The Official Preppy Handbook, 1980 (Archival Information)
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Anonymous
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"The College of Your Choice"
The Top Ten Princeton Hamilton U of Virginia St. Lawrence Babson Hampden-Sydney Lake Forest Sweet Briar Hollins Pine Manor (SATs N.A.) The Runners Up Amherst Reed Williams Georgetown Colorado College Trinity (CT) Colby Vassar Connecticut College Wheaton (MA) Note: While these schools appeared alphabetically in the original, they’re listed above in order of the included SAT profiles for an indication of how these colleges may have changed across time. |
Anonymous
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Love this! Super dated, but love to see how things have evolved.
What would this list look like in 2025? |
Anonymous
| ...and somehow, against all odds, hampden-Sydney survives! Churning out well behaved chubby boys for the past 200 years! |
Anonymous
What a disturbing thing to say. |
Anonymous
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Um, this book was humor.
Those rankings were supposedly of the “preppiest” schools, not the best schools. It was meant to be funny! I was in college at the time and we all thought it was a very funny book- almost as funny as the movie “Animal House,” which is also comedy. |
Anonymous
| I have my original copy somewhere. The second tier was the second tier because those people were actually going to have to work in school and wanted to, so they were not quite prep enough for lightweight Skip and Muffy. |
Anonymous
I had to look it up. I honestly had no idea all men’s colleges existed. Never crossed my mind. |
Anonymous
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So funny. I knew a guy whose photo was in it. It was a joke and yet we were all quite serious about layering lacoste shirts one over the other.
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Anonymous
| I'm surprised Dartmouth isn't on the original list. |
Anonymous
Good job missing the whole point of the book, I guess |
Anonymous
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I surprised that Reed was ever on the list. I do know preppies who went there but they were the serious druggies who dropped out to follow the Dead and are now carpenters in Oregon.
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Anonymous
| The book was mostly humor. |
Anonymous
Sweet Briar and Hollins were dumb rich girls Hampden-Sydney - dumb rich boys They were never known to be academic. You realize the Preppy Handbook was about what kids wore on campus, etc |
Anonymous
I had an original copy and it was my bible 
But it was never meant to have anything to do with academics for crying out loud. It was tennis and finishing and boarding schools and Speery topsides, monograms, LL Bean duck boots, duck phones, etc Sweet Briar almost shut down completely from lack of funds and enrollment lags. Hopkins is all female too. Let me guess : you are the same poster that turned to Vogue magazine for a historical article on “prestige” colleges (a fashion magazine) and now are going to a preppy parody book. I suggest you look for academic literature. |
Anonymous
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Hey OP:
The author of the Handbook went to Brown. |