Life at the most insecure Ivy

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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@Much2learn asks:

“For example, if someone asked me describe UChicago and Harvard, I would be more likely to describe UChicago with “Top national university”, or “Nobel prize-winning research.” Does that mean I am insecure about UChicago?”

The answer is yes - absolutely! By responding with words that are positively valanced (“top” national university, “nobel-prize winning research,”) you are trying to convey something positive to the audience - because you are insecure in how broadly known UChicago’s stature. is, and you want to convey its greatness to the audience. You don’t need to be a UChicago student to have insecurity about the school’s brand strength!

It’s the same idea as an osteopath saying she’s a “doctor” vs. a MD - as the osteopath is insecure and unsure how familiar the audience may be with osteopathy, the osteopath links to a word that is positively valanced (“doctor”).

It’s the exact same idea as Penn students referring to the school as “ivy league” - they are insecure and unsure of how familiar the audience may be with Penn, and they want to link the school to something positively valanced (the ivy league).

The fact that Harvard students DON’T do this demonstrates that they are quite confident in their U’s brand - no matter the audience.

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“2, The students of each school adjust their responses based on their experience of what will be informative to other people.”

@Much2learn I agree. This is the key to unlock the differences in the different student body responses. Penn students are conditioned from the time they pay their deposit during HS senior year and are asked about their college plans. Some try to shorten a “where to” conversation with saying “University of Pennsylvania” and then just smile when someone still assumes Penn State.

Penn State has an undergraduate student body of 85,000 versus Penn’s 10,000. It’s all about probability and what is more likely, not just football as some suggested… It dwarfs all other universities in any state with an IVY school…

Even in New England, most adults (even those very well educated) do not differentiate between Penn and Penn State, and I assume that is the case for other parts of the country. Remember that New England parents have likely sat in the stands at a swim meet, track tournament, lacrosse tournament and looked across the Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale pool or field at all seven school emblems while their high school student is competing. The Penn name, location may still not be familiar.

However, that does not at all diminish the Penn brand. Have your student treated by a specialist at any Harvard hospital and watch their expressions as they ask your son/daughter questions about where they go to school, their major and university research. Even with all the elite universities in NE, Penn students return home for the summer with incredible internship opportunities. Gauging their audience at another academic type institution or workplace, a Penn student may be more humble than their Ivy peers and answer the “where question” first with Philly, then University City, then Penn.

The more amusing part is when students finally arrive on Penn’s campus, they are asked where they went to high school. If their response is Andover, Groton or Milton, MA or Exeter, NH it is automatically assumed that they went to boarding school. Tired of explaining that they do not go to Penn State and that they actually went to their public high school may be one reason some use the simple three letter word, Ivy, in a survey (surveys are not conversations).

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You said, “…you are insecure in how broadly known UChicago’s stature.”

Now I think I understand the problem. We have a definitional difference.

You are using insecure to mean “uncertain.” I am using insecure to mean, “Lacking self-confidence or self-esteem.” That is why we are disagreeing.

Yes, I agree with you that students are mentioning Ivy League more often because they are less certain that the audience will recognize the Penn brand than a Harvard student is that the audience will recognize the Harvard brand. That is an accurate statement and simply demonstrates good judgment by both groups of students.

However, the use of the word “insecure” implies that they’ve demonstrated that the reason for Penn students mentioning Ivy League more often is that Penn students lack self-confidence (feel insecure/have low self-esteem) about attending Penn and think they have to try to impress others to feel good about themselves.

Applying Ocham’s Razor, I think the primary reason Penn students think the Penn brand is not as well known as the Harvard brand is that they have assessed the strength of the Penn brand correctly. That is entirely different than if the brands were equal but the students are feeling personally insecure.

It is possible that Penn students are more insecure compared to Harvard students, but they did not demonstrate that in this study. To evaluate that, they would have to find a way to adjust the frequency of the “Ivy League” response to remove the differences explained by the relative strength of the brand.

QED lol

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And so what if they call out the diff between Penn State and Penn?

" By responding with words that are positively valanced…" Lol, that applies more to the futile contenders who need to find something positive to say. “We have a top xx program,” when zip about the rest is so great and they know it. Wonder how you’d explain Harvard grads’ reluctance to mention the name, when asked where they went to college, instead saying something like, “in Cambridge.”

“Even in New England, most adults (even those very well educated) do not differentiate between Penn and Penn State, and I assume that is the case for other parts of the country.” I wouldn’t generalize about the “very well educated.” Perhaps the phrase means something different to each of us

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I love how this has become an argument among a bunch of non-Penn people

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My daughter’s orthopedic doctor who went to Penn said to her “Well, at least people know Brown; everyone thinks I went to Penn State.”

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This discussion reminds me vaguely of guys that wear T-shirts emblazoned “old dudes rule.” If you indeed rule, why do you have to announce it? Everyone would already know it, right? There’s something pathetic in having to call attention (look at me!) – in the case at hand, Penn and its membership in the Ivy League.

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@Much2learn - I’m using insecure to mean uncertain and unconfident in the strength of the brand. Conversely, I’m assuming that the responders are confident and secure in the brand strength of terms like “ivy league,” “doctor,” “nobel prize” etc.

So, when students immediately use “ivy league” to describe UPenn, or osteopaths use “doctor” more often than MDs, it shows that these groups are lacking confidence in the brand strength of certain terms (Penn, or osteopathy), and more confident in brand strength of other terms (ivy league, doctor). And, they want their term (Penn, osteopathy, whatever) to be positively valanced with a term that is better known (like the ivy league or a doctor).

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@cue7 “I’m using insecure to mean uncertain and unconfident in the strength of the brand.”

In the words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

First, insecurity is not interchangeable with uncertainty. Insecurity has to do with lacking confidence in how a person views him/herself. Uncertainty has to do with something that is unknown generally. Second, uncertainty is not an appropriate word choice in this context because here because the participants aren’t uncertain. They know that Penn is not a well-known brand, generally. That is just a fact. There is no uncertainty.

True statement: The Penn students accurately assessed that Penn is not as a well-known brand to most people.

1st error. Confuse certainty and uncertainty.
The Penn students were uncertain about the strength of the Penn brand.

2nd error. Confuse uncertainty and insecure.
The Penn students were insecure about the strength of the Penn brand.

3rd error. Shift the object of the verb for the brand to self.
Fallacious conclusion achieved via multiple English errors: The Penn students were insecure.

It only took 3 errors in word usage to change a rational assessment into a personal insecurity. This has taken mangled English to a whole new level.

Inconceivable!

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@Much2learn

Sigh - the definition of insecure is “not confident or uncertain”

https://www.google.com/search?q=insecure+definition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Synonyms for insecure are uncertain and unconfident.

That’s exactly how I was using the term insecure. When using the term “ivy league” to describe UPenn, responders are expressing insecurity about the Penn brand’s strength. They are NOT expressing any such insecurity with the term “ivy league.”

Please note, insecure does NOT mean bad. It is completely ok for a 19 yo to be insecure about strength of brand, or many other things!

Penn students accurately assessing that Penn is not a well-known brand, and therefore substituting a well known brand (ivy league) to describe it shows insecurity with the Penn brand.

This is the exact same thing as someone describing UChicago as having “lots of nobel prize winners” - the responder shows insecurity (lack of confidence, uncertainty) with the UChicago brand, and they substitute in something they are more confident about (nobel prize winners).

I’m not using the term insecure pejoratively. I’m also NOT using it to describe UPenn students broadly - I’m using the term narrowly - to link to their impressions about their brand.

Would it sit better with you if I said the Penn students were less confident in Penn’s brand than with other terms, and therefore substitute in other terms?

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@cue7 The words in the article are not chosen properly, and that is confusing readers. You are using the terms from the article.

Harvard is the best-known university brand on the planet, only Stanford, Yale, and OxBridge are even close. Of course Penn’s brand isn’t as well known. Neither is anyone else’s university brand.

A person from any school other than Harvard who recognizes that fact is not automatically insecure. They are just aware of reality. The students are also not uncertain about the Penn brand. They are quite certain that the brand of their school is not very well known to most people. No one attends Penn, Chicago, Cal Tech, Columbia, Cornell etc. to for brand recognition. They would attend Ohio State, Alabama, or Michigan State for brand recognition.

The only thing this study shows is that Penn students understand (correctly) that the Penn brand is not very well known to the general population. Penn knows that and has the money to fix it, but they don’t care. Why would someone spend time and money to “discover” that? lol

A simpler method of figuring it out would have been to walk up to some Penn students on Locust Walk between classes and ask, “Is the Penn brand well known to most people in the general public?” They will almost all say “No.” What was learned from that? Nothing.

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The finding assumes that everyone would want to go to Harvard … which is not true.

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A case in point:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/15/charlie-baker-takes-proust-questionnaire/p2B2GsYFIUnYnVLsZCiX3I/story.html

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This author has a knack for writing clickbaity headlines for the DP; I still remember her critique of sorority rushing and all the response pieces it generated.

I went to a high school with lots of smart, high-achieving students who ended up taking hefty financial aid packages from UW or UMN rather than apply to Ivies. The cream of the crop would go to Northwestern or UChicago. As a result, I spent a lot of senior year correcting people that I was not going to Penn State. I tried to describe my frustration to a friend as “imagine you worked for years to get into Northwestern, and then once you get in everyone keeps congratulating you on Northeastern. They say go Huskies, give you red and black things, and tell you how beautiful Boston is. At this point it’s not even an issue of prestige, it’s just about how aggressively wrong people are, and you get really tired of telling people ‘No, that’s not actually the school I’m going to.’” (In a weird coincidence, the inverse situation is happening this year to my friend who just got into Northeastern.)

Thanks to my reputation of being a high-achieving student, I also got more than one person ask me why I’m going to Penn State even though I could probably get into Harvard…

Anyway, the point is that it’s frustrating having people ask you about life at a school you don’t attend, and any confusion of the type would cause the same frustration. In an ideal world I would say that Penn’s March Madness appearance would help with our brand recognition, but I saw one bracket infographic that had Kansas playing Penn State, so I have no such hopes.

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@Much2learn said:

“A person from any school other than Harvard who recognizes that fact is not automatically insecure. They are just aware of reality. The students are also not uncertain about the Penn brand. They are quite certain that the brand of their school is not very well known to most people” and… “Of course Penn’s brand isn’t as well known. Neither is anyone else’s university brand [outside of Harvard et. al.].”

Really…? So if you asked students at Duke, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Georgetown, etc. “is your brand well known to most people,” you think almost all those students would answer no?

Also, UPenn students “are quite certain that the brand… is not very well known to most people” - really?

How do you know this? How can you state this so definitively?

I think a better analysis would be, because UPenn students are UNCERTAIN how well the audience may know their brand, they use terms that have more traction (like “ivy league”) to describe their school. To say Penn students are “certain” their brand is not very well known seems strange. Why would they be “certain” about that - especially when they don’t know who the audience is?

I think it’d also be strange to say that students at Duke, Hopkins, etc. are, as you would allege “certain” their school brands are not very well known. It’d be more accurate to say, at best, they are uncertain about their brands based on who the audience is, so they’d use other terms (highly ranked, or “top school”) to describe their institutions.

And even there, I have my doubts… If you asked a Dukie is your school well known, or someone from Hopkins or Georgetown, would they almost all say no? Really?

I don’t think you can group the analysis we see about Penn (like the poster above who complained about the confusion with Penn State) to some other places. Are Duke students annoyed that people always confuse their school for some other school? Do people at Johns Hopkins or Georgetown feel that way?

I mean… come on.

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I’ve followed a few top school forums (Penn, Dartmouth, Vandy, WashU) during application season and a few very good state school forums as well (GaTech, UVA, UNC). Hard to generalize based on who posts in a forum but the schools you would think would draw the applicants most secure about their performance don’t appear to based on forum conversation. The Ivy forums (like the Penn Class of 2022 RD discussion post) seem packed with people who are insecure and scared to death about the prospect of not getting into an Ivy, while the UNC forum for example seems way more even keel about the whole application/acceptance process. I’m sure someone has a great explanation for why this is really competitive fire and not insecurity but I’m not convinced.