Hilarious.

The Ivy hierarchy is totally....silly. There's really not another good word for it. On the one hand, Ivy Leaguers are so totally cool: they're totally on the New York indie scene, they've definitely read Rushdie and Yeats' "The Second Coming," and they could probably chat with you on the intricacies of Colonization in Southern Africa, 1884-1969. On the other hand, they're pretentious cocks, and I admit guilt on both counts, though I'd like to think I'm as yet unmarred by too much pretention or cockitude.

The hierarchy is silly because it isn't based on anything other than rumors, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. People consider Harvard the best because A. it is the most selective, B. it has the most money, C. it has the most illustrious grads, and D. its profs are world-renowned for their obscure research. Thus, we have all the people of the world, all 6.2 billion people, who have probably heard the word Harvard at one point or another in their lives, and consider it to be the acme of higher learning.

But all the people of the world don't concern me as much as the few thousand who are associated with the Ivy League, but not with Harvard. One school's narcissistic drive towards purely mechanical output has led to an entire culture of statistic-grubbing and assholery.

This year, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard, and Cornell enjoyed a sizable drop in admissions, and much self-congratulation ensued (I'm not quite sure why yet, but maybe I'll understand that some day).

Unfortunately (and I say that with my tongue stuck firmly to the inside of my cheek), Penn and gasp Princeton's admission rates went up! This, after years of assurances that I wouldn't get into any colleges because the class of 2009 was just so huge and competitive...

On its own, this isn't a very interesting or shocking statistic. Penn, after all, only increased by .1%. Yet. Yet, the comments on the Daily Pennsylvanian article would have you think that Penn's admit rate was up around 50%: "I guess this means I got a lousier education than I thought," says one comment. This, allegedly from "alumnus," means that after four years (and very possibly more) at one of the premier universities in the world, they considered a rise in admissions a sign that their education wasn't very good. Please pause here and re-read that sentence, then take a deep breath and continue.

Still, overall the comments on Penn's newspaper's website are more concerned with the cogency of the "interactive graph" at the beginning of the article. Now, where the comments really are flipping insane is on the Daily Princetonian.

Princeton saw a .54% increase in admissions this year, and you would think the sky has darkened permanently in Princeton, NJ. "BRT" sums up the position of most of the commenters, albiet a little less vehemently: "Well...that's just embarrassing." The comments, all 267 of them, are mostly '09ers, '10ers, and a whole lot of alums who are straight-up PISSED OFF. They are actually mad. They offer solutions ("fire [admissions dean] Rapelye") but mostly just rant about how Princeton is going downhill. A few '13ers (and soberminded '09ers, '10ers, and alums) try to jump in and state the obvious, that Princeton is still an insanely good school and many would die for this opportunity, not to mention that having a sub-10% admission rate makes them titty-twistingly competitive...

I don't get it. I applied early to Yale using those three indicators of Ivy status: rumor, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. Rumor and hearsay were that despite its number two or three position, Yale had the best undergrad program in the nation and, most importantly, I wouldn't want to either kill myself after my first class (Harvard) or kill myself after meeting my new roommate, Ralph Lauren (Princeton). Maybe I just haven't seen it yet, but I chose Yale because I don't want a bunch of whiny assholes complaining about loss of prestige. I'm sure I'll see it at Yale and I'm sure that not everyone at Princeton and Harvard are intolerable, but it's the impressions that lead to a school's image. If I were a junior on my college search, I'd be disgusted by what I saw on the Daily Princetonian. To me, it screams pettiness, arrogance, and lack of world-view. And to think that it was juniors, seniors, and ALUMS saying most of it made it all the worse.

To get back to what I was saying originally, this hierarchy based on selectivity is simply silly. I would venture to say that all of my TASP friends (with possibly one or two exceptions) had better grades and standardized test scores than me. They were better writers, more well-rounded, more diverse than I. And yet not everyone who applied to Yale got in. Does that make me better or smarter than them? Absolutely and resoundingly not. Hell, one of my friends got rejected from Stanford and Cornell, and then was admitted to Harvard. Does that mean she is smarter than those of us who got rejected from Harvard? No. It doesn't.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in minute percentages, median percentiles, and GPAs that I think those of us in the HYP crowd often forget what makes up a good education. It's a dedicated group of professors with not only a smart, but also a creative and motivated group of students. Just because Yale and Harvard had sub-8% admit rates doesn't mean that Cornell (19.1%) shouldn't be an Ivy League school. I am absolutely certain that there is marginal or no difference between a Cornellian and a Yalie in terms of competence and intelligence.

Don't be a dick, Princeton. Alums and current students are going to make a much stronger impression on prospective students than percentages. If you're so worried about losing your prestige, then it only goes to show that you have very little.

Princeton: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/04/01/23213/comments/?p=2

Penn: http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2009/03/31/News/Admit.Rate.Rises.To.17.1.Percent.Interactive.Graph-3688972.shtml