Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State

[Anonymous]

I have a childhood friend who went to Wharton in the early 1990s. He’s been fabulously successful. I get much pleasure out of messing with him over how that “Penn State” degree paid off. Much fun. 🤩

[Anonymous]

Ivy league or not, Penn is just not considered a good enough school for people to be talking about it unless they live next door or plan to go there. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Best one is the University of San Diego,
UC San Diego, and San Diego State!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My super educated, Ivy parents had no mental data points on half the colleges my kids applied to. I mean, they had heard of them but they had no idea if Colby was ranked 5 or 40. Or if Wash U was a top10 or a top50.

The only people who sit around with a continually updated mental google doc of college rankings are:

-parents with kids in the admissions process
-people who work in academia
-DCUM posters

Ok

[Anonymous]

The only people who matter in this scenario are future employers or grad programs.

[Anonymous]

The difference between Penn and Harvard is that at Harvard everyone says they go to school “in Boston” because they want you to believe they’re humble, whereas at Penn, people are crass enough to allow themselves to be seen to care about being mixed up with Penn State.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Best one is the University of San Diego,
UC San Diego, and San Diego State!

On the east coast, this on confuses many. I am a UCSD grad living on the east coast. Most people think UCSD is that fun party school or that really pretty Catholic school.

[Anonymous]

On this board, people confuse University of Washington (Seattle) and Washington University (St. Louis) all the time. People confuse names, doesn't mean much.

Our DCs will know what school they are going to!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My super educated, Ivy parents had no mental data points on half the colleges my kids applied to. I mean, they had heard of them but they had no idea if Colby was ranked 5 or 40. Or if Wash U was a top10 or a top50.

The only people who sit around with a continually updated mental google doc of college rankings are:

-parents with kids in the admissions process
-people who work in academia
-DCUM posters

I got a crash course in colleges and their comparative rankings and prestige in law school. I went to my state flagship on scholarship and never really considered other schools because even just the expense of traveling to them would have been a major burden on my family. I was a big reader and had seen lots of movies, so I wasn't totally uneducated on the subject, but didn't have some encyclopedic knowledge either.

I remember being scolded when I referred to a classmate has having gone to Penn undergrad, because she'd technically gone to Wharton which is considered more prestigious. I also learned the difference between Bates and Bowdoin, two colleges I'd never heard of before in my life. I learned the nuance between Ivy League schools, how Yale is culturally different from Harvard and Princeton, and why Cornell gets treated differently than all of them. Why Dartmouth has certain reputations. Also all about Catholic colleges (I would not have been able to tell you that Georgetown or Boston College were Catholic schools before this) and the parochial pipeline into them, and the nuance in how they are viewed by Catholics and non-Catholics.

Law school is also when I learned about how a lot of people think cars convey a lot of information about a person and that people get very offended if you confuse their expensive, luxury car with a less-expensive, luxury car. Though that one I honestly still struggle with because it makes no sense to me. Some people read a lot of nuance into this that I will never understand. That's probably true of colleges too, to some degree. It's so important to some people that their college (or their kid's college) be hard to get into, or expensive, or both. My own experience says that none of this matters so much as what you actually do while you are there, but it's very, very important to many people here, so I try to be respectful about it even though I think it's a little silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about people that don’t know what Barnard is or that it is an Ivy League school and part of Columbia? This is a weird one too. Almost like a litmus test for your education level.

Barnard is not an Ivy school. It is a Seven Sisters school.
- signed, Barnard alumna

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A sign that the obsessions with prestige is a narrow community.

Exactly

[Anonymous]

Happy Penn parent here. My kid is happy and thriving academically and socially. Kid loves the restaurant scene in philly. Who cares what anyone thinks? Oldest kid went to Columbia (no name confusion) and had a lackluster experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child’s first choice school is Penn. I had mentioned that it would be a reach for him and that usually 1 kid gets in from our school. At some point, I realized that they thought I was referring to Penn State. When I mentioned UPenn was an Ivy League school, they seemed confused. These are Americans. Do people really not know the difference????

OMG that must have been sooo embarrassing for you when people thought Penn State was a reach for your kid! I hope you set those idiots straight!

[Anonymous]

Williams? Where’s that? Is that Williams and Mary? Happens all the time and not a reflection of one’s education. It all depends on your bubble. I went to a northeastern LAC and a T-14 law school but there are hundreds of great schools and degree programs I’ve never heard of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Happy Penn parent here. My kid is happy and thriving academically and socially. Kid loves the restaurant scene in philly. Who cares what anyone thinks? Oldest kid went to Columbia (no name confusion) and had a lackluster experience.

My niece went to Columbia College of Chicago. There's always room for confusion!