<p>I’ve had lots of Ivy alums as grad school classmates and professional colleagues over the years. I’d say as a general matter the arrogance quotient tends to be slightly elevated, on average, among those who attended Ivies as undergrads, especially among Harvard alums. This can cut both ways; it can give them an extra edge in self-confidence, and perhaps intimidate some people into deferring to them in some circumstances, in either case opening up some extra pathways for them. But it may also cause some people to resent their perceived arrogance and look for opportunities to cut them down to size, thus creating extra hurdles. On the other hand, many of the Ivy grads I know are among the nicest, most down-to-earth people I know. Arrogance is by no means a universal trait among Ivy grads, nor is it by any means exclusive to Ivy grads, though on average I would say it is elevated just a notch among Ivy grads, with ample exceptions.</p>
<p>Some of the smartest, most capable, and best educated people I know are graduates of top LACs. By and large, they don’t do a lot of name-dropping of their undergraduate alma maters, perhaps because they quickly learn that even names like “Williams” and Amherst" don’t carry anywhere near the same kind of throw weight as the “H-bomb.” But those who can throw around the H-bomb will do so in some cases. And of course, it’s a longstanding parlor game among non-Harvard grads to see how long it will take a Harvard grad to mention that fact, and to observe how cleverly or clumsily he or she will manage to work it into the conversation.</p>
<p>Final observation: to the vast majority of people I’ve known, attended school with, or worked with, where you got your undergraduate degree (or any degree) matters a whole lot less than is often imagined by the holders of degrees from the most elite institutions. So in my experience, concerns about non-Ivy grads looking to magnify your “errors or mess-ups” or erroneously “assum[ing] you’re a genius” are grossly exaggerated. These problems exist mainly in the minds of certain Ivy grads, who by and large are the only ones obsessed with their own status. Most people just don’t give a hoot; they’ll judge you on who you are as a person and on the quality of your work, and won’t give a second thought to where you went to college unless you constantly bring it up. Among my own faculty colleagues with whom I interact almost daily, I couldn’t name where where more than a tiny handful got their undergrad degrees or even their graduate degrees, without looking it up. Not that I haven’t looked at that information; I have, but it’s information of such low value that I promptly forget. I know those whose work I most respect, and those I most admire as persons; I don’t stop to think about whether there’s a correlation with where they went for their undergraduate education, or where they did their graduate work, but my guess is such a correlation would be fairly weak, especially for undergrad degrees. I am aware, however, that a small minority of my colleagues seem to feel a need, whether out of arrogance or insecurity, to remind people where they got their undergraduate degrees, and this tendency seems to be somewhat more pronounced among Ivy grads, and especially Harvard grads, though again not universal among those groups.</p>