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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just discovered this forum today and out of curiosity searched up what ''DC Urban Moms and Dads" had to say about my alma mater - Bowdoin. While gratifyingly, most reviews are glowing (and I can attest to the wonderful education & career outcome I received!), it was to my great surprise to find that it is apparently viewed as a tier below this so-called 'WASP' collection of schools.

Not salty at all, just very confused - in all my years on this planet, I have NEVER heard 'WASP' referenced. And I work among many graduates of such schools and volunteer to interview Bowdoin applicants every year (I ask them about what other schools they are considering)!

Hence my question: how long has this 'WASP' grouping existed, and is it even meaningful?

I confess that I may just be ignorant because I come from a California public school background and did my college search independently without referencing any online forums (just went down US News LAC list and did research on each school). I was the only kid in my HS class to apply to LACs and college counselor/immigrant parents only knew Ivy League/UCs etc, so nobody around me had any idea either.

I do recognize that Williams & Amherst are consistently #1/2 in the rankings, but I had always thought Swarthmore/Pomona were more or less equivalent to Bowdoin. The year I applied to college, Pomona & Bowdoin were tied and I don't think Bowdoin has ever fallen out of the top 6-7 LACs... so I guess if you would want to rephrase, my question is.. are S/P truly perceived as qualitatively 'better' than B? Or does did WASP arise simply because it is a funny (and somewhat fitting) acronym?

FWIW in recent years there seems to have appeared a new 'official' association called 'Six Colleges' that includes WASP + Bowdoin and Carleton, so why aren't people using that?

Answers appreciated! And in exchange, I suppose I can answer any questions you people may have for a young-ish Bowdoin graduate. [/quote]

It's recent and people enjoy the term WASP in relation to SLACs because of white anglo-saxon protestant[/quote]

Here’s what ChatGPT has to say:

📌 Earliest Online Mentions (2000s)
College Confidential forums (2005): One of the earliest easily findable instances on the public web of “WASP” meaning Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona appears in a College Confidential thread from July 2005 where a user explicitly defines the acronym that way.

College Confidential Forums
Urban Dictionary entry (circa 2004): Urban Dictionary contains a definition (by a user) that lists WASP as this grouping of top liberal arts colleges, dated November 21, 2004 (according to the posting date shown on the UD site).

Urban Dictionary
These two examples suggest that this collegial usage circulated informally (especially online) at least as early as the mid-2000s.

📌 Other Early Instances & Community Use
College Confidential glossary references (recent but discussing older culture): Some compilations of acronyms list WASP for Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, indicating it’s been part of online admissions-forum vocabulary for a while. 
talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com

Online discussion boards: Reddit threads going back to the 2010s and 2020s show the term widely understood in the college admissions community as referring to those four schools, but they generally do not cite an origin date earlier than the 2000s.

Reddit
📌 What Isn’t Evident from the Records
There do not appear to be documented uses of the “WASP” college acronym before the early internet / forum era (i.e., before the 2000s) in any major published material searchable online.

There also doesn’t seem to be a known official origin (e.g., coined by a magazine or college guide) identified in the searchable record — this use seems to have emerged organically in online communities.
[/quote]

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