3. Unfogged meetups have been remarkably fertile grounds for dating.
also Anne Lamott's Match.com article was horrible.
Plus, Princeton, in particular, is full of douchebags.
Fortunately the internet exists.
Lies. Why would you lie?
4: The internet doesn't exist? You mean it's all inside my head? That explains so much.
If you squint at that article just the right way, there's kind of a valid point in that college actually is a great place to meet people so stop freaking out and get down to the relationship having, on the other hand 98.5% of the Princeton undergrad population are total douchebags who deserve each other so let's just light everyone on fire.
from the second link:
After 27 years together, Patton and her ex-husband finalized their divorce last month. "He went to a school of almost no name recognition," she said, declining to name the institution. "Almost no name recognition. A school that nobody has respect for, including him, really."
This, among other things, makes me think she means something very different by "intellectual equal" than the rest of us do.
I'm thinking the mom wants her son to get married, but realizes that her nagging him wasn't working, so she decided to approach the problem from the other side.
So many nuggets. But this one may be the most egregious:
As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?
If you squint at that article just the right way, there's kind of a valid point in that college actually is a great place to meet people so stop freaking out and get down to the relationship having
If you squint at the OP in just the right way, it looks like you are pwned.
This is an amusing reversed version of the Linda Hirshman article that we argued about, in which she encouraged successful, highly-educated, professional women to marry down.
Heebie and Halford are giving this woman too much credit. She is saying it is ok for men to date dumber people than they are if they are young and pretty, but women cannot date people dumber than they are, and certainly not people any younger than they are. She is accepting these rules as given and good. Also, she is openly asserting that people who don't go to Princeton are dumb. If I didn't realize that by "smart" she actually meant "high status" I'd be really offended.
And the ladies had better remember to be nice to the guys in their class, because if they spend all their time flirting with upperclassmen and ignoring their peer-bros, by the time they're all seniors the boys will only want to date first-years, since their classmates have shown themselves to be stuck up bitches.
I am going to start saying, "How wonderful would that be? That would be wonderful." all the time!
My mother tried to lecture me yesterday about how Kids These Days don't understand marriage, that they think it's about having nice vacations and spending time together as a couple instead of sacrificing for their children. I'm not really sure why she thought I'd be sympathetic, but I guess it's nice that she thinks Lee and I are doing marriage right and just opposes our right to marry. Or something.
I like all the references to how people of high quality must join forces rather than waste their time on lesser mortals. Is this woman writing under a pseudonym? Is Jacqueline Parker Posey Paisley old enough to have sons in college?
Heebie, you totes could have recycled my "Tiger Mother" joke and I would have let you get away with it.
11: Maybe if you had been nicer to Halford as a freshman he'd actually read your posts.
9, 16: Is this woman writing under a pseudonym?
Yeah, this is deserves a "Holy Shit, Mom!!" if anything ever did (especially from the younger son).
17: I have to admit I didn't really get the joke. I mean, I remember the other Tiger mom.
15: "I don't understand this gay marriage stuff, but as long as you are unhappy, that is all that is important."
Nobody's happy in this story, looks like. Although one does expect to discover that one of her sons is gay and hasn't told her.
Or has told her, and she wants him to suffer to be serious, like Thorn's mom.
by the time they're all seniors the boys will only want to date first-years, since their classmates have shown themselves to be stuck up bitches
Ordinarily, the appropriate response would be to date law school / business school guys, but of course that doesn't work at Princeton.
That way I could have embraced Princeton for the thirty years that I stayed away from it because my ex-husband had no respect for the hoopla, the traditions, the allegiance, the orange and black
I think she may have been hypnotized by someone in the Princeton Alumni Assocaiton.
23 - It would work fine, if Princeton Law weren't full of transnational progressives.
Also, divorce makes a lot of people absolutely insane with the pain for years on end, and possibly she's having a do-over fantasy in which she married in college and everything else went right.
Damn, is this going to be embarrassing when she comes to. Or maybe she'll marry a 20-something recent Princeton graduate and shill forever.
I try to lend an assist to the OP's trolling/provocative discussion facilitation and all I get is grief. You should be nicer to me or else you might have to marry a moron (aka, everyone who is not me). Think of how screwed you are now!
I'm pretty sure that a lot of women in my college class were trying to follow the advice in 10. But they mostly got dumped and abandoned when their older man moved on to the horrors of the real world, leaving ripe pickings for Senior Roberto Halfordo.
She's just trying to narrow the OverPrinceton Window.
Anyhow, just avoid people from this list and you might be able to find an acceptable mate.
The line someone quotes in 24 jumped out at me too, as something like a weird transference of sexual desire originally for Princeton which, because of societal and no doubt also biological reasons, had to be transferred onto an actual person.
Hrrrrmmmph! Princeton.
24: my ex-husband had no respect for the hoopla
What about the sis boom bah?
29: Dude! Some of us may want to sleep again without nightmarish Lovecraftian visions of your non-union Mexican equivalent feasting on your female cadres.
I picture the letter writer as a somewhat skinnier, blonder and more educated Hyacinth Bucket.
Did everyone watch that "Three's Company" pilot linked on bOING bOING this morning? It was interesting to me to see Ritter playing Jack so swish. The whole thing just seemed much more "Tales From The City", more authentically '70s.
I'm glad Halford and I are of one mind on the douchebag factor.
38: We call it "The Axe Effect" 'round these parts.
Dude! Some of us may want to sleep again withoutnightmarish Lovecraftian visions of your non-union Mexican equivalent feasting on your female cadres.
I'm surprised the author of the original piece didn't suggest women from Rutgers should blow her sons and save the sperm for use whenever they wanted to trick a truck driver into marrying them.
save the sperm for use whenever they wanted to trick a truck driver into marrying them.
That sounds like quite a trick.
They teach many tricks at Princeton.
Sorry. I went to land-grant schools.
"Tricks are for kids? Don't be ridiculous, Michael. Tricks are for whores."
- Job Bluth
||
Should I go softer on the student whose test the other two copied from?
|>
"I don't understand this gay marriage stuff, but as long as you are unhappy, that is all that is important."
I just wanted to reproduce this because it is so great. It is entirely ready to be the caption on a classic New Yorker cartoon.
48: Do you have any evidence one way or the other about the degree to which the copyee collaborated with the copiers? I'm inclined to go easier on the copyee, but that's because I was an unwitting victim of copying as an undergrad.
Not really. I have three tests with the same bizarro mistakes on about five different questions. One kid's supporting work makes a little more sense, and he answered questions that the other two left blank.
The three kids all sit near each other, but I didn't actually observe anything.
I can play head games with them to get an answer, except I never know how to play head games over cheating. But if anyone has a recommendation...
52 - Ask them, for 90% of their grade, which tire went flat.
I emailed all three students and told them they'd be getting a 0 on the test, and the copied-from student fired back an outraged response.
I can't decide if I should admit to him that I also think he was copied from. All I said in the original email was "You three turned in identical answers to 5 problems".
54: Now you write back, "Got you! April Fools!"
55: Is there a school strategy, either official or actual?
Nope. They ask that we report cases of cheating so that it goes in the student's file, but how we handle their grade in our class is our own business. The other two are getting 0s on the test.
Oh gee, I'm the only faculty member who actually thought that we were supposed to submit names of cheating students. I just went to the online form, and discovered that they've still got last semester's classes listed. (The form makes you pick class, and then student from that class, from drop-down menus.) So essentially nobody has bothered to tell IT that the form cannot be submitted, for the past four months.
IT could be incompetent!
Our system has made it impossible for me to spend a grant for months now. No overhead, so they don't care?
59: It's possible that people have told IT, and been told "Just send it in an email" or something. As is the case with my institution's system where you theoretically use a web-based drop box to submit a poster file for printing by the sign shop, but this drop box only works in browsers that do not yet exist.
This, among other things, makes me think she means something very different by "intellectual equal" than the rest of us do.
Mental whateverness?
Since almost every school whose policy I know about is ludicrously lenient on cheating, I have been forced to assume that this is not an accident, and that most schools are intentionally adopting highly lenient policies on cheating because they would rather not piss off their "customers".
I'd probably find the article silly if I actually read it--the excerpts given are certainly staggeringly silly--but I'm going to be humorless and instead say that I find it kind of horrifying. This--conflating all dimensions of worth, calling the resultant "smartness", but actually operationalizing it as "got into an elite college and won subsequent status tournaments"--is one of the major components of today's dominant justificatory ideology, and using it to screen all potential romantic partners and friends means that our rulers will increasingly never actually encounter anyone outside this charmed circle, making it increasingly unlikely that they will have reason to rethink their views on how the world works.
Plus, how else am I going to get back into the middle class, if women aren't willing to marry down?
There are many dimensions of 'down' trapnel. If you can find a few that you personally are willing to compromise on then you can certainly snag yourself a high-status woman, if that is your only goal.
It is horrifying, but I think (hope) it's on its way out. Mothers like this are now held up to ridicule, while that wasn't always the case.
65 is a good point, but that's a strategy that the woman in the linked article is trying to foreclose.
The Princeton women who had starter marriages to Princeton men at age 23 may be looking for their keeper husbands now, trapnel.
You'd think a member of one of the first Princeton classes to include women would know that ambitious people of all genders should be looking to marry wives.
69, 70: If it's not a thing, it definitely should be.
Trapnel just has to become a gardner!
My reading: middle-aged divorcee takes out her problems on Princeton undergrads. Tell: describing ex's experiences as not "luxurious."
Trapnel just has to become a gardner!
Well, and these days, I'm going more for cyclist thighs than skater thighs--though I think they're similar, since that was how my father got involved with skating in the first place. But, hmmm, there is a community garden a block away from me...
Trapnel, I'll bet if you applied yourself and hung out in Nob Hill hotels with a suitable cover story (Clark Rockefeller style but less murder-y? You could totally get away with some bogus German title and could probably buy one on the Internet) you could get a not merely middle class, but affirmatively wealthy, woman to marry you within a year.
a gardener with skater thighs
Your prayers are answered.
64
... and using it to screen all potential romantic partners and friends means that our rulers will increasingly never actually encounter anyone outside this charmed circle, making it increasingly unlikely that they will have reason to rethink their views on how the world works.
Which makes them just like everyone else. Few people have any interest in rethinking their views on how the world works.
I'm touched by the vote of confidence expressed by Oudemia & Halford, but my current strategy (viz.: wait for women to message me on OKCupid) seems to be working great so far, so I'll stick with it a bit longer. I've even considered bringing the woman I've been dating to next weekend's meetup, except that her brother's visiting town.
76: I know some people who know his now-former wife. They say she's smart and lovely, but my god if you're smart and you fell for his shit, then the only other choice is that you're deranged by status markers.
76. Transients in Arcadia!
SPOILER ALERT: x.trapnel, it turns out that she's not actually wealthy, but the two of you will be very happy.
Which makes them just like everyone else. Few people have any interest in rethinking their views on how the world works.
This is quite right, but with great power comes great responsibility, and all that.
Which highlights an aspect of extreme inequality that's often not given much attention: counteracting the informal and interpersonal mechanisms of class reproduction is often more difficult, and would require much more "making the personal political", than just using the tax code and so on to reduce inequality and hence diminish the importance of these issues.
82: I'm still failing at all other aspects of life, so don't feel too bad. And the woman in question isn't fabulously wealthy, though she is European.
Well, maybe you *should* endeavor to bring her to the meetup, so that I can woo her from you.
"making the personal political"
we need to start sexing outside of our socio-economic level, stat. ladies.
You could join us later that evening when we go out dancing, Nosflow, except that I know you don't dance.
So after you leave your friends neb behind, who gets to act real rude and totally removed and who like an imbecile?
That's ok, x., you can dance and we'll occupy ourselves otherwise.
my current strategy (viz.: wait for women to message me on OKCupid) seems to be working great so far
Hey, that's my strategy too. It hasn't been working out quite as well for me, though.
Oh, that reminds me: I just got another message on OKC, today. I'm afraid to log in to read it, because then she'll know I checked my account.
The last time I responded I confessed in short order that I was far too emotionally crippled to actually date someone.
I assume you win OKC by receiving more messages than you send, right?
I think you have to reject more people than reject you.
101 to both 99 and 100, I guess. There are many ways to win at OKC.
Like NCAA football, the pressure for a tournament has been resisted.
I haven't had much interest in dating. I keep thinking that speed dating would be fun. But I don't know if it is a thing anymore. I've been too lazy to find out. When I wasn't single, match and okc seemed like fun. Now, not so much. Just haven't had any desire to sign up.
EGGPLANT
READ THE FUCKING MESSAGE
SHIT
because then she'll know I checked my account.
Which she wants you to do, or else why would she send you a message?
For a moment, I thought I was saved by a forgotten password, but I got in. Thankfully, it's a "'sup"-style message.
It's warm enough to be out on the river where you are? Cool.
Thankfully, it's a "'sup"-style message.
"Watching the game, having a Bud, far too emotionally crippled to actually date."
I hope this experience has taught Eggplant a valuable lesson about discussing his dating experiences on Unfogged.
I'm assuming 'sup'-style is slang for pictures of genitals.
I'm assuming 'sup'-style is slang for pictures of genitals.
Wow! I guess I'm really out of the loop. And here I assumed it meant 'let's get together for supper,' or something like that.
Re: the Princetonian Tigress-Mom, I cringe for that woman, I really do. Even though I realize she doesn't deserve my sympathetic cringing on her behalf ("He went to a school of almost no name recognition," she said, declining to name the institution. "Almost no name recognition. A school that nobody has respect for, including him, really." Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us: did she really say that in an interview?!). And is it true, or is it just an internet rumour, that she consults for the wedding-oriented megasite known as The Knot?
||
I don't want to keep working on these slides, though.
|>
Outsource 'em to us! What could go wrong?
Shouldn't every talk begin with a cock joke?
"Turn", Moby. One turns a trick.
Or rolls him. Those are awesome calls. It's a lot of fun to fuck with a guy who's trying to tell you how a strange girl ended up in his hotel room without telling you his plan was to pay for a sex act.
Thankfully, it's a "'sup"-style message.
A young Lass stopped him Further up,
She said 'Come in Wi' me and sup.'
He said 'I'm taking none o' yon,
Besides, I must be gettin' on
"Uppards".'
My mother has been deluged with enquiries from my cousin's vaguely tigerish wife (who has two small kids) (not a real tiger mom. Same general family though. Ocelot mom?) along the lines of "You got ALL YOUR SONS into $UNIVERSITY. How did you do it? What's the secret? What should I be getting them to do?" and is desperately trying to conceal the fact that we all just basically surfed into $UNIVERSITY on a wave of disjointed general knowledge, unjustified self-confidence and pure dumb luck.
But if anyone can think of some good stories for her to tell Ocelot Mom, then I will pass them on.
124. If she want them to go to Oxbridge, buying the college a library usually works. Otherwise what you said. TINA, as the lady remarked. (Do British universities still interview candidates? If so, I guess you an buy practice interviews somewhere.)
A 'sup'-style message is a lot better than its 'inf'-style counterpart, unless the examined set consists of a single message.
124: Humility and quiet persistence.
God, I dread to think what would happen if I told the parents that I was engaged to someone who'd been to Princeton. Might be able to talk them round eventually, but I doubt it.
105: I didn't realize that you weren't still with BR, will. Hope things are going okay.
As somebody who generally doesn't give a shit about the reputation of universities, why is Princeton particularly a joke, as opposed to, say, Columbia or Brown?
Or rolls him. Those are awesome calls. It's a lot of fun to fuck with a guy who's trying to tell you how a strange girl ended up in his hotel room without telling you his plan was to pay for a sex act.
How did you miss the opportunity to do that with teo?
Princeton, in the not-so-popular imagination, and sorta kinda anecodotal fact, is home to a particularly high percentage of aggressively preppie rich shitheads, fully expecting to take their parents' place in the ruling class.
The rep of Columbia and Brown is much more arty and less cutthroat.
More or less.
Reputation-wise, Columbia is kinda bookish (it's like Chicago, only less so), Brown is artsy, and Princeton is full of rich guys who call each other "brah".
Oh, oud-pwned, and she even wrote at more length.
137: No, your added value was extra valuable! It's that Chicago book learnin'.
The best dig at Princeton came from Einstein: "a quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts".
Princeton, in the not-so-popular imagination, and sorta kinda anecodotal fact, is home to a particularly high percentage of aggressively preppie rich shitheads, fully expecting to take their parents' place in the ruling class.
Also, as the Ivy League school closest to the South*, it was the university of choice for such Southern segregationists as wanted to send their sons to a prestigious institution north of the Mason-Dixon line. Partially in consequence of that, Princeton was traditionally the last Ivy League school to abandon discriminatory policies.
*Not literally true in a geographic sense, but in a cultural sense.
Princeton is a much smaller institution than Yale and is located in a small town rather than a (declining) city, thus is divorced from the wider world. It doesn't have a law school or medical school or very many scientific facilities, for example. Also on the undergraduate level there is the unique tradition of "eating clubs" which I don't know how they differ from fraternities but they certainly sound snooty and arcane.
I once saw somebody eating a club sandwich.
If Princeton doesn't have a med school, how can Hugh Laurie work in their teaching hospital?
I sometimes wonder about the alternate universe where the IAS was built in Newark instead of Princeton.
The biggest differences are probably found in Cory Booker's life.
How did you miss the opportunity to do that with teo?
I probably should have but on the internet they can cheat a bit because they can think about their answer. Watching them come up with stuff on the fly is definitely part of the fun.
Otherwise what you said. TINA, as the lady remarked.
Over here "tina" is slang for meth and typically not a route into an elite university.
132
Columbia > Princeton > Brown
USN has it:
Princeton > Columbia > Brown
and I agree.
143
Princeton is a much smaller institution than Yale ...
They have about the same number of undergrads although Yale is bigger otherwise.
146: The angriest letter I ever received from a professor was when I sent a ms for this particular fellow to Princeton rather than IAS. A very grave insult akin to calling his mother a whore.
TINA = "There Is No Alternative", catchphrase of Margaret Thatcher used to refer to her in satirical contexts.
150: Who are you going to believe, a slightly respected magazine with a half-assed research methodology or a random guy from the internet?
152: How many times have you called somebody's mother a whore when sending them a ms?
155. We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest. Also, your mom is of considerable biological interest.
How did you do it? What's the secret? What should I be getting them to do?
Being from an obscure, underrepresented state helps.
I don't get why more UMC parents don't avail themselves of this option. Surely getting little Emma-Kate into Yale is worth a few quiet years in rural South Dakota? Especially if you're wealthy enough to take a year or two off of the career track and do something salt-of-the-earthish, so that your child can put, say, "farmer" and "cabinet-maker" under parents' occupations on the application form. This is surely much higher RoI than sending her to Brearley.
157: This is pretty much going to be the entirety of fetus' college strategy....
157: I live in Knifecrime Island and the Ocelot Mom lives in the former crown colony of Smackharbour, so that isn't really an option either way. Interesting point though.
155: I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this assertion but the margin is not wide enough to contain it. UNLIKE YOUR MOM.
159: Hooray for Fetus' fetus-ness! Stay put, Buster.
Depending on how you count. 37 was last week. 38 this week. In any case, things look the same as they did two weeks ago, so we're thinking my cervix just wanted extra credit by proving how well it could efface. Could have the baby today, could go another two weeks. Could be pregnant FOREVER.
164: there's an Iain Banks character who decides to stay pregnant for forty years. I can't see that being a popular life choice.
(Interestingly, Culture citizens quite enjoy being pregnant, while Lois Bujold's Betans are more "fertilise in a test tube and put the zygote in a box to gestate for the next nine months". I suspect this is because Bujold has been pregnant and Banks hasn't.)
I am going to make my millions by starting a service where I read emails/OKCupid messages that people are afraid to read, and then let them know whether they should read it or not.
Or by editing personal ads for people. I feel some appropriate mix of pride and horror, weighted toward horror, about this, but I won "ad of the week" twice in the Chicago Reader!
That's a great deal of pressure. If you have an award-winning ad and don't find anybody, you've got nothing to blame but your personal qualities.
166: helpy-chalk and I have a friend who did too!
167: Number of dates I went on from two practically Pulitzer-Prize-winning ads? You guessed it! Zero!
Crossing my fingers for a speedy and magnificent birthing, Cala.
169: I would have guessed an "ad of the week" winner would get a (relatively) lot of responses. Does your experience indicate otherwise?
I think once you're polling people who are not academics and the like, Princeton is more the name you'd pluck out of the air to say "smart and headed for success!" than Columbia.
Speaking of which, I assume everyone read the thing on Gawker linking to the op-ed in the WSJ where some wretched little beast talks about how unfair it is that no Ivy let her in for being a white girl with no interests or achievements.
Yeah, and I'm just going to repost here the remark I made elsewhere:
I assume the problem is that she wasn't white *enough*. If she'd been associated with DAR, she'd've been in like Flynn.
171: I got some responses, not tons. They didn't seem interesting. My dating life in Chicago was...not the best?
If she'd been associated with DAR, she'd've been in like Flynn
Flynn is hardly DAR material.
My dating life in Chicago was...not the best?
It's not you, it's me.
I think Gary, Indiana, should get some of the blame.
172: So her sister was a section editor at the WSJ, her parents are wealthy enough to build a $700,000 house during a recession, and she grew up near Carnegie Mellon? This smacks of the old parable about the fellow who was not saved from drowning because he rejected God's two boats and a helicopter. Surely her parents must know a couple of people associated with Carnegie Mellon? Or some other professors or administrators? Someone who could have offered a bit of advice? Like "read the admissions sections of the websites -- there's nothing about being yourself on there"?
Also reminds me of a HS friend of mine -- very bright, lots of extracurriculars, good grades & test scores, good writer, came from a somewhat disadvantaged background (mother was on Social Security and he of course went to the same inner city school I did) -- who applied to Harvard and the U of Mn and nowhere else. How the Hell does that make sense? I'm sure he could have gotten into at least a couple of Ivies or near-Ivies if he'd deigned to apply.
176: I would tend to agree with this! I assume I continued to be the same undatable asshole in NYC I was in Chicago and my love life was instantly and ongoingly better after I got here.
178: That high school certainly has people who know the admissions game.
One of the problems I have with OKC is that my profile, while not award winning, is much more dateable than me.
who applied to Harvard and the U of Mn and nowhere else. How the Hell does that make sense?
I've seen similar behavior from academic job searchers. I'll ask how many applications they've sent out this year and they'll say:
"Three".
Planning on any more?
"Umm...no."
?????
I mean obviously the market sucks in any case, but that's not maximizing your chances.
Regarding the HS student in 178, I think those of us who either grew up in UMC environments or had parents who were academics easily forget how much tacit knowledge we've internalized about how the college game works.
I saw a similar story to 178 play out where a student almost missed out on a full scholarship at an excellent state school because she wasn't aware that she was the perfect candidate. Fortunately someone clued her in before it was too late.
I think Gary, Indiana, should get some of the blame.
There's a hand-painted "billboard" on someone's farm as you drive from Chicago into Gary that announces: "Hell is real!"
181 to 184. She was raised in Squirrel Hill and went to Allderdice.
181 to 184. She was raised in Squirrel Hill and went to Allderdice.
How do you know where Minnie's friend went?
One of the problems I have with OKC is that my profile, while not award winning, is much more dateable than me.
I just updated (ok, filled out) my profile this morning, inspired by Eggplant. It basically says, "Hi! I am totally undateable and not even really willing to consider it at this point." It's a strategy, anyway.
Oh, the other high school student.
Of course, my law/grad school strategy was to apply to exactly one school and just not be a lawyer/teacher if I didn't get in.
188. If I were doing internet dating, which is a wild hypothetical to start with, I would totally respond to that.
Hmmm. Maybe I should just disclose each and every one of my (known) flaws in excruciating detail. Nobody who responded could possibly have any disappointed expectations.
This smacks of the old parable about the fellow who was not saved from drowning because he rejected God's two boats and a helicopter.
My favorite version of this parable ends with G-d's booming voice asking, "WHO DO YOU THINK SENT THE FLOOD, ASSHOLE" and now I recall that it's due to ajay.
who applied to Harvard and the U of Mn and nowhere else. How the Hell does that make sense?
I did the same, substituting the University of Deep Redstatia for U of Mn. It was a choice between a free ride at a landgrant university and shelling out big bucks for something expensive. My parents were willing to go the latter route for a top school, but not for some middling SLAC. So not illogical. Luckily, I got into my first choice school.
easily forget how much tacit knowledge we've internalized about how the college game works
No kidding. I had never even heard of a "safety school" until college - probably when I heard my classmates yelling it at Princeton fans at a football game.
Maybe I should just disclose each and every one of my (known) flaws in excruciating detail. Nobody who responded could possibly have any disappointed expectations.
Lawyers. Always so fearful of litigation.
174: The friend in question married a lady he met via the Reader. But I'm not sure if was through one of the award-winning ads.
I don't always brush my teeth. My housekeeping resembles an episode of Hoarders. I flip out in the face of stress and/or conflict. I sometimes eat nothing but Cheez-its for dinner. This includes nights I'm responsible for my child's dinner. I rarely read books and mostly like sitting on the couch watching TV.
I sometimes eat nothing but Cheez-its for dinner.
No worse than Kraft Mac & Cheese, apparently.
I applied to four colleges that I got waitlisted at and then was rejected, and two where I got accepted and got a full tuition scholarship. We put way too much effort into the whole process.
198: I got nasty habits, don't always brush my teeth.
Yes, and the Cheez-its I eat for dinner
Must be hung up for a week
I rarely read books, and like to sit around
On the couch watch-ing TV
Doncha think there's a place for you
In between the sheets?
198. You had me up to the bit about watching TV.
Shorter 201: Di pwned by the Stones in 1969.
who applied to Harvard and the U of Mn and nowhere else. How the Hell does that make sense?
When I first applied to college, I applied to nine, with a state school as a safety, and only got into the safety. When I applied to grad school, I only applied to one place and I got in. YOU DECIDE.
200 We put way too much effort into the whole process.
Ugh, yeah. I guess sometime I should thank my parents for all the time they put into driving me around on college visits and whatnot. Not that it really had much of an effect on anything in the end.
178
... who applied to Harvard and the U of Mn and nowhere else. How the Hell does that make sense? I'm sure he could have gotten into at least a couple of Ivies or near-Ivies if he'd deigned to apply.
Doesn't applying to a lot of places start getting time consuming and expensive? If he was sure to get into U of Mn and was ok with that what's the point to applying to lots of other places?
I only applied to one grad school.
We have visiting grad students here now. None of them seem to want to talk to me. They're all clumping around Famous Professor. I was thinking about printing up some flyers warning them away and discreetly putting them in various locations where they might be found.
The first time I applied to college, I applied to 8, and got into 0; 4 waitlist-rejections, 4 flat-out rejections. I didn't apply to any safeties--the closest thing to a safety was Hopkins, as I recall--despite going to a high school where there was a *lot* of knowledge of how the system worked; it was particularly stupid not to apply to Berkeley, for example, given that back then--'98--I would have been a shoe-in on test scores alone. This was almost entirely due to general cussedness, and resentment towards my parents more specifically. But I showed them!--because then they ended up paying a ridiculous amount of money for me to basically take an extra year of high school at a boarding school, and now they still support me.
I do not have this information on my OKCupid profile, and that's probably for the best.
shoe-in
I think of it more as a sandal kind of place.
Look, if "admitting drunken lazy underachiever legacies" to Ivy League schools is wrong, then let's just call me Benito Mussolini.
we're thinking my cervix just wanted extra credit by proving how well it could efface
There should be a prize that does not involve a longer pregnancy.
Also, only a fool would date a lawyer.
210 Shall we compromise and call you Paolo di Canio?
Look, if "admitting drunken lazy underachiever legacies" to Ivy League schools is wrong, then let's just call me Benito Mussolini.
This has always been okay. The problem nowadays is that there isn't any room for anyone else.
António de Oliveira Salazar, at best. (After all, you went to Far-Above-the-Waters, right?)
The problem nowadays is that there isn't any room for anyone else.
??
Isn't the opposite of this sort of true? Percentage of drunken legacies is as low as it's ever beeen at most Ivies, no?
215: Maybe the key word is legacies? I remember reading something recently that a big chunk (more than 50%) of each admitted class is flatly given over to legacies but more importantly, donors. So "regular people" are competing for an ever smaller number of spots.
That sounds nuts, and it may be nuts!, but I definitely read this.
Yeah, I can't find what I read, but I did find this that says that Harvard's legacy admit rate is 30%, whereas Yale's is down around 10. But hmm hmm hmm the thing I read was about donors.
That sounds nuts, and it may be nuts!
I don't know. As a model for a university, running it as an elite research institution financed by a diploma mill for millionaires sounds better than many I've heard.
That sounds completely and totally implausible to me. Quick googling suggests legacies are typically between 10-15 percent at Ivies, and the naive estimate (based on acceptance rates) is that at least a quarter of those students would have gotten in anyway.
It's hard out there for a legacy without rich parents.
If they're not stupid, donors trump legacies and non-donor legacies* get little additional consideration barring highly unusual circumstances.
*Basically true in my case.
I mean the "non-donor" part was true. No building bears my name!
220: It doesn't sound right to me either, but like I said, the thing I read was about donors, and that a hefty percentage of each class was essentially spoken for and that normies really weren't in competition for 2000 spots, but rather 1000. No clue!
No building bears my name!
That's smart vandalism.
The legacy admit rate is not the same as the percentage of the class that is legacies. Also, even if the college was blind to legacy status, legacies are especially likely to have the advantages that allow one to build a purely merit-based application (think kids of professors).
I don't know anything about Ivies. I was thinking about hiring in general. There is this crunch now, where once upon a time they would hire some people based on an objective and rational search, and some people based on networking and collegiality. Now they have to choose one or the other.
220: It doesn't sound right to me either, but like I said, the thing I read was about donors, and that a hefty percentage of each class was essentially spoken for and that normies really weren't in competition for 2000 spots, but rather 1000. No clue!
Don't forget all the spots that go to fill the sports teams and the orchestra and whatnot!
Just an FYI:
I am single and can offer a multi-generational legacy (grandfather, father, and me) to a fine university in my state. I have regularly donated very small sums of money to my school. There is a dorm that bears my family name, although I am not a direct descendant of that person. Unfortunately, I have no children whose grades will allow admission.
I am willing to consider marriage proposals for a small fee. We do not need to live together and can stay in whatever relationship you are in. We can terminate the marriage immediately upon your child's admission. The paper work to change your child's last name is easily accomplished.
I am also willing to consider stacking marriages so that multiple people can take advantage of this spectacular offer.
The not-very-reliable figure that these college admissions obsessives seem to use is that roughly 40-50% of the class is reserved for "special cases" who benefit from relaxed admission standards, which includes athletes, legacies, some underrepresented minorities (not you Asians!) and children of the rich and famous.
I am also willing to consider stacking marriages so that multiple people can take advantage of this spectacular offer.
How much are the BB+ tranches?
Percentage of drunken legacies is as low as it's ever beeen at most Ivies, no?
I have a theory that there will be a tipping point at which it no longer makes economic sense to extend the legacy preference. Back in the day (1960's or so), a legacy applicant had about a 90% chance of getting in to a Harvard or Yale. As the size of the applicant pool has grown, that percentage has gone into long-term decline. Mind you, being a legacy still doubles or triples your chances of admission, and it increases your chances substantially even after controlling for other factors. But the baseline probability of admission is a lot lower than it used to be, therefore the chances for legacy applicants are correspondingly reduced.
Now, for the administration, the calculus has to look something like this: Without the legacy preference, the entire alumni population would be slightly less enthusiastic about giving to the institution. With the preference, some proportion of alumni are slightly more enthusiastic (those whose children have been admitted, or might one day be admitted), while another subset is heartily pissed off (those whose children didn't get in even though they "deserved to" as a legacy). In our model, these pissed off alumni withdraw their support entirely. Depending on the values you assign to the variables for "slightly less" and "slightly more" enthusiastic, there is a clear financial break-even point for percentage of legacy applicants admitted. I estimate it's about 20% (which, per the link in 218, means that Yale is already at the boundary). This yields a testable hypothesis: the admission rate for alumni children will never get as low as 15% at an Ivy school with a legacy preference. The preference will be eliminated entirely before it gets there. A further conjecture: Yale will go before Harvard.
Because Yale has all that extra time saved by not getting piss on their hands.
232 -- presumably there's also a sliding scale for the wealth of the legacy in question. No one cares about your kid, burnout!
Agree with 184. It may not be obvious to apply for a dozen or so colleges. Also, don't colleges charge an application fee? That could add up.
Anyhow, the most important thing we should keep in mind is that every school in the Ivy League is equally super-prestigious -- every school -- and no it does not matter whatsoever for purposes of prestige whether the school in question allows you to major in Sheep.
224: What I saw from some sources is that between legacy, donors, children of "celebrities" of the right kind, and athletes it gets to about 50% or less open to the general population at most Ivies. (And yes many of those in varying degrees could (not sure about "would" if they were thrown into the general pool) have gotten in without whatever boost their status gave them*.)
Back in the day I somehow stumbled* across what looked to be an internal questionnaire of a "get you into an Ivy" place and it was quite a long form with very specific questions around:
a) Level of academic honors (national vs. regional vs. state and level of prestige of competition/honor) well beyond just grades/class rank/scores.
b) Level of achievement in extracurricular activity (once again beyond your HS/town).
c) Legacy status in detail.
d) Donation levels.
and
e) Very specific questions on name recognition/field of parents.
f) Standard questions on demographics/minority status etc.
My impression from the context and process they described was that they evaluated your answers** (and it cost pretty decent $s for just that much, less if you signed up for their "continuing" services) to assess chances and where your resume needed to be shored up. The part that was a revelation to me was the specificity of information requested for a) and e).
*I plunged deeply into that world just because it was an area with interesting stats and things like the revealed preference work. Not to any benefits to my kids--but I was quite familiar with it for a while (about a decade ago, so getting out of date).
**Note that they claimed to be modeling the outcomes of the admissions process, not necessarily the consciously-applied criteria of the admissions department.
McMegan jumps into the fray!
Get married as early as possible, writes The Daily Beast's Megan McArdle
For the curious top 20 from the paper in 237 9from 2004)
rank College Name Elo pts
1 Harvard 2800
2 Yale 2738
3 Stanford 2694
4 Cal Tech 2632
5 MIT 2624
6 Princeton 2608
7 Brown 2433
8 Columbia 2392
9 Amherst 2363
10 Dartmouth 2357
11 Wellesley 2346
12 U Penn 2325
13 U Notre Dame 2279
14 Swarthmore 2270
15 Cornell 2236
16 Georgetown 2218
17 Rice 2214
18 Williams 2213
19 Duke 2209
20 U Virginia 2197
227 There is this crunch now, where once upon a time they would hire some people based on an objective and rational search, and some people based on networking and collegiality.
At a recent faculty meeting I got to see the outcome of a junior faculty search. It was clear they had already chosen the candidate they liked at the outset, and none of the others ever had a chance.
This somehow makes me feel very uncomfortable with having the job that I have.
At a recent faculty meeting I got to see the outcome of a junior faculty search.
So has everybody who has met an assistant professor.
235: Folks who would really have a hard time paying the app fee should apply anyway with a note asking the college to waive the fee. Then worst case, you're just out the cost of the postage.
I suppose that's another one of those things most folks can't be expected to try, though.
I have heard that something like 40% of Harvard undergrads don't get financial aid which, since they offer financial aid to any student with a family income less than the low six figures, means that a good percentage of the class is in the 1%, at the very least.
244.1 would never ever ever ever have occurred to me. That said, the reason I applied to two colleges was the same as KR's: there was fancy prestigious college,* and then there was full-ride state college, and then there were all the SLACs in the middle that would have given me jack for financial aid other than loans, so why waste the application fee anyway.
*Not as fancy or prestigious as other colleges discussed in this thread, certainly not back in the day. But it does have the distinction of giving a decent handful of merit scholarships, which is unusual.
170: thanks, text!
I applied to lots of schools because I wasn't going to go anywhere that wasn't giving me a lot of aid. That ruled out all SLACs except one that offered full-ride scholarships to the winners of their entrance exam contest which was a third math, a third science, and a third Biblical knowledge (I'm still rather proud that I won -- didn't want to go there, really, but there's something nice about destroying evangelicals at their own game.)
Depending on how you count. 37 was last week. 38 this week.
Wait, you're right. Why was my doctor acting like 38 weeks was next week, this morning?
Maybe doc was thinking "next visit you'll be 38+" ?
Do pregnancy weeks go like ages, where you only claim the number you've actually achieved? I was at 30 weeks on Sunday, so if people ask, I say I'm 30 weeks now, right? Not "in my 31st week"?
More than 5 years in dog pregnancy weeks.
Wait, dogs are 7x not 9x--4 years.
250: That's how I tend to say it. 37 weeks = 37 weeks completed. I'm at the point at any rate where students tend to say "See you Thursday, Professor, unless...."
I only applied to one college, a SLAC, and it waived most of my tuition. (I applied in my junior year of high school. If I hadn't gotten in and stuck around for my senior year I would have applied to a bunch of places.)
246: It wouldn't have occurred to me at the time either.
254: Applying a year early is another of those things that would never have occurred to me.
I was going to apply to two, but I can't remember if I sent the second application in, or if the first got accepted before the second was due. My older brother was one year ahead of me in high school, and could go anywhere: such a deal was made of this all that I was inclined to participate in any of it as little as possible (although not, obviously, going the full trapnel).
[He ended up going to Stanford, and then Princeton for grad school. I suppose I could make a catty remark about how my ex-sister-in-law came into and went out from the picture, but, well, we're all just old people now.]
I applied to three state schools and an Ivy. There was no reason I should have gotten into the Ivy--perfectly fine grades, good SATs, nothing much to distinguish me--and I didn't. (I did get into an Ivy three times later and did not attend in any instance. I'm just mentioning it because I didn't get anything out of it except perhaps a momentary burst of respect from you, gentle reader.)
The thing that didn't occur to me when applying to colleges was the concept of "engineering". I show up on campus and half the guys on my floor apparently already have a good job guaranteed if they can get through three years of this engineering dealie followed by an internship, and it's too late to switch to the School of Engineering from the School of Anything Else without re-applying in some way and transferring out of all my classes. And I went to a prep school! I could have switched, but it seemed like "bioengineering" was the most complicated form of engineering and I had never taken any physics classes and it was too much to contemplate at the time.
Applied to 10ish schools, don't remember exactly. Probably an Ivy or two, my state school, and a bunch of well-thought-of SLACs. (Had to Google that acronym.) I don't think I would have called the college I went to my first choice, but it wasn't the worst either.
Here's another bit of guidance some families have access to and others don't.
||
I have one train-wreck ex-student that I can't bring myself to un-friend on FB. (She was one of the people chastising everyone who goes "I'M SO PREGGERS APRIL FOOLS!!!)
There are so many not-quite-right things she posts and I never know exactly if it's the accumulation that's hilarious or if each one really is funny, but right now she reposted some meme pining for the original Super Mario Bros, which must have been released at least five years before she was born.
(She also had a baby about two months ago, and from about the second hour of the kid's life, started posting all these things about the ongoing sacrifice of being a mom, etc. Things about your kid maybe not seeming like they appreciate you, then they reveal all poignantly at age 18. Lots of things about "through the years, as a mom...")
Well, this got long. I guess I have a lot of pent-up opinions about this weirdo.
|>
Maybe someone can put 261 up as a guest post.
261: My child just spent about 10 minutes sticking a piece of candy deep in my bra and then forlornly shaking his head and throwing up his hands: "No candy! No candy!" Only jam his hands back in there, whip out the candy (a Chimes ginger chew he would never eat), and shriek: "CANDY!!!!" while cackling. It was very emotional. Even though did you know there are diabetic children who can't even eat candy?
Okay, this was another one of my anecdotes where I didn't provide enough background: Friend was a very smart, very verbose, very inquisitive kid who played all his cards right in HS and, while no Casanova, was reasonably popular with the crowd of UMC grade-grubbers who talked about colleges constantly and made much better choices in applications than he did. He was also the pet of a number of different teachers, many of whom explicitly advised him to aim more broadly*. We were also attending the best inner city school in the region, which, due to two magnet programs, had quite a few legacies of near-Ivy and Ivy League parents. A LOT of our other smart, high-grade/high test score, lots-of-extracurriculars classmates applied to Harvard just on the off chance that they'd get in, and at least a couple did every year. Although his mother was on disability, she came from a middle-class background and was very supportive of his educational aspirations. I'm 99% sure that if he had applied to a basket of Ivies/near Ivies, he would have gotten into most of them. We had friends who went to Stanford, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, etc. etc. It wasn't like the concept of going to one of those places was super alien to him. He just had it in his head that if he couldn't go to Harvard then fuck it -- he would just hang out at home and coast at the U. He wound up getting sucked into the Cult Studs demimonde, not finishing his degree, working menial jobs and being depressed. I think he is doing much better now, but he could have really excelled if he'd just bothered to admit of the possibility that those other schools might have provided him an education and entry into UMC-ness as good or better than Harvard.
*I also advised him thusly, and got infuriatingly vague answers about why that didn't make sense or he wasn't into it or whatever.
OMG your kid is acting out Scenes from Freud.
N.b.: We made fun of the people who wanted to go to Dartmouth. There weren't very many of them.
265: Always. But usually it's da und fort.
Hokey Pokey loves to hide things in my bra. Mostly toy cars. "Where'd it go? Where'd it go? HERE IT IS!" Or sometimes, during storytime, he'll just lodge his hand in there to rest and cup.
269: Oh yes. It's his favorite handwarmer.
I applied to Harvard but it's probably good I didn't have much intention of going there. A misspelling of my name - likely caused by my lack of cursive, naturally - seems to have led them to believe that I had not sent in all the required materials. I can't remember if I re-sent the stuff, but it probably got sorted out. They eventually told me I was waitlisted and could be considered for the following year (maybe? do they do that? I can't remember) if I sent in a card asking them to keep me on the list and I think I replied that I'd decided to go elsewhere. Or I didn't reply. I never filed a FAFSA so that settled things long before they made a decision.
I didn't apply anywhere else through regular channels because I was already in Berkeley through a program where they admitted people based on grades and test scores through junior year of high school. I'm pretty sure I'm boringly repeating myself here from threads years past, but I realized later I should have seriously considered other schools, not so much for academics but for the sake of living somewhere new. Staying in-state sure saved a huge amount of money - this was during the last period of relatively low UC fees.
For grad school the advice I got, at least for PhD programs, was that the concept of the safety school only made sense if it's somewhere you would like to attend. But in the humanities time-to-degree is long enough and the job market brutal enough that you'd be crazy to go somewhere you didn't like just because you knew you had a good chance to get in and you just wanted the degree.
23 years later, my mom is still just a little mad at me for never applying to Harvard. I applied instead to two schools I had no intention of going to, the one I went to, and a school one of you is currently teaching at. The first two solely to placate those nagging that you can't just apply to two schools.
Maybe the missing half of the advice to the snotty kid was "Be yourself and you will wind up somewhere you genuinely fit rather than shoehorning yourself into some place that will leave you fighting off impostor syndrome for the rest of your life."
244
235: Folks who would really have a hard time paying the app fee should apply anyway with a note asking the college to waive the fee. Then worst case, you're just out the cost of the postage.
And the time and trouble it takes to fill out the forms and get your SAT scores sent (which also can cost money although there is some sort of fee wavier) and who knows what else.
Obligatory expression of enlightened-topless surprise that US universities are actually allowed to tell their students: "Oh, your dad went here/gave us a lot of money? Front of the queue with you then!"
274: Yes, of course there are other factors to consider. I was thinking of the case where the chief obstacle is fees. People who also just didn't want to put the extra work in shouldn't be whining about application fees in the first place. Plus, lots of applications are pretty similar, so probably the amount of work scales less than linearly.
277: "The WWGR station's manager did have to issue a retraction -- or at least a constant on-air admission that the gag was, in fact, a joke -- even though St. John and Fish were technically correct that dihydrogen monoxide was, indeed, coming out of their taps."
You'd think old people would know old jokes.