Higher Education Commons^™

Among Friends? Classed Navigations Of An Elite Social Scene (Psa Paper), Megan Thiele

Faculty Publications, Sociology

Both class and racial status matter for establishing connections within a university setting and peer groups exert a heavy influence on the thoughts and actions of students (Flores-Gonzalez 2002). This research assesses socialization patterns across these demographic cleavages, in part by showing how students encounter and react to the dominant culture of exclusivity at an elite, private university. Recent quantitative research has evidenced the undergraduate experience as the “great equalizer,” by showing that the effects of class background across five measures disappear for students who attain a Bachelor’s degree (Torche 2011). However, if disadvantaged students are unable to fit in …