Ranking List Most Schools Don’t Want to Be on: 25 Most Expensive US Schools by Business Insider

[AustenNut]

I think we’re likely in agreement on this, @Blossom (as seen in my initial post quoted below where I’ve bolded the parts about flagships for emphasis).

@AustenNut

That said, however, if a person who cared a lot about keeping up with the Joneses attended a non-flagship public U. or a private that was not a Top X + a good number of schools, I doubt they would be seeing quite the economic distribution as those that attend a school that is one of the 75 most expensive in the U.S. and thus would be less likely to be gunning for the pinnacle of consumerism that they might aim for at a school with folks who have more conspicuous consumption.

@momofboiler1

I don’t think you can make any generalizations based on cost. I know first hand schools that aren’t on this list that feel way more “country club-ish” than some of these schools. Throw in greek life and you can get some very polarized socioeconomic distribution at many schools.

I’m in general agreement with this in terms of making generalizations based on high sticker prices, though I think that schools (excluding flagships) with low sticker prices generally have much less of a “country club-ish” feel.

It’s one of the reasons why I specified non-flagships, because most of the instances of publics attracting lots of wealthy families via merit are generally the flagships. I can’t really think of many non-flagships that have been successful at attracting significant numbers of very wealthy families, though I’m happy to learn about any such instances.