Princeton University Top Questions

No. I KNOW that you can find people of these stereotypes at any and every school. These people exist at Princeton, but they are by no means in the majority. I have been thrilled by the number of interesting, mature, artistic, and extremely friendly people at Princeton.

There are some of these people at Princeton, and they fit the stereotype hilariously. But as you could probably guess, not everyone fits into these categories.

Like all stereotypes, yes and no.

There is a kernal of truth to this. And it seems that students start conforming more to the stereotype as they get older and enter the eating clubs, where the preppy attitude/look is usually encouraged.

Princeton is, I hear, the wealthiest per capita (per family) in the Ivy League, and that segment of students (and their mystique) lend the social atmosphere a strange exclusivity. Most of that exclusivity, though, is artificial. Differences in intelligence, beauty, social status, popularity between the various "classes" of Princeton students seem quite trivial to me, despite the stereotypes. Some find it hard to find normal friends here. I think it's relatively simple, as long as you can find a good student group, and peers with similar interests and goals. If you can't find a group like that, you may be out of luck socially.

To some degree; they apply to a good number of students but not nearly all

There's definitely a select circle of Princeton that is very interested in social climbing and networking, and will probably go from being privileged college kids to rich stock brokers. That said, there's also a huge group of incredibly thoughtful and interesting people that want to learn about the world and make it a better place. Princeton can provide a lot of opportunity, it just depends what you do with it, and people do some very different things. For every pretentious prepster, there are two intense academics and three interesting, normal people.

While I definitely have met a fair share of wealthy prepsters and rocket scientists, there's definitely more to Princeton than just that. The University's generous financial aid policy allows kids from all socio-economic backgrounds the opportunity to enjoy an ivy league education. We do tend to generally be a studious group, but we also know how to have a good time.

In some ways, yes, but in other ways, no. There are many parts of Princeton that encourage an elitist culture- primarily the eating clubs. I was on the whole disappointed with the amount of elitism that i saw, primarily through the eating clubs, but i've also found many people who were more accepting and open-minded than i have encountered anywhere else. I've encountered more very wealthy students at Princeton than anywhere else, but I've also encountered many students who were not at all rich, since Princeton gives such good financial aid. I would say that while Princeton has more wealthy students than most other schools, it's definitely not just rich kids. On the whole, Princeton was less diverse than i would have hoped. However, as long as i tried to hang out with different people and attend a variety of events (rather than just going to the eating clubs for example), i was able to find a lot of different types of people. So while the stereotypes are true to an extent, they aren't really if you take a deeper look.

No, there is definitely a wide range of people throughout campus. You can always find the type of people you're looking for. While there may be some people who exhibit these qualities, let's be honest... they exist on almost every campus. One advantage Princeton has is that there are so many students from all over the world.

Those people exist, but so do lots of other kinds of people. I think Princeton doesn't have a lot of socioeconomic diversity, but you'll certainly find students with a spectrum of backgrounds and views.

People are generally well dressed which I actually find extremely nice. The vast majority of students are liberal although there is a conservative stronghold on campus, which is also very nice. It provides great balance and support for the minority of students.

On the whole, I would say these stereotypes are inaccurate. Are there people who are preppy, wealthy, and elitist? Yes, but what Ivy League school or any major college in America doesn't? Princeton is definitely not conservative, though we do seem to be more politically apathetic than maybe some of our liberal peer schools. Princeton is way too diverse and has way too good of a financial aid program to be stereotyped as white and rich. I'm willing to bet that for the average applicant to Princeton, Princeton will be much more ethnically, geographically, and socioeconomically diverse than his or her high school. More than 50{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the student body is on financial aid, and I believe Princeton has the highest proportion of African-American students among the Ivy League. However, it's true Princeton students are smart. Some are huge nerds, and some are extremely hard workers. Everyone here is a hardworker for the most part, and I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that Princeton students are generally very intelligent, hardworking, and high achieving Type A people.

All of them are true of some Princeton students, but certainly not all--Princeton is actually incredibly diverse in absolutely every way. But 75{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the campus still wears Northface fleeces and rainbow flip flops.

Not everyone is freakishly smart by any means. There is a ton of money on campus - I'm not sure how many people at state schools can start rattling off names of heirs who are their classmates - but just because you are wealthy doesn't mean you are snobby. Most people on campus are nice and not snobby. It's a few people who can give the place a bad rep, but you find that everywhere.

There are many spoiled rich white kids and nerds are Princeton, but that does mean everyone fits that stereotype. There are many people who can't believe that some of my friends and I went to Princeton. Obviously, for a variety of reasons, we don't fit that stereotype.

If a stereotype had no accuracy, it wouldn't be a stereotype. Princeton is a university that houses some of the most privileged children in America. Are they all a bunch of pricks? Definitely not.

As with any stereotype, they came about for a reason, but I would say that the stereotypes of Princeton hold no more weight than the stereotypes of other institutions. Yes we have a lot of preppy kids, yes people are pretentious, yes most of the engineers are Asian, but that happens.

I did not feel that the students were pretentious overall, however, there definitely were groups of people that were elitist. Also, I only felt like people were competitive in certain classes, namely introductory classes for pre-meds. Overall, I thought that students were really helpful and were willing to work together to complete assignments and to study for tests.

While the stereotype definitely holds true for a good portion of the students here, it certainly does not define everyone. The type of person you're going to find mainly depends on what social circles you interact with- and those circles are generally quite distinct with little overlap.