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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Actual bad names:
Salisbury State
Skidmore
Colgate
Grinnel
Goucher

Names that are so bad they are actually great:

Harvey Mudd
Transylvania U
Colorado School of Mines

Names that sound classy:

Cambridge 
Oxford
Georgetown
Notre Dame
Vanderbilt

[/quote]

How is Colgate a bad name? [/quote]

Most people think of toothpaste when they hear Colgate.[/quote]

Colgate sounds elite, but it's true that many people associate it with the toothpaste for which the family that the university is named after made its money.  It's probably better than Penn, which gets called Penn State by those who like to poke fun at its claim to being "elite.  Other universities have names that are also associated with corporate brands, such as Duke (Energy), Occidental (Petroleum), and Vanderbilt (jeans), but they are not considered as non-elite as toothpaste, even if each of the companies or products are more controversial than toothpaste.  I doubt any of those names, though, even the ones people might poke fun at, actually seriously deter people from attending.

By far the worst name for that reason is Washington & Lee.  The Robert E. Lee name is toxic for a lot of people outside the South and for someone who is already a bit skittish about going to the South for college because of stereotypes about the kind of people or attitudes held there, having Lee in the college's name is a big red flag.  Other college names may turn students away - such as a religious affiliation for students who don't belong to that religion - but those are conscious decisions made by the college to encourage self-selection.  Washington & Lee was presumably named that to provide the opposite signal - unity of north and south and welcoming to all - but that meaning has gotten lost over the years.[/quote]

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