Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read the whole thread so these might be repetitive, but: Princeton, maybe Dartmouth (but it's also pretty outdoorsy), Duke, Georgetown?, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Middlebury (also outdoorsy), Davidson, Hamilton, Trinity in CT, Colgate, UVA, Chapel Hill, BC, Sewanee. There are more, of course, but this is what comes to mind.

I'm not too sure about Chapel Hill. My nephew chose it over UVA, because it was more hipstery. He actually thought UVA was more preppy than Duke.

Tarheel and native Virginian here. I concur with your nephew's assessments which I also had 15 years ago and contributed to me picking UNC over UVA (which is still an excellent school, but wasn't the right atmosphere for me). It's not universally as preppy as UVA by any stretch.

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Anonymous wrote:Georgetown, Boston College, Alabama, UVA, Princeton, Wake Forest

Um, no.

Boston College is Catholic preppy.

That is a contradiction in terms.

Don't tell the Columbia Country Club set!

The P is WASP pretty much makes it antithetical to Catholic

Being from the south, is there really much of a difference between Catholics with money vs protestants with money? Of course, most of the Catholics I've known have families who came from Ireland over two hundred years ago.

Yes.

Catholics are not preppy.

There is a particularly Bostonian pride in proclaiming one's Irish Catholic heritage, even--maybe especially?--among the preppy crowd.

Boston "Irish" Catholic preppy is a whole subset of its own. I don't know if it exists outside of Boston, but it certainly does there.

I encountered a sizeable prep population at both Boston College and Harvard (undergrad and grad). BC also has a significant upper middle class Catholic faction, and I didn't see this at Harvard, but preppy "Irish" Catholics abound in the Boston area. (I put "Irish" in quotes because many of these people are not of 100% Irish heritage, but it is fashionable in their set to emphasize the whole shamrocks and Irish "family names" theme).

The term prep / preppy derives from preparatory schools, not WASPs. There are Catholic preparatory schools (Georgetown Prep comes to mind ) and it's hard to argue it's not a "preppy" school.

WASP refers to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Technically this includes the hillbillies of West Virginia as well as the old East Coast Episcopalian / Congregationalist / Presbyterian establishment. I'm aware that WASP was invented by a Philadelphia writer named Digby Baltzell in reference to a stratum of affluent old money Philadelphia families who made up the city's establishment - both Episcopalians and Quakers. The reality is that WASPs were never as so monolithic or rigid a group of people (plenty of old money American families listed in the old social visiting books and members of the various clubs and residents of the preferred areas were of German, Dutch, Danish, Irish heritage - and more commonly a blend of all northern European backgrounds) and the term really referred to a set of values and lifestyle practiced by a particular stratum of Americans.

While Catholics were certainly quietly discriminated against, you also found cases such as old Catholic families like the Carrolls of Maryland, who were "accepted." Or the Creole families of Louisiana. It really came down to how ethnically Catholic you were. (I once knew someone who referred to herself as WASC - white, anglo-saxon Catholic for her family were one of the original Maryland Catholic families, and they'd always been members of the major Baltimore clubs and institutions).

To reiterate, preppy is not so perfectly synonymous with WASP that it cannot be used to refer to people of Catholic backgrounds or, especially these days, non-white backgrounds. Preppy is a lifestyle moniker and has always been (not all graduates of prep schools are "preppies," for example).

Anonymous wrote:

Catholics are not preppy.

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Anonymous wrote:Georgetown, Boston College, Alabama, UVA, Princeton, Wake Forest

Um, no.

Boston College is Catholic preppy.

That is a contradiction in terms.

Don't tell the Columbia Country Club set!

The P is WASP pretty much makes it antithetical to Catholic

Being from the south, is there really much of a difference between Catholics with money vs protestants with money? Of course, most of the Catholics I've known have families who came from Ireland over two hundred years ago.

Yes.

Catholics are not preppy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read the whole thread so these might be repetitive, but: Princeton, maybe Dartmouth (but it's also pretty outdoorsy), Duke, Georgetown?, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Middlebury (also outdoorsy), Davidson, Hamilton, Trinity in CT, Colgate, UVA, Chapel Hill, BC, Sewanee. There are more, of course, but this is what comes to mind.

I'm not too sure about Chapel Hill. My nephew chose it over UVA, because it was more hipstery. He actually thought UVA was more preppy than Duke.

There's a kind of pervasive prep vibe about UVA, whereas Duke has pockets of frats and extreme douchebaggery, along with a lot of less preppy Mid-Atlantic kids. Chapel Hill is more like a Big 10 school, although it's in the ACC.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown, Boston College, Alabama, UVA, Princeton, Wake Forest

Um, no.

Boston College is Catholic preppy.

That is a contradiction in terms.

Don't tell the Columbia Country Club set!

The P is WASP pretty much makes it antithetical to Catholic

Being from the south, is there really much of a difference between Catholics with money vs protestants with money? Of course, most of the Catholics I've known have families who came from Ireland over two hundred years ago.

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read the whole thread so these might be repetitive, but: Princeton, maybe Dartmouth (but it's also pretty outdoorsy), Duke, Georgetown?, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Middlebury (also outdoorsy), Davidson, Hamilton, Trinity in CT, Colgate, UVA, Chapel Hill, BC, Sewanee. There are more, of course, but this is what comes to mind.

I'm not too sure about Chapel Hill. My nephew chose it over UVA, because it was more hipstery. He actually thought UVA was more preppy than Duke.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown, Boston College, Alabama, UVA, Princeton, Wake Forest

Um, no.

Boston College is Catholic preppy.

That is a contradiction in terms.

Don't tell the Columbia Country Club set!

The P is WASP pretty much makes it antithetical to Catholic

I haven't read the whole thread so these might be repetitive, but: Princeton, maybe Dartmouth (but it's also pretty outdoorsy), Duke, Georgetown?, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Middlebury (also outdoorsy), Davidson, Hamilton, Trinity in CT, Colgate, UVA, Chapel Hill, BC, Sewanee. There are more, of course, but this is what comes to mind.

College of Charleston. Sewanee. SMU.

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Anonymous wrote:Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet, but Miami, OH.

"Not sure???" Damn, talk about lazy. All you had to do was read the page before to see that this was discussed.

Yes, it was posted over three years ago, on 09/19/2013 23:24

Anonymous wrote:Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet, but Miami, OH.

"Not sure???" Damn, talk about lazy. All you had to do was read the page before to see that this was discussed.

Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet, but Miami, OH.

Bowdoin, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Colgate, Trinity, Hamilton

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams IS remote. Its a one street town...ugh last I checked that is pretty remote. Its nothing but mountains all around it, beautiful but absolutely isolated, and on visits you will sometimes hear the kids say that was something that helped make their decision, so you have to WANT that kind of environment.

MY DS wants remote. He loves it. We're looking at Wiliams for that reason. I'm glad to hear that it's not too preppy. DS is at private school but isn't even remotely preppy. He just likes the outdoors and is an excellent student, and wants to be around other smart kids. But if your kid wants urban, Williams is going to kill him/her. It's very pretty, though. I don't think I could stand it, but I'm a NYC gal. I always thought of it as very preppy, though.

Look at Dartmouth. Preppy and Greek, but about half of the students are not. My black, progressive daughter is very happy there because she loves the outdoor.All the kids are very bright, and many are very creative thinkers.