<p>Why would anyone, when asked what college they attend/attended or their child attends/attended, NOT come out and say the actual NAME of the school - no matter what school it is. Is it supposed to sound more modest if you say “an Ivy” rather than Harvard or Yale, or less embarrassing if you say “an Ivy” rather than Cornell or Brown?</p>
<p>I have no idea China- I like accuracy in language myself.</p>
<p>I didn’t attend college- so perhaps that is why I did not have the expected reaction when a neighbor mentions their grandson is playing basketball @ Cornell or that one of my daughters classmates will be attending Upenn. ( um so why would you go all the way to Pennsylvania to go to a state school?)</p>
<p>I do admit that I sometimes didn’t mention where oldest was attending after dealing with either blank looks or comments that indicated that " well, she must be a lot smarter than * her parents look* " . I just said it was a small college in Portland and most people were satisfied with that except the ones who then thought I was going to make them guess.</p>
<p>Sometimes people are just asking to be polite, but other times they are actually interested and I have met some interesting people who have attended the same school-as either of my daughters have attended/are attending.</p>
<p>They also both have friends who attended/are attending " Ivies", that would be just dumb to say" I am attending an Ivy". I can imagine them saying- " I go to school back east or NYC or Rhode Island, but not " an Ivy".</p>
<p>I think people on CC say, “My kid goes to an Ivy” because they don’t want to disclose where their kids go to school. But I think in real life, most people just say, “My kid goes to school X.”</p>
<p>One time I had fun with doing Google searches on “Harvard of the {Midwest, South, West, etc.}” to see what colleges like to claim that they are just like Harvard, except not in the northeast. </p>
<p>And when repeating this set of searches just now, I noticed a funny phrase, the “Poison Ivy League.”</p>
<p>**“I think people on CC say, “My kid goes to an Ivy” because they don’t want to disclose where their kids go to school. But I think in real life, most people just say, “My kid goes to school X.”” **</p>
<p>Absolutely. I understand that 100% and totally agree with you (and with the thought process behind that.) And I do think (and hope) that most people in “real life” would just say school X.</p>
<p>What I was responding to was more of the OP’s original query about why some people might refer to obviously non-Ivy schools as “Ivies” and other posts where people referred to the generic answer of “an Ivy” rather than a specific school (happening in “real life,” not here on CC.)</p>
<p>It’s certainly not a big deal, but just like emeraldkity4, I too like “accuracy in language.”</p>
<p>tokenadult, if I did not remember incorrectly, your S1 (A+Math) is applying for college this year. Good luck with everything and hope he gets into his top choices.</p>
<p>It looks like the term is not rare or unusual and often returns to a specific working group of peer schools who share common problems and interests.</p>
<p>I just saw an old thread that reminded me again of cases where a parent writes “Ivy” when it is not clear that a college actually in the Ivy League </p>
<p>is intended. There are eight colleges in the Ivy League. A few students apply to all eight. Many students apply to some subset of the eight. But some students prefer some colleges that don’t happen to be in that sports conference to some colleges that are.</p>