I attended an Ivy League college and never saw a college ring on anyone. In fact, the first time I saw one was about 20 years later. I was working as a contractor and had to meet with the project architect. While looking at the plans with him, I noticed he was wearing one.
Me: “Oh, did you graduate from Ivy League school?”
Him: “I did. Class of 79.”
Me: “Cool! I was class of 75.”
The expression on his face was remarkable. We went on to work on several projects together and became fairly good friends. He remarked later that he really didn’t believe I was being truthful at the time, especially standing around in jeans and steel-toed work boots.
I have very fond memories of my Canadian high school. But I never considered buying a ring - even for a second. Nor did any of my friends or anyone I know. I was offered to make the Valedictorian speech, but declined it because it would go to someone who I thought would find it much more meaningful. And I agreed with Cecil about a degree of ickiness regarding these things.
Never got a high school ring, because I knew I was going to college, and planned to get a class ring from there.
My dad wore his college ring for more than 50 years. I think he still has it, even though it’s actually a replacement, as the original one was stolen, along with his wedding ring.
Hubby and I went to rival colleges and both got class rings. I never wanted the woman’s version - I wanted the same style as my dad.
When we got married, we did the traditional wedding ring picture and also a class ring picture. Probably the last time we wore them.
As was common then (early 90s), we both have our names and social security numbers engraved inside the rings. His has his first name, middle initial and last name, mine just has my initials.
I did wear his college ring from the time he got it until we got engaged. Another college tradition.
I now live in central Europe, concretely the Czech Republic. While here you’re not automatically assigned the school closest to home, a major difference to North American schools is that here they lack a lot of the associated pageantry and attempts to build school spirit. Few or no extracurricular activities are run by state schools (this is the job of the local community, cultural or youth center) though a school may cooperate with external institutions which offer them. There is certainly no representative football team, cheerleading squad, or homecoming. Neither do they do these things like make school letters or have school colors or school songs. Therefore, I can’t imagine any Czech school offering graduation rings.
this 100% reflects my 70ies-80ies reality (I think most of continental europe is pretty much the same) …
As a student, you enter school, 5 min. before the (entrance) 8 a.m. bell sounds, take all your classes and 1 min. after the (exit) 13.00h bell sounds you are off - together with everybody else. There is no social life/pride/emotional investment/social baggage associated with that institution at all → hence no rings, jackets and all that jazz.
Living now in LatAm, this is quite a bit closer to the US-system here, mostly due to the reason that while public schools are substandard-to-OKish … all good schools are private or semi-private.
I think out of the 500 highest ranked schools here (equivalent of SAT-score-avg), 480 are private. So you pick your school (based on closeness and $$$), hope to get in (there are “entrance-tests”, quite often at kindergarden-level!) … and then your kids go to that school - for as long as you pay the school-bills
→ more social life in school as well (sports/music/dance in the afternoon …mostly IMHO due to “kids-parking-reasons” until 4-5 pm where kids are released/handed over to their parents.
Naw, that’s not how they work. They are just more popular some places than others.
Fwiw, no one at Harvard buys them. I’m not sure they are even offered for sale. And they are wildly popular at MIT, and I often notice some random adult is an MIT grad because he’s wearing a brass rat. (They don’t have a gem, they have a beaver as the center piece.)
Most Americans go to the public school that serves the place they live. But as @themapleleaf says, those schools have sports teams that compete with trans from other schools, and a variety of other clubs and activities organized within the school. Many such public high schools used to offer class, i don’t know if it’s still a thing.
Before you graduate you wear your ring with the beaver’s head away from you, after you graduate you change it so the beaver’s head is to you. That’s because you graduate from the beaver shitting on you to the beaver shitting on the rest of the world.
We actually had an assembly so Jostins could pitch their product in person. I think the school must have been promised a cut of the sales. Nobody I knew even considered ordered one.
