<p>Why does it matter if someone knows where a school is? It doesn’t make them any more or less intelligent, and the location doesn’t make or break the school either.</p>
<p>I know that you feel as if they are dumbing themselves down by asking where the school is, but they probably don’t care. It’s called making conversation.</p>
<p>Ughh…i’m a rising senior, and everyone’s favorite question to ask me is “where are you applying” and i normally try to say “a couple of little schools”…some drop the convo at that, some then ask “which ones” so then i tell them Smith, Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps, Union and then they look at me like i just made up all those schools
then again, my own GC hadn’t heard of any of them…what do i expect</p>
<p>I usually avoid telling people where I’m going, especially when I’m around my friends. They’re all going to community college and I’d feel like an ass if I just blurted out the name of my very well-known school. Instead, I just tell people that I’m going a university in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Im going to Berkeley in the fall and I live in northern california. At my school we send about 10% of our graduating class to Berkeley each year so it doesnt seem like as big of a deal here (and its not even the top 10%, they go to Ivys…) but when I meet people from other, less competitive high schools in the area and they ask where I’m going I usually say Cal (it doesnt seem as pretentious somehow) and if the other person says something like “wow you must be really smart then, im not going anywhere good like that im just going to San Jose State” or something along those lines I usually counter with “Oh sweet so you are staying in California too? Good choice, I dont think I could survive on the East Coast after 18 years of this weather”</p>
<p>fortunately the only people from our school (on the most part) who go out of state go to REALLY good schools so the “Nice, staying in CA!” works most of the time to avoid any awkwardness and try and show I’m not some elitist who wants to rub my school in their face</p>
<p>I try not to push where I’m going. For instance, if someone asks if I’m going to college, I say something like “yea a public uni in Cali”. But when people do want to know where I’m going, I just smile and say UC Berkeley. I sometimes feel bad because I do feel pretentious since I feel all giddy up inside that I’m going to a big name school.<br>
I also have to agree with the notion that if you’re too modest it has the same effect as being too arrogant with your school.</p>
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<p>QFT.</p>
<p>(10char)</p>
<p>For some reason, when I tell people I go to NYU, they’re amazed. More than a handful of people thought it was in the Ivy League. I’m like… yeah it’s not even close.</p>
<p>A lot of people around in Maryland (DC area) actually know about Cornell (though not where it is, everyone thinks its in NYC), probably because I live in a more educated area. But I always get the people that think I’m being pretentious when I say it. I guess though even without Cornell, people still kind of think i’m pretentious since i’m known as the “smart kid” at my school…</p>
<p>maybe i do talk a little bit too much about cornell though haha</p>
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a lot of people i know thought it was an ivy… weird.</p>
<p>i just say i’m going to school in the city. if they ask where i just say NYU. i usually get the following responses:</p>
<ol>
<li>wow, you must be smart.</li>
<li>say hi the olsen twins.</li>
<li>you must be rich.</li>
</ol>
<p>"Why would you hide the college you’re going to? I’m really asking. "</p>
<p>“Because people will view it as bragging”</p>
<p>Those of you in SoCal, the Northeast, and the suburbs of Chicago are probably the only ones who feel like you are entitled to an expensive, prestigious education. In the other parts of the country it’s considered the height of pretentiousness to go far away to an expensive elite college. In these areas you better have a good excuse for the local state U. not being “good” enough for you.</p>
<p>It’s a common belief on CollegeConfidential that the intelligent people you run into will know the more obscure elite colleges. But once I was talking to a medical doctor who’d gone to U of Chicago undergrad and Northwestern for med school. I told him I just hired a young guy for a summer job who was attending Carnegie Mellon. He said “What’s that? A trade school?”</p>
<p>An uncle of mine who was a prison guard in Pennsylvania scoffed at a kid in his neighborhood who said he was going to Johns Hopkins. “Johns Hopkins?” he said, “That’s a MEDICAL school!”</p>
<p>how about schools like UChicago, Cornell, Columbia, NYU, etc. will open more doors for you than University of Bumblefck.</p>
<p>i think it’s an excuse that keeps on excusing.</p>
<p>“how about schools like UChicago, Cornell, Columbia, NYU, etc. will open more doors for you than University of Bumblefck.”</p>
<p>Folks in the Midwest and South can point to way too many millionaires and bigshots who went to Local State U. for the “opening doors” excuse to fly. I have an uncle who got all his degrees at the state flagship, and he won a Fields Medal and gets huge money for hanging out at top universities all over the world. Nobody in the family is very impressed that I have degrees from Boston College and the U of Toronto.</p>
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<p>it’s definitely considered pretentious to go to a non-ivy private school in SoCal.</p>
<p>maybe you meant norcal?</p>
<p>When I lived in NorCal, it seemed like the locals worshipped Berkeley, and if they couldn’t get in there, back-to-nature places like UCSC, Oregon, Utah, Colorado were considered cool. I had a NorCal cousin who had family connections at Williams, but she didn’t even consider going there…it was pretty much Berkeley or nothin’.</p>
<p>I know in SoCal there are lots of folks who want to go to Berkeley. I didn’t sense that a lot of NorCal folks were eager to go to UCLA (too glitzy).</p>
<p>Some of y’all are getting embarrassed over nothing; the only people who care about elite colleges are the ones that go there, so you don’t have to be modest. If you go to a prestigious LAC, no one’s heard of it anyway, if you go to an elite university, chances are they still don’t care unless the football team’s amazing. Unless you go to HYP you shouldn’t worry about people automatically assuming you’re smart (they’re thinking: What the hell is Tufts?!) :)</p>
<p>A lot of it is regional - I didn’t think of Stanford and all those California schools as elite at all til I joined this site. Most people from the east, south or midwest lump all the UC’s together and don’t distinguish or care.
haha where do you live? Based on personal experience, people outside NY think NYU is a State U and people who live here don’t think of it as elite at all, especially the older generation (not long ago it was a commuter school for locals). Columbia and Cornell are the elite schools here in NY.</p>
<p>After rereading this thread, it seems like a lot of people here sort of want some social reenforcement for going to a good school. You shouldn’t feel embarassed over where you go to school. You should feel proud that you go to Harvard or Brown or Tufts or whatever. It’s a collossal waste of money if you’re going to Brown over your state university and you are afraid to tell people you go there.</p>
<p>I’m also amazed at the person who says he doesn’t ask other people where they go to college. Most people like where they go to school. It’s just polite to ask someone who goes to college which school they go to. You then follow up the small talk with something like “oh, thats a nice city” or “i applied there” or “i have friends there and they love it”. You seem really pretentious if someone asks you where you go and you don’t ask them back.</p>
<p>Most people haven’t heard of my school and it’s solidly top 10 for undergrad with top 3 business and med school and a top 5 law school. If people think I go to Penn State, I correct them not because I want to feel smart or to validate where I go, but because I have pride in my school and want someone to be clear (because they asked) that I go to the University of Pennsylvania, a different school. Whether or not that person acknowledges it as an Ivy, or just some school in Philly doesn’t matter that much to me. The only time I don’t correct people (it happened twice) was when they said “Oh wow, Penn State is a really good school, you’re really smart.” and something to that effect. At that point I just felt pretentious to tell someone “no, I go to Penn, Ivy League blah blah blah.”</p>
<p>To the person who said to say “University of Pennsylvania” instead of “Penn” I’ve tried that too. Most people still hear Penn State (which menas they aren’t really listening and don’t really care, just making small talk).</p>
<p>I personally don’t feel entitled to go to a prestigous school and don’t expect most people to know what Penn is. I just wanted to go to a college where I felt I would get the best education and fit in the best. I only really expect you to know what Penn is if you’re in business, medicine, or law and hire outside of your local geographic region.</p>
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<p>well, i’m impressed!</p>
<p>Thanks, stephennn. You can be my honorary cousin!</p>
<p>A lot of this prestige discussion might be more understandable if we shift the discussion to cars. To some people, cars are just transportation…if it starts up reliably and gets them where they are going, they are happy. To them, people who pay big money for a Lexus, BMW, or Porsche (never mind a Rolls or a Maybach) are unbelievably pretentioius and are trying to compensate for some insecurity. Meanwhile, the ones driving the Lexuses, BMWs and Porsches have a hard time believing anybody would be content driving a Malibu or a Carolla.</p>
<p>^if you never drive a Benz you don’t know what you’re missing. Same way if none of your friends or family went to a prestigious school, you’ll never know if they are any better than Southern North Dakota State A&M. You’ll just view it as a waste of money because a Kia and a degree from SNDSAM can get you where you need to go. It’s worse if the one person you know with a BMW got a lemon or the one person who went to Harvard dropped out and is now working at McDonald’s.</p>
<p>If you go to a great school, and people ask you where you go. Give them the truth. When you say that you go to Harvard or Stanford or MIT people wont think that you are snobby, they will be very impressed at your ability to get into such a tough school. If they think that you are snobby, they are just jealous that they were stuck in the state school whereas you went to the best.</p>
<p>Who cares what other people think anyway?</p>