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.