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Hey, me too!
Which college were you at?
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Hey, I went to Miskatonic U. !
This made me laugh out loud. Too bad it’s a little long for a sig line. 
UVA … isn’t that the new upstart school Jefferson founded because his grandchildren couldn’t get into his alma mater?
[Yes, I know why he really founded it. I just couldn’t resist.]
I was at Homerton College, the bastard stepchild of the Cambridge family. My college in the US had a pretty cool year-abroad program. Anyway, I was there for the 1993-94 academic year. Lots of good memories of my time there.
Oh, its a twist on my FAVORITEST pickup line.
You go into “that kind” of bar. And there are young women standing around whose career aspiration is to “marry well.” And someone says “when I was in law school” and you know he’s getting laid.
I suppose “When I was at Harvard” will work equally as well.
It’s taken me almost 20 years to be comfortable saying I went to Princeton, but I still have to say it in an offhand way so no one thinks I’m bragging. I got in as a legacy and didn’t do particularly well there, so there’s nothing to brag about.
But for years after school? “I went to school in New Jersey.” And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
And someone mentioning Cambridge (MA) could mean any number of colleges. Maybe they’re just hoping folks will assume it means Harvard.
My daughter had a high school teacher that could not go 5 minutes without mentioning that he went to Cornell.
When we went for the open house night, she warned us he would mention Cornell.
So we go to his room, and it is not 45 seconds into the conversation when he says “Well when I was at Cornell I learned…”
I shot right back with, “Yes I learned the same thing at Yale.”
I wish I had a picture of the look on his face. For that matter the look on my wife’s face has she tried not to bust out laughing was pretty damn good also.
FTR I did not go to Yale, I went to a California State College. The deal was I just had to take that guy down a notch.
The OP reminds me of this quote (source unknown): “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
Harvard? Do they even have a football team?
Yep, they’re Division I-AA and regularly get blown out 46-3 by the likes of Holy Cross and Lehigh. 
You’d think so, but no. When they say “I went to Cambridge” they mean Cambridge, MA, a/k/a Harvard. They wouldn’t think Cambridge UK was a step up from that – no place on earth is a step up from that. Because it’s, you know, HARVARD.
I went to the most prestigious school in St. Louis (the “Harvard of the Midwest” :rolleyes: ). I more or less try not to mention it unless someone asks. My Educational Psychology professor (at lowly state school (I’m back in school for my teaching certificate)) goes out of his way to mention it more or less every class though.
Of course, I teach now at my alma mater, so know just how stupid the students are at my “elite” university.
We have a bunch of people back home who say “I study in Cambridge”, hoping people don’t realise they mean the former polytechnic.*
*also know as the Early Learning Centre 
Dave Barry had a bit on this in one of his columns – he must’ve experienced exactly the same thing.
“Pass the butter, please. we certainly did pass the butter At Harvard.”
FWIW, I have a couple of friends who did go to the big H, but they were never insufferable about it like that.
BFD. I went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Brown, Columbia, and MIT in high school, while visiting potential colleges.
And I’m now in the process of flunking out of the University of Kentucky, where I’m proud to say that our basketball and football teams are both better than anyone else’s mentioned so far in this thread. So suck on that!
ETA: Maybe I’ll tell people “I studied in Lexington” so that they’ll think I got a degree from Transylvania instead of knowing that I flunked out of UK in less than a year.
In all seriousness, this is a trait I never see in Harvard grads. Maybe it’s because there are so many of them here that such bragging would merely be met with “Yeah? So? Me too.”
I’m always surprised when I mention where I went to school. I usually mention it with a bit of shame. The response is almost always “Really? Wow! I heard that’s a really hard school to get into!” Um, walk in, write a check. That’s about it. Getting out is much harder. I recommend running and screaming.
I worked for a while for a lawyer who had not only gone to law school at Harvard, but been the editor of the Law Review. And yet – gasp! – she was actually not even remotely stuck up about it; she was one of the nicest, most genuine people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with or for.
It’s nice to see the occasional stereotype proved wrong. Although I do realize in this case how rare that probably is.
Exactly. Cambridge is used as a synonym for Harvard, and it is assumed that the rest of us are so perpetually dying of Harvard envy that we will realize this immediately.
To be more fair … I work in higher ed and Cambridge is often used as a working synonym for Harvard and there isn’t very much confusion about it at all. If another Cambridge, MA area college or Cambridge UK is what someone is talking about, they will just say so.
The thing that gets me about it in casual conversation is the idea that saying “Cambridge” softens the blow, as it were, that this fortunate person went to Harvard and I did not. It’s like saying the word “Harvard” is akin to flashing cash, but repeating “Cambridge” fifty million times in a conversation is perfectly low key.
:dubious: Hey, that’s OUR title!! The University of Chicago! We get to be the snobby, pretentious school of the Midwest - full of ugly and overeducated idiots! The University of Chicago! I went to the University of Chicago, you know. Surely you know this school? The University of Chicago?