<p>Being an educational consultant, I try to know about as many schools as possible. I often end up trying to drag the name of a small school out of an alum who assumes no one has ever heard of her alma mater! I have a lot of conversations like this:</p>
<p>Hanna: Where did you go to school?
New Friend: A small town in Wisconsin.
H: Whereabouts?
NF: In Menomonie, near Eau Claire?
H: Oh, UW-Stout?
NF: Wait, you’ve heard of Stout? Are you from Wisconsin?
H: Were you in the hotel school?
NF: ::eyes pop out of head:: You know about the hotel school? No one has ever heard of Stout!</p>
<p>I was working with someone the other day and her eyes popped out of her head, when I guessed what college she attended right off the bat ( she was my D’s age & said she attended a school in the NC foothills)
Warren Wilson- </p>
<p>I guess it takes a lot of fashion sense to give a girl a buzz cut and dress her in baggy pants and a flannel shirt.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is the buzzcut and baggy pants they need help with - but the wallet chain and boots give the ensemble that * je ne sais quoi* ;)</p>
<p>Seriously- my D had so many gay male friends that I was disappointed that none of them seemed to be the fashion experts that the gay men I had known in the hair business were.</p>
<p>OK, to be honest, some of the schools everyone has posted I have not heard of either so to some extent I can understand the blank stare reaction but:</p>
<p>As some may know from my other posts, we are about a 40 minute drive away from Penn State University Park Campus. My D is going to Cornell. In addition to the blank stare looks she gets, she also gets “why didn’t you go to PSU?” (because they didn’t have her major). Our are is so full of PSU, that a very high percentage of people don’t even know Cornell is a fantastic school about 4 hours North, and is part of the Ivy League. In D’s class, 2 applied to Ivy League schools, D is the only one accepted and attending. I believe she is the first from her high school ever to go Ivy. </p>
<p>And that is how far away from the bright spot in the universe we live…</p>
Well, there must be some underlying reality here. D turned me on to a group called “Girlyman,” composed of a straight woman, a gay man, and a f2m transgender man with the parenthetical, “They’re very popular in the Boston Jewish Queer community.” How’s that for microniche demographics? (They have a very nice sound with three-part harmonies and there music isn’t at all “political,” one of my faves being about the early days of TV and another a pretty good song about dealing with jealousy.)</p>
<p>But I move that RBJL be adopted as a standard CC abbreviation.
Is there a second?</p>
<p>No one in my county (meaning the public school system) has ever gone to a top twenty-five school. Ever. Maybe 1/4 of the people I talk to know anything about Stanford, let alone places like Cornell or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Right now my MiL wants to know why our student is looking at schools in the northeast…
EVERY time we speak, she asks about schools, which ones we looked at etc etc…and then…why aren’t you all looking at Vandy, Duke, etc…
We will, we will get ti them…</p>
<p>and then she tells me how Brother in law would never go to school up north
I am from the north and so is my sister inlaw== Think she is telling me something?</p>
<p>I will second the RBJL nomination. I think it should be right up there with BWRK. BTW, I think I’ll google that group. It sounds nice from your description, TheDad.</p>
<p>mom in community: What is your D interested in?
me: Asian languages and culture
mic: Oh, don’t worry, it’s just a phase
me: Actually, She’s been studying for years, and hopes to study abroad as well
mic: (laughing) I can’t picture your D in Asia
me: smile and nod, smile and nod</p>
<p>mic#2: Congrats on D’s acceptance to Vanderbilt!
me: (nicely) It’s Vassar
mic#2: I knew it was a V school!
me: smile and nod, smile and nod</p>
<p>mic#3: Too bad your D won’t meet any boys at Vassar
me: Well, it is co-ed
mic#3: But still (pulls out picture of her older D with boyfriend) Don’t they look great together?
me: smile and nod, smile and nod </p>
<p>sis-in-law(who lives in another state): I asked the guidance counselor at our school about Vassar, but she never heard of it
me: Well, it is a small school
sil: Didn’t she do well on the SATs?
me: s&n, s&n</p>
<p>Ohhh, from reading this I only have thoughts of things to come. We are getting statements like this about the schools my son is LOOKING at…
Top 20 school- you know they are VERY selective… you don’t say, I didn’t know that. Perhaps my son isn’t a viable candidate and we’ll just cross this one off our list. Thank you SO much for pointing this out!
Top 20 school…? I don’t think their (fill in the blank) department is as strong as (school xyz)… wow perhaps you have done some research on this and know what that program is doing currently. I must have been misinformed. Thank you for setting me straight! Whew! We could have made a BIG mistake!
State school… you know they drink underage… I didn’t know that. I didn’t think that happened on any college campus.
Safety school (well known nationally)— seriously! why would you go there? You can do so much better!! Well thanks. When you find the oos school that has my speciality and gives better merit aid so I can afford it, you let me know!<br>
Once you have done the hours of research and found that these schools are the best match for me… you get back with me! :)</p>
<p>I can not IMAGINE what we will go through once the decision is made next year. Maybe we’ll all just get t-shirts made with the name of school followed by ‘because I want to!’ :)</p>
<p>About my daughter’s decision to apply to/attend Tufts, Early Decision:</p>
<p>Obnoxious and Misguided other parent: wow, did she bomb her SATs?
Me (Sarcastic): Yes, she only got a _____.
Obnoxious parent: Wow, she could go to Harvard with that score.
Me: No, she couldn’t, because she loves and is committed to Tufts.
Obnoxious: Well, did she bomb something else?</p>
<p>And when UVA was on my daughter’s radar, briefly:
Other parent: University of Virginia? That’s a hillbilly school, isn’t it?
(this from a parent, from a sophisticated and educated parent community, whose child attends my child’s very rigorous, well-known prep school)</p>
<p>I do think that one thing that most of us have learned on this thread is to never identify a school as your child’s safety because it may be someone else’s reach.</p>
<p>My SIL has been turning her nose up at our school choices since forever, his private day school, “I would never send my child to such a snob school” she doesn’t even live in our community. His Boarding School, “well I won’t be sending my children away” they were 4 and 2 at the time. Comments galore on his college search, “I went to Peace College, it is very selective” I admit I hadn’t heard of it until she was dating my BIL, I looked it up…I am smiling and nodding.</p>
<p>Re pronunciation: I resemble that remark. I went to a school that most have heard of but few pronounce correctly: JohnS Hopkins. </p>
<p>The story around campus (which has been attributed to many of the presidents of the university over the years) was that Milton Eisenhower (in the version I know) was invited to give a speech at the University of Pittsburgh. He was introduced as the president of John Hopkins University. He got up and said, “Thank you, and it’s wonderful to be here in beautiful Pittburgh.” I don’t think anyone in the audience ever mispronounced JHU’s name again.</p>
<p>A friend was teaching high school in the South prior to returning to grad school. She selected Northwestern and the other teachers in her school were incredulous - “Why’d you want to go to some Yankee school???”</p>
<p>I remember back in ancient times when I told people in my southern Virginia town that I was going to Yale, several of them said, “Why do you want to go up there with all those Yankees?” They also couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just go to U.Va. or Tech.</p>