[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
The older you get, the less often your university crops up in conversation. When I had first got out of New Haven*, I tended not to refer to it unless absolutely necessary, because I didn’t want people to think I was bragging. I’d sometimes just say I studied in the States for a while, and that normally was enough. If the actual university came up naturally in a conversation, so be it, and of course I plugged it when applying for jobs - that’s what it was for.
Other than that, I was too busy getting admitted to the bar to talk about it a lot, and most of the people I was hanging out with were busy doing the same, or starting their other careers, and pretty soon the topics in casual conversations were about house-buying, weddings, kids, and the topics in professional conversations were about what that loony judge did this week, etc.
Nowdays, where I went to university rarely pops up in conversations of any sort, so it’s not much of an issue.
*Euphemism used to avoid referring to what university. Force of habit. 
[/QUOTE]
Oh sure. I mean, what university I went to doesn’t ever pop up in the line of work I even do. Photo editors don’t give a shit where you went to school or even if you went to school. Just show me the pix!
It’s just that I perceive any mention of a fancy-ass Ivy League school as being interpreted as bragging. Like I said above, if it’s germane to the story because of location or whatnot, it’s no big deal to me. Also, if I’m listening to people tell stories about college, I kinda want to know what college. Not because I’m sizing them up or judging them, but so I can get a sense of what life at all these other colleges were like. It’s an additional point of info that I appreciate. When it comes across as bragging (when it’s repeated over and over again like a point of pride) then it’s annoying.
For example, MIT. When I was in 8th grade, my dream was MIT. Their campus culture, history of pranking, etc., would be relevant info to me if somebody were telling me a college story, so I could file it away in my head as another example of those wacky and brilliant MIT kids. Don’t dance around it. If back in your college days you stole a police car and reassembled it on the dome of one of your buildings on campus, just tell me it was at MIT. When talking to me, at least, I won’t think of you as some sort of pompous asshole.