Puh-leeze.
Reminds me of a friend of my daughter, a musician who chose another (perfectly fine) school but kept auditioning at Juilliard every year just so he could turn them down after being accepted.
Data, I think you may be a little off-base here. For one thing, fewer applications from a certain geography further from the college in no way means that people in that region are not impressed by the school. You say: “I’d expect the concentration of persons obsessed with Harvard loosely follows the concentration of students applying to Harvard since persons who think especially highly of Harvard or Harvard alumni are more likely to apply”. As an east-coaster in the USA, my child didn’t apply to Stanford, Oxford, the Sorbonne, etc, because she wanted to live a reasonable distance to home, but we are definitely aware of those schools’ reputations and fabulous offerings and “think especially highly” of those schools. Her lack of application does not mean she doesn’t think those are fantastic, desirable schools with amazing student bodies. I would think that the number of applications would loosely follow the distance between home and the college, rather than the extent to which a person thinks a college is appealing.
I also think you are unnecessarily choosing exaggerated and unflattering language that doesn’t match the OP’s. OP did not say that people in Wyoming and world-wide are “really into Harvard” or “obsessed with Harvard” or “particularly concerned about Harvard or Harvard alumni”. OP did not imply that people the world over are spending all their minutes obsessing about Harvard, spending all their time talking about Harvard. But it is valid that people who may not spend a lot of time thinking about Harvard WILL still have a reaction of some sort when the topic comes up. Those people in Wyoming or Alaska or wherever surely have some understanding of what Harvard is, and if they meet a Harvard student, they will have some thoughts about that (could be that they are very impressed, or they could be haters that have some sort of negative reaction based on envy, or they could be stereotypers who choose to assign positive or negative attributes to the student or many other possibilities).
I think the number of people answering “Boston” is very small and that’s sort of an outdated/overplayed joke, but the few times it happens, I don’t at all think it is coming from a place of self-aggrandizing as was suggested. I think it’s a human reaction to a sometimes awkward situation (made awkward by those on the receiving end), but I think the most common way that this is handled is that the majority of Harvard people (excluding the professor mentioned above and some small number of other folks) tend to avoid bringing it up at all unless it really makes sense to do so.
In answer to the OP, I wouldn’t go so far to say true sympathy is warranted, given that those students are likely enjoying a phenomenal experience (not saying they are the ONLY students to enjoy phenomenal experiences), but yes, I do think it’s true that they probably don’t feel like they can publicly share their excitement and school pride in the same way many other students do without a second thought.
I don’t believe there is any need to sympathize.
Not just Harvard, but for most of the Ivies or Chicago, we typically don’t see car stickers as much as for popular in state schools or sport schools.
There are plenty of H kids wearing their sweatshirts (and non students too !)
The in-state public schools are typically much larger, with alumni concentrated in-state, so it is not surprising to see more stickers, etc. from the better known in-state public schools than for smaller out-of-state schools.
There was an article in one of the newspapers last year interviewing a bunch of kids at Harvard, all of whom had some kind of underlying feeling that they didn’t belong there and only got in because they were URM/legacy/athlete etc. Then of course the top students had the issue a poster above mentioned about Cornell, and which is common across highly selective schools (more so in the UK where legacy/athletes don’t count any more), that the admits have been used to being top of the class all their lives and are now in a situation where everyone else is too, and someone has to be middle and bottom of the new class. Imposter syndrome is big at these schools.
Yes, it’s easy to say you don’t need to feel sorry for the kids admitted, but at the end of the day they are still 17- and 18-year olds with many of the same insecurities, and sometimes battling to fit in at their new college, that other teenagers have. A little sympathy is not necessarily out of place, even at Harvard.
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I’ve never used the “I went to school in Boston” line but I can sympathize with those who might feel the need to. I live in Boston so it wouldn’t work for me anyway. My husband and I didn’t attend Harvard College but we both went to different Harvard grad schools. These are comments addressed to us over the years. I can only imagine these types of comments would be magnified if we attended as undergrads. I’ve never received a similar comment about my undergrad other than “Good school.”
“Oh, you went to Haaaarvaaard?”
“When I found out you went to Harvard I expected you to be a snob but you’re all right.” (him)
“When you applied we almost didn’t hire you but when you [did something any normal person would have done] we saw you didn’t think you were too good for the job.“ (me)
“Ooh, a power couple!”
“Are you like a brain surgeon or something?” (Neither of us is in a field in any way resembling medicine)
“Are your kids going to Harvard?” (In front of the kids)
How often have you seen one of those “stupid answers students at ___ College give” video segments for the state flagship? No, it’s almost always Harvard they choose, as if they need to knock down those “too good for the rest of us” types. I can sympathize with those who are concerned about being judged.
The claim I replied to was not that some people are impressed by Harvard or believe Harvard is appealing. It’s was that Harvard has a “mythical aura” and people believe Harvard grads are destined for “super wealth”, becoming “senators and future presidents,” etc. And such beliefs have more weight as distance increases further away from Harvard.
I’d expect persons with such extreme beliefs would certainly be more likely to apply, even if the school was not local. For example, would a Texas resident with such beliefs consider Rice, UT Austin, or any Texas school a comparable substitute for Harvard? Would hearing a student went to Rice or UT Austin elicit a similar feeling, reaction, or “mythical aura.”? Would they be willing to travel out of state for a school as “mythical” as Harvard? Yet there is still an average of fewer than 1 Harvard application per HS in Texas… or in almost any state outside of the northeast.
Or if Texas is too far, one could compare Massachusetts with a state neighboring MA. Would someone who has such extreme beliefs about Harvard find a way to travel to a neighboring state fora school as “mythical” as Harvard? Yet most neighboring states still average fewer than 2 applications per HS, which is a small fraction compared to MA residents.
While distance is certainly a consideration in choosing a college, I think the number of applications and large change in number of applications among out of state residents is suggestive that a lot of high achieving students don’t have this type of belief about Harvard, and the portion of students with such beliefs is likely to decrease when you go further away from the school, rather than increase, as was implied.
All of my posts in this thread list both the poster’s name I am replying to and the specific comments I am replying to. It should have been clear that the post you quoted was not a reply to the OP or referencing his comments.
The thing about Harvard is that they are so strong in so many different ways that it’s hard to identify just one Harvard type. I live in New York City most of the year and every time I see Harvard swag, I am nearly always left scratching my head (“That guy went to Harvard?”) As someone mentioned upstream, you just never know how or why someone got into Harvard.
I contrast that to my Princeton friends who are much more of a certain “type” and who have no problem at all with claiming all things Tiger and my Yale friends who not only treat New Haven like it was Mecca but don’t quite understand why I don’t treat Philadelphia with the same deference since that is where I went to law school for my only Ivy degree (TBH, it took me about twenty years to warm up to the idea of giving a dime to my law school’s annual fund - but that’s another story.) IMHO, some schools are just better at inspiring cult-like behavior than others.
It certainly impressed the FBI agents when they caught the Unabomber.
Just a joke folks. lol.
If a person truly wants to avoid saying they went to Harvard, saying a “school in Boston” seems like an odd choice since there will likely be a followup question that leads to stating the school name. There are far more effective alternative phrasings to avoid a followup question about school name. However, I agree that such phrasing is probably not common. Prior to this thread, I’ve only heard people use the “school in Boston” phrase as part of joke – once on 30 Rock and once by Conan. In the former, a character on the show said something like,
“I went to a school in Boston… Well, not in Boston, but nearby… No, not Tufts…”
Persons I personally know who attended Harvard all do not appear to be ashamed about stating their school name and instead seem quite proud of the school. Some mention it surprisingly often, considering how long it’s been since graduation. This is especially true for social media posts.
In RI the joke is how do you know someone attended Brown?
They’ll tell you. Lol.
Lots and lots of grads in our area and H too.
Maybe it’s a regional thing because it’s simply not that uncommon. H B and D are regular names for hs students at the day schools and their parents.
Yale Cornell and Princeton are very rare, surprisingly. Usually a women’s lacrosse or male hockey athlete.
I have heard “a college in Boston” as well. The young person in question did admit to Harvard after being asked which college. She also clearly was uncomfortable with being pressed to state the name, as though she didn’t want to look more important than her HS classmates who were studying at Syracuse, UMD-CP, and various other places. And truly, I sympathize. My 7-Sister and not-Harvard Ivy sweatshirts get worn a lot more now that I’ve moved out of the suburb where they caused reactions.
I think that with Brown and Dartmouth alum, knowing where they went to college can be an immediate ice breaker. For example, every Dartmouth graduate I’ve ever met loves the outdoors. Once I know they went to Dartmouth, the conversation can go in any number of directions. With Brown graduates, you can at least start with state capitals you’ve visited and go on from there.
Data, on the geography point, thanks for the clarification, but I guess I still see it quite differently. Applications are costly in time (essays), pride (possibility of rejection), and treasure ($75 a pop adds up!). I would expect the numbers of applications to go down as mileage to campus rises for several reasons. Just one of those is a desire to attend school at a more reasonable distance to reduce costs and headaches and perhaps minimize homesickness, etc, as mentioned. Another very big one would relate to perceived likelihood of admittance. Brown University assures that it is more generous to local RI students (for community relations purposes), and I believe the same is true at Harvard with Massachusetts. Whether the stats bear this out is irrelevant (do they really accept local students with lower SAT scores) if the perception is there. Part of driving that perception could be the frequency with which one comes in contact with Harvard students and grads. Not only do more students get in from the local area (#1 being MA itself, then the surrounding states, and decreasing from there, etc), but many grads stick around in the general area afterwards. Living in Hawaii, high school students are less likely to meet many Harvard students/grads, and so it may appear more “impossible” to get in than when an applicant knows 20+ people who went to Harvard via six degrees of separation. Feeling you have a chance of acceptance probably is a huge factor in whether you spend your time and money on an application.
The Texas example is interesting to me. I would think head-to-head yield would much better demonstrate the “aura” or appeal rather than number of applications. If someone got into both Rice and Harvard, where are they more likely to choose to attend (especially if one place isn’t way more inconvenient in terms of distance and costs). I think Texans applying in greater numbers to Rice does not suggest that Rice has a greater aura for them. It could be more closely tied to many things not limited to but including: knowing lots of people who you don’t think are smarter than you are who have attended—>believing your chances of acceptance are reasonable, knowing that a Rice degree may help you with networking/job placement after college if you want to stay in Texas, having family connections, having visited the beautiful campus and seen first-hand all it has to offer, etc, etc. I don’t think loads of TX applications to Rice disproves that there could still be an aura to the Harvard name that reaches Texas.
And yes, while TiggerDad presumably intended “mythical aura” to be a little tongue-in-cheek, given all of the popular culture references to Harvard the “myth” does travel far! Whether it’s Tina Fey saying that the best comedy comes when you put “hyper intelligent Harvard boys” with visceral Chicago improv actors, or Lisa Simpson responding to her brother Bart when he asks her, “Do you know what it’s like to be second best at anything?” And Lisa responds, “Yeah, I do! I’m going to Yale!”, Frazier Crane, Legally Blonde, Good Will Hunting (Harvard and MIT), super-nerds Bill Gates and Mark Z dropping out to start iconic companies, Harvard (mythical-like) references are all over and far-reaching. I don’t think that TiggerDad’s thoughts that the myth becomes more important than reality the further you go from the school seems off. I bet he’s right that the further you go, the more your opinion will be shaped by pop culture references and things you read vs. real-life connections and experiences.
Data, I think your observation about people name-dropping Harvard more in social media than in real life is fascinating and worthy of its own post sometime. Is it a pent-up desire to brag, and doing so anonymously satisfies that desire? 
CircuitRider: It’s possible that some of the people you see wearing Harvard swag are not actually students/grads. Harvard and affiliates do a booming business selling branded items to tourists/wannabes.
Back to OPs key question, “Is attending Harvard in some small way a “burden” when it comes to being excited about your college choice and having to downplay which college you attend?“ I believe the answer is that yes, for many H students, they do feel somewhat compelled to downplay their school spirit to others because many people can be extremely critical and judgmental and often harshly (Mis)perceive the student as boasting.
I did not know this was a thing until I said something about my son going to college in Boston at a NY Eve party. Then, someone asked if he went to Harvard. He doesn’t. He goes to Northeastern but few people in Texas have heard of NEU and don’t know it is in Boston so I generally don’t mention it unless asked. I do mention it if a parent or high school student is looking into college options and might be interested in attending.
And, for some context here, my MIL actually said this to my son: Tell me more about Northeastern. I’ve never heard of it and neither have any of my friends. They’ve heard of Northwestern.
Another Tina Fey quip:
Criss Chros: Wesleyan is the Harvard of central Connecticut
Liz Lemon: No, Yale is the Harvard of central Connecticut.
Well in my family if a certain someone does something silly that person is reminded that they have three Harvard degrees. So in public, you can only imagine the reactions. Our kids weren’t given swag from any college we attended and certainly aren’t encouraged to become legacies anywhere.
Counterpoint: The name can be used to good advantage during job interviews or with “know it alls/extreme braggarts”to silence them.
Some use the name. Others are comfortable or say I went to college in Cambridge ( that’s code for Harvard/MIT and many people know it)
Folks in my neck of the woods only freely admit to going to Northwestern because it’s across the street. People are otherwise vague. We have Cornell, Dartmouth, and Yale represented in our tight group of friends. When people ask me, I just say I went to school in NY. The Dartmouth/Yale friends just say New England. It’s very unusual that anyone will pry further. If they do, those of us will usually add that we would never get admitted now and move the conversation on.
But, because we’re in a college town, with grad school students, there is a lot of swag being worn. On any given day, you’ll see kids and adults proudly sporting HYPS swag and no one blinks an eye. I wear swag for my alumni meetings with students so they can easily identify me and don’t feel out of place or self conscious.
Just tell me you went to Harvard. I won’t be impressed if you dance around it.
Also, going to a private college today isn’t anything like it was when baby-boomers strode the earth. Back then, it was comparable to taking out an additional car loan. Nowadays, saying where you went to college is almost a proxy for how much money your family makes.