford all kinds of indulgences. The surprise is that such things seem to be a curiosity to her and her colleagues, but not at all a press or an expectation of the culture. The student body is in general the most diverse gathering of young people I have ever seen. And the value placed upon that diversity has clearly been sold to the undergraduates. More than at any other campus I know, the culture there seems to expect from its participants an appreciation of the differences in its midst as one of its key assets. In recent years, the attraction of economic diversity has been an overt mission of Harvard’s admissions process, and that seems to be appreciated as much as ethnic or national diversity. These differences will exist at many schools; its the campus attitude about that difference that determines how it will impact the students. I feel very safe in stating that the snobbishness and class conciousness that my D has experienced at Harvard (if in fact, she believes she’s experienced any) pales in comparison to what I experienced at a private southern university in the '70s.</p>
<p>Oh and I posted after Mini, I know what middle income is, and I gre up around poor. Very few of truly poor kids will ever make to any of the 4 year colleges discussed on these forums. They aren’t just uncomfortable, they may feel that they have landed on a different planet, because their lives and concerns are so different than their classmates’.
There are bound to be some uncomfortable situations, as well as some insensitive people, the question is how common is it, how is it handled and do the more wealthy kids learn from their surroundings.</p>
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<p>No, I did not. Go back and read the posts. Hint: the author’s name starts with an H.</p>
<p>EDIT: deleting further comments.</p>
<p>Like calmom’s snow analogy–there’s snow and then there’s SNOW. There is wealth and then there is WEALTH. According to the IRS, I guess we are wealthy. But my son had never been exposed to WEALTH until he went to college. No one he grew up with had second homes; very, very few had ever traveled outside the US and many not outside the state; “top” designer clothes were Abercrombie; we do our own yard and house work and do not belong to country clubs. Then he went to school and found out people went to the Bahamas for a long weekend, dropped a hundred bucks on an informal date meal, wore coordinated work-out “outfits” to the gym and wondered why he didn’t have sport coats at school to wear to class.</p>
<p>Of course, this has made him rebel even more–he wants to wear his most stained undershirts to the gym, carries his middle school backpack, wears his Timberlands from 9th grade and for a function he needed a sport coat–went to Goodwill and got one for $1.50.</p>
<p>Now all this is surprising to me as in high school he was voted “best dressed” as one of his superlatives—guess he only wants to do it if he doesn’t feel like he “has” to. Hey, not complaining–more of his money stays in his savings;).</p>
<p>Mkm: Where does your son go to school where men wear sports coats to class? I know of a couple of boys in my entire school who do that. </p>
<p>What is he rebelling against, though? Besides that comment about dressing up to class, which is just weird, I don’t see where those students did anything that would make him want to move toward the opposite. Wealthy students are wrong when they automatically find fault with those who don’t have as much money (though I don’t believe anyone on this thread has mentioned anything like this, just ignorance of different people’s income levels), but the reverse is true, as well–I’m not saying that’s true in your son’s case, Mkm, just making a point. There is a backlash against wealth on many campuses which is what causes wealthy students to play down money or hide their wealth, as a few past posters have mentioned. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more flamboyantly rich students are reacting in part to that backlash.</p>
<p>He is at Wake. And not many wear coats to class–but some of the frats require coats on certain days of the week and some guys just wear them. I think he is “rebelling” (maybe not the right word) against everyone looking/dressing the same–I’m not up on these labels but I guess certain brand jeans, particular brands of polos and sweaters, etc. I pointed out to him that I thought the kids (other than the ones in sport coats) all looked pretty average–obviously I am clueless to what $300 jeans look like–they could have been from Walmart as far as I could tell. But I guess students notice these things.</p>
<p>I guess I should add that these things don’t bother him–it’s just different from anything he experienced in the past. The things that have bothered him at school have nothing to do with anyone’s wealth or lack of wealth–they have been issues with individuals’ sense of superiority (which does not correlate with family income).</p>
<p>My daughter attended public school magnet programs in California. She is now a junior at Yale. To answer the original question, I think your student would be comfortable at Yale. My daughter has friends who are on full financial aid and friends who come from priviledged backgrounds. During her freshman year, her suite contained girls who were upper class and girls who had grown up in very poor neighborhoods and they all got along very well. She has best friends on both ends of the spectrum. There is a bit of culture shock for a California public school kid who lands in an East Coast Ivy League environment, but it’s not because of individual socioeconomic differences. It’s just a different culture. I think the biggest adjustment was not social, but realizing that the playing field between a public school education, no matter how good, and a top prep school preparation was not exactly level. However, the playing field levels pretty quickly. Of course, the kids are aware of differences in their backgrounds, whether it’s economic or religous or ethnic, but it’s enriching rather than polarizing – at least it has been in her experience.</p>
<p>mkm56 - That’s the same campus I was at in the '70s. And don’t get me wrong - I loved it and I’m a loyal alumnus! But I don’t pick up on anything near that level of conformity expectation or income awareness from my daughter’s experience up north.</p>
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If he’s making an effort to rebel, then it must be bothering him. Stained undershirts? Yuk! That’s kind of “in your face,” don’t you think? Very different from not really caring what others wear & dressing the way he wants.</p>
<p>I think it is reasonable to expect a class consciousness or status pecking order in every walk of life. But not everyone buys into it or gives a hoot. What a high school kid handled effortlessly will be magnified in a year round residential setting. I’d certainly think it’s important to make kids aware of the wide range of backgrounds they’ll face in elite schools, on either end of the income scale. Some kids will be receiving Pell grants. Some kids’ families set up the foundation. And until you get to know someone, you have no idea if his socio-economic class is his central focus or just one small part of his core nature.</p>
<p>No, I don’t think it’s really “in their face”. That’s the way he dresses to work out here at local gym–his attitude is that he’s there for a serious work-out, not a fashion statement. Why mess up good Tshirts and shorts–just keep the same 7 “sets” and wear them until they fall apart.</p>