OK: An Excellent College Ranking

Parents Forum
1

<p>By Katie Baker, a young writer employed (I sure hope, she's very good) by Bill Simmons to provide content for his website Grantland. It's part of an elaborate scoring rubric for what used to be called "Altarcations" on Gawker -- a game of ranking N.Y. Times wedding announcements to determine which couple "wins" by being the most impressive each week. A big piece of that, of course, is university cachet. Here's how she calls it:</p>

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Universities</p>

<p>For each of the below tiers, points are awarded as outlined for each degree (undergraduate, graduate, law, medical, MFA, whatever diploma James Franco is earning these days, etc.). Keep in mind, once again — this is not a US News and World Report-sanctioned ranking, but rather a careful and studied analysis of what matters to the powers that be at the New York Times.</p>

<p>The Insufferables (+3): Cal Tech, Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, Yale</p>

<p>The Demi-Elite (+2): Amherst, Berkeley, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Penn, UNC, UVA, Williams</p>

<p>The Boarding School Crowd (+1): Bowdoin, Charleston, Colgate, Colorado College, Davidson, Hamilton, Hobart, Middlebury, Pepperdine, Rollins, SMU, Ole Miss, Trinity, Vanderbilt, Washington & Lee</p>

<p>The Power-Hippies (+1 if relevant to the couple's "vibe" or "agenda" as pushed forth by the Times): Bard, Berkeley, Hampshire, Oberlin, Pomona, RISD, Swarthmore, Vassar (if it was the groom), Wesleyan</p>

<p>Other Notable Niches (+1, same as above): Army, Howard, Julliard, Morehouse, Navy, Smith, Spelman, St. Andrews, UCLA, USC, Wellesley

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<p>All in fun, incomplete, annoyingly puts Berkeley in two categories (many of us are ambivalent about Berkeley these days), but overall pretty accurate as a guide to how the East Coast Establishment views the world.</p>

2

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This is my favorite.</p>

<p>Gee, U of Chicago (nor Tufts or Carnegie Mellon to name other favorites of ours) doesn’t get any respect. :frowning: ;)</p>

3

<p>Yes, disappointing to me, too, but probably accurate.</p>

<p>I recommend searching out the entire article. (I didn’t link to it because I think it’s probably not kosher under the TOS.) My daughter read it to us during a long car ride this weekend, and it had us in stitches. I have always thought that wedding announcements were the Times’s version of Sunday comics, and apparently I’m not the only one who reads them that way.</p>

4

<p>Last month I was looking for a wedding announcement in the Chicago Tribune, and couldn’t find them online! I was in shock… even if they are online, they don’t make it easy to find.</p>

<p>OTOH I decided to look at my hometown newspaper (Houston Chronicle) to see if parents continue to bore 99% of readers with the smallest detail of the bride’s dress, bridesmaids’ dresses, flowers purchased for every venue used, grandmothers’ corsages, dogs they will be returning home to up on their three-month honeymoon, etc. Yep, still doing it.</p>

5

<p>Love the wedding section. Back in the olden days it use to be even better when they had a reporter who covered certain high society nuptials and he would reveal all the dirty secrets like how the brides mother third marriage was to the groom’s second step father, etc., etc. </p>

<p>But I still love it. </p>

<p>They are very strict though, for instance, if the grooms parents refuse to allow them to give details of were the FOG/MOG work they will not print the announcement. They also insist that brides age be included. Sussie Essman from Curb Your Enthusiasm wasn’t too happy about that.</p>

6

<p>So how many points do I get for meeting my husband playing pinball at the same insufferable institution? ;)</p>

7

<p>Interesting. I’m intrigued to see Hobart and Charleston are worth points. Compared to the others, they’re not very selective. But, then again, that’s not what this is about, is it? </p>

<p>Thanks for the peek inside the society page. This stuff is fascinating.</p>

8

<p>OMG! I just read the whole article. It’s better than I thought. Thanks for the :D.</p>

9

<p>What if both went to one of those institutions, +3 for Yale (one partner), +1 for Middlebury(the other partner), total of 4, or just +3 for Yale.</p>

10

<p>We take the NY Times Sunday edition largely for the wedding announcements. They are always entertaining.</p>

<p>I think Reed is sort of leader of the pack for Hippie Elites.</p>

11

<p>This is embarrassing, but am I the only graduate of a women’s college who read the wedding announcements each Sunday in the '80s and kept a running tally of how many alums from my school were getting married vs alums from another, equally prestigious women’s college?</p>

12

<p>Class, you are not the only one - my Mom (Smith '50) still does that.</p>

13

<p>I wonder how many negative points DH and I have earned for going to boring state colleges (and out west, too–oh the horror!) ;)</p>

14

<p>Perhaps it’s appropriate, given that this list would be used in connection with the NY Times, but the list seems very East Coast-skewed.</p>

<p>For example, it’s hard for me to conceive of a Demi-Elite list that does not include Northwestern and Wash U.</p>

15

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Haha! Berkeley could also be in the insufferables category if looking at breadth and depth of grad programs. :)</p>

16

<p>One think I love about CC is that no matter how nutty the ranking system you are talking about, people will always come on the thread to discuss how the actual rankings are wrong.</p>

17

<p>I do not know which one will provide me with the most fun or shake my head moments: the article or the responses to the thread about the article ;)</p>

18

<p>I get the Sunday NYTimes and was perusing the wedding announcements. No less than three brides had law degrees from Stanford. I was starting to wonder if that is what it takes for a woman to get married now days…</p>

19

<p>You can get married with proof of age and (sometimes) a blood test. And a partner, not necessarily of a different sex in NY. You don’t need a Stanford Law degree.</p>

<p>However, if you want your wedding reported in the N.Y. Times, it helps . . . .</p>

20

<p>she should really only include US schools or just do it international. there are other schools in the UK and other schools internationally that should be on that list besides Oxford and Cambridge</p>