Hi all,
I’m wondering, for people who attend ultra-selective schools (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, JHU, Vanderbilt, yada yada…) what are people’s reactions to this news? Do you try to hide the fact that you attend such schools if possible? Also, what is your reaction if you attend a top LAC that no one knows about? (someone once said “I thought it’s called WILLIAM & Mary” when I discussed Williams College with them). Wondering what parents think also. I am someone who is unfortunately hung up on prestige, so I would be sad if the latter occurred, lol.
It’s regional to say the least whether people know the difference between Penn and Penn State. Or washU vs University of Washington. Or are familiar with Brown or Rice.
But nationally most know the big sports teams.
I went to a pretty-darn-good school that has basically zero name recognition in the region from whence I hail (the South, specifically Georgia), and really you just have to develop a sense of humor about it. When I told people originally and to this very day (15 years later), people assumed/assume I was going to/attended Boston College and that BC and Boston University are interchangeable (they are not!). And people only know BC if they follow college basketball; otherwise I mostly got blank stares. You really can’t get too hung up on prestige, especially when YOU know it’s an amazing school that is a good fit for you. That’s all that matters: you’re going where you want and getting an awesome education.
I really don’t think it’s worth thinking about either way. The people who make such a big deal about pretending to be humble and modest about hiding their Ivy come across as really pretentious. Nobody cares, for the most part. Like ClarinetDad16 said, the typical American knows the big sports schools way more than they know or care about Dartmouth or Barnard. When I say Penn, I’d say more people than not have responded in a way that shows they’re thinking Penn State, not UPenn. Doesn’t matter. Smile and move on, I’m not here to impress anyone.
The average person is more likely to have heard of Alabama than Middlebury. If your goal is to impress random people stick to HYPMS. I wouldn’t even assume the average person outside the northeast has heard of Brown. When you say you’re hung up on prestige, are you worried about job interviews or do you want to impress some random person at the bar?
This is such a strange conversation…like someone who graduated from Williams cares about what people who’ve never heard of it think!
If you pay attention to CC, seems like everyone knows the name of every Ivy, puh-lenty are applying from all over the country.
Depends on whom you want to impress. I just wouldn’t worry about the sorts who don’t know W&M from Williams. And that will include plenty of hiring managers. In the end, it’s what you offer, not the name on the diploma. In the real world, the oohs and aahs over the name end after a while, if you can’t keep up.
I go to a top-40 university and the main thing that happens (at least within 100 miles of the school) is people making the unfounded assumption that my parents are rich and pay the sticker price.
I’m admitting that I care about prestige; you most likely do, too, considering you use this website.
@HRSMom true 
I am originally from the West coast, and lived overseas for 20 years, then moved to the East coast. I have been here for over ten years. Prestige is very regional, and 99.9% of the population are not on CC, where everyone knows what HYPSM means. On the West Coast, everyone who is anyone wanted to go to USC. Overseas, you want to go to Oxford or Cambridge, and the Sorbonne. I can confess that until I moved to the East Coast, in fact until about 6 years ago, I had never heard of Brown or Duke. Internationally, I would say the only US schools people have reliably heard of are HYP. No, not Stanford or MIT. If you are talking about 99.9% of people, they have only heard of a very few schools. If your goal is prestige or bust, you need to get into Oxford.
The important thing is do employers know a prestigious school when they hear it? The answer is yes and no. I live near NYC, and there is obviously a huge international influence there. Many higher-ups are international. When they are hiring people, they don’t really have any idea of Williams or Amherst, or even Stanford for that matter. They know about HYP, and Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne. (In fact, world wide, I would say Oxford probably has the most name recognition.) They possibly know of some others, like Notre Dame. If they ask Americans in their offices, they would probably get the confirmation they need if they want to know that an applicant went to a prestigious college. They like to hire people with masters degrees.
On the other hand, probably most higher-ups in NYC are of course American. These people often know of all kinds of top schools. Example, I know a hedge fund manager. He is certainly very aware of top LACs. He knows of Carleton, Pomona, and Harvey Mudd. He knows of the top colleges in the east, and elsewhere. The point here is that many employers are aware of top colleges, at least in professions where that kind of thing matters. But the more important thing is that they are hiring a person, not the college they went to.
Do a search and find the excellent article by a guy who graduated from Indiana State or something like that. He ended up working at the same place and had a higher position than a Yale graduate he went to high school with. It was for an insurance company I think. A top university doesn’t guarantee a champagne and caviar lifestyle, and a state university doesn’t guarantee a life of squalor. It’s all about who you are as a person and what you do with your opportunities.
Echoing others, it’s a regional/career field thing. Everyone knows HYPMS/etc, but the smaller ones are regional. Others are very well known within a specific career field, but not as much outside of it.
“I’m admitting that I care about prestige; you most likely do, too, considering you use this website.”
You don’t believe people can and do come to College Confidential because they found it while hopping around the internet looking for information and found a wealth of information here? You believe those people are chasing after a brass ring?
Ooh, just thought of a Seinfeld related analogy. You know the episode where George leaves a tip in the jar for the calzone place, but the guy behind the counter turns around right as he does it? So he fishes the dollar back out to put it back in when the guy is looking, but of course the guy sees him and thinks he’s stealing from the tip jar, etc. It’s like that. You’re not doing it so everyone can praise you for leaving a tip / going to a prestigious school, you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do for you.
See also: Ted Danson donating the “Anonymous” wing on Curb, while Larry donates the “Larry David Wing.”
@Waiting2exhale a lot of people use this website to do chance threads, to find out how to get into top schools, to ask questions about top schools, etc. The website tends to attract people, like I, who get hung up on USNWR and other media outlets. Of course, there are some that use this thread to read about other things, such as college life, but prestige is important to many CC’ers, if their posts are any indication (I know mine are). Obviously, I am not sure what all of these users are like in person, but I highly doubt you know what users are like either, unless I am missing something. I have gathered, from interactions on the internet, that a good amount, though possibly not the majority, care about name recognition and prestige.
I love this response so much.
It is clear that people care about prestige and come here to determine how well they might position themselves to be accepted by those schools that they, and others, hold to be among the top schools. As you say, ‘chances thread.’
But that is clearly not the only reason, nor would I posit it to be the main reason, that people come to the forums.
My question to you was designed to get you to see how narrowly focused your wording was, and how you would place your own motivations (prestige seeking) as being in line with others’, in that narrow sense.
Hopefully, you are also willing to be open to the idea that people are here to listen, read and try to figure out if they’re headed down a path which is going to work out for them, minus the anxiety and stomach ulcers of trying to force oneself into meeting a magazine’s ranking standard.
I honestly don’t have a problem with making it to the ‘big leagues,’ but would not want my own children to think they must make it someplace where outside approval and awe are conferred upon them because of where they matriculate. For me, ‘seeking prestige,’ has elements of that type of search in it.
Finding oneself in a place held to be prestigious because you have determined it the best place for you academically and socially (can’t forget affordably, these days) is always the most healthy route of getting there.
I went to a great LAC that has regional prestige, but not quite national. Academics and employers who regularly hire college graduates generally respect it. Pretty much every African American person has heard of it and respects it, too - it’s an HBCU (Spelman College).* And most people in the Southeast recognize it, but all bets are off other than that. Having spent middle school through college in the Southeast, I was simply used to people recognizing the name and nodding approvingly when I said it.
When I moved to the Northeast, I was originally a little surprised (and a little disappointed, I will admit) that simply saying the name of the school elicited nothing but a blank stare from most people. I got over it quickly. I know my school was excellent. Plus, as others have mentioned, I see people give the same blank stare when they hear Brown or Dartmouth; I routinely heard people confusing Penn and Penn State, even in New York; most small colleges aside from Wellesley (and maybe Swarthmore) got the same lack of understanding. Most people really just don’t think about colleges that much!
Now I live in the Pacific Northwest and surprisingly get more people who recognize my alma mater here than in the Northeast. I tend to think the Northeast has so many universities and colleges ranging from small and unknown to large and nationally known that they don’t have the headspace to absorb other people’s colleges, lol!
I have the opposite experience with my graduate university. Almost everyone’s heard of Columbia, and I rarely have to explain it. I have had people have embarassingly over the top reactions before, but most people just say “Oh, great” and we continue our conversation. Interestingly enough, though, a lot of people can’t place it, even though they’ve heard the name before. I meet a lot of people who don’t know that Columbia’s in the Ivy League, for example.
But yeah don’t try to hide it. That just comes up as ridiculous. I always roll my eyes at the freshly minted undergrads who fake embarrassment when they answer “In Boston” or “In New York.” The other person is inevitably going to say “Where in Boston?” or “Oh, NYU?” and you’re just going to have to explain, and it looks pretentious.
My Mom lives in Colorado. When she told people that her daughter is going to Tufts, multiple coworkers responded “oh, it’s getting so hard to get into UC Boulder these days, isn’t it?”. It’s kind of a no-name school outside of New England in my experience unless you work in diplomacy. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter as long as you’re getting a good education.
@Waiting2exhale great points, I definitely agree that people can benefit from CC in a multitude of ways, including myself.