Exactly! I went to York, which is pretty much the extreme in the other direction, and when two York grads meet, all they do is find common ground for bitching. (Sure to increase after this year.)
I don’t know. I just don’t get school spirit, I guess. I also don’t get patriotism, so I clearly have a defective pride gene.
I know lots of Harvard grads. Yale and Stanford too. I only know one that name drops it, and he went undergrad Yale, law school Harvard. He is very well educated, but something of an all around nut case.
We are indeed – the Law Quad is beautiful and I spent most of my undergrad education in the building across from it, in East Quad. I most heartily recommend the grinders at the In and Out on E. University Ave. They are really good for a convenience store sandwich.
Perhaps the graduate students get a bit of a buffer, but there are a number of materialistic, snotty undergrads at U of M, and not everyone attending this school is brilliant. I was perhaps especially sensitive to it because I had no money or anything resembling the kind of life these kids were living. The snobs are worth it for the education, though… it’s a beautiful place with trees and grass and plenty to do, filled with people who care both about thinking critically and about making the world a better place. It really is a kind of utopia, if you’re that kind of person.
Attending an Ivy, I’m guessing, outs you, from what I can tell, as a person with an expensive education, which implies something about the kind of life you’ve had and your socioeconomic status way more than it implies something about your intelligence. I was discussing my plans for graduate school with a former coworker (not even talking about which schools to attend) and she made a comment about how she wished she could do what I was doing.
I understand that I’m fortunate in this regard, but her tone very much implied that I was one of the most privileged people on the planet. I wanted to say, ‘‘Um, don’t you live with your Mom and sisters and take care of your family? Tell me, what’s it like to have the knowledge that you are cared for and loved by your family members?’’ but I’m not very aggressive. Anyway my point is people make all sorts of assumptions based on stupid little details about you. This girl didn’t have half a clue about the life experiences I have had to overcome to get to where I am, she just assumed I had it all handed to me. If I end up at Penn or Columbia and have to deal with that every damn time someone asks me where I went to school, you’re damn right I’ll try to avoid the subject.
This thread is riveting on so many levels. You’re arrogant and insecure if you mention where you went to school too many times. You’re arrogant and insecure if you try to avoid mentioning where you went to school. So basically in order to be regarded as a decent person unworthy of mockery you have to strike exactly the right arbitrary balance of mentioning it at exactly the right time or you will be labled a snob or worse. And who the fuck * wouldn’t * care what state or school someone was from? Personally I like talking to people about where they came from and what experiences they’ve had that make them different. But then, I’m not a misanthrope, so what would I know?
It’s weird if someone is vague when asked, but I do the vague geography thing when school is irrelevant to the conversation. Maybe I’m talking about autumn leaves in the NE, or pizza variations, or Quaker meetings. Most people don’t ask where I was because it doesn’t matter and the conversation has moved on.
A lot of people don’t know where Dartmouth is. If you’d walked up to me yesterday and asked, I’d have had to think about it. I don’t know anyone who went there. I can’t count how many people have asked where Yale is, and I think people are more familiar with that.
The reaction I get to “Swarthmore, outside of Philly”, is usually “oh, never heard of it.” But sometimes I get an offended “duh I know where it is.” Can’t win.
You’re starting in May? Can I ask why? That seems like an odd time to start.
Anyway, I’m right across the street from y’all in the policy school. We’ll have to go for sangria at Dominick’s when I get back to school in August.
My public school program is ranked higher than most of the Ivies’. I look down at the policy students at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and UPenn. 
A friend I’ve known since high school went to UCLA. He won’t stop about it, especially right now during basketball season, though I haven’t seen the same of other UCLA grads.
Oooh, the “Upper West Side”. There’s nothing wrong with going to school in Harlem.
uhh…City College?
I think they call it Morningside Heights now.
Mich Law has a somewhat unique Summer Start option that can be applied for. Unlike early-start programs at many law schools, Mich Law’s Summer Start program doesn’t allow you to graduate in 2 years or anything. The main benefit is that it spreads your 1L (first year) out over 3 semesters instead of the normal two. That whittles your required doctrinal courses down to two per semester instead of a usual three, and you also get to begin taking elective courses a couple of semesters earlier than Fall starters.
Summer starters also have the Law Quad and really much of Ann Arbor to themselves for a few months. I don’t know if it’s just a gut feeling I have, but I’ve always had a great affinity for summer programs. Every class of new JD candidates will be split into sections of 90 or so students, but the Summer Starter’s 90 are supposed to be unusually tight knit.
Additionally, 1L summer jobs are typically quite competitive but without an actual gauge of law school student quality for employers. For Michigan Fall starters, applications for summer clerkships and associateships will be put in long before they have any grades to show. Summer Starters have a small advantage in that they have one semester’s worth of performance to gauge.
A few years back, the Mich Law Summer Start program was regarded with suspicion by a lot of potential JD candidates. Typical Summer Start programs at schools like Northwestern are fast track graduation plans (typically less prestigious) or the like. But Mich Law’s Summer Start program has become increasingly popular to the point that I understand there is actual competition to be switched to Summer Start from an accepted Fall admission. Prestige is much less a factor, I think, since Summer Starters have the same LSAT and GPAs as the Fall body on average.
To be more on topic, though, I almost wish I had the same problem as Harvard grads! I was quite proud to be admitted to the University of Michigan Law School, but it turns out that no one outside of the legal profession knows that it’s one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. They’re like, “Michigan? Why go to a public school all the way up there?” Down here in the South, they’d have been much more impressed if I’d chosen Vanderbilt or Univ. of Texas in Austin.
Heh, and everyone talks about this sangria! It must be either amazing or a terrific inside joke
I’m not a Harvard grad, but I did go to college in Morningside Heights. Neither City College or [sub]that other school[/sub] are on the Upper West Side. 
I won’t try to dodge a direct question about where I went to school. There is really no point. If someone is interested enough to ask, the least I can do is be honest. A thousand other people graduate from Columbia every year. I’ve chitchatted with at least three or four Columbians on the SDMB.
I don’t drop the name if it doesn’t really add anything to the conversation. If I am telling a “this one time, at band camp” sort of story, then it really doesn’t matter where I went to school. I will add “in NYC” if I need it to explain more context. I don’t try to be mysterious about where I went to college, but I am conscious of not wanting to name drop without any conversational purpose. I went to college with plenty of morons: the last place I look for intellectual validation is my diploma.
So, do you want me to give the next verse?
I’ve done that too :smack:
Me too.
Plus, I want someone to be impressed with ME (if I deserve it), not with where I went to school.
So, I sometimes say I went to school in California.
A. The sangria is delicious.
B. The sangria is about 10 feet away from the policy, law, and business schools.
Dominick’s is closed for the winter, but it reopens on March 3. Spring and sangria! We’re counting down the days.
Of course. That’s why I specified “direct question.”
I think you’re missing my point. It wasn’t about whether I knew where the school was or not. It was a ploy to make himself seem modest about having gone to Dartmouth.
Sure you can. Just say you went to Swarthmore. If they ask where it is or give you a blank look, then say “outside of Philly.” Is Swarthmore is as little known in Central Illinois as Grinnell is in the NY area? Either way, we know that both schools are a hell of a lot lesser-known than any Ivy. To pretend like Dartmouth isn’t commonly known is just stupid.
Since I went to university near the county seat of Oxfordshire, I always laugh at the plebs who seem to think that Harvard is impressive, and that they need to hide it.
pdts
I see what you did there. That was clever: you replaced a “u” with an ampersand. Now it’s a totally different word.
Excellent post. You’ve summed this thread up way better than I could, but I’ve been feeling this. It’s like highly educated people are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. You’re reading it more charitably than I am, though; I don’t even see that they are being offered a middle ground where they could conceivably be loud enough about their background without being too braggy. Either you come right out and say it, in which case you’re an arrogant prick, or you dance around it, in which case you’re passive-aggressively boastful.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
The reality is not actually all that complicated. There is plenty of middle ground, as long as one does not give into the sweet temptation of the false dilemma.
Mention your school when it is relevant. Do not evade direct questions. This is pretty much the same conversational standard used for just about everything.
Here is a very simple test. Because I am a statistician (gratuitous career reference), I will call it a “tea” test. Consider the following example.
So when I was having tea (with the Queen of England)…
If there exists any other reasons aside from self-gratification or careful manufacture of a first impression to mention the parenthetical to a group of people you do not actually know, then it is acceptable to offhandedly mention where you went to school.
The last time I can recall name-dropping my school was in a bar with a bunch of random people I had met. Since I roll with a hip crowd, we were talking about Ghostbusters. I completely forgot the context, but I was able to get away with a college reference because two of the Ghostbusters were actually professors at Columbia, and the beginning of the film was shot there. Mentioning that yes, Columbia really does look like that was quite relevant, added something to the conversation, and almost certainly did not make me out to be a gratuitous braggart.
It really, really, and I mean really isn’t all that difficult.
The problem is that surprisingly often a simple answer to a direct question is received as a challenge: “Well la-de-da! You think that makes you better than me?” olivesmarch4th and Hostile Dialect have it pegged, in my view.
The reality can be more ambiguous.
For example, I may casually mention to someone that I lived in the US while in college, but moved back to Japan for grad school. He asks me where I went to college. Is that a direct question because he’s now curious about my educational background, or is the school name not relevant because he just wants to know were in the US I lived? In this situation I could say “Harvard” and be accused of name-dropping, but it’s just as likely that I’d say “Boston,” then get asked “which school in Boston” and accused of “faux modesty.”