If anything, the difference is that in New York, the prep-school students are not likely to play pickup ball with the kids from Bed-Stuy.

As part of a plea agreement after being arrested for writing graffiti themselves, five prep-school students have pledged to spend 120 hours each cleaning up the barriers and other spots in town.

Henry Bowman was in the final stages of that ritual common to prep-school students in the summer preceding their senior year: The College Visiting Trip.

Adds Chuck Starr, a 17-year-old prep-school student: 'I'm the No. 1 male groupie in the United States.

Ironically, Dunphy finds that his fellow prep-school students merely represent a wealthier, more polished class of delinquent than the friends he has left at home.

It is the scene in which a prep-school student arrested for drug possession, ticks off her academic and athletic achievements to a disbelieving social worker.

The F.B.I. operative is dressed in a blue blazer and striped tie; he's like some prep-school student seated in front of a particularly invidious headmaster.

In it Mr. Jackson portrays a refined prep-school student returning on a vacation from New England to his New York ghetto neighborhood.

But why not compare apples and apples: the average upper-middle-class child in Bangalore with the average prep-school student in America?

He berates Charlie, the nervous prep-school student hired to care for him, then unexpectedly whisks the young man off to New York for Thanksgiving weekend.