There was some discussion of this article in the thread of Cafe.
I know that President Lowell didn't like Jews, but I think it's worth pointing out that Harvard had a lot more Jews than Princeton did. There were Southerners who wouldn't go to Harvard, because it had too many Jews.
And I don't think that Harvard looks for well-rounded people. It wants people who are specialists, excellent in some field. They may be warped and not as talented in some academic area, but they're very good at something.
Stanford often has higher SAT scores than harvard does, but Harvard will let in a concert pianist who only got 500 on his Math SAT. Dartmouth and Brown are more well-rounded in this sense.
I do know that the Suburu I saw on my way home from the grocery store, the one with the Phillips Exeter Academy, Johns Hopkins U, and Columbia Business School stickers, narrowing escaped getting keyed.
Well-rounded is for Yalies. Harvard takes mentally unbalanced individuals who happen to be freakishly good at some or other. The well-rounded kids are just the underqualified legacies. Within my own family, the normal kids (little brother, cousin) went to Yale and Harvard got . . . the blogging prodigy who can't spell. Think about it.
I do think that there's an exception to the no well-rounders at Harvard for Boston Latin graduates. If you get decent SAT scores, the Director od Admissions invites Latin students to apply, but I believe that there are scholarships specifically designated for Boston Latin alumni that have been around "since time immemorial."
Roxbury Latin is also something of a feeder school. As an classmate of mine who had gone to Andover put it, when I pointed out that RL may get more students into Harvard than her school, "Yeah, but for them it's either Harvard or BU. Nobody from there goes anywhere else in between." I don't think that's entirely true. They send some people to Yale, although I've never met a Roxbury Latin/Brown grad or a Roxbury Latin/Dartmouth grad. If you go to Roxbury Latin and you're bright boy, they steer you toward Harvard.
All three of the people from my high school who went to Yale were inarguably weird (though at least one was weird in boring ways), the people I've met at law school from Yale are closer to the well-rounded model, but I think Yglesias is under-selling the prevalence of those well-rounded types at Harvard This is based on visiting people there at least once every year for the last five years, giving me about two weeks total time at Harvard to base this on, versus Matt Y's four years.
Well let's ask Weiner. I say that save for the Winsor girls and Roxbury Latin boys, Harvard doesn't go for the generally well-rounded. I've got 4 Harvard years of my own. So, it's 8 years to your two weeks, washerdreyer.
I was going to start adding friends together until I was ahead, and then ask their opinion, but that's a silly contest. Also, I would lose, making it extra silly. Also also, my previous post is missing a "."
Well, I've only got two weeks on Yale's campus to compare to 4 years at Harvard--and probably less time at Yale spent around math majors--but I'm with BG and Yggi. At Harvard (this may also be self-selection with who I hung around with) it seemed like everyone had a thing going on--intense involvement with the Crimson or Let's Go or looking like you're 12 and winning a MacArthur before I'm ABD or writing musicals or something. Or, in some cases, being obnoxious legacies who fucked around all the time because they were going to get to rule the world anyway (not unknown at Yale, historically). I sometimes felt like a slacker because I didn't join the literary magazine till I was a junior (while also doing some theater--eventually staging a Beckett play in an empty swimming pool--and being reasonably serious about academics).
Yale folks seemed mellower. This was also my judgment when I visited colleges. Which will tell you how weird I myself I was and perhaps remain.
I've literally never set foot on Yale's campus (though I'm planning to change that sort of soon)and was just going on people I knew/know either pre- or post- their Yale experience
It does seem like Harvard has an unusual preponderance of super-driven people who are freakishly good at one thing (from what people are saying here; I have no personal experience). This is probably because of the reputation thing; all the best kids at everything apply to Harvard, which gets to cherry-pick the best of the best (plus legacies etc.) and the others end up at less-reputed but still top-tier schools.
Folks 'round here are pretty laid-back compared to what I've heard about Harvard, but there's a definite feeling that most people are just here to get their card stamped and move on to a lucrative career. Not a lot of learning for its own sake (outside of the obscure departments where I spend my time, of course). I don't know how other top schools compare.
I sometimes wish that I had chosen Yale for just the reasons that Weiner articulated.
One of the things that made me laugh about Labs's post on how different undergrad was from grad school is that I often felt that in certain courses within one's concentration, the professors were training you to be baby graduate students. That's how the Classics department operated anyway. It wasn't as much work as graduate school, but there was a strong emphasis on specialisy excellence--not a lot of experimentation.
The girl I knew in highschool who was two years older than I was and went to Yale was quite intellectual. (She took a few years to work, but now she's in a doctoral program at Princeton.) At Yale there was time for conversations. At Harvard nobody had time to talk, because we were all nusy doing things.
If I was opening up a boarding school, I think "St Grottlesex" would be pretty low down on my list of names. I think it would be right down there with "St Hardlyeversodomisethepupils".
To keep the numbers of Jews low, Harvard at one point adopted a policy of favoring students from rural areas and city centers, but not the "donut" area around cities (i.e., the suburbs) where Jews were plentiful.
In response to this measure, one Jewish faculty member (possibly Dershowitz) is said to have remarked, "Those aren't donuts; they're bagels!"
St. Marks, Groton and Middlesex, small schools of about 320 students each as distinguished from the larger academies..Philips Exeter Academy and Philips Academy at Andover.
re: Jews
I knew a girl who transferred from Georgetown where she was studying International Relations (which is pretty damn good at Georgetown) to Harvard to study Government with a focus on IR at Harvard, because there weren't enough Jews at Georgetown.
At Harvard nobody had time to talk, because we were all nusy doing things.
Or, I sometimes suspected, hiding out in one's dorm room pretending to do things, because if you had open time on your schedule you lost space. (Nothing personal, BG.) My original comment could have been: I thought it was really weird to have your calendar booked up weeks in advance in college--though maybe they were just busy when I was calling. (I actually did spend plenty of time talking with people, in the dining hall especially.)
Re: donuts, I've heard that the geographical diversity requirements--it's lots easier to get into Harvard if you're from Wyoming than if you're from New York--originated as a way to keep the numbers of Jews down. But that may be covered in the article, which I should read anyway.
It seems the challenge in this thread is how to name drop which schools you went to and which you were accepted to but turned down, without making it seem like that's the point of your post. If you could only work your SAT scores in as well.
During my time at Heidelberg, I sometimes wistfully thought about missed opportunities to punt along the Thames (the Oxford rowing crew almost recruited me, but my love of the saber led me to the Continent). If only I hadn't wasted so many hours studying to get those perfect SATs and ACTs--useless in Europe--I might have been able to figure out a way to do both.
Oh, of course people talked, and I talked to people in the dining hall, but it was pretty casual stuff. People talked about their clubs or all of the work that they had to do. Very few of the people I knew talked about ideas.
And yes, we all had very busy calendars.
And it's kind of funny how little things change sometimes. The Complete Guide to one Upmanship has strategies for how you can do well in school by making other people do poorly.
At Edinburgh you are to walk around the night before your exam spouting off your brilliance so that you intimidate everyone. Everyone else would fail and you'd do great on a scaled test.
At Oxford you were supposed to do some bull shitting in your essays and tutorials, but the suggestion for Harvard was ingenious. Harvard students should check into a hotel with a sun lamp and study like mad. Then they should walk into the exam dressed in a panama suit with a tan. Afterwards the word will get out that the Harvard man had been to Florida for a vacation, and he still did superbly, and everyone will think that he is brilliant.
I'm telling you, being nonchalant is a lot of work.
re 28 & 31: Gtown is jesuit, no? which I thought meant it wasn't as conservative theologically. certainly the Gtown grads I know (one's even Persian-American!) are the antithesis of conservative, or even moral...
my fun fact for the day is that the Boston College Law School (also Jesuit) is closed today for Rosh Hashana...
And one more word on conversations. I once read a Harvard Magazine article by a guy who had gone to Cambridge on one of those one year fellowship things.
He said that he had people over for tea in his college rooms every week whereas at Harvard nobody would have thought that they had the time to have tea in Eliot House.
I've actually wondered quite a bit about how this culture affects the type of work produced by Harvard people. I once read a biography of Keynes which noted that the Cambridge culture was a culture of conversations. Keynes was involved with the Apostles etc., but later he and many of his colleagues--including some outside of his department--spent a lot of time talking about his ideas. Large portions of the General Theory were worked out collaboratively with Joan Robinson and the Marxist Straffo. I can't imagine that sort of cooperation happening at Harvard.
Could you imagine a group like C.S. Lewis's Inklings meeting at Harvard?
I lost a couple of friends to the Harvard culture -- high school friends who went to Harvard while I went to MIT. They couldn't ever find time to get together. Not that I should blame Harvard for this, but it made me sad.
I can't remember why I know this, but apparently the fixed, tooth-exposing grin expected of beauty contestants gives you dry mouth, which can lead to your lips sticking unattractively to your teeth. A little vaseline on the teeth, and your lips glide right over them, regardless of how parched you are.
A few years ago, Brooks wrote his "The Organization Kids" or whatever. This was basically an essay/article about Princeton kids being exactly as BG describes Harvard students: calendars booked weeks in advance, making appointments to see friends, and nobody discussing ideas outside of the classroom. What this was, really, was bullshit. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all you hear about is the "organization kid" that's all you expect to see and all you look for. The truth of the matter was that most kids there were well rounded, took a couple of things very seriously, but also made sure they could relax. I have a feeling this is the same as Harvard. You really only hear about the super-kids who are good at one thing, and the others are generally well-rounded. I have a brother there now and a sister who's an alumnae, and I can say that, save for them being more driven and studious than I, they did/do have great friends and do have time to relax.
45: Vaseline on the teeth makes you smile a big toothy smile. That's how cheerleaders do it. It looks painful.
I dissent from the nobody discussing ideas thing, but the calendars booked weeks in advance and appointments to see friends are authentic anecdotes from my time at Harvard, and not because I was seeking out organization kids or whatever. (It may partly be because of the way Harvard social life is organized around a bunch of different Houses of about 300-400 people each, which you ordinarily stay in for your upperclass years. So seeing people in other Houses can be hard. This may have changed since they stopped letting people pick which house they would live in.) I don't mean to deny that people have great friends or time to relax, but there was definitely something of a cult of busyness when I was there.
Is that what the young kids are calling it these days?
I suppose I did get to learn about two-sided tape and walking so your thighs don't jiggle and stairs without boobs bouncing so that is something. Never know when I'll need those tips.
God, I hate to find myself agreeing with Brooks. I think that he was talking about Yale, though. I may have to revise my opinion:)
I do think that larger schools will invariably promote specialization in a way that, say, Williams or Amherst won't. They need people to play sports AND run the yearbook.
I think that people become more balanced as they age. So the fact that your sister is an alumna and is balanced doesn't really tell you anything.
It isn't that people don't relax. It's more about compartmentalization. Relaxing is about not working. There wasn't, in my experience, time to work playfully--to speculate and tease apart ideas without feeling that you had to accomplish something, but I'll gladly admit to being something of a freak. Terribly square on the outside, but somewhat unconventional and rebellious on the inside.
I'm not sure that the house thing is so uncommon. I imagine it is very similar to frats, eating clubs, etc. Once you are in a contained place with your friends, inertia becomes a pretty powerful thing to overcome. But I hadn't known of anyone making appointments to see friends. I think part of the reason why this didn't occur at Princeton is because so much of the studying and work takes place in common areas that you end up seeing your friends anyhow. That being said, I'm sure that by not being an "org. kid" I didn't ever meet them.
I was referring to her time in school. Although, I think you may be right. I did consider her some wild workaholic, but she was before Harvard so I didn't see any change in her. Again, my view isn't so much broad as it is drawn from my own experience.
I need to know how you walk without your thighs jiggling.
Seriously? If I recall correctly it was something about gliding. Maybe it is a Zen thing - don't ask how to walk without jiggling, ask how to move without walking?
I don't know about the jiggling but apparently the bouncing is an American thing. One of my Indian co-workers said that was how he could always tell from afar whether a South Asian girl had been born in America or abroad when checking them out. American girls' hair and boobs bounce when they walk. Indian girls' don't.
Re: 49, randomization has made things worse, not better. Since you don't get to pick your House, the House has declined as a locus of social activity. But the culture, institution, and infrastructure are still set up so as to discourage spending time with friends from other Houses. As a result, obsessive pursuit of clubs, publications, etc. becomes even more important as a way to find a social group composed of people you like.
On the other hand, the people I know who were accepted to Harvard but didn't go are all pretty much the same (roughly speaking, driven toward success by an ill-disguised self-loathing) so I think the distinctive Harvard personality quirks are more selection effect than treatment effect.
As I understand, randomization increased the size of blocking groups--if you couldn't choose a stereotype, you wanted to make sure you took a lot of friends with you.
Lot of different stories I heard about why randomization, but one of them was that the master of Leverett didn't like having a jock house.
(My year was the last before partial randomization.)
To tie this thread into the mid-life crisis one, I find it almost frightening to think how much of my life has been determined by my college's Housing and Residence Life department. Had I not been randomly assigned to the floor I had been, I would not have met the person who suggested I try out my major. I'd probably would have stayed pre-med and would be doing a residency right now in Chicago instead of writing software in New York. I was an RA in college and definitely observed how much the trajectories of people's lives were set by the people the computer happened to pair them with in their Freshman dorm. Kind of disturbing, considering that stuff like randomization is so, well, random.
Matt--When you describe partial randomization, are you describing the period when you got to put 4 houses down, but you weren't able to rank your choices.
I graduated in 97, but one of my Freshman-year roommates had a sister who was a Senior when we were starting out. That makes her class of 94. Her sophomore year (91-92) there were still Seniors who had been able to order their preference, and that was very odd.
Still there are all kinds of quirks. Eliot had a preference for groups of 3.
My year about 1/3 of Weld wound up in Winthrop House--even though we hadn't all blocked together. I didn't stay with my Freshman rooming group, but they all wound up there as did a bunch of other people from my proctor group--1/3 got randomized to Cabot, and the other third were diffused.
I always heard the point of randomization was to prevent de facto racial segregation of the houses. The blocking groups did get bigger, up to a max size of 16, but the increase in block size combines with the basic impact of randomization to reduce the incentives to reach out beyond your blocking group and befriend other members of your house. Living in a historical jock house without the actual jocks was, in my experience, awesome. We had all these old t-shirts in the basement about how easily Kirklanders could beat up the nerds and art fags who otherwise populated the school. Also, a legacy of awesome rightwingers -- Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, and Pat Toomey.
My blocking group was 6 people--4 guys, my roommate and I. And of course, it got awkward when my roommate and I decided that we couldn't get along after our Junior year.
About 1/2 of my sophomore class had lived in Weld and already knew eachother even though we hadn't blocked together.
I heard that ages and ages ago Kirkland was actually an artsy house.
At my Senior class dinner the House Master was a bit drunk and seemed to be complaining that it looked like the entire football team was about to move in...
I think the distinctive Harvard personality quirks are more selection effect than treatment effect.
The guy at my high school who (supposedly) got 1600 on the SAT went to Yale because, he said, "normal" people go there. The guy at my high school who (supposedly) got 1590 on his SAT, but was very good at math and physics, went to Harvard.
I write "supposedly" because I never saw their actual scores firsthand, but I don't doubt that they could have achieved them.
There was some discussion of this article in the thread of Cafe.
I know that President Lowell didn't like Jews, but I think it's worth pointing out that Harvard had a lot more Jews than Princeton did. There were Southerners who wouldn't go to Harvard, because it had too many Jews.
And I don't think that Harvard looks for well-rounded people. It wants people who are specialists, excellent in some field. They may be warped and not as talented in some academic area, but they're very good at something.
Stanford often has higher SAT scores than harvard does, but Harvard will let in a concert pianist who only got 500 on his Math SAT. Dartmouth and Brown are more well-rounded in this sense.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 5:21 PM
I do know that the Suburu I saw on my way home from the grocery store, the one with the Phillips Exeter Academy, Johns Hopkins U, and Columbia Business School stickers, narrowing escaped getting keyed.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 5:33 PM
2: Jeez, yeah. You're not supposed to lord it over us mensch.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 6:31 PM
I was a legacy to Chicago.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 6:36 PM
No Ivy looks for "well-rounded" people; they look for superstars, and fill up on well-rounded people when they run out of the rest.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 7:41 PM
5 is true, of course. Some have more room than others.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 7:56 PM
Well-rounded is for Yalies. Harvard takes mentally unbalanced individuals who happen to be freakishly good at some or other. The well-rounded kids are just the underqualified legacies. Within my own family, the normal kids (little brother, cousin) went to Yale and Harvard got . . . the blogging prodigy who can't spell. Think about it.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 8:11 PM
Go Big State!
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 8:13 PM
Well-rounded is for Yalies. Harvard takes mentally unbalanced individuals who happen to be freakishly good at some or other
Huh. That does accord with my experience.
You're always right, Matt.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 8:17 PM
"I knew that the Ivies didn't want Jews, but I did not know these details."
Was there something specific you found noteworthy or surprising?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 8:24 PM
I didn't know that the admissions standards were changed in the ways they were changed in order to allow room for "discretion" to exclude Jews.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 8:37 PM
I do think that there's an exception to the no well-rounders at Harvard for Boston Latin graduates. If you get decent SAT scores, the Director od Admissions invites Latin students to apply, but I believe that there are scholarships specifically designated for Boston Latin alumni that have been around "since time immemorial."
Roxbury Latin is also something of a feeder school. As an classmate of mine who had gone to Andover put it, when I pointed out that RL may get more students into Harvard than her school, "Yeah, but for them it's either Harvard or BU. Nobody from there goes anywhere else in between." I don't think that's entirely true. They send some people to Yale, although I've never met a Roxbury Latin/Brown grad or a Roxbury Latin/Dartmouth grad. If you go to Roxbury Latin and you're bright boy, they steer you toward Harvard.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 9:06 PM
Re: 12, also BB&N for girls and to some extent Milton are the same way, suspiciously high Harvard-Yale ratios.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 9:14 PM
All three of the people from my high school who went to Yale were inarguably weird (though at least one was weird in boring ways), the people I've met at law school from Yale are closer to the well-rounded model, but I think Yglesias is under-selling the prevalence of those well-rounded types at Harvard This is based on visiting people there at least once every year for the last five years, giving me about two weeks total time at Harvard to base this on, versus Matt Y's four years.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:08 PM
Well let's ask Weiner. I say that save for the Winsor girls and Roxbury Latin boys, Harvard doesn't go for the generally well-rounded. I've got 4 Harvard years of my own. So, it's 8 years to your two weeks, washerdreyer.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:21 PM
I was going to start adding friends together until I was ahead, and then ask their opinion, but that's a silly contest. Also, I would lose, making it extra silly. Also also, my previous post is missing a "."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:24 PM
The math of it might be fun, though, of course, I agree that it would be silly.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:32 PM
Well, I've only got two weeks on Yale's campus to compare to 4 years at Harvard--and probably less time at Yale spent around math majors--but I'm with BG and Yggi. At Harvard (this may also be self-selection with who I hung around with) it seemed like everyone had a thing going on--intense involvement with the Crimson or Let's Go or looking like you're 12 and winning a MacArthur before I'm ABD or writing musicals or something. Or, in some cases, being obnoxious legacies who fucked around all the time because they were going to get to rule the world anyway (not unknown at Yale, historically). I sometimes felt like a slacker because I didn't join the literary magazine till I was a junior (while also doing some theater--eventually staging a Beckett play in an empty swimming pool--and being reasonably serious about academics).
Yale folks seemed mellower. This was also my judgment when I visited colleges. Which will tell you how weird I myself I was and perhaps remain.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:34 PM
I've literally never set foot on Yale's campus (though I'm planning to change that sort of soon)and was just going on people I knew/know either pre- or post- their Yale experience
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:41 PM
It does seem like Harvard has an unusual preponderance of super-driven people who are freakishly good at one thing (from what people are saying here; I have no personal experience). This is probably because of the reputation thing; all the best kids at everything apply to Harvard, which gets to cherry-pick the best of the best (plus legacies etc.) and the others end up at less-reputed but still top-tier schools.
Folks 'round here are pretty laid-back compared to what I've heard about Harvard, but there's a definite feeling that most people are just here to get their card stamped and move on to a lucrative career. Not a lot of learning for its own sake (outside of the obscure departments where I spend my time, of course). I don't know how other top schools compare.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 10:51 PM
I sometimes wish that I had chosen Yale for just the reasons that Weiner articulated.
One of the things that made me laugh about Labs's post on how different undergrad was from grad school is that I often felt that in certain courses within one's concentration, the professors were training you to be baby graduate students. That's how the Classics department operated anyway. It wasn't as much work as graduate school, but there was a strong emphasis on specialisy excellence--not a lot of experimentation.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 11:02 PM
The girl I knew in highschool who was two years older than I was and went to Yale was quite intellectual. (She took a few years to work, but now she's in a doctoral program at Princeton.) At Yale there was time for conversations. At Harvard nobody had time to talk, because we were all nusy doing things.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 11:08 PM
At Harvard nobody had time to talk, because we were all busy doing things.
This is why I'm glad I didn't go to Harvard (not that I had the option).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10- 3-05 11:11 PM
If I was opening up a boarding school, I think "St Grottlesex" would be pretty low down on my list of names. I think it would be right down there with "St Hardlyeversodomisethepupils".
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 2:56 AM
To keep the numbers of Jews low, Harvard at one point adopted a policy of favoring students from rural areas and city centers, but not the "donut" area around cities (i.e., the suburbs) where Jews were plentiful.
In response to this measure, one Jewish faculty member (possibly Dershowitz) is said to have remarked, "Those aren't donuts; they're bagels!"
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 4:17 AM
Actually it wouldn't have been Dershowitz; I think this was a decade or two before his time.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 4:17 AM
And yet, despite the school's continuing large Jewish population, the dining hall bagels are deplorable.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 6:59 AM
dsquared--I know you're joking, but ..
re: St. Grotelsex stands for
St. Marks, Groton and Middlesex, small schools of about 320 students each as distinguished from the larger academies..Philips Exeter Academy and Philips Academy at Andover.
re: Jews
I knew a girl who transferred from Georgetown where she was studying International Relations (which is pretty damn good at Georgetown) to Harvard to study Government with a focus on IR at Harvard, because there weren't enough Jews at Georgetown.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 7:36 AM
At Harvard nobody had time to talk, because we were all nusy doing things.
Or, I sometimes suspected, hiding out in one's dorm room pretending to do things, because if you had open time on your schedule you lost space. (Nothing personal, BG.) My original comment could have been: I thought it was really weird to have your calendar booked up weeks in advance in college--though maybe they were just busy when I was calling. (I actually did spend plenty of time talking with people, in the dining hall especially.)
Re: donuts, I've heard that the geographical diversity requirements--it's lots easier to get into Harvard if you're from Wyoming than if you're from New York--originated as a way to keep the numbers of Jews down. But that may be covered in the article, which I should read anyway.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:18 AM
It seems the challenge in this thread is how to name drop which schools you went to and which you were accepted to but turned down, without making it seem like that's the point of your post. If you could only work your SAT scores in as well.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:25 AM
28: Well, Georgetown is a Catholic school, and I hear it can be surprisingly conservative theologically.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:31 AM
During my time at Heidelberg, I sometimes wistfully thought about missed opportunities to punt along the Thames (the Oxford rowing crew almost recruited me, but my love of the saber led me to the Continent). If only I hadn't wasted so many hours studying to get those perfect SATs and ACTs--useless in Europe--I might have been able to figure out a way to do both.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:35 AM
Matt Weiner,
No offense taken.
Oh, of course people talked, and I talked to people in the dining hall, but it was pretty casual stuff. People talked about their clubs or all of the work that they had to do. Very few of the people I knew talked about ideas.
And yes, we all had very busy calendars.
And it's kind of funny how little things change sometimes. The Complete Guide to one Upmanship has strategies for how you can do well in school by making other people do poorly.
At Edinburgh you are to walk around the night before your exam spouting off your brilliance so that you intimidate everyone. Everyone else would fail and you'd do great on a scaled test.
At Oxford you were supposed to do some bull shitting in your essays and tutorials, but the suggestion for Harvard was ingenious. Harvard students should check into a hotel with a sun lamp and study like mad. Then they should walk into the exam dressed in a panama suit with a tan. Afterwards the word will get out that the Harvard man had been to Florida for a vacation, and he still did superbly, and everyone will think that he is brilliant.
I'm telling you, being nonchalant is a lot of work.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:36 AM
I'm thinking this name-dropping thing must be an east coast thing, although attending Hoopeston IL HS (team name the "Corn-Jerkers") is pretty kewl.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:39 AM
Post-9/11, we are all Corn-Jerkers.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:43 AM
re 28 & 31: Gtown is jesuit, no? which I thought meant it wasn't as conservative theologically. certainly the Gtown grads I know (one's even Persian-American!) are the antithesis of conservative, or even moral...
my fun fact for the day is that the Boston College Law School (also Jesuit) is closed today for Rosh Hashana...
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:45 AM
And one more word on conversations. I once read a Harvard Magazine article by a guy who had gone to Cambridge on one of those one year fellowship things.
He said that he had people over for tea in his college rooms every week whereas at Harvard nobody would have thought that they had the time to have tea in Eliot House.
I've actually wondered quite a bit about how this culture affects the type of work produced by Harvard people. I once read a biography of Keynes which noted that the Cambridge culture was a culture of conversations. Keynes was involved with the Apostles etc., but later he and many of his colleagues--including some outside of his department--spent a lot of time talking about his ideas. Large portions of the General Theory were worked out collaboratively with Joan Robinson and the Marxist Straffo. I can't imagine that sort of cooperation happening at Harvard.
Could you imagine a group like C.S. Lewis's Inklings meeting at Harvard?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:48 AM
I don't know from Ivies, but it seems to me that the purpose of Harvard isn't the education or the conversation. Right?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:55 AM
I lost a couple of friends to the Harvard culture -- high school friends who went to Harvard while I went to MIT. They couldn't ever find time to get together. Not that I should blame Harvard for this, but it made me sad.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 8:59 AM
And I think that friendship is one of the most important things there is.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:03 AM
That was very poorly written. God, i wish that it were possible to edit for spelling and grammar after one had already hit "post."
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:04 AM
"had" should be "has." See, though?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:05 AM
LizardBreath,
The exact same thing happened to me! Except it was the Miss Illinois pageant. And it was dating, not friendship. I still blame Miss America though.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:09 AM
As well you should. Never trust anyone with vaseline on their teeth.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:12 AM
What does putting vaseline on one's teeth achieve exactly?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:14 AM
I can't remember why I know this, but apparently the fixed, tooth-exposing grin expected of beauty contestants gives you dry mouth, which can lead to your lips sticking unattractively to your teeth. A little vaseline on the teeth, and your lips glide right over them, regardless of how parched you are.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:19 AM
If you have to ask...
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:20 AM
A few years ago, Brooks wrote his "The Organization Kids" or whatever. This was basically an essay/article about Princeton kids being exactly as BG describes Harvard students: calendars booked weeks in advance, making appointments to see friends, and nobody discussing ideas outside of the classroom. What this was, really, was bullshit. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all you hear about is the "organization kid" that's all you expect to see and all you look for. The truth of the matter was that most kids there were well rounded, took a couple of things very seriously, but also made sure they could relax. I have a feeling this is the same as Harvard. You really only hear about the super-kids who are good at one thing, and the others are generally well-rounded. I have a brother there now and a sister who's an alumnae, and I can say that, save for them being more driven and studious than I, they did/do have great friends and do have time to relax.
45: Vaseline on the teeth makes you smile a big toothy smile. That's how cheerleaders do it. It looks painful.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:31 AM
I dissent from the nobody discussing ideas thing, but the calendars booked weeks in advance and appointments to see friends are authentic anecdotes from my time at Harvard, and not because I was seeking out organization kids or whatever. (It may partly be because of the way Harvard social life is organized around a bunch of different Houses of about 300-400 people each, which you ordinarily stay in for your upperclass years. So seeing people in other Houses can be hard. This may have changed since they stopped letting people pick which house they would live in.) I don't mean to deny that people have great friends or time to relax, but there was definitely something of a cult of busyness when I was there.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:37 AM
Is that what the young kids are calling it these days?
I suppose I did get to learn about two-sided tape and walking so your thighs don't jiggle and stairs without boobs bouncing so that is something. Never know when I'll need those tips.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:38 AM
Tweedledopey,
God, I hate to find myself agreeing with Brooks. I think that he was talking about Yale, though. I may have to revise my opinion:)
I do think that larger schools will invariably promote specialization in a way that, say, Williams or Amherst won't. They need people to play sports AND run the yearbook.
I think that people become more balanced as they age. So the fact that your sister is an alumna and is balanced doesn't really tell you anything.
It isn't that people don't relax. It's more about compartmentalization. Relaxing is about not working. There wasn't, in my experience, time to work playfully--to speculate and tease apart ideas without feeling that you had to accomplish something, but I'll gladly admit to being something of a freak. Terribly square on the outside, but somewhat unconventional and rebellious on the inside.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:42 AM
MW,
I'm not sure that the house thing is so uncommon. I imagine it is very similar to frats, eating clubs, etc. Once you are in a contained place with your friends, inertia becomes a pretty powerful thing to overcome. But I hadn't known of anyone making appointments to see friends. I think part of the reason why this didn't occur at Princeton is because so much of the studying and work takes place in common areas that you end up seeing your friends anyhow. That being said, I'm sure that by not being an "org. kid" I didn't ever meet them.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:45 AM
BG,
I was referring to her time in school. Although, I think you may be right. I did consider her some wild workaholic, but she was before Harvard so I didn't see any change in her. Again, my view isn't so much broad as it is drawn from my own experience.
It was about Princeton.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:49 AM
I need to know how you walk without your thighs jiggling. I thought the only way to do that was eight-hour days in the gym.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:52 AM
Massive injections of quick-setting epoxy.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 9:58 AM
I need to know how you walk without your thighs jiggling.
Seriously? If I recall correctly it was something about gliding. Maybe it is a Zen thing - don't ask how to walk without jiggling, ask how to move without walking?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 10:00 AM
TD,
Thanks for the article link. I'm not a subscriber; I may have to look this up later. He wrote about teaching at Yale for the Weekly Standard too.
I feel a bit that I'm talking out of my ass now. So, I don't want to stick too hard to what I was saying before.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 10:04 AM
BG, if you search for "organization kid," the second link is a full reprint.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 11:00 AM
I don't know about the jiggling but apparently the bouncing is an American thing. One of my Indian co-workers said that was how he could always tell from afar whether a South Asian girl had been born in America or abroad when checking them out. American girls' hair and boobs bounce when they walk. Indian girls' don't.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 11:02 AM
Re: 49, randomization has made things worse, not better. Since you don't get to pick your House, the House has declined as a locus of social activity. But the culture, institution, and infrastructure are still set up so as to discourage spending time with friends from other Houses. As a result, obsessive pursuit of clubs, publications, etc. becomes even more important as a way to find a social group composed of people you like.
On the other hand, the people I know who were accepted to Harvard but didn't go are all pretty much the same (roughly speaking, driven toward success by an ill-disguised self-loathing) so I think the distinctive Harvard personality quirks are more selection effect than treatment effect.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:01 PM
My Senior year, the sophomores had been randomized. Winthrop House was even more Winthrop-like than it had been before.
Even with randomization, you still get pretty large blocking groups.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:11 PM
As I understand, randomization increased the size of blocking groups--if you couldn't choose a stereotype, you wanted to make sure you took a lot of friends with you.
Lot of different stories I heard about why randomization, but one of them was that the master of Leverett didn't like having a jock house.
(My year was the last before partial randomization.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:22 PM
To tie this thread into the mid-life crisis one, I find it almost frightening to think how much of my life has been determined by my college's Housing and Residence Life department. Had I not been randomly assigned to the floor I had been, I would not have met the person who suggested I try out my major. I'd probably would have stayed pre-med and would be doing a residency right now in Chicago instead of writing software in New York. I was an RA in college and definitely observed how much the trajectories of people's lives were set by the people the computer happened to pair them with in their Freshman dorm. Kind of disturbing, considering that stuff like randomization is so, well, random.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:33 PM
Matt--When you describe partial randomization, are you describing the period when you got to put 4 houses down, but you weren't able to rank your choices.
I graduated in 97, but one of my Freshman-year roommates had a sister who was a Senior when we were starting out. That makes her class of 94. Her sophomore year (91-92) there were still Seniors who had been able to order their preference, and that was very odd.
Still there are all kinds of quirks. Eliot had a preference for groups of 3.
My year about 1/3 of Weld wound up in Winthrop House--even though we hadn't all blocked together. I didn't stay with my Freshman rooming group, but they all wound up there as did a bunch of other people from my proctor group--1/3 got randomized to Cabot, and the other third were diffused.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:37 PM
Yes, that's what I mean by partial randomization. I was '92, so I was the last of those seniors she was talking about.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:42 PM
I always heard the point of randomization was to prevent de facto racial segregation of the houses. The blocking groups did get bigger, up to a max size of 16, but the increase in block size combines with the basic impact of randomization to reduce the incentives to reach out beyond your blocking group and befriend other members of your house. Living in a historical jock house without the actual jocks was, in my experience, awesome. We had all these old t-shirts in the basement about how easily Kirklanders could beat up the nerds and art fags who otherwise populated the school. Also, a legacy of awesome rightwingers -- Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, and Pat Toomey.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:48 PM
My blocking group was 6 people--4 guys, my roommate and I. And of course, it got awkward when my roommate and I decided that we couldn't get along after our Junior year.
About 1/2 of my sophomore class had lived in Weld and already knew eachother even though we hadn't blocked together.
I heard that ages and ages ago Kirkland was actually an artsy house.
At my Senior class dinner the House Master was a bit drunk and seemed to be complaining that it looked like the entire football team was about to move in...
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 4-05 12:53 PM
I think the distinctive Harvard personality quirks are more selection effect than treatment effect.
The guy at my high school who (supposedly) got 1600 on the SAT went to Yale because, he said, "normal" people go there. The guy at my high school who (supposedly) got 1590 on his SAT, but was very good at math and physics, went to Harvard.
I write "supposedly" because I never saw their actual scores firsthand, but I don't doubt that they could have achieved them.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:36 AM
I sure wish I could have seen the punch! caino only one card face up until all the players have finished their hands .
Posted by Emiliano London | Link to this comment | 01-19-06 6:07 PM