Presumably, CCCP means Columbia, Cornell, CMU, Penn in this context, rather than USSR in Russian.
CMU’s place in this is very weird.
For engineering/CS, CMU is far superior to all the Ivies and its only peers are MIT/Caltech/Stanford/Berkeley.
Its Dramatic Arts department is also far superior to all the Ivies.
Everything else, even most CMU alums I’ve known would concede is so much less impressive that they’d be reluctant to be full pay if their kids wanted to major in anything outside of engineering/CS or Dramatic Arts.
@ucbalumnus & @cobrat & @HRSMom : Nope. Columbia, Chicago, Caltech, Penn.
This “I only got into X” mentality bugs me too, but the misplaced modifier really drives me nuts. Could these posters at least phrase it correctly: “I got into only X”??
Caltech’s placement here makes no sense in the areas of its greatest strengths…engineering/CS and natural sciences as they are peers/superior to HYPS in those areas…
I will say it is also frustrating that people think the only reason you may go to a State College other than those in California or the East coast are stupid and should try harder. Good grief my son had no desire to go to California or the east coast and wanted to study animal science at a land-grant University with a Veterinary collage in the south or midwest! His grades would let him go elsewhere HE didn’t want to! But I don’t say we should stop people saying that nothing other than the Ivy League schools are worth going to.
@cobrat: None of that makes sense. There’s no point critiquing it.
I wasn’t trying to start Prestige Wars. I just thought that the “only” variety of posts come across as hurtful to some of the people on CC. I am pretty sure that most students would avoid using that phrasing, if they realized that (maybe not, but that’s my guess). We can’t do anything about the people who are really stuck on prestige.
Also, I think CCCP includes Moskovskii Gosudarstvenyi Universitet (sorry for the lack of Cyrillic letters)? 
@Marian, years ago we had some kind of thread about the unutterable shame of “only” going to a “lower Ivy.” It was pretty funny. I recall writing about slinking through the supermarket and leaving my house only under cover of darkness because my S “only” went to Dartmouth. (Want to talk about a school that gets the hate on CC…!) I think it was in response to some kids talking about the “lower Ivies,” a term that I had never heard before.
@QuantMech, my point was not that it was wildly impractical, but that adults who chastise kids for potentially making others feel bad because of their opportunities have no hesitation discussing their own purchases and habits that many other adults here could not hope to attain. And they don’t see the irony. Let me make this very clear: I am NOT advocating that anyone censor themselves on that account. We all have the choice or reading about other people’s expensive vacations, just to pick an example, or not. We all have the right to express our own tastes in furniture, clothes, cars, and schools. I can be a chocolate snob if I want. 
I shouldn’t be chastised because someone else thinks that it is “pretentious” not to be satisfied with Hershey bars or Lindor “truffles.” (See, I’m such a snob that I have to put the word in quotation marks. B-) )
On the ‘lesser’ Ivy topic. I think kids refer to Cornell this way because it has the highest acceptance rate of the Ivies, not fully comprehending that 13% still means your chances are very slim. But one of the main reasons it has a higher rate, is because it is more than double the size of some of the others, so they need to accept more kids. Selectivity does not = better.
I am not actually meaning to chastise anyone–that was probably some other poster. I was just thinking that it might be useful to gently point out to a few young posters that their comments might be seen as hurtful by others. In my view, it is not a question of pretentiousness; it is a question of being considerate of other applicants.
It seems to me that there is a subtle, but important difference between saying, “I enjoy the finest chocolates, such as La Maison du Chocolat” (if that type is good enough, Consolation ), and saying, “I only received Lindor ‘truffles’ for Valentines Day.”
If people write about their expensive vacations, I have no problem with that. If they make fun of my less expensive vacation spots, or write “This year, I could only go to [fill in QM’s favorite vacation spot here],” I would object to that. If someone says, “Your Henredon furniture is so plebeian; I much prefer Hepplewhite,” I am annoyed. If the person is just rhapsodizing about Hepplewhite, then I would view any annoyance on my part as my fault, due to jealousy. As with the chocolates, I do see a difference here.
Actually, @QuantMech, La Maison du Chocolat is the ONLY brand whose truffles and chocolates I enjoy as much as my own. (At least the only brand I have had. I’m sure there are others out there. I find most of them far too sweet.)
I take your larger point, though.
QuantMech, I appreciate your thoughtful musings about how to encourage posters to consider the impact their comments may have on others.
Is it any different than having “only” a 33 ACT or “only” a 3.85 gpa?
Who would that be? I just did a search for the term and came up with few hits.
One of them is mine, as a joke. I had the capitalist WASPs (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Ponoma) fight the communist CCCP for placement after HYPSM.
planner03, I see a difference between the two usages of “only,” though I agree that one might see them as the same. The difference in my view is that the student with “only” a 33 ACT or “only” a 3.85 GPA might be irritating to students with lower scores, but these results are clearly on a numerical continuum, which goes higher. Also, for a sophomore who might have lower scores and is reading a comment like that, there is time to raise both.
The admissions decision is really in/out/waitlist (probably out). Here the continuum is being constructed with the colleges, not with a numerical score that is not all that meaningful.
But I agree that people could see this differently.
To clarify my original intent a little: The students who have posted the “only got into X comments” have had metaphorical cold water dumped on them in some cases, by some of the adults on CC, who have informed them that they are prestige-seekers in “need a dose of reality.” That was what I was trying to prevent, on behalf of the student, by pre-emptively encouraging next year’s students to avoid the phrase (if there is a way to do that). I sympathize with the students and understand their underlying feelings, however sub-optimally expressed.
Thanks for your comments, Consolation–I did misread your original post a bit. On the expensive vacation threads, if people comment that they have just returned from an exhilarating two weeks in Bora Bora, do people post in response: “Awful plutocrat. You need a dose of reality”?
Please PM me about your brand of chocolate, Consolation! Otherwise, I will be trying to rename this thread by adding and chocolate!!!
@hebegebe How very Calvin of you! 
Alas, I have shut down my chocolate business.
@PurpleTitan Quite the slanderous and presumptuous comment you got going here At least mention me so that i can give my side of the story…tstststs
Never mentioned the creation of a CCCP acronym (looks ridiculous tbh). All I said was that Columbia, Penn, Caltech and Chicago seem to kind of outperform the rest of the ivies and ivy-equivalents in terms of overall rankings, yield rates and cross-admit splits and some other key metrics. Yes in opinion these four schools complete the US top 9, but I specifically said that the the prestige difference is not substantial, if there at all.