In Quadgop’s thread about Texans he says the Texans he met let him know quickly that they were Texans, then says “an odd behavior I’d previously only noted in Harvard grads”
So, is this true in your experience? Are Harvard grads very eager to let you know? I’ve seen this meme before, but not encountered it. Maybe I just never meet Harvard alumni. I live in Durham, NC and I mostly meet Dukies (who don’t do this, but then, in Durham, maybe they don’t have to).
The only Harvard man I met ( to my knowledge) was actually quite dodgy, the first time college came up he said he went to school “in the Northeast”, the second time “around Boston”.
Some do. I meet a lot of Harvard grads. Ironically, the ones most inclined (IME) to do this are legacies. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a legacy, but I personally am less inclined to be impressed that you got into Harvard if there’s a plaque with your last name on it anywhere on campus.
Not Harvard, but a friend of mine went to Yale and she says that she’s lied about where she went to college. After college, she was in Teach for America in Brooklyn and, afraid of being thought of a snob, gave the name of her dorm as where she’d gone to school.
I meet a lot of Harvard grads, mostly through work. They are a little more reluctant to mention where they went to school than most. Can’t remember anyone who was obnoxious about it. With the exception of one woman who was a nut case, and was let go so quickly that it doesn’t count. She was probably lying or went to a weekend seminar or something.
Off the top of my head, I know three Harvard grads, and I knew them for years before I found out they went to Harvard. I may know a lot more who haven’t mentioned it yet.
This reminds me of the joke about the fighter pilots:
Q: How do you know there’s a fighter pilot at your party?
A: He’ll tell you.
I do this as a Princeton grad, and I know other people do too. “In New Jersey” is a standard answer. It’s been 20 years (!) and I am more comfortable saying where I went because it’s less and less relevant, but it does change people’s perceptions of you and I don’t like that.
In the high school where I teach, we have a grant program where a recent Top Tier grad works with our most promising kids to help them through the application process. The one we had was from Harvard, and her first year she mentioned it a lot–mostly, I think, because she was 22 and thought it helped with her credibility. Unfortunately, we have only two types of kids in our school–the “neighborhood”, where houses start at half a million and go up very quickly, and where professional school is assumed, and the “apartments”, where people are usually immigrants and inevitably desperately poor. The first set weren’t impressed by Harvard because their grandparents went there and the second set because they didn’t understand why she kept mentioning that one particular school, since “college” was one big mass to them. Her second year she figured it out and quit mentioning it.
I had a classmate in grad school who’d done his undergrad at Berkeley. I knew this because he mentioned it every time he opened his mouth. We referred to him as “Berkeley” behind his back.
He’s the only person I’ve ever met who engaged in that kind of school name dropping. I don’t take it as a reflection on Berkeley, I think this guy was just a jerk. I’ve known people who attended Ivy League schools and none of them did this.
Just this past week I mentioned to a friend of mine (who worked on a movie last year with Steve Zahn) that Steve Zahn had gone to Harvard, and my friend replied, “I know. He told me within 4 seconds of meeting him.”
In my experience, quite a lot of Ivy League folk use this sort of dancing when the subject of college comes up.
The funny thing is, in most cases it’s very clear exactly where the person went to college from the terms they use, and the faux-embarrassed demeanor they adopt, so their dodging around the subject actually serves to draw even more attention to it.
Which is, in most cases, exactly what they were trying to do in the first place.
Yeah, this. I went to Harvard, and after initially trying the faux modesty approach - “in Boston,” etc. I just dropped it. I mention it if I’m asked. I typically do not lead with “well, at Harvard, where I went to school,” it’s more like, “when I was in grad school, x, y, and z.” But that’s how I would preface it if I went anywhere else.
I have my undergrad degree from a school that’s very proud and alums are not shy about saying where they went to school, and both grad degrees from the Crimson H. It’s strange to embrace one but not the other. I’m proud of the work I did at both institutions, but I am also probably one of the most critical people about either school you’ll encounter. Of course the critique is based in fact and experience, not in some ridiculous envy or disdain. I am also proud of the more positive work that goes on at both places.
I’m from humble beginnings and was the first in my family to go to college, so I’m sure there are circles of Harvard that I’m not able to access. I don’t particularly care.
And of course, being a Texan definitely trumps being a Harvard grad. Even during the Bush years.
I’ve noticed it in law clerks that work for my firm during the summer; they are generally very quick to tell me they went to Harvard. Little do they know that (a) I don’t really care and (b) I have found that many Harvard grads are much better at telling me they went to Harvard than they are at practicing law as a junior associate. (Laywers from Harvard with experience are generally speaking interchangeable with lawyers from other schools; I only notice the difference in the fresh ones. And it’s pretty much only the fresh ones that have to announce it; by the time you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ve figured out that no one really cares where you went to school.)
Insecure people will tell you things that they think will impress you. Sometimes it is their school, the amount of money they make, the car they drive, how big their dick is, etc. But not everyone who went to Harvard is insecure, nor everyone who drives a certain type of car, etc.
I knew a guy who was a Harvard grad and a Mensa member, and he mentioned the latter (only very shortly) before the former. IME, Mensa members will very likely find a way to let you know, which in most instances, may not have the effect they’re hoping it will have.
“From the terms they use”: Do you mean particular elocutions or colloquial expressions unique to particular schools, or do you mean primarily geographical hints (e.g. “I did live near Boston for a few years…”)?
Does there still exist an “Ivy League” way of speaking and behaving, and that was once symbolized by the “Ivy League suit” during the 1950s? (From one passage in Updike’s Rabbit, Run it seems that it wasn’t uncommon for less educated men to wear an I.L. suit, presumably hoping to convey the idea that they went to such a college, or any college in the case of this character). The character in question, in this passage, does try on a more elevated style of speaking than was usual, but just for that occasion it seemed.
If you ask someone where they went to school, and they say they went to school “right outside Boston,” or even “in Boston,” or something similar, it’s almost certain that they’re talking about Harvard. If they went to Boston University or Boston College, or one of the myriad other schools in the area, then they’ll tell you. I’ve also found that, despite its formidable reputation, MIT does not tend to produce faux-modest graduates. Most of them will quite happily say, “I went to MIT.”
ETA:
I’ve also had people tell me they went to college “on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.” Betcha can’t guess what university they were referring to?
One exception i’ve found is Penn, perhaps because, if you don’t know much about it, “University of Pennsylvania” sounds like a run-of-the-mill state school.
I’m sure I’ve met a number of Harvard grads who didn’t tell me, so I guess it’s just the jerks giving a bad name to the rest of the alums. Anyway, I met this guy at a party once who somehow worked into the conversation that he went to school “at Harvard, in Boston.” Really, the one in Boston, you say? Not the one in Omaha? Fascinating. Did the guy think I was too much of a dumbshit to know where or what Harvard was? I immediately decided that I hated him, and I moved on to enjoyable conversations other people in the room.
