<p>What schools' official names might not be easily recognized, compared to their common names?</p>
<p>California Polytechnic State University
California State Polytechnic University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Virginia Polytechnic and State University</p>
<p>What difference does it make? When is an LSU graduate going to use that full name?</p>
<p>New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology</p>
<p>You really think people won’t recognize VTech from that last one? Or LSU from the 3rd? Maybe a better question would be how many people could come up with the correct official name from the commonly known one.</p>
<p>Well . Berkeley has a lot of names.</p>
<p>Berkeley
Cal
UCBerkeley
UCB
University of California, Berkeley
berserkeley :)</p>
<p>Caltech belongs on the list in that hardly anyone says California Institute of Technology, on the other hand, if you are nerdy enough to have heard of one you are probably nerdy enough to have heard of the other.</p>
<p>The weird thing about Berkeley is that no one on the East Coast knows what Cal is, but apparently everyone that attended uses that term.</p>
<p>I didn’t know until the last 5 years that Berkeley was sometimes known as “Cal.” Oh well. It’s not like it impacts my everyday life or that I have to know it.</p>
<p>Cal is frequently used to refer to Berkeley sports teams, but also to the university.</p>
<p>Another one who didn’t know “Cal” was Berkeley until this “college microscope” I actually thought Cal was an even more shortened form of CalTech</p>
<p>This can be a fun thread- as I expect was intended. I and others have spent time on the U of Wisconsin threads correcting UW hopefuls that UWM means the system’s Milwaukee campus, UW implies the Madison one. Of course, on the west coast that UW is spoken U-dub, making it easier in oral than written use.</p>
<p>In Wisconsin MATC meant either Madison or Milwaukee Area Technical College, depending in which city you were in (both part of the state’s 2 year or less vocational-technical college system although I’ve heard they may have switched the focus of the Madison one to being also for bachelor’s bound students who transfer to a 4 year school).</p>
<p>One year son, at UW (Madison), was going to a summer program at the other UW (Washington- in Seattle) while one cousin was going to start at Wash U (Washington U in St Louis), another cousin had gone to UW in Seattle. It could get confusing, depending on how one addressed each school by name.</p>
<p>I heard of Berkeley during the late '60s Vietnam war era protests as it and UW-Madison were two of the most vocal antiwar protest campuses. Never knew it was called Cal until CC. A CA relative who went there accepted our use of Berkeley- perhaps since we may have been confused about which Cal U he meant.</p>
<p>I have wondered why UIUC is used for the Illinois flagship in Champaign-Urbana. Is it because the university is technically in Urbana while Champaign is the larger of the two contiguous cities?</p>
<p>When people refer to WUSTL, do they pronounce it “wussle”?</p>
<p>I say it was “wustul” in my head whenever I read it.</p>
<p>One thing that’s made me laugh about Caltech is how the university is very particular about how, if it’s going to be abbreviated, it should be written as Caltech and not CalTech or Cal Tech. Yet when you go around Pasadena all of the signs in the area have it written incorrectly.</p>
<p>Virginia Tech is actually Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.</p>
<p>It always amazes me how many students want to go to Leland Stanford Junior University</p>
<p>Georgia Institute of Technology is almost never used</p>
<p>
My S is a student there, and calls it Wash U.</p>
<p>“California Polytechnic State University” is pronounced [sloh].</p>
<p>No one calls it WUSTL. It’s Wash U.</p>
<p>^Ha! So totally missing the point.</p>
<p>Does this count?
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/RPI.
Many people assume you mean RIT, and that it’s in Rochester.</p>