I’ve found it normal and expected to specify where a college is located unless it’s blindingly obvious (i.e. University of Texas at El Paso). It seems somewhat pretentious to just assume others have heard of your school, and avoids a “why the hell would I know or care where that is?” Similarly, I’m not going to tell someone I’m from Canutillo (I’m not, just an example) without a “near El Paso, TX”*. It’s polite. YMMV
*Always El Paso, TX, as there are a few El Paso’s out there and some folks think it’s in NM or AZ or something.
I only know one Harvard grad but it’s all he ever fuckin’ talks about. If ANY other school ever comes up he looks incredulous and says “that’s not a real school.”
I suppose it must depend on what kind of company you keep. The people I know who take this kind of shit take it because they really are irritating, even if they don’t believe they are. Their attitude can convey that they think a great deal about their accomplishment, such as it is. This is really the root of the problem.
People who went to (in)famous schools really aren’t saddled with this great big social dilemma. Aside perhaps from the SDMB, negotiating the sensitive problem of telling people where you went to college is not all that difficult, even for a social semi-misfit like myself.
Now that I’ve thought on it, a better response may be, “I was in [location], at [school]”. Adds the polite clarification for those who need it without any implication of lack of knowledge on their part or false modesty on the speaker’s part.
I suppose life is full of big risks like this. I am sure there are social situations that require some human judgment rather than straightforward application of a reductionist principle. But this happens all the time. If you do slightly unconventional things with your time you will always be subject to this. I am an enthusiast of all sorts of other stuff that screams “you think you’re better than me, huh?” So believe me, I understand this sort of thing. Telling people where I went to school is the least of it.
Well, I never said it was a major problem. I was just trying to illustrate a case where someone may be exercising honest modesty and be misunderstood, or answering a direct question and be perceived as name-dropping.
I understand, I was just being somewhat rhetorical. I also think that body language and expresseion have a great deal to do with how this is received.
Some people are just perpetually looking to cause trouble or have an axe to grind people who have experienced some privileges. The only social remedy for this is just to avoid spending much time with them.
You went to Princeton? What are you doing working here?
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Where did you go to school, gigi?
I went to Princeton.
<shocked deer in headlights> You went to Princeton? Wow, that’s a really good school. You must be really smart.
Maybe these people are assholes, but no more than anyone else. They’re just my co-workers, and this is the type of response I get.
<enthusiastic indiference> Hey! That was my safety school!*
Not really. But it’s a fun thing to say to people who get all high and mighty about their school.
I’ve asked the “so what are you doing here” question before. I was at this tiny consulting firm working with an MIT grad. Basically our job was to manually clean and normalize a database (making sure all the variations of G.E, GE, General Electric, etc are the same). IOW something you could hire some temps to do, not an MIT grad and an MBA/engineer. Overcome with the tedium of our job, I honestly asked her “you’re from MIT, how come you aren’t building robots instead of this bullshit?” A few weeks later, she IMed me to let me know she had taken my advice and was going to work for Lockheed Martin designing aviation systems for UAVs.
I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question really. Especially if the job seems like a waste of your talents. I mean I can’t figure out what I’m doing in my job, let alone some Wharton or MIT graduate.
Not really related but in the same job, there was a project manager who used to always be like “Common people!! This isn’t rocket science!!” So every time he used to say that, I would nudge the guy next to me who actually had a masters in aerospace engineering and be like “so is he right?”
The sangria is STRONG. I don’t remember much about the one time I went. Enjoy the summer while it lasts. Michigan during the academic year is not so peaceful.
I think, in general, people in the Midwest will respond much more strongly to someone who’s attended an Ivy League school than on the East Coast. I really didn’t realize, until I read this thread, the sheer number of really excellent schools in this region of the United States. I did not know, until I started filling out grad school applications, where any of the Ivies were… they’re all scattered on the East Coast. Hell, I live 20 minutes from Princeton, NJ and it never actually occurred to me that Princeton, NJ has… Princeton, the university. Only two of the Ivies offer my graduate program, and both are within reasonable driving/commuting distance of where I live. This is amazing to me. We are drowning in good schools out here. I still don’t think I could recite all of their names from memory. And I think that fact is going to very much influence regional perceptions of Ivy League education.
Having said that… being admitted (or at least unofficially at this point–I was told, during the interview, that I would be admitted) into an Ivy League school is pretty much a culmination of a dream come true for me. I lost a lot of academic confidence in undergrad due to a personal crisis that required me to withdraw from courses for over a year. This is almost like a rebirth of my identity. I’m really happy about it. It’s really important to me. Arrogance is not a problem for me… I don’t believe I’m better than everyone else or anything like that. But I am at least starting to feel like I have good qualities to offer the world. I AM proud of my accomplishment and I see no reason to pretend that it’s not important to me.
mssmith, are you inquiring as the to def. of ‘‘safety school?’’ It’s the school you apply to even though it’s not your #1 choice… you know you’re going to get in. You need at least one safety school to gaurantee you’ll be SOMEWHERE. My safety was Rutgers. And I was accepted. So worse comes to worst, I’m going to Rutgers this fall.
I have two degrees from MIT and one from Harvard. I generally avoid mentioning the schools unless it’s really relevant (e.g., if we get into a discussion of pranks, I probably will mention MIT because I’m talking about the specific school’s culture). When I was an undergrad doing a (dreadful) summer engineering job, I was once asked, “You go to MIT? Is your Daddy, like, president of the university?” But in general, I have not gotten much reaction to it. Occasionally a “wow,” but often not even that.
I have told someone who was being a dick about his education the old saw that PhDs are like noses - it’s only conspicuous when you don’t have one.
University of Chicago is right up there with the Ivies but at the time, for whatever reason, I had a lot better chance of getting in there than an Ivy, so it was my safety school. So it would be true to say that to someone, but assholic.
