In the 1930s and 1940s, the Roper did a series of surveys for Fortune magazine that covered a wide range of topics. One of them involved views of college students. People were given a list of words, and asked to "pick the three or four that best describe your idea of what the average college student is actually like. (By that I don't mean what they should be). " Here is the list, rearranged so that it's in order of most to least frequently picked.
Intelligent 47%
Ambitious 41%
Well-informed 33%
Well-mannered 29%
Hard-working 26%
Democratic 21%
Time-wasting 12%
Snobbish 9%
Radical 9%
Conservative 8%
Soft 6%
Hard-drinking 5%
Over-worked 3%
Immoral 3%
Views were very favorable--"ambitious" could be seen as either positive or negative, but all of the other top choices were unambiguously positive. Unfortunately, the Roper/Fortune series came to an end in 1949, and that's the only time the question was asked.
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