<p>Didn't Douthat get quite sour towards the end of his days at Harvard? I don't buy anything he says, he seems fickle.</p>
<p>Very self-absorbed. Everything he writes is more about himself than the topic generally..... with the exception of his hilarious skewering of Cornel West, of course.</p>
<p>Oh yes I think I read that, it was really quite funny . </p>
<p>To stick to the topic, yesterday at a party someone asked me where I was going to school and I was debating to myself whether or not to just lie about it.</p>
<p>[q]People: Where are you going to college?</p>
<p>Me: I'm going to a school in Boston.</p>
<p>People: Oh, wow! Which one?</p>
<p>[Long pause]</p>
<p>Me: ...Harvard?</p>
<p>It's that weird every. single. time. [/q]</p>
<p>Lol. This is great!</p>
<p>No, the article is really arrogant in several places, although I have to say that he has some excellent point. I haven't applied to the big H (I'm going to Uchicago), but I did the summer program there, and even on something that insignificant, I got the same reaction. Loads of friends of mine were putting it down, saying that they were going to do better things, or worse, going to better summer schools (which, I must say, Harvard's is by far the best).</p>
<p>But, at any rate, I'd like to post a parallel question. Summers, whom I had the pleasure to meet in my 10-week stay there last year, was known of being a revolutionary at H, especially in the FAS, by doing anything from pushing freshman seminars in the sciences to questioning the school's notorious grade inflation. Now, by his somewhat forced departure from the school, wouldn't be accurate to assume that the leadership at Harvard isn't terribly interested in questioning its academic supremacy as Summers rightfully was?</p>
<p>Complacency breeds failure.</p>
<p>I personally believe that the least pretentious way to respond to the "Where do you go to school?" question is to tell them you go to Harvard, just like you would tell them you go to any other university. After all, that's what it is. Sure it may be "better" than a lot of other universities in some areas, prestige being the most obvious, but it's important to remember that there are a lot of areas where Harvard doesn't even come close to other universities.</p>
<p>The best was today when my baseball coach asked me where I'm going to college, and my friend says "Oh, he's going to some place back east...I forgot what it's called. What's it called again?" That truly puts you on the spot.</p>
<p>melissas, I agree. A girl I knew (slightly) from a few years ago handled it excellently by doing just that.</p>
<p>Wake Forest, do you go to school to school somewhere in North Carolina. Maybe Raleigh?</p>
<p>From a column in today's Crimson, lamenting the cross humble Harvard students have to bear being identified as such:</p>
<hr>
<p>"While we at Harvard may think that oceans of difference separate us from our peers, to the outside world, we are all just Harvard students. Whether we scored a 1600 or (gasp!) a 1350 on our SATs, all of us are subject to the same skeptical glances and the same odd combination of reverence and resentment from the strangers we meet outside the confines of the Yard. As different as we may seem to each other, in the eyes of many, we are all the same: rich (or soon-to-be rich) members of a privileged elite poised to inherit the world. While our critics may misjudge us, let our common position in the minds of millions bind us together."</p>
<p>"Let our common arrogance bind us together," I think he means.</p>
<p>Just think: if you'd gotten into Yale, you could have pretended to be almost as arrogant! The Y-bomb doesn't have quite the magatonnage of the H-bomb, but you'd love to be dropping it, wouldn't you?</p>
<p>ouchhh.....</p>
<p>byerly get a life with your 3,988 posts. How old are you?</p>
<p>Way to add to the discussion venus....</p>
<p>Byerly is an indispensable part of the Harvard forum (I am not sure if she is an adcom or not)-she knows a LOT about the school, and is very helpful.</p>
<p>Lay off.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Just think: if you'd gotten into Yale, you could have pretended to be almost as arrogant! The Y-bomb doesn't have quite the magatonnage of the H-bomb, but you'd love to be dropping it, wouldn't you?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i'll let what he/she said speak for itself.</p>
<p>Hey, Zephyr just hangs around the Harvard board for the sole purpose of bashing the school. It's not like Byerly said this out of the blue - Zephyr is constantly posting anti-Harvard stuff that serves no purpose and has no factual basis. I guess he's just unhappy he ended up at Stanford? (An amazing school.)</p>
<p>He/she couldn't be an adcom because what adcom, after spending an 8-5 job at an admissions office reading through applications, would come home and spend even more time on the discussion forms of collegeconfidential discussing the nitty and gritty of college admissions. Most of us are high school students, which i don't THINK Byerly is. Maybe a parent..but then what parent would be picking on some high school or college student?</p>
<p>Byerly is an alum, an interviewer, and a guy :p Not to mention, as was mentioned before, an indispensable (and pretty much unavoidable, lol) part of this forum. I think Zephyr and Venus's (going Greek/Roman mythology with the usernames, are we? :p) comments were a bit out of line...</p>