cough Northwestern cough 
You should be nice. These people clearly think that where they went to college is the best thing they’ve got going for them, and they’re probably right.
Hmm. Mom went to Weston and “in Cambridge” is often used as a modifier for that.
Aaah exotic C-Dale, alma mater of what seemed to be half the freakiest freaks in my old MUD… at least until we got the Russian contingent. I actually went there once, to visit some of those guys shows her Saluki Teddy to DMark
I’m always wary of people who name-drop schools. Partly because I know perfectly well that the #100 from, say, Haaaahfahd, is not better than the #1 from Potatoville.
Washington University in St. Louis? That was bro’s alternate, and U of Chicago was mine. We both ended up staying on the East Coast.
Is Stanford still “The Harvard of the West”, the way it was when I was looking at schools?
I agree. When I started grad school, I was sort of awed by the grad students from Harvard, Princeton, etc., since those schools’ philosophy PhD programs are frickin’ impossible to get into. But then I met some and said, “I’m smarter than these punks.” And I’ve seen the careers of a lot of people with Harvard PhDs slide into the gutter while mine continues apace. This isn’t to say there aren’t some brilliant people at those schools. But I no longer assume someone is brilliant because they have a wall full of Ivy League diplomas.
:: twitch ::
On that note and to go along with the OP a bit, the St. Louis Rams back up QB Ryan Fitzpatrick…(oops I see he is with the Bengals now)… went to Harvard.
You can bet the farm that the damn announcers will mention that he went to Harvard several times a game(if he gets to play)…just a few times if he doesn’t play.
Believe me, I’m not impugning Penn State’s academics. If I go for a PhD, I’ll probably end up there.
I’ve just had to deal with a lot of assholes who believe that the world revolves around State College.
Robin
Hey, I love U of C. My best friend got his master’s degree there and I visited him several times. I love the campus. But, from the perspective of an outsider, NU is the school that’s popularly thought of as the top academic school in the Chicago area (and probably the entire Midwest), similar to Stanford, Duke and Rice in their respective areas.
Pfft. Show me a Brass Rat and maybe I’ll be impressed.
Yeah, UChicago students tend to be bitter about this, because we usually rank fairly higher than [del]those upstart party animals[/del] Northerwestern.
(Not that I have anything personally against Northwestern. A lot of my friends go there.)
Yeah, well, Wash U.'s ranked 12th. Northwestern’s a lowly 14th.
(Ignore Chicago’s ranking. It’s just an illusion.)
Am I the only one that would be freaked out by this? It would make me think that he wasn’t very qualified. If the best thing he could say was to name his school, I’d wonder if he knew what he was doing. I’d want him to tell me that the reason he knew about my condition was that he treated many people successfully that had it, not that he learned about it in a textbook in school.
I’ve been to a couple of doctors that went to Harvard (yes, Harvard), but if they mentioned it in regards to treating me, I’d begin to wonder about them.
I went through a phase of trying to weasel out of saying “Harvard” by saying “Back East” or “in Boston” instead. Now I just out with it when people ask where I went to college and hold my breath wondering what sort of freaky response they are going to have. I almost didn’t get an interview recently because the business owner thought I wouldn’t be able to relate to regular people because I went to Harvard. :rolleyes:
Hey! I went to Harvard!
(had a heckuva buzz on and I wandered around a bit. It looked a little untidy)
Heh. In my world, when people say Cambridge they mean MIT.
I just asked my officemate to confirm, he said “Yes, MIT. People from Harvard are invariably dropping the Harvard name.”
I went to Tickle U (the school of knock knocks)
Really?!?! I went to Northwestern and I definitely thought NU was a slight peg below U of C in prestige and academic reputation. I mean, hell, when I spent a summer at Harvard cough some of the people there didn’t even know WTF Northwestern was. I seriously got this response: “Northwestern? Is that the one that Dukakis is at?” (No, that would be Northeastern.)
And, living abroad, U of C is much, much more well-known than NU. In fact, NU is hardly known at all–at least I can’t think of a single person who knew of it that was not American.
I am shocked to hear that NU is considered the top academic school of the Midwest. Like I said, I’ve always felt it fell in the shadow of U of C.
Well, I went to the University of Central Florida.
And graduated in three years.
And I’m working in my career field that I majored in.
So there. 
I heard someone describe this “syndrome” as one of confusing creditials with qualifications. After all, what do you call someone who graduated last in his class at Harvard Medical?