Analyzing the Cultural Dimensions of Elite Educational Centers Based on the Ego and Alter Dynamics

National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET) schools, known as SAMPAD in Iran, a main pillar of policy making in elite education and training during the last three decades, has expanded and attracted a wide range of talented students from around Iran.The current studyseeks to investigatevarious cultural dimensions of SAMPAD community of students/alumni, based on the Internet corpus .In this regard and by using cultural semiotics as method, the theoretical framework has been organized on the basis of the Cultural Dimension Theory (Geert Hofstede et al., 2012).In addition, thedynamism of SAMPAD semiotic components in the context of the relationship/opposition between Ego and Alter (non-SAMPAD) provides access to some important cultural properties. Accordingly, a SAMPAD student Group in Facebook, which is the largest group dedicated to SAMPAD in social networks and has more than 21900 members, was selected for sampling.From the perspective of semiotic analysis, in regard to the historical objectivesof SAMPADeducational institutions and the necessity ofrecognizing various identities derived from it, the binary opposition Barbarous/Hellenism plays a crucial role in creating SAMPAD community. In this context, individualism, masculinity,power distance, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation are considered to be the dominantculturaldimensions of SAMPAD's identity.