<p>Bay, I don’t take any of it seriously.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>None of the kids in my high school’s graduating class who headed off to Princeton were snobby…nor those who headed off to Harvard and Yale. However, based on negative experiences of older HS classmates who were Princeton students/alums, there was a lot of concern over whether they’d be snobbed by the “upper-crust/legacy” students for being working/lower-middle class kids from a NYC public high school…even if it was a math/science magnet. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there were far fewer such concerns for those who went off to Yale and Harvard. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As someone who has worked as an academic tutor during and after college, taught basic computer literacy/usage courses, and substitute taught a few undergrad-level courses at a community college, that’s an unacceptable excuse. </p>
<p>Being asked a large number of seemingly simple or even “stupid questions” by undergrad students comes with the job of being a TA or any teaching/teaching related job at a college/university. If that TA can get so annoyed to the point of visibly manifesting it to his/her students…frankly…he/she should seriously consider going into another line of work. </p>
<p>Such folks usually turn out to be the very bad/crappy teachers one hears horror stories about from traumatized/scarred former students…even several decades after the fact.</p>
<p>I was curious to see what Princeton’s school newspaper says about the eating clubs and their role in the social environment–there are lots of articles. This one has a lot of interesting information.
[Eating</a> club task force calls for change to Bicker - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/05/05/26097/]Eating”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/05/05/26097/)
This one I note without comment:
[Ralph</a> Lauren hosts Ivy members - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2005/11/11/13757/]Ralph”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2005/11/11/13757/)</p>
<p>I stumbled across Jessie’s blog through a facebook post, and I feel the need to put my two cents in. I went to high school with Jessie, and I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we were acquaintances. We were in a math tutoring club together, and were friendly toward one another, but we never actually hung out. </p>
<p>I do disagree on the more minor points in her article. Our high school, and Vegas in general, are not the most accepting of everyone. There were definitely a few snobs, to the point of it being obnoxious at several points. The fact that Jessie was able to be friendly and accepting of everyone was something she was known for. She was always very nice, she was not socially awkward, and she was never overbearing. This is why I think that what she says about Princeton must have a certain degree of truth to it. If she believes the school we went to was not snobby, and she thinks that Princeton is, I imagine she speaks at least partial truth. </p>
<p>I just wanted you all to know that this girl is not rude or overly obnoxious. She is definitely opinionated, but that does not make her a terrible person. The people who are blindly attacking her character should know that she is not a bad person.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This strikes me as a blah-blah-blah type of thing, because really, you could go to Ole Miss or some SEC school that doesn’t have the academic cred of a Princeton, and you’ll still find impossibly rich kids who hang around one another. Heck, you can find that at the University of Kansas or Arizona State. I don’t know what planet someone is living on if they don’t think that in ANY community of several thousand young adults, there are going to be some who pretty quickly stratify who they want to hang with and who they don’t on whatever criterion they desire. And so let 'em – who cares?</p>
<p>The issue is only that it is more likely for Princeton kids to have the opportunity to stratify, based on sheer numbers and modus operandi. When there are more students (most of them intelligent, interesting, and usually caring) from the top 5% of the population than the bottom 50% of the population, and there are institutions that serve them, why is this at all surprising.</p>
<p>The Ivy Club/Ralph Lauren event cited above could only happen in a place where there was a population large enough to support it. (Berea need not apply.)</p>
<p>You WOULD find the same at Ole Miss or Arizona State if the percentages and institutions were similar.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Then why is it that the Eating Clubs/bicker are an overwhelming part of Princeton’s social environment whereas Harvard’s Finals Clubs are only taken seriously by a tiny minority of Harvard’s undergrad student body and are ignored or sometimes even regarded disdainfully as a joke by most?</p>
<p>Finals Clubs don’t serve top 5%ers. (try 1%ers). If they did, and had a tradition for doing so, they’d be packed.</p>
<p>Do you think Ralph Lauren could even get in the door to hold a semi-commercial event at a Finals Club?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because eating clubs are, traditionally, where upperclassmen take all their meals. This is changing somewhat with the advent of four year residential colleges and the popularity of co-ops. There are also some apartment like dorms on campus with full kitchens that are popular among seniors want to cook for themselves.</p>
<p>The role of the eating clubs on campus if very different from the roll of Finals Clubs at Harvard.</p>
<p>Although I am not fan of bicker, the eating clubs themselves are really no big deal. Anyone can get into one by signing up. My son, who will be choosing a club soon, has absolutely no desire to “bicker” so he will choose a “sign-in” club and sign in with his friends. He has other friends who will choose to bicker though and he thinks it’s fine. They will still be his friends!</p>
<p>To me this thread demonstrates the strength of the Ivy brand and exemplifies why the Ivies continue to have the extreme popularity they do. Ivy students and grads seem to assume that association as an important part of their identity more than students of other schools. Even if they themselves don’t have the propensity to do this, others will relentlessly do it for them. “He’s a Harvard man.” “She goes to Princeton!” The college gets used an adjective: eg. Harvard-educated. (Berea-educated? Nah.) </p>
<p>This perhaps explains why a thread like this gets people so hot and bothered. I liked my college, and thought I received a very good education there. But the college is just where I attended school, and has not become attached to my personhood. No one would ever say College X-grad TheGFG. The school isn’t good enough for that, and frankly the lesser schools are not viewed as life-determining in the same way as a school like Princeton is. So if people were to say that the students at my College X were snobby, or stupid, or ugly or whatever it really wouldn’t phase me. For one thing, people experience places differently since clearly just because Jessie said things about Princeton doesn’t mean everyone feels that way. Also, no place stays the same forever and change can happen quickly. For all I know the students there now could be snobby. So why the ire and hyper-sensitivity over the Ivies?</p>
<p>Look, no one can have scientific evidence about the atmosphere of a school. A thread like this can only be anecdotal and contextual. Still, when a student visits Princeton on an NCAA official visit like my D did, and the assigned hostess illuminates the Princeton social scene for D in a certain way, I fail to see how that is any less relevant a comment than any other on here. I wish I could share a few other details about that visit which would add to the discussion of rudeness, but I can’t.</p>
<p>
I agree that schools vary in terms of how strongly students identify with them, but I’m not sure it has to do with how they are ranked. People who go to Columbia (for example) don’t define themselves this way, but what about Texas A&M?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you serious? Go spend some time in other parts of the country, TheGFG. Hunt’s comment about Texas A&M (as an example) is spot-on. Or some of the SEC schools. There is an amazing provincialism about CC at times, where people seem to think that the Ivies (or similar elite schools) are the only ones that people truly “affiliate” with. That’s complete nonsense. Oh - and you can find plenty of well-to-do southern belles who won’t talk to anyone whose daddy doesn’t make what their daddy does at some of the SEC schools, or rich Californian kids at Arizona State who stratify, etc. Why it’s somehow different when it’s at Princeton is beyond me – *conceptually, *it’s all the same.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It isn’t different, but for some reason some people want to deny that it happens or defend it as okay because it happens in other places.</p>
<p>
Harvard (and Yale) designed their residential college systems to be so desirable that most people don’t feel the need of having final’s clubs as a separate place to meet friends away from the hoi polloi. Nor do most even want to live off campus. The whole point of the Houses (or Colleges) is to bring students together and have the synergy that develops when house tutors, faculty and students of all walks of life live and eat together. The basements of the houses are full of stuff to help create community. My House had seven squash courts, a bunch of music practice rooms, several pinball machines, fussball, a pingpong table, a small student run cafe, a pottery studio and a dark room. In addition the house had a small library, and a junior and senior common room - and of course it’s own dining hall.</p>
<p>When Harvard asked the finals clubs to go co-ed in 1984, they chose to go private. About 10% of males are members and 5% of females (in female only clubs that were created in the 1990s and 2000s.)</p>
<p>While “conceptually the same” stuff happens elsewhere, people are more interested in it and get more upset over it when it is alleged to occur at HYP. This annoys some of you because you don’t see why Princeton et al. are so special as to deserve the attention and scrutiny. The fact that they indeed get this attention was my point–the brand is strong, and it’s strong on a national level. You may think the attention is myopic or undeserved, but it exists nonetheless. Of course there are regional brands that are strong too but I haven’t noticed that there have there been countless Texas A&M love fest threads, articles, blogs, complaints, etc. being posted on the parent forum in the years that I’ve been reading it. There ARE endless threads about the Ivies, though. If anyone cared enough to post comparable threads about other supposedly strong brands, than we could debate the level of snobbery at those schools too.</p>
<p>GFG- I respectfully disagree. There are segments of the population which consider Notre Dame or Georgetown the Be-All and End All of their identities; there are parts of the country where Ole Miss or Texas A&M or Mizzou literally define your social circle for much of your adulthood. Look at the outcry over Sandusky at Penn State- believe me, he’s not just another assistant football coach to alums who graduated 20 years ago whose identities were firmly molded in Happy Valley.</p>
<p>I think in the Northeast, HYP and the preppy culture they used to represent are symbolic of whatever is left of the old Yankee aristocracy. But to folks in the rest of the country they are vestigial and frankly, not that interesting.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>EXACTLY. Well said. Especially Notre Dame! Good lord, that is one school that really has a tremendously loyal “user base.” Good for them - they’re doing something right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Also well said. I have an affinity for it, myself, since I grew up in the northeast, I love preppy culture (despite not having a WASP bone in my body) and I fully get it. But I would be guilty of precisely the Northeast provincialism that I was raised with to think that everyone, everywhere, is drooling over these sets of schools the way I was raised to drool over them or that they, alone, serve as cultural markers of identity that everyone wants a piece of.</p>
<p>I think there is a microscopic focus on HYP (and some other great colleges) because there is a perception that they are composed almost entirely of tippy top/smart students (most colleges have them too, but not in the same percentages), so when less-than-admirable or immature or base behavior occurs, it is notable, if only because it tells us something about elements of human nature that cross all intelligence/achievement strata.</p>
<p>This thread has carried on long enough that I have finally remembered the name of the 1990 movie about NY preppies. I think most participating in the thread would enjoy it, if they missed it the first time around. </p>
<p>Metropolitan
[Metropolitan</a> :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews](<a href=“http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900810/REVIEWS/8100302]Metropolitan”>http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900810/REVIEWS/8100302)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Why it’s somehow different when it’s at Princeton is beyond me – conceptually, it’s all the same.”</p>
<p>It’s not conceptually different, but numbers matter. Finals Club at H. attract top 1%ers, and folks don’t take regular meals there. Yale’s residential college system pretty much rules out something like P’s eating clubs. There are fraternities and sororities at other colleges and universities, but nowhere else (or very, very few places, at any rate) would one find such a concentration of top 5%ers who can segregate themselves so easily as part of their daily college life if they choose to do, and by doing so mold the fabric of college life.</p>
<p>So it really isn’t “conceptually” different. But it really is different.</p>