Colleges with best/worst names

College Search & Lists
1041

<p>Adding to my previous post, I personally think that all of the Claremont colleges have atrocious names. Nothing personal against the schools themselves - the names are just ugly.</p>

1042

<p>Defiance College.</p>

1043

<p>Best: Furman University (FU, I’ve always wanted one of their shirts) used to be called Furman University of Christian Knights as folklore would have it.</p>

<p>I don’t like Swarthmore. They say it like Swurthmore, and that r before the th is just annoying.</p>

1044

<ol>
<li> Chapman University -------> Sounds like a terrible case of dry, chapped lips.</li>
<li> Vassar College -------> Again, like Chapman, it sounds like Vaseline on a chapped body part.</li>
<li> Bard College at Simon’s Rock -------> Sounds like an SNL Thanksgiving parody of the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock.</li>
<li> Cal Tech -------> Sounds like a vocational/pseudo technological school.</li>
<li> Full Sail University ------ > 'nuff said.</li>
</ol>

1045

<p>I’ll just go through the top 50 on US News rankings:</p>

<p>Best: Princeton (bar none! Sounds royal, sophisticated, prestigious…), Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (I like the Chapel Hill part of the name :p), Wellesley, Amherst, Vassar, Macalester, Whitman, Dickinson </p>

<p>Worst: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Case Western Reserve University, Occidental, Lehigh, Pennsylvania State University–University Park, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Grinnell, Colgate, Scripps, Bucknell</p>

1046

<p>Worst: Princeton, bar none. Sounds effete, precious, pretentious, inappropriately monarchist in a nation firmly committed to democratic republican government.</p>

1047

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, they are the Paladins, but some of their sports jerseys do have FU on them:
<a href=“http://www.furmanpaladins.com/sports/w-softbl/2010-11/photos/0007/HugheyM-11PC2_thumb.jpg[/url]”>http://www.furmanpaladins.com/sports/w-softbl/2010-11/photos/0007/HugheyM-11PC2_thumb.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

1048

<p>^^ Named after the town, which was named after King William III, Prince of Orange and Nassau. Maybe should have stuck with College of New Jersey?</p>

1049

<p>Best:
Duke, Amherst, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Georgetown</p>

<p>Worst:
Many. But amongst the most well known: UPenn</p>

1050

<p>If Berkeley is ever privatized, maybe it should be renamed “Roma Pacifica University” (or, does that sound too much like one of those unaccredited diploma mills found in California?) lol</p>

<p>[Roma</a> Pacifica: The Phoebe Hearst International Architectural Competition and the Berkeley Campus, 1896-1930](<a href=“Wrong shelf. | UC Berkeley Library”>Wrong shelf. | UC Berkeley Library)</p>

1051

<p>Best one hands down: Chico State University</p>

1052

<p>If you stop to think about it, Dartmouth is actually a sadistic and painful name. :)</p>

1053

<p>Oklahoma Panhandle State University…sounds like they’re all beggars.</p>

1054

<p>I like the sound of Villanova :)</p>

1055

<p>Worst: Kalamazoo, Bowdoin, Wesleyan (I’m sorry), Wellesley as well (Lets not leave that out), St. John’s (I like the school. Not the name). Dartmouth. George Washington. Yale. Harvey Mudd. Bob Jones. Brigham Young, Knox, Holy Cross, Deep Springs, Villanova, St. Olaf, Cornell College (just cuz they’d have to explain that every time), Lehigh, Loyola, Duke, Johns Hopkins, DePaul and DePauw, U of Miami at Oxford (fools people into thinking you go to Oxford U), Barnard, Babson, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Assumption College, Immaculate College</p>

<p>Best: Amherst, Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley, Rochester, Vanderbilt</p>

1056

<p>Worst: Brown, Cornell, Colorado School of Mines, Dickinson, WUSTL, Marlboro, and certainly some others.</p>

<p>Best: Vanderbilt, Princeton, Dartmouth, College of William and Mary, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.</p>

1057

<p>I think Notre Dame is pretty bad too. It means Our Lady. University of Our Lady. The freak. Not to mention it’s usually pronounced Notre Daaaaaaaim. Terrible.</p>

1058

<p>Best: Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Vanderbilt, Barnard, Cooper Union, Bowdoin, Shimer, Deep Springs, Roanoke</p>

<p>Worst: Drexel, Wellesley, Babson, Claremont McKenna, DePaul, Wabash, Scripps</p>

<p>I’ll post more when I think of them.</p>

1059

<p>This isn’t actually a name, but I hate the term “Ivy League”. It makes sense when one speaks of the eight colleges in that division, but when the term is applied elsewhere for marketing, it is aggravating. Like, the term “Hidden Ivies”. This is not “Where’s Waldo”; there are eight true “Ivies” and I do not think we can magically unearth anymore. Also, the word “Public Ivies”; yes, they are excellent schools, but calling them by such a prestigious epithet only sounds foolish. Like, “This is my Toyota Prius – Aston Martin”. ‘Nuff said.</p>

1060

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<p>Not only that, but it sets up the real Ivy League as the gold standard for quality, and relegates all other schools to 2nd tier status. In reality, all of the Ivy League schools are great, but there are lots of great schools like Duke, MIT, and Stanford that are as strong if not stronger than at least half of the Ivies.</p>