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<blockquote> <p>I thought TheFacebook was based in Palo Alto. </p> </blockquote>
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<p>Many people have told me that they are surprised that a computer science major from Harvard designed this people-meeting service. - </p>
<p>I never realized it was 84.3%. Do we have cross-admit data for Harvard versus Stanford, Princeton and MIT?</p>
<p>"We" have it, but I can't post exact figures, unfortunately.</p>
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<p>No, Hanna trashes him because he is a giant loser who blames others for problems of his own making (hardly a conservative attitude, by the way). Hanna made a number of close friends amongs the conservatives at Harvard, particularly during law school.</p>
<p>Fact: People who punch the Porc and are heartbroken that they didn't get in are POSERS. Most of us overcome the bad habit of longing to sit at the "cool table" by the time we hit eighth grade. If you're still jockeying to be in the prom king's posse in your twenties, that's unbelievably lame.</p>
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<p>A true scholar wouldn't term him a "douche"</p>
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<p>True scholars don't post on internet message boards. This board is for conversation and gossip about colleges, so that's what I'm up to. Feel free to found a peer-reviewed journal of comparative literature if the discourse around here isn't up to your standards. I think you'll find that most literary critics don't consider the memoir/expose' to be part of the "academic dialogue." True scholars, for example, typically realize that a study with one subject (Ross) is academically worthless.</p>
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<p>that's the kind of shallowness and lack of intellectual rigor that he's criticizing.</p>
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<p>Wrong. Shallowness is when you care about things like which final club is chic enough, as Ross does. I am not cool. I am a huge a cappella nerd, choir dork, and drama geek. Thus, I thought Harvard was paradise, just as most nerds who embrace their nerd identity love college. Ross would not deign to associate with nerds like me -- he wanted the girls in Theta, the girls in the Bee. HE was the one who decided that social status was important and then allowed Porc members to define it, thereby creating his own mud hole of unhappiness to wallow in. Well, I'm not going to be playing the violin at the little pity party he throws for himself. There were 6,000 of us having a grand old time, and instead of joining in the fun, he pouted because the 500 he considered socially worthwhile wouldn't let him in the club. What a paragon of depth.</p>
<p>::::applause::::</p>
<p>"No school loses fewer matriculants via transfer."</p>
<p>care to substantiate that claim? princeton has a higher freshman retention rate than harvard, and about 400 fewer students per class, so i would expect, given these numbers, that it loses even fewer matriculants via transfer than H.</p>
<p>by the way, i note, on u.s. news, that harvard has a 97% freshman retention rate yet a 98% graduation rate. i find these numbers hard to reconcile.</p>
<p>It seems to me that you rather grimly distort his views because you do not sympathise with his politics. In saying this, I do not mean to say that I share all his theses, but only that the personal attacks strike me as a bit overdone.</p>
<p>Let me set you straight, and help you reconcile.</p>
<p>Harvard has an official policy of encouraging students to take a year off, either at the outset or during their college career. Enough students take off a year after the freshman year (in response to this official encouragement) that the "freshman retention rate" is "only" 97%.</p>
<p>The people taking a year off mid-career, as it were, generally return, so that Harvard's graduation rate is the nation's highest at 98%.</p>
<p>SEE: "Time Out or Burnout For The Next Generation" (Fitzsimmons)
<a href="http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/applying/time_off/time_out.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/applying/time_off/time_out.html</a></p>
<p>Hanna, who is familiar with the world of transfers, will I'm sure testify the the number of transfers out from any class can be counted on the fingers of one hand, although the transfers-in number from 25-50 or so annually.</p>
<p>Hanna, your posts in this thread are some of the most spot-on, not to mention amusing, posts I've read on this board.</p>
<p>Is the book good for a couple of laughs?</p>
<p>The fact that Mr. Douthat himself attended Harvard provides an effective counterargument against his main thesis.</p>
<p>Hanna, your ridiculously high level of invective distorts your argument (that Ross Douthat is a "douche") and makes me wonder what he really says in that book to provoke such a response. </p>
<p>God forbid he criticize Harvard! We can't criticize the #1 school! </p>
<p>His criticism of the lack of a core curriculum is totally spot-on.</p>
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<p>Care to speculate, then, about why I have never said anything approaching this level of negativity about any of the other Harvard conservatives who have had critical things to say about the institution? And furthermore, why would I completely ignore Ross' politics-related Harvard criticisms -- even tangentially political ones like the Core -- and focus entirely on his analysis of the social life? Could it be because I actually think there's a lot of room for debate on those political issues? Could it be because social life is the one area he's spectacularly unqualified to comment on, and I resent the fact that he is publicly smearing a lot of us happy nerds as social-climbing snots?</p>
<p>In fact, the only other book I've slammed this way is One-L, by the liberal Scott Turow, for exactly the same reason -- blaming the institution for the nonexistent social life the author brought upon himself.</p>
<p>Real conservatives, like my friends, do not kiss the rear ends of the hereditary aristocracy, and they take responsibility for the consequences of their choices. I'm surprised you even consider Ross to be among them.</p>
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<p>makes me wonder what he really says in that book to provoke such a response. </p>
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<p>Let me get this straight. You're criticizing my reaction to a book you haven't read? Now that's the mark of a true scholar.</p>
<p>I still suspect that your sentiments are politically tinged to a degree.</p>
<p>I can recall, a while back, when the Cornel West drama was on center stage, that you fiercely denounced the author for his anti-West parody published in the Crimson.</p>
<p>As I also recall quite vividly, you came down on me pretty heavily at that time for being less than worshipful of the Reverend West, and arguing that brooming him out the door was a courageous move on the part of Larry Summers.</p>
<p>Suspect away. When it comes to my ability to separate political affiliation from douchebaggery, I think I'll take the opinion of the Republican criminal law professor who wrote my clerkship recommendation and the Republican-appointed federal judge who hired me after reading them ahead of your speculations.</p>
<p>I did disagree with you and Larry about West, but I believe that the nastiest term I used in connection with Larry's handling of the incident was "clumsy." If that disagreement calls into question all my future criticism of all self-identified conservatives on all issues, so be it.</p>
<p>Lol! It was a <em>bit</em> more than that, as I recall! </p>
<p>Remember, the question is not whether "some of your best friends are Republicans", but whether you in fact trashed Douhat on a highly-charged political issue even before he wrote his tedious book.</p>
<p>Can't recall whether you called Douhat (or me!) a "douche" at the time, but you might have use that term - or something equally complementary!</p>
<p>I said nothing whatsoever about Ross Douthat's character ever in my life before this book came out. I didn't know who he was. If political disagreement constitutes "trashing," you've trashed me for years.</p>
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<p>Remember, the question is not whether "some of your best friends are Republicans", but whether you in fact trashed Douhat on a highly-charged political issue even before he wrote his tedious book.</p>
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<p>Oh, so you're changing the question now? A few posts ago, you simply claimed that I trashed Ross because I am an "ultra-leftist" and he's a conservative, and that I "distort" his views "because I do not sympathize with his politics," not because this is some kind of ongoing feud. The eminent conservatives who trust my political judgment and fairness are directly relevant to the point you were making before you decided to pull this little switcheroo.</p>
<p>In addition to redefining the argument, you conveniently ignore my stomping all over liberal Scott Turow when he did the same thing Ross did. And the fact that Ross is not a conservative by any honest definition. And the fact that this book is filled with political fodder for me to slam Ross with, if that were the issue. It's becoming tiresome to repeat myself, so you can continue this argument on your own if you like ... readers are welcome to form their own judgments about whether I've adequately supported my opinion that Ross desperately needed to get a life, and that he did a terrible disservice to his fellow undergrads by imputing his messed-up social priorities to the rest of us.</p>
<p>I refer the right honourable lady to my answer to her previous post. </p>
<p>I have enormous respect for her views on most non-political matters - although I understand the feeling is not mutual!</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>