Anonymous
Post 01/20/2026 13:22     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I think the funniest thing about Princeton is how it gets confused with Rutgers all the time


Really? They don’t even sound alike. I’ve never heard this….


Nobody makes this mistake. They are physically close to the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers.
Anonymous
Post 01/20/2026 13:15     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote: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.


lol no! We say school “in Boston” because people act weird if we mention Harvard. Like the nail salons suddenly charge extra, parents with kids in school start getting obnoxious with their questions about how to get in, parents with older kids who did not get into Harvard get insecure and start bragging about their kids,….IYKYK it’s a PITA.


This is spot on. It's so strange how people think this is braggy when it's literally the opposite. We just don't want yet another awkward conversation.

Signed,

someone who went to college "in Connecticut."



I react differently. WT F , why not say Yale or Harvard? Do you feel so superior as to show how humble you are? You have a predicament but you should know who you are taking to when you say or not say these things.


The odd assumption you're making about Yale and Harvard grads (that we feel superior) just illustrates the point we have made. People have had really odd reactions when I have said I have gone to Yale, and this has made me AND the other people listening really uncomfortable. So I have deferred answering the question to avoid that.

And no, this is not a universal reaction by all. But based on the fact that this triggers you so much, I would not expect you to be in the camp that can handle it.


Who over the age of 30 is asking anyone where they went to college? I have absolutely no idea where the vast of people I've met went to school. And I couldn't image asking some 45 year old where they went to college. The question doesn't come up in adult life outside of hiring, and even then undergrad is a very minor point in someone's professional history.


Meanwhile people are still using their harvard.edu email addresses into their 50s.
Anonymous
Post 01/20/2026 08:10     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DD attends Loyola Marymount in LA. People get all the Loyolas mixed up even though they are not affiliated. It doesn’t bother us. We just explain.


There are also all the Mary schools.

St Mary’s College of Maryland
St Mary’s in California
Loyola Marymount
Marymount in Virginia
And more I can’t remember…


And St Mary’s College of Maryland isn’t Catholic, which comes as a surprise to many people.


+1 my DD was applying to SMCM, Mary Washington, and Washington College and even she had trouble keeping them straight.

I found the Virginia college system very confusing when I moved here from CA where public Us are all UC _____ or Cal State ____. FYI, Berkeley is "Cal" because it was the first.
Anonymous
Post 01/20/2026 07:31     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:Depends on your circle and where you live. In Georgia, most people know and care about UGA, Ga Tech, etc. Emory, not so much- it’s better known as a hospital system than as a university. The obsession over private colleges and most OOS publics is limited to Atlanta and affluent-transplant pockets in other parts of the state. Then there are a whole bunch of small regional universities and colleges that no one really talks about unless there’s a scholarship/athletic commit involved.

G
This has much more to do with class than anything. Emory is the largest employer of GA residents, mostly very high income earners. You dont think Emory being the hardest school in the state to get into and being only 15% instate population has something to do with the lack of overall popularity? Emory is no different than Rice in Texas as UT is the most popular but not the best school in the state.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 22:02     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
All I know is that whenever I am touting my degree in kinesiology from UMass- Amherst, I of course tell people all about how “I went to Amherst”!
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 21:51     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:Best one is the University of San Diego,
UC San Diego, and San Diego State!


Yeah, this one is fun. Also trying to sort out the UCs and CSUs for people.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 21:50     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote: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.


Not PP - I tell people I went to school in Boston because Cambridge either means nothing to them or they think I went to school in England. Not Harvard. Another Cambridge, MA school.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 19:12     Subject: Re:Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
If Penn couldn’t even beat Iowa this year, how is it supposed to compete with THE Ohio State University in terms of either prestige or a pipeline to Wall Street?
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 14:46     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
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????


Just say U Penn. It's like my cousin who keeps referring to Berkely as Cal when Berkeley would be so much clearer, we had relatives that thought he went to Caltech because he was STEM.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 13:52     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:Penn State is far better known to the general population due to sports.

UPenn doesn’t have anywhere near the name recognition as HYP, and also less than Duke.



Penn is known as the school that educated Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Tiffany Trump. So that gives it a certain renown.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 13:29     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Penn State is far better known to the general population due to sports.

UPenn doesn’t have anywhere near the name recognition as HYP, and also less than Duke.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 12:37     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
I'm not sure knowing that UPenn and Penn State are different is really the hallmark of a well-educated American. Sounds more like a snobby mid-Atlantic thing. I know the difference because I had a career in academia, but for most people it's pretty irrelevant.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 10:40     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It wasn’t until after I graduated from an Ivy League school that I knew that “Cal” and “Berkeley” are the same school.
Ivy League schools can be as far off some people’s radar as California schools were off of mine.


Really? I had no idea.


You didn’t know Cal was Berkeley?

I think another phenomenon this points to is the ridiculous obsession with going OOS for “prestige,” not realizing that state college systems are inherently regional and serve the good of the state. So yeah, I knew Cal was Berkeley because I grew up there, but totally reasonable if you are in DC and didn’t know that.


Californian living in DC. If someone doesn’t know Cal is Berkeley, I figure they are mildly uneducated or first gen. Just like I would feel the same way if they didn’t know the difference between Penn and Penn State or that Brown is in the Ivy League, or that Barnard is part of Columbia, etc.


DP. I know all of those things listed in your last sentence, but I didn’t know Cal and Berkeley were the interchangeable. Growing up on the East coast, I’ve just never much paid attention to things in California I guess.


This. And I was born in the Bay Area and visited the Berkeley campus as a child and my Dad was 2x employed by the University of California. We moved east when I was in middle school. I think only California people and sports people know Berkeley as "Cal".

I only learned this from my son's OOS friends at his school explaining where their friends went to school. I was really confused as to why Berkeley is "Cal" and not UCLA.


As a native of Southern California, I never knew “Cal” referred to Berkeley. Why should it when all of the UCs are “The University of California.” Berkeley is just one campus, albeit the flagship. But why shouldn’t UCLA, UC Irvine, UCSB, UC Santa Cruz, and all the others have the right to call themselves “Cal”?


Berkeley was the first UC and was originally called the University of California (and was in Oakland). So it is “Cal.”
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 06:40     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:Penn would probably get much better name recognition if it weren’t, by far, the most overrated football team in the Big 10.

Having pedo apologist Joe Paterno as the President of Penn probably doesn’t help Penn’s reputation anyway.



Good one!! Bc this would confuse those who don’t know the difference between the two. Saying just Penn usually means UPenn (I think that’s why in more recent years people use this moniker) and Penn State for the other. I’ve noticed this too with Michigan, Mich/UMich means UofM and those referring to state say Michigan State.
Anonymous
Post 01/19/2026 01:47     Subject: Not knowing the difference between UPenn and Penn State
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DD attends Loyola Marymount in LA. People get all the Loyolas mixed up even though they are not affiliated. It doesn’t bother us. We just explain.


There are also all the Mary schools.

St Mary’s College of Maryland
St Mary’s in California
Loyola Marymount
Marymount in Virginia
And more I can’t remember…


And St Mary’s College of Maryland isn’t Catholic, which comes as a surprise to many people.