There is nothing sad about it. People can dress anyway they want. If you ask me, no one (men or women) need more than two sets of clothes — one on the body, and one in the wash. Anything more than that is indulgence.
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Time to repost one of my favorite clothing stories about our son:
I once discovered that our son never even took the tags off the three lovely pair of iconic preppy shorts I bought him for freshman year at Choate. How did I make this tragic discovery? I found them wadded up in a box marked “High School Crap” while helping him pack for his move to his first Army duty station. His explanation? “Really, mom? Whales? Lobsters? Sailboats? Those were just too ridiculous to wear” — he said while carefully folding his SpongeBob beach towel and placing it in a box with his brigade of plastic Army men for shipping off to Ft. Gordon
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As much as I laugh at this story, as I did the first time you shared, perhaps the time has come to move back to topic. Someone can start a thread about ugly clothes that I’d never be caught dead in if the discussion of sartorial splendor needs to continue. 
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That would be this thread (no pun intended), so no need to start a new one.
Here is a thread specifically for this topic: Preppy clothing
I was referring to my age . . .
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I’m good friends with one of the co-authors. She always compliments me on my taste in clothes 
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Mixing it up a bit, and taking a brief break from “it depends” and whether it’s important at all.
For me, the real test is, have I ever met, and will I ever meet, anyone from that school who is not truly, truly brilliant? I mean truly very bright and academically gifted in some way. I honestly can’t say that about any SLAC, any Ivy or any of Duke, Vandy, Northwestern or Furd, and certainly not any state flagship. There are people, and not just a few of them, who get into those schools who are academically competent but are not special and who have some other compelling reason they were admitted. There’s the Happy Harvard bottom 25% (big donor legacy, etc.) and the many athletic recruits. Any school with D1 athletics, particularly those that compete in P5, has many people who are decent (but not great) students who would never, ever have been admitted but for their athletic ability.
But two schools which leave no doubt across all their graduates are MIT and Cal Tech. So, I’ll decree that MIT and Cal Tech are the true prestige champs. You introduce me to someone who graduated from one of those two and I know who I’m dealing with before they open their mouths. You introduce me to someone who graduated from Duke or Stanford, or even Harvard, and I really don’t know until I start interacting with them.
Boom! Done.
ETA: maybe accounting for creative intelligence, we can add a category for schools that admit solely based on demonstrated giftedness in the creative and performing arts. So, Julliard, etc.
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Re: the USNews peer assessment discussion some posts back regarding whether/how well it gauges academic quality –
While obviously the peer assessment is imperfect, I wonder how else we could gauge academic quality at a school. Could we use factors like % of profs with their terminal degree and % of profs who are published or have won awards? But do research and publishing and awards make them great teachers?
Would we include student surveys? But – students are unable to compare their school to others, since they only go to their school. How do they really know that they’re getting top-notch teaching?
We might use average and median class sizes, but the size of the class doesn’t necessarily correlate to the quality of teaching. Some kids do better in smaller classes while some prefer the anonymity of the larger lecture.
Which variables should we use to determine academic quality, if the peer assessment does not pass muster?
My gut tells me that academic quality is something that is hard to peg, since it seems there are caveats to every single factor we can identify.
Eh, I went to MIT and there are lots of amazing people there, but not every single person there is all that. (And I include myself in the “not all that” category!)
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It is all relative. I went to a nationally reputed college in a different country. I would have said that only the top 30 kids at that college (out of about 300) were special. It depends on who you are and who you see.
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Maybe so (though I don’t necessarily believe it), but if MIT and Cal Tech are “Eh”, then everyone else is less than Eh. My understanding is that none of the other very highly selectives controls entry to their school as rigorously and consistently as those two. For starters, your family can’t buy your way in. And their athletic recruits are held up to the same standards as non-athletes. If there is any flex for recruits at MIT or Cal Tech, I think it’s safe to say it’s not anywhere near what it is at the other schools, particular P5 D1. And I’m pretty sure that a 710 SAT Math score isn’t going to get you in even if you play the Tuba very, very well.
That’s prestige, baby!
Yes, it’s interesting how the wealth profile at MIT looks more like a public university.
(From Explore How Income Influences Attendance at 139 Top Colleges - The New York Times)
Aren’t there English and Econ majors at MIT? (IE, not everyone majors in STEM, so there is likely much more nuance to the aims and abilities of the students than for which MIT is given credit…)
Absolutely! My first husband (who I met there) was a political science major.
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Yes, but my understanding is that nobody gets in w/o very high test scores, particularly in math.
If either school admits by major and gives applicants who intend to major in Poli Sci a break in test score evaluation, it’s news to me.
Isn’t the middle 50th percentile math score for MIT 800?
Let’s go back to the claim: every person, with few if any exceptions, who graduates from MIT or Cal Tech is academically gifted or at the very least very accomplished. Can you say that about any other college or university?
They don’t admit by major. Everyone has to take the core courses including math and science, and you can major in anything you want.
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There you go.
MIT and Cal Tech: Prestige champions of College Confidential. Let it be written.
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Nearly everyone who chooses to attends MIT plans to include a major in a STEM or math heavy field, but plans can change for a variety of reasons. MIT primary major enrollment total for 2025-6 are below.
That said I wouldn’t equate majoring in STEM to being exceptional or not majoring in STEM to not being exceptional. I agree with the other poster that there are good variety of different students at MIT. While MIT has a higher rate of exceptional students than the overwhelming colleges, there are exceptions for a variety of reasons. I expect there are also MIT grads who are subpar in their respective fields, although no doubt a small minority.
MIT Primary Major Enrollment Totals
- School of Engineering – 70%
- School of Science --23%
- School of Management – 4% (vast majority of this group majors in finance)
- School of Humanities and Social Science excluding … + CS/Eng – 1.7%
- School of Architecture – 1.5%
Breaking down the School of Humanities and Social Science. I didn’t list majors with only 1 student enrolled.
- Econ / Math Econ – 0.6%
- Political Science – 0.3%
- Linguistics – 0.2%
- Humanities + Science – 0.1%
- Music – 0.1%
- Comparative Media – <0.1%
- Humanities – <0.1%
- Theater --<0.1%
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Nobody made either such claim.
That’s the point.
What are they? And “exceptional” relative to what? Other MIT students?
Nobody ever said that Harvard’s best aren’t as exceptional MIT’s or Cal Tech’s best. We all know that’s going to be the case, and not just at Harvard but at a great many other places as well.
We’re talking about “prestige” here, which is a wishy washy topic to begin with. I’m saying that the consistency of the talent pools of those two schools makes them different from most or all other highly selective schools in a way that one could posit is a good proxy for prestige.
Are there other schools with a 25th percentile SAT math score of 780 and 75th percentile of 800? Is there another college that has stricter admissions standards, using the conventional measures that other highly selective colleges use, that matches or exceeds those of MIT and Cal Tech? If so, I stand to be corrected and will alter my prestige list accordingly.
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