I did even better. I was halfway through my application to Harvard when I had an epiphany: This application is NOT going to get me into Harvard! So I saved my $35 (or whatever it was 40 years ago) and did not apply!
@Pizzagirl Post #46:
That’s actually very funny, since you and I wound up at the same college. (Many years apart, I’m afraid.)
@CCDD14 Not all alumni are in favor of the athletic recruiting policies of their school.
I recall seeing hockey players sleeping in the back row of my classroom when I was a student.
On one hand I thought, what a joke that they are here. On the other hand, the games were exciting !
I suppose if you want to be invited back to interview more prospects, you need to “get with the program”,
but my neighbor was not inclined to do so. I think he was more warning the student than insulting them,
but he clearly did believe that Princeton’s mission should be strongly linked to winning Lacrosse games.
@njsue:
I don’t know, I don’t know too many people whose identities is based around their alma mater, I work with people who have gone to a number of top notch schools, places like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, one Princeton person, and they don’t see their Alma Mater as being part of their identity, I kind of think that the OP in some ways is making that point. The idea of the “Harvard Man” or “Princeton Man” seems to me to be the kind of snobbery the two idiots she interviewed with had. There is a difference to me between being proud of going to a school, getting a degree (or degrees) then matriculating into the real world and doing things, the work it took to get into the school in question, the work they did there, but as part of their identity? Dunno about that, Harvard and Yale and MIT and Cal Tech and a lot of top level schools have a lot to be proud of, the science and research and thoughts that come out of them, but as an indicator of who someone is as a person?
As far as their being asshats at all schools, of course. With the Ivy league, especially HYP, with all the hype around it, it seems there are a lot of people who go into this assuming that those schools are the only real schools, that they are it and if you don’t get in there, it means you failed or something. More importantly, there also is the very real snobbery out there, there are jobs and such that if you don’t go to an elite school, no matter how bright you are, no matter how much you have achieved, you won’t get in…and a lot of that is elite school graduates basically enforcing the kind of snobbery the OP is talking about, that somehow a "harvard man’’ or "princeton man’ is the only kind of thing that matters.
On the other hand, I know a lot of Ivy league graduates who shake their heads and say take a look at who the snobs are, what they end up going into, and you have your answer. The couple who were lawyers who went to the ivy league school, have the big house, probably the fancy cars, were probably born snobs long before they ever went there. Then there are those from more modest backgrounds who go to a school like that, and act like they think Ivy league and elite school graduates should behave, ie like snobs;). BTW, there is some truth about ego and ivy league graduates in the real world, in OB they called it the “Avis effect”, where the kids who weren’t the 4.0, perfect SAT, elite university often did better, because they like Avis knew they were number 2 and tried harder:)
I just don’t find that the stereotype of “Harvard [or whatever elite school] grads” rings true. Harvard grads will respect a degree from Berkeley etc. Snooty types are usually second-raters with bad manners, not top-tier grads. (Although there is a private basketball school in the South that produces some extraordinarily arrogant graduates, for some undiscernible reason).
Obviously your whole identity is not based on your alma mater, but it’s strange to be looking back to a school you didn’t choose to apply to or attend 30 years ago as some kind of signal event in your life.
We have a number of family members who are Ivy grads. I went to a state public university. They respect my school well…because the Ivies do NOT offer my major at all on the undergrad level. I’m not even sure they have it on the grad level.
“I did even better. I was halfway through my application to Harvard when I had an epiphany: This application is NOT going to get me into Harvard! So I saved my $35 (or whatever it was 40 years ago) and did not apply!”
I got that beat. I rejected Harvard so thoroughly that it didn’t even occur to me to apply. I not only saved the application fee, I saved the effort of sending for an application and partially filling it out.
" I got that beat. I rejected Harvard so thoroughly that it didn’t even occur to me to apply. I not only saved the application fee, I saved the effort of sending for an application and partially filling it out. "
Okay, not to be reverse snobbing you too much, but I think I beat even you. When I was in high school, I’d never even HEARD of Harvard.
Am I correct in my impression that the OP did not actually have an offer of admission from Harvard, only her assumption that she was a shoe in because she was as badass female water polo player? If so, her claim to have “rejected” Harvard seems a little hyperbolic. In reality, she just withdrew an application to Harvard. Apologies if I missed a later post wherein she stated that she actually had an official offer from the office of Admissions in hand.
I think the OP has bowed out!
@njsue:
Just my impression, but I suspect that the OP wrote that as a counterpart to the mania these days about getting into Harvard or the other elite schools, that somehow they are magical, mystical places that confer superhuman ability on people or make them automatically ‘successful’ in life, that basically she didn’t go to Harvard and has done well in life.
The couple in question show another kind of bias, one that some posters have expressed, that somehow there is a certain kind of applicant who is obviously “Harvard material”…and yes, it is snobbery. It is a question admissions people ask themselves, is someone for example who has played by the rules, never taken chances, never extended themselves, taken chances, and has the ‘clean’ record (high gpa, high test scores, safe EC’s, etc) a more valuable asset to the school than a kid who has actually lived for something other than to get into a top notch school? Is the kid who had a rough background who managed to make something of himself less valuable then the kid from a well off family, like my cousin’s, where his kids all went to his alma mater, where they went to a top notch elite prep school and private schools before that…an elite athlete has to spend a lot of time on their sport, so if they don’t have 8 AP classes and all the other trappings, are they ‘less valuable’ than the kid who played the admissions game? I think the OP in a sense is commenting on that, in assumptions for example that there is necessarily an ‘ideal’ student for an HYP or elite school, and asking what is that? In the case of the lawyer couple, is it the kid who wants what they did, a high powered career in high powered law schools and the big house and the wealth, is that all that matters?
Again, I am not saying that the elite schools are all like that couple or other snobs, it just isn’t the case, there are a lot of kids who go to those schools assuming going there makes them ‘special people above all others’, I have run into them, but I also know a lot of kids who go to those places, even if pushed by parents who were snotballs, who saw them as a great school and actually liked that they were around bright kids, great teachers and so forth, but that the school does try for diversity and not everyone was the 2400 SAT/8 EC/ 4.0 GPA type and they liked that, too, or that not everyone saw their vision of adult life as an investment banker, corporate CEO or high powered lawyer or doctor shrug. I think the OP is answering the ones who are snobs or put too much emphasis on having gone to school at those places, and also trying to give hope to those who didn’t go there, couldn’t or wouldn’t, that there is life outside the elite schools…and even some of the school snob places have started to admit that, Goldman Sachs was notorious for their business side (tech is different) for only hiring from the top 10 schools and so forth, usually business/finance/econ majors, they have made a lot of noise in recent years about hiring kids with ‘different approaches and backgrounds’ other than the HYP business and finance types, basically saying that they are seeing too much group think, too much following the pack, and not enough people looking outside the box or those driven by different visions (among other things, the recruiter mentioned music students and those in the arts as an example).
"Am I correct in my impression that the OP did not actually have an offer of admission from Harvard, only her assumption that she was a shoe in because she was as badass female water polo player? If so, her claim to have “rejected” Harvard seems a little hyperbolic. In reality, she just withdrew an application to Harvard. Apologies if I missed a later post wherein she stated that she actually had an official offer from the office of Admissions in hand.
She said she withdrew her application a day after the interview, so I would guess there was no offer.
Perhaps this thread would be more aptly condensed to be, “I knew for certain that I would be accepted into Harvard because of my exceptional athletic prowess, but then I talked to two people who confirmed all of the negative stereotypes that I had about Harvard, so I decided that Harvard was not good enough for me. And look at how successful I am now!”
And on that premise, I think it’s apparent that this story is either made up, or the OP has some unresolved confidence issues. I am certain by this point she has realized that if you set out to put down and stereotype a specific school on this forum, you are not going to get much support.
Agree that the title of this thread is bogus–in my world, you can’t reject anything that you haven’t been formally offered. If you could, heck yes I’d reject tons of things that I don’t want or need.
I’ve rejected winning the lottery dozens of times.
I turned down the Foreign Service.
I’ve continually rejected being rich an and/or famous.
Come to think of it, I must have rejected going into the astronaut corps, being the first female Blue Angel, and becoming the Vice President of the USA. I do somewhat think about these decisions (but I knew when they would have offered them, they would be entirely wrong for me). Good thing I didn’t apply!
I seriously did reject working at research labs in New Mexico. Sometimes I regret that decision. I bet it would be fascinating work. But I wanted to live where there were TREES, so I chose Maine instead.