Maybe this belongs in the <a href=“Noticeable decline in memory - Parent Cafe - College Confidential Forums”>Noticeable decline in memory - Parent Cafe - College Confidential Forums; thread, but the other day a friend and I were talking at the gym and had reason to itemize the Ivy schools (we were discussing the kid who was accepted at all of them). We were both having a brain freeze, and could only come up with 7. We asked around the gym, and nobody could tell us which one we were missing. We used the old technique of changing focus, and very quickly the missing one came up (Brown, fwiw). Anyway, of the half dozen other people there, nobody knew off the top of their head, and I know that at least one of those people had a child at an Ivy.</p>
<p>I think some of it really is regional. I can easily name the Ivy League and NESCAC schools but I have no idea who’s in the PAC 10, the Big 10, or any other major football conference. If pressed I’d start randomly naming state names. It’s probably because I come from the New England, where we have no big powerhouses among our state schools.</p>
<p>Responses really do depend on geographic area and the background of the person to whom you’re speaking. My D is also headed to Sewanee! Although it is a few states away, many in our area have heard of it. However, people have questioned why D didn’t choose to go to Clemson like her brother (and question my sanity for paying private school tuition!). A lot of folks have a hard time comprehending any choice other than our state schools. Of course, when D would tell people she was also applying to Kenyon, the response was along the lines of “you want to school in Kenya?”</p>
<p>I think our kids will get a great education at Sewanee. And in the end, that’s what really matters!</p>
<p>The Pac 10 (and Pac 8 before that) was never a problem to remember: First you name the three West Coast States: California, Oregon, Washington. Then add Arizona. Then, for the non-Californians, do it again, but add “State” to every name. Then, for California, add the only three schools in California anyone other than academics paid attention to, because they were the ones that played games on TV: USC, UCLA, Stanford. Voila! The Pac 10. (There are some other schools in there now, too, but I don’t know what they are.)</p>
<p>The Big 10 was sort of the same way. It was basically the eponymous flagship public universities of the Rust Belt, Minnesota to Ohio (and later Pennsylvania), except Michigan got an extra “State” school and Northwestern was in there for no apparent reason, because (until pretty recently) it never won anything.</p>
<p>My son will be working on a research project in Malawi this summer. I get a lot of blank stares, along with “Maui?” “Mali?” "What is that? " “Is that a country?” “Where is that?” </p>
<p>Quite often people have not heard of certain HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities). Spellman, Morehouse, Howard, Fisk, and list goes on and on of some strong ones with amazing histories and strong alumni networks.
The funniest I have heard in this exchange is:
“So your son is headed to college in the fall, right? Where is he going?”
“Our son is going to Howard University”
“Wow, Harvard!”
'No, Howard…it is a great HBCU with a wonderful history, in DC."
“An HB what? What is it know for?”
“Well, Thurgood Marshall went there, as did Toni Morrison, Vernon Jordan and many others. Brown vs. Board of Education legal team prepared there, great business, communication and science departments. It is just a solid university and we are thrilled for our son”
“But not an Ivy, right?”
“Well, think of it as the black Harvard”. Then walked off, head shaking. </p>
<p>I literally laughed out loud when I overheard that conversation.</p>
<p>Omg YES, taben! D is planning on applying to one and has friends at several, others headed to them in the fall, but yes, the “HB what” is common, and some have never heard of even the more famous ones. The corollary is that HBCU’s are “not good schools” and “But she is smart, why would she want to go to one of THOSE?”</p>
<p>Unless, of course, you’re talking to someone from her church, her school, parents of black friends. THEY all seem to have heard of them. We’ll be touring several this summer.</p>
<p>Do you think it bothers you because you either secretly hoped that they would attend Harvard, or because you put a lot of stock in people acknowledging your family as special?</p>
<p>Ironically the people who go to really top universities have the opposite problem. Hence Harvard students answering “in Boston.”</p>
<p>Eastcoastcrazy, I have a facebook friend from Malawi (& another IRL friend is writing a book about the men imprisoned there for their sexuality)</p>
<p>@Momzie - Clemson is public! I think it’s a great state school, but not the place for someone like my D looking for a small LAC with a great English department. Is your S doing PRE or Finding Your Place?</p>
<p>“I forgot about Purdue, the Clemson (or is it Auburn) of Indiana!”</p>
<p>This reminds me of the Colbert Report exchange between Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers which established that Harvard is both the Northwestern of Cambridge and the Dartmouth of Eastern Massachusetts. </p>
<p>(Both are Northwestern grads in real life, but the Colbert “character” is a Dartmouth grad, hence the conversation.)</p>
<p>Harvard kids are so very, very self-conscious about going to Harvard that they say “in Boston.” Literally, every day, they know that they are at Harvard and so know they must be special. It is slightly embassing for them to actually say “Harvard” when asked about college, as it implies (to themselves, the Harvard person) that they they are implicitly putting down the person who asked (thus, the phrase “H-bomb”). All of this swirls through their heads and chokes them up to the point where all they can say is “in Boston.” If they just said “Harvard” the conversation can hit the usual slight hiccup and continue. The “in Boston” stuff just invites a full stop to the conversation while the interlocutor delves into the mystery of where, exactly, in Boston, and so drawing out the whole painful affair even more. Harvard folk really do never get over themselves, and it extends the rest of their lives. I think this really applies mostly to the College, as the Harvard grad schools are full of Harvard rejects, so they never really care much about the H-bomb in the way the more callow undergrads do.</p>
<p>I went to Harvard for grad school as did my husband. We also attended the same wonderful LAC to which we are much more attached than Harvard. If I name my undergrad institution people who know it might say, “That’s a nice school,” but then that’s the end of it. The reaction to the 9 months I spent at Harvard used to get stupidly oversized reactions. “Ooh, a power couple!” (I was working as a part time preschool teacher) “You must be a genius!” (Uh, no.) “Well excuuuse me!” (Why, did I do something wrong? Did you? You asked, I answered.)“Did you pahk the cah in the Hahvad Yahd?” (No, I do not have a Cliff Clavin accent.)</p>
<p>But back to the original topic…
I see a lot of confusion over LACs- Davidson or Dickinson? Skidmore or Swarthmore? Lawrence or St. Lawrence? Haverford or Hamilton? and for those of us on the East Coast, Pomona or Pitzer?</p>
<p>“Lawrence and St Lawrence” and don’t forget Sarah Lawrence. My S is at St Lawrence and you can imagine the looks and questions here in our little beach town in SoCal. He is just finished his freshman year …and other than missing his Mexican food…he is ridiculously happy there… So that is all I tell people. </p>