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<p>Maybe you get +2, an average of Yale and Middlebury.</p>
<p>Did anyone happen to catch the methodology used to compute the rankings? I haven’t been able to find one at all! That’s one thing that really bugs me about rankings in general. </p>
<p>The list is pretty suspicious. From what I could tell, it seems to have weighed some sort of ‘peer assessment’ component way too high.</p>
<p>^ That’s the point. “Peer assessment” is all that matters in clubby, New York social circles.</p>
<p>The complete rules: [Katie</a> Baker on the New York Times wedding section - Grantland](<a href=“http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6769919/matrimonial-moneyball]Katie”>» Matrimonial Moneyball)</p>
<p>I got a chuckle out of the category “Insufferables”. The saying in my Midwestern world is “you never have to ask and Ivy League alum where they went to school…because they will make sure you know.”</p>
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<p>However, unlike the New York Times’s sports section for men, this one includes pretty comprehensive reports of contests on Saturday, and often includes Sunday events as well (a neat trick for a paper available on newsstands Saturday evening). (The weekend of Hurricane Irene, my daughter spread out the section and said, “Look! A whole section of people who probably didn’t actually get married yesterday!” That was when we were being smug, before our power went out for the first time.)</p>
<p>Rankings listed noticeable for being east coast centric- throws in a few west coast schools with known schools from the eastern region but mentions plenty of schools off the radar for the rest of the country as well as ignoring the middle. Is it partly because public education, instead of private, is so strong in the middle? So many small schools that get notice.</p>
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<p>More than I got from meeting Mrs. Turbo at Cajun U. in English for Foreign Students… Maybe our wedding announcement should mention I graduated with the university high score in Pacman at the Student Center & also the high score for Rogue and Nethack on the school Unix network…</p>
<p>So funny. It’s the NYT, of course it’s east coast centric – that is what makes it so “fun” to read. Second only to this forum at times. That kind of stuff is important to a large swath of people living in that region.</p>
<p>A real testament of how eclectic and intellectual the crowd of this forum has become over the years. Atlantic Monthly and Fallows have been replaced by the august and ever-so-respected NY Times. This is so humbling. </p>
<p>PS If this become an annual list, they might hire an unpaid intern to check the spelling of Caltech.</p>
<p>A group of my friends used to get together once a year, and as part of our Sunday brunch we would read the Times wedding announcements out loud. We had a similar point system to figure out why the couple was included. We gave points for attending Ivies, either graduate or undergraduate. Parent professions counted. The kicker was someone whose relative came to the US with the Pilgrims, or some similar type pedigree. Sometimes you had to read the entire announcement, wading through unimpressive state schools and boring jobs/parents, to learn that the bride’s great grandfather was someone like Andrew Carnegie. Ah hah! we’d shout. That’s why that couple is here!</p>
<p>O.K., gotta dust off my copy of Weddings of the Times: A Parody. Excerpt:
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<p>I’m from one of the areas of the northeast thats among the worst offenders for this sort of thing, and a lot of those schools I’ve never even heard of, not to mention the chunk that I would think would be looked down on. So it’s a bit dated.</p>
<p>The complaints that the NYT is east coast focused miss the point. Should they report on the betrothal of Topeka’s finest haberdasher to daughter of the local alderman (at the Elk’s Club). I think not.</p>
<p>Thank the Ochs family, for foolishly pursuing national distribution, and Al Gore, for inventing the internet; otherwise you would be properly denied access to the Old Gray Lady. Personally, I am appalled that it is delivered to the outer boroughs, let alone Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Carry on, with dignity.</p>
<p>Oh, and Katie Baker is seriously brilliant.</p>
<p>DH and I have followed NY Times nuptials for many of years. The trend we’ve noted is that the offspring of Wall Street money men or captains of industry invariably major in art history or anthropology or some such thing, then (if female) teach at a very exclusive private school or (if male) go to work in a brokerage of some sort or go to law school, occasionally get an mba. One common variation on the theme will be that one or both of the happy duo will “work for a nonprofit”, frequently one in the arts, one in societal justice. The big exception seems to be the physician crowd. The Big Cardiologist or Big Oncologist very often has their son or daughter eventually following in their footsteps, usually by way of some arts or social justice nonprofit stint.</p>
<p>The general thrust seems to be that the parents of the kids who end up in those wedding announcement pages are usually folks from the professions who have worked at rather mercenary professions to put their kids in those colleges of note. Then the offspring seem to avoid altogether – or as long as they can manage – doing anything at all very lucrative. One just presumes that there is enough money put away and invested very capably to finance at least a generation or two that dabbles vs actually works at anything remunerative.</p>
<p>We find it fascinating.</p>
<p>I think this whole thing indicates how a society is compelled to set up some kind of class system. It’s facinating that in American we want to base on university attendance.</p>
<p>…Does the same scoring stystem still apply, or is there a totally different one?</p>
<p>Inquiring Minds Ask in Texas,</p>
<p>ProudMomofS</p>
<p>No one ever said America is a class-less society…although I’ve met plenty of people with “no class.”</p>
<p>I usually blow through my 20 free articles on the first Sunday of the month on the announcements. I absolutely LOVE them.</p>