the social logic of ivy league admissions

this has been making rounds in the blogosphere.

the fifteen second overview: i'm canadian, and canadians have a pretty cool college system. then i met someone who went to harvard, and boy was he wack. that harvard thing is pretty exotic and strange, isn't it? once upon a time, harvard decided to make the admissions process a meritocracy, but then a bunch of jews and catholics and public school people streamed in, and that messed up the harvard brand. so then they started looking at other stuff, like character and fitness. like, whether you were manly. and if you were "conclusively jewish," that was bad! but if you could bounce a ball, that helps! and in the 1980s, all those asian people decided to show up and mess up the harvard brand. AIYEEE!!! shy short people with big ears suck!

update: okay, i just drank my daily dose of dunkin' donuts coffee, so i'm going to comment on this article like a normal person. there is no doubt that top colleges and universities have exercised questionable admissions policies, whether they are overt (labeling applicants "j1" for being "conclusively jewish," or the admission policy of the university of michigan that was litigated in gratz and hamacher v. univ. of michigan where automatic "pluses" and "minuses" were assigned to applicants on the basis of race) or more subtle (such as the silent quotas intended to keep asian american enrollment at top universities at a "manageable" level in the 1980s and 1990s). however, i thought the portrayal of the ivy leagues was just a little skewed.

Wherever there was one Harvard graduate, another lurked not far behind, ready to swap tales of late nights at the Hasty Pudding, or recount the intricacies of the college-application essay, or wonder out loud about the whereabouts of Prince So-and-So, who lived down the hall and whose family had a place in the South of France that you would not believe. In the novels they were writing, the precocious and sensitive protagonist always went to Harvard; if he was troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to complete his senior thesis. Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and proudly display the large crimson “H” tattooed on his chest. What is this “Harvard” of which you Americans speak so reverently?

don't people who were at duke and carolina reminisce about the early 90s, when both schools dominated ncaa basketball? don't they speak about the wild bacchanals after each win, as if franklin street / ninth street were still streaming with drunken revelers? speak to a carolina alum from the 1980s and mention "dean smith". his eyes will glaze over, and he will be taken back to "the good ol' days." in my home state, people wear the light blue / navy blue jerseys loudly and proudly.

as to the groom and the best man in the snippet above, why wouldn't they reminisce about their college days? reunions are always prime for rehashing a time when life was simpler and more carefree. my girlfriend always gets together with her friends from george washington, and "remember when..." is pretty much the only topic of conversation. why? because after college, people grow apart and lead separate lives. talking about those crazy times in the past reinforces the bonds of friendship. plus, the time when all your roommates got drunk and formed a six foot tall pyramid of furniture on your bed is more likely to elicit laughs than the latest project your humorless boss handed down to you in your cubicle where you spend 60% of your waking hours.

i read one L by scott turow, which documents the author's first year at harvard law school. guess what, people. i had the exact same experience at my crappy 2nd tier law school. we're all taught the exact same way (i.e. the socratic method). some professors are especially brutal, run their classes like a "cambodian death camp" (a classmate's words), and become immortalized in legend. there is always one precocious nitwit with his nose stuffed so far up the professor's ass every day that there is a good chance the professor hasn't shit all semester. people can be stressed out, desperate, and backbiting. it's the same old, same old, same old at every school.

anyway, i think the author buys into the myth of the ivy leagues, when there really isn't anything exotic or special about these old colleges in the northeast except they are ranked high on the u.s. and news and world report. so here's the deal. yeah, i went to harvard. we slept in, streaked, skipped class, blew things up in chem lab because we weren't paying attention - we had to commandeer the cd changer since the other students were playing crappy music, ate crappy food in the dining hall, drank crappy beer that foamed up because we were stupid enough to roll kegs down the hall, sat around drinking said crappy beer all night gossiping about dormmates, did nothing all semester until finals, traded files over the internet, went dancing, dated, mated, and battled roaches and other vermin in the residence halls. sound familiar? and yeah, we went to the hasty pudding. it's just a building, like the astrodome. we went to the harvard/yale game, just like duke and carolina students go to duke/carolina basketball games.

and we reminisce about college, because we had a good time in college. just like you.