Canada Geese are often seen roaming Tufts campus — and not just the birds. On a chilled Thursday in February, I counted 27 different people wearing Canada Goose winter jackets. A parka with that logo patch will cost you around $1,000, which means I saw some $27,000 strutting around campus that day.
I also saw a variety of other brands from Uniqlo to Carhartt, Columbia to Patagonia. Some wore beat-up, seemingly secondhand coats; other brave souls wore no winter coats at all. Sure, some of these outerwear choices come down to style. But we can’t ignore the thousand-dollar goose in the room: Our jackets reflect a willingness to pay. This variety in winter apparel is one of the many telling signs of the apparent wealth gap on Tufts campus.
This socioeconomic split is not just speculation; 56% of Tufts students pay full tuition without receiving financial aid, while the other 44% receive an average of over half of their tuition in aid. That’s not to say all of the 56% can easily afford every cent or don’t have financial struggles of their own, but it does mean that there exists a stark difference between the lives students are able to lead both within and outside of these ivory walls.
Take, for example, this hypothetical question: What would you do if you were handed a check for $100 right now?
Personally, I would put it toward my next grocery bill or rent payment. Ryan, a junior at Tufts, said he would pay off some of his student loans. Others would choose the saving route. Tarkan, another junior, stated, “It would sit in my bank account. I wouldn’t use it immediately.” (All students’ last names have been withheld so they could speak more freely about money.)
Sofia, a sophomore, was more focused on the necessities of her internship in the veterinary field. “I would probably put it towards giving my rabies vaccine because it’s $800 dollars and not covered by insurance,” she said.
These answers, while all practical in their own right, reveal how these respondents think about money. Asking for an on-the-spot answer to this question gives away whether or not someone has an expense they need covered at the forefront of their mind.
Tufts is afraid of talking about money. I’ve seen the taboo in my own life; I reserve my money talk for close friends or those with similar financial backgrounds. Sure enough, of the 14 students whom I asked to interview, only three said yes — even with the promise of first-name-only anonymity. However, when asked in an anonymous survey, 29 were willing to respond.
For Tarkan, conversations surrounding money happen only when there is an expense to be split among a group of people, such as groceries or housing bills.
“[I don’t have] casual conversations [about money],” he said. “It’s something you talk with your friends about — I feel like I wouldn’t talk to a random classmate about it.”
In Sofia’s living situation, she gets to see financial discussions between people on both sides of the wealth gap firsthand.
“Two of my roommates are on more opposite ends of the [wealth] spectrum,” she said. “There [are times] where one of my roommates will want to go out and do something or go on a trip, and my other roommate isn’t able to financially do that, which is fine. But sometimes there’s a little bit of tension because of it.”
Ryan, who’s abroad in London right now, drew a comparison between how people talk about money at Tufts versus where he is now.
“Generally, it’s a little bit more difficult to talk about money on the Tufts campus, just because there’s such a wide range of different backgrounds that people are coming from,” he said. “But with my closer friends, it’s a little bit less of an issue.”
He also emphasized that the majority of people he considers close are in a similar financial situation to him (at least, from his vantage point).
Wealth is also comparative, making it all the more sticky. Classes aren’t distinctly drawn social groupings; they’re amorphous and depend on those around us. (Think of how many people designate themselves as “upper middle class.”) It begs a question: Who exactly is rich at Tufts?
I asked all interviewees and respondents of an anonymous survey to place themselves on a scale from 1 to 10: 1 is the least affluent, and 10 is the most. The scale is based on their perception of their socioeconomic status relative to other Tufts students.
Tarkan, who came up with the initial idea of the scale, clarified the importance of bounding the scale to the Tufts population and its wealth distribution rather than that of the entire country or world. He gives himself a 6 on the Tufts wealth scale.
Sofia put herself at around a 6 or a 7, and Ryan did as well — though, as he spends out of his savings while abroad, he currently sees himself at around a 3 or a 4.
For the 29 respondents to the anonymous survey, their numbers ranged from a 2 to an 8. When asked whether they received financial aid, respondents’ answers generally lined up with their placement on the scale. (Aid recipients generally ranked themselves from 2–4; non-aid recipients generally ranked themselves from 5–8.) Interestingly, no respondent was willing to say they were the richest at 9 or 10, or the poorest at 1.
Wealth is also about perception. There are calling cards for richer students, from their name-branded jackets to their elaborate spring break plans, but relying on these metrics could lead to false judgments.
For Sofia, she believes her choice of extracurricular activities skews the way people view her financial situation.
“People think that I’m better off than I am because I ride horses specifically, which is not necessarily true,” she said. “Riding horses is a big financial investment, and that’s not something that you’re able to do without money. But I also think that people think I’m super wealthy because I grew up riding horses, and a lot of it was [that] I worked at the barn and got free lessons.”
From the outside, Sofia doesn’t think her wealth status is a dead giveaway, except for in the winter, when her Tufts Equestrian jacket is the only warm coat she owns.
And coats may not be the perfect tell, either. Three out of the 14 survey respondents on the more affluent side of the scale had jackets that were thrifted or secondhand. And there were some cases — for North Face, Carhartt and Eddie Bauer — where people on both sides of the spectrum repped jackets of the same brand.
Based on clothing and outer appearance, Ryan drew a comparison between Tufts and the school he attends, the London School of Economics and Political Science, which he views as having a “pretty similar” socioeconomic background to Tufts.
“I think at Tufts, there’s a tendency to hide the amount of wealth that you have,” he said. “At [LSE], I think there’s more of a tendency to show it off. People are spending more. … People are going around in designer clothing. It’s definitely a little bit more like showy culture.”
As Ryan understands it, this difference in the displaying of wealth between the two campuses is in part due to the career aspirations of its students. LSE students studying finance may be more willing to flaunt than their liberal arts counterparts.
Sure, a stark financial gap exists on campus. Take The New York Times’ word for it: 19% of Tufts students are in the top 1%, compared to just 2.9% of students in the bottom 20%. But we might have more in common than we think; of the 29 respondents to the survey, a significant majority said they were going home or staying at Tufts for spring break, rather than an extravagant location. So, next time I see a Canada Goose on campus, I won’t run the other way — unless it’s the bird, of course.
