<p>How do you tell people that you are attending Columbia without sounding pretentious?</p>
<p>I’m assuming this is if somebody asks what college you attend. I’ve felt the same before, but the best approach is a straightforward simple answer. Just say, “I attend Columbia University.” and if they say “Columbia, huh?” or “good, good,” or muse in thought… just say “I like it there a lot. Lots of opportunities and great people to meet.” </p>
<p>If the person you’re talking to mentions their own college, make sure you compliment it. Ie: they say “I go to U.C. San Diego” then you say “great school, has an amazing bioengineering department and nice weather.”</p>
<p>You’ll only come off as pretentious if you harp on about all the nobel laureates, “ivey-ness”, or go around to people who have no interest in what college you attend and brag about it.</p>
<p>i just say I go to Columbia, and then I usually add, the one in New York. For some reason there are a lot of people from the KC metro area who know about the Columbia art school in Chicago. Sometimes I feel like being a ****** bag and instead I say “the ivy league one”.</p>
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<p>We’ve done this thread before. I’m not sure why this is an issue. Nobody’s going to think you’re pretentious if you answer “Columbia” when someone asks where you go to college. Uneducated folks outside the northeast haven’t even heard of the f’ing place – or even if they recognize the name, don’t know enough about it to recognize it as one of america’s premiere schools. </p>
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<p>More like d–chebag than pretentious. Pretentious might be saying with a swagger, “I went to Cuh-lum-bee-a.”</p>
<p>Yeah, answering someone’s question honestly isn’t at all pretentious. If someone asks where I go to college I’ll just say Columbia, then I’ll usually get congratulated and asked how I like it and I give the standard “it’s really fun but also a lot of work.”</p>
<p>interesting, why does the OP ask this question on all the Ivy forums?</p>