^ :))
My husband went to Vassar.
Usual reply: “Isn’t that a girl’s school?”
Vassar has been co-ed since 1969! And my husband was Class of 1990.
Sometimes he just can’t resist giving an answer like, “I used to be a girl.”
Me: “Williams.”
Person: “Oh, you mean William and Mary?”
Me: “No, Williams College.”
Person: “Roger Williams?”
Me: “No, Williams College.”
Person: “Where’s that?”
Me: “It’s in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, near Vermont and New York, in the Berkshire Mountains.”
Person smiles politely, looking blank.
——-
It is either that or they recognize the name and gush forever about what a great college it is. There seems to be no in-between.
I grew up in eastern PA and it was “I go to Indiana University- the one actually IN Indiana!”
Marshall University - “Oh, the one from the plane crash?”
@MomofWildChild I have a friend who went to Indiana University of PA and has had to explain multiple times that it’s not the better-known one.
SDSU, UCSD, USD.
I’m close to a gas station that apparently gets a LOT of tourists. I’ve had people ask me for directions to SDSU, “the one in La Jolla”. (or directions to the others). Two freeways away.
When I try to tell them to that SDSU is not in La Jolla, they either get upset or confused.
I’ve had people ask me for directions to USD, “you know, the Trojans that go to the Rose Bowl”.
The sad part is that I have friends at all of those uni’s and they all have told me that each year, they get a confused family that applied to the wrong university.
One family insisted, at UCSD move in, that they had admission paperwork confirming acceptance. They pulled out the USD paperwork and were told that the student applied to the wrong school. UCSD starts late; the student had missed over a month of school at USD.
Mount Holyoke. Yes, it used to be a seminary in the 19th century, but isn’t anymore. Don’t be confused by the ‘holy’ syllable.
Oberlin. But not the conservatory.
Wellesley. Not Wesleyan.
Notre Dame The college not the uni. Maybe a good idea to save 200k and just say Notre Dame with no explanation.
Wow, @“aunt bea” it is crazy that folks don’t get things straight before they apply it at least before they accept! Yikes! Talk about a rough start!
^Scary that these people travel with move-in stuff and don’t know. Usually students and families who didn’t visit!
MIT. Michigan institute of technology.
This is no joke. A woman in my office went to Muhlenberg. Several people on the break room where discussing what it must have been like going to college in Germany.
Not quite on the same topic, but still about names. I’ve lived in my neighborhood for 15 years and always thought some of the streets streets were named after colleges (like Yale, Stanford, a couple more) and only after reading CC for a while I realized almost all of them are!
Samford…No…Sam not Stan
Amherst College, the elite LAC, and UMass-Amherst, the state flagship, are a couple of miles away from each other. There are folks who don’t realize that these are TWO different schools in close proximity. Similarly, there is UMass-Dartmouth, not to be confused with Dartmouth College of the ivy league.
There was a sleazy AAU basketball coach who told folks he graduated from “Amherst”, but it was actually a mail-order degree from “Amhurst”.
@MADad Oh yeah, and he got his masters at Harvurd.
I thought he said it was Kornell
Hand to God:
“Bryn Mawr.”
“I thought you were straight.”
MIT is a good one. My Filipino friend proudly wears his MIT (Mapua Institute of Technology) T-shirts proudly.