I thought about financial aid (lack thereof) also, Carolyn, but discarded it in favour of HS zipcode. Less wealthy kids might "try harder" to keep up with the wealthy ones.
CarolynLawrence wrote: I would suggest including the percentage NOT receiving financial aid as a measure. It would be easy to do from CDS info, and I think true preppiness is intrinsically tied to family wealth. Percentage of full payers would be one indication. Or you could use percentage receiving Pell grants perhaps.
I agree with this, but it also seems that sometimes college students will imitate the values of privilege even if they were not necessarily so themselves. DePauw, for example, had a relatively low number of students entering from private schools yet scored high due to a uniquely strong Greek life score (over 70%). I wanted to account for this, too.
Yes, there are all kinds of caveats to this. Greek organizations can be social, not selective, in their function on campus. Wealthy students don't always go to private school (some, for example, go to publics in wealthy suburbs where the admissions fee amounts to being able to buy a house in the school district). Private school students are not all wealthy, and not all wealthy students adopt the values of privilege. All of this is premised on group tendencies, as are most social statistics. Stereotypes are for fools.
