Peer Crowd Affiliations In College Essay

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Peer relationships play a crucial role in different aspects of college students’ lives in the United States and other parts of the world. Brown et al. (1990) defined peer crowds as “reputation based collectives of similarly stereotyped individuals who may or may not spend much time together” (p. 177). Peer crowds have benefits such as promoting the development of an individual’s identity or self- concept and facilitating social interactions (Brown et al., 1994). Peer crowds also help in the development of friendships and provide social support (Brown, Eicher, & Petrie, 1986).
Hopmeyer & Medovoy (2017) highlighted that a few researchers have used peer crowds common in adolescence to evaluate the relationship between peer crowd affiliations in college and students’ risk taking behaviors (Sessa, 2007;Stapleton, Turissi, & Hillhouse, …show more content…

They identified peer crowds in college which were classified under four dimensions which are social, athletic, scholastic, and counterculture. These dimensions describe the main aspects of college campuses in North America (Hopmeyer & Medovoy, 2017). These areas include sporting, intellectual, social, and cultural pursuits (Hopmeyer & Medovoy, 2017). Individuals who reported self- identification with the social dimension were more interested in the recreational and interpersonal aspects of college, for example the ‘Partiers’ or the ‘Greeks’ while individuals who participated in sports and identified themselves as ‘Jocks’ or ‘Athletes’ were associated with the athletic dimension (Hopmeyer & Medovoy, 2017). The scholastic dimension comprised of individuals oriented towards academics, politics, culture, and environmental issues in college, for example ‘Foreign Exchange’, ‘Academic’, ‘Ethnic’ (Hopmeyer &

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