These names just sound odd and/or ugly to me: Gonzaga, Goucher, Pitt, Gustavus Adohphus, DePauw, Hofstra, Hiram, Hobart and William Smith, All of the Loyolas because there’s just so many of them, Moravian, Oglethorpe, Salve Regina, Soka, Fairleigh-Dickinson, Ithaca, and Pitzer (it sounds so ugly and pharmaceutical).
Two schools that sound beautiful to me (but I have no idea if they are beautiful at all): University of Redlands (ah, timeless), and Sewanee: University of the South (I can practically see Spanish moss dripping from the trees. I hope there actually is some!). Pepperdine also sounds good to my ear (but I know nothing about it).
Someone beat me to it…Harvey Mudd. But at least they have fun with it. I don’t see it often but I’ve seen brochures that state “Our name is Mudd” and students are called Mudders. But my favorite is as a mom…I am called a “Mudder’s Mudder”.
“College of the Siskiyous” - I always loved that name. Whenever I hear it an image of students walking around campus dressed like Paul Bunyan pops into my head. On top of that, it’s located in Weed, California.
When I was a kid there was a school in Pennsylvania called “Beaver College”. That got enough laughs among adolescents that they changed it.
Susquehanna. nobody pronounces it right. And it’s in Selinsgove, PA - nobody pronounces the name of the town right, either! (I still love the school, and that’s where my youngest is going next year.)
My daughter’s school, Willamette… is not pronounced how you think it is, unless you live in/know Oregon. Emphasis on the middle syllable: WillAMit, rhymes with Damnit. Not that it’s a bad name, just… different.
Oh, and on school names that sound alike… my daughter kept getting recruited by Augustana. Except their emails often didn’t even say where they were, which maybe if you are a small, not especially famous school in the midwest and you are recruiting on the west coast, you might want to at least mention… and especially if there are 2 of them - mention which one you are.
Fun semi-related Loyolas fact: Loyola U in Chicago got to keep the short name Loyola U, but Loyola MD got the url “loyola.edu”
There are also too many Wesleyans.
And UNew Haven is confusing because its logo is UNH, which is also New Hampshire’s flagship university. It’s the USC problem, but at least people have differentiated between those two with USC and U of SC.
Case Western used to be two separate colleges - Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, They merged, and Case Western Reserve University became the new name.
Every time I see someone mention St. Olaf, my mind goes to Betty White’s character Rose Nylund. I have wondered if any parents have been influenced by this. Doesn’t exactly inspire thoughts of “higher education.”
Some confusions were mentioned—surprised nobody’s pointed out (unless I simply missed them reading through the thread) Cornell College (of Mt Vernon, Iowa) and Georgetown College (of Georgetown, Kentucky).
