Find two more graphics below. Courtesy of Liam O’Connor.
Almost 60 percent of Shapiro Prize recipients from the Classes of 2019 and 2020 weren’t members of an eating club, a Tory investigation can reveal. Only 41 percent of upperclassmen overall forgo “The Street.” Winners are 40 percent more likely than their peers to be on an independent meal plan.
The Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence recognizes the top 3 percent of each class for “outstanding academic achievement” in the freshman and sophomore years. Residential College deans and the Office of the Dean of the College select students based on a combination of their grades and their courses’ breadth and depth. Many of them have perfect GPAs.
The Tory acquired winners’ names from past commencement programs and eating club membership rosters from Princeton’s meal exchange website. The list of recipients isn’t published until eight months after students learn that they’ve won, so this investigation presents the most recent publicly available results. Those who won two Shapiro Prizes weren’t counted twice in the tally.
Sign-in eating clubs had about two times as many winners as bicker clubs. Colonial Club had the most with 15. Students in this club composed five percent of all upperclassmen but ten percent of prize recipients.
Tower Club came in second at 13 and Quadrangle Club third at 11. One in eight members of Quad received a Shapiro Prize, while one in ten at Colonial and Charter Club did the same.
Tiger Inn, Ivy Club, University Cottage Club, and Cannon Dial Elm Club combined had fewer than five prize winners, which was less than any single other eating club.
Groups that “feed” these clubs’ memberships are one cause of this disparity The Daily Princetonian reported last year that TI, Ivy, Cottage, and Cannon had some of the highest rates of varsity athlete representation on Prospect Avenue. Only one of the prize winners in the Classes of 2019 and 2020 played a varsity sport.
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