How the fuck are you still a moderator here?
L never went to Harvard or Yale, but I have two brothers that both went to Jail!
Boston isn’t a big college town.
If you have any concerns about the staff here, make a thread in ATMB next time. Bringing it up in a topic, putting it like a potshot (like you did), and doing it about three years after the post in question was made, is not the way to do it.
I know this is a zombie thread. I initially say “I went to school out east” or “I went to school in New Jersey.” If they push any more, then I’ll mention Princeton by name. It’s not a matter of being coy or humble-bragging. It’s just that some people’s reactions make you feel awkward.
Interesting. So we can cross off “Interacting with hoo-mons” as an Ivy League special skill?
Yeah. I wouldn’t worry about it.
I think this post is an excellent example why many of us don’t tell people we went to an Ivy.
I go to a very well known university for grad school. My SO goes to a nearby state school. I have no illusions about the relative qualities of our educations; we’re in similar fields and having compared her homeworks and projects to mine, it seems that her education is more rigorous. Nevertheless, I also have trouble saying the name of my school.
There are three reasons for my reluctance. First, the name of the school is very well known and strangers tend to react with “wow, you must be a genius!” which is both false and annoying. Second, I don’t have very good control of my vocal intonation when I’m self conscious about something and I’m terrified of sounding smug when I say the name. Finally, my school is very selective. Having been here for a couple years now, I’ve seen the BS and stochasticity that go into the admissions process and I know that there are a lot of deserving applicants who didn’t get in. When I meet my SO’s friends, I know that there’s a strong likelihood that they also applied and didn’t make it. The rejection can sting quite a bit (I know from experience with other schools!). First interactions are formative, and I don’t want that emotion to be associated with me (that said, I’ve started just saying it anyway because I know there are only a few grad schools in the area and it’s even douchier when I start evasively and then am forced to specify soon afterward).
Hopefully none of the above make me a shmuck as suggested in the Slate article, but if so I’d rather hear about it on here than in person.
shrug You can do or do not as you like.
I’ve never been anything but admiring when someone tells me they went somewhere prestigious. But if they told me something generic because they figured I couldn’t handle the truth and I found out, I’d be annoyed and disappointed. As someone said earlier in the thread, be proud of where you went. If people are gonna be jealous, that’s their bag.
In the late 1980s I was a co-op student at a satellite R&D lab in Maryland. (COMSAT, in case you’re curious.)
COMSAT hired co-ops students from three engineering schools: The University of Cincinnati (my alma mater), Virginia Tech, and MIT.
The UC students were cool. The VT students were cool. The MIT students were flakes. 
Good at math, but not much more.
I remember one MIT EE student in particular. She came in the lab one day and said, “The outlet in my bedroom doesn’t seem to be working. I’m going to take home this handheld multimeter this evening and find out what’s wrong.”
Next day she came in and said, “The meter doesn’t work. And I saw a spark or something…”
I looked into it. The internal fuse was blown. I asked her what she did. She said, “I did some research and found out the outlet is 15 amps. So I configured the meter to read current and tested the outlet.” :smack:
I told her to stick to math.
A guy I knew who was working in a maquila in Cd. Juarez had similar things to say about the MIT engineers vs the local Mexican tech school grads, who also happened to be a lot cheaper.
I had an old platoon leader who would say he went to a small school in upstate New York.
He was the only West Pointer who wasn’t obnoxious about it.
I’ve very proud of where I went to school. But as much as people like you might be annoyed if I say I went to school in NH, my experience is there are an equal number or greater who would think it pretentious if I say I went to Dartmouth. In many ways it’s just easier to say NH and move the conversation elsewhere. If I want to talk about Dartmouth I’ll mention Dartmouth.
It’s not about what you can handle or can’t handle. Sometimes I’m just not interested in having a discussion about where I went to school.