Ivy League – Your Mom's Guide to Life

Your Mom’s Guide to the Ivy League

There’s an old saying that writers should write what they know.

So what do I know? I know the Ivy League. I went to Brown. I come from a long line of Dartmouth men. (No women back in those days.) I have friends who have attended each of the Ivies. And I’ve visited all of them — except Cornell. Because Cornell is convenient to absolutely nothing.

Of course, I know some of the Ivies better than others. But according to me, I am well enough informed about all of the Ivies to share my wisdom about them with you. So here are some important facts I think you should know. I hope you find them useful in your college search.

Brown University

Famous for: Having no requirements. At all! You can graduate without ever going to class. Or seeing Providence. Really! (Please don’t tell my parents.) Also, free tampons!

Little Known Fact: GQ named Brown “America’s Douchiest College.” Finally! Brown won something! We’re #1! We’re #1!

Notable Alumni: Me; Hermione Granger; a LOT of minor royals from small countries (bonus admission points to the scions of monarchies in exile); Daveed Diggs (the coolest possible combination of Brown and Oakland, CA. Represent, Daveed!); JFK Jr. (Yes. I was in a tiny seminar with him. And yes. He was that handsome in real life.)

Columbia University

Famous for: A safety violation that allowed Peter Parker to be bitten by a radioactive spider and turn into Spider-Man.

Little Known Fact: Columbia’s wiki includes a dress code which describes — in excrutiating detail — what to wear from “casual” to “white tie” and when to wear it. In case you were wondering, “black tie preferred” may include an ascot. Occasion? “Opening season at the opera.” Sadly, they failed to suggest something that would be really useful — like an ensemble for going to the grocery store or cleaning my house. So Columbia’s dress code only gets a C+. I’m disappointed in you, Columbia.

Notable Alumni: Alexander Hamilton (Go ahead and sing it. You know you want to. “Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there’s a million things I haven’t done. But just you wait. Just you wait.”); Barack Obama (I’m working on an interpretive dance about him. I think it’s going to be a massive hit!); Meadow Soprano; Martha Stewart; a ridiculous number of spies.

Cornell University

Famous for: Cold, cold, cold, hotel management, cold, cold, Andy Bernard, cold, cold, cold, cold, the Gorges, cold, cold, f**king cold.

Little known fact: The chicken nugget was invented at Cornell. Which makes Cornell the dream school of every 3 year old in America.

Notable Alumni: Bill Nye, the Science Guy; Citizen Kane (expelled); Sideshow Mel from The Simpsons; Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; the Wizard of Oz.

Dartmouth College

Famous for: Being the birthplace of beer pong. And the ultra-conservative Dartmouth Review. I’m sure these facts are completely unrelated.

Little Known Fact: An anthropomorphic beer keg known as “Keggy the Keg” is Dartmouth’s unofficial mascot.

(Keggy the Keg on the Green. Is that you, Rob?)

Notable Alumni: Dr. Seuss; Senator Bluto Blutarsky; Shonda Rimes (Call me, Shonda, I have a fabulous idea about an Obama interpretive dance. I think it’s going to be a massive hit!); Mr. Rogers; Mindy Kaling. Bonus alumni — my dad, my uncle, my grandfather and two cousins. Which makes me the Brown sheep of the family.

Harvard University

Famous for: Being in Massachusetts.

Little Known Fact: Absolutely nothing. Because it’s Harvard. They know everything. Just ask them. Also, Harvard murdered its sister, Radcliffe. (That’s for you @EastGrad!)

Notable Alumni: Fred Munster, the Unabomber, Gopher from “The Love Boat,” Bill O’Reilly (figures); Jason Bourne.

Princeton University

Famous for: Eating clubs and the world’s ugliest marching band jackets.

Princeton University football at Lehigh, Bethlehem, PA, September 26, 2009. Photo by Beverly Schaefer.

(This just in — the fashion police at Columbia think I should wear the Princeton band jacket while cleaning my house.)

Little Known Fact: Bob Dylan wrote a whole song about how much he hated getting an honorary degree from Princeton. He analogized Princeton to a swarm of locusts. Really.

Notable Alumni: Aaron Burr (aka the damn fool who shot Alexander Hamilton); Doogie Howser; Batman (dropped out)(WTF, Batman? Doogie Howser managed to graduate and he was only 12); Michelle Obama; Ted Cruz’s roommate, who managed not to strangle Ted Cruz in his sleep. (Mad respect, Ted Cruz’s roommate! You are a paragon of restraint.)

University of Pennsylvania

Wait . . . . Penn is in the Ivy League? (Cheap joke. I know. But it works. Every time.)

Yale University

Famous for: Being the venue for some great love stories — Bill and Hillary Clinton; Skull and Bones; Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger; George W. Bush and Beer. Upon further reflection, perhaps “great” is too strong a word.

Little Known Fact: Yalies traditionally play a game called “Bladderball” which is a rule-less game involving much alcohol and a fight for a giant leather orb. It also has, at various times, included a leaflet drop by helicopter and referees in top hats and tails. What could possibly go wrong?

Notable Alumni: Montgomery Burns; Lupita Nyong’o (I love saying that name); Agent Fox Mulder; Anderson Cooper; Jodie Foster (who I hope will play me in the movie version of this blog).

Next — Your Mom’s Guide to the Personal Statement.

See my Guide to the Hippie Colleges here, and follow me on Facebook!

Your Mom’s Guide to College

For my popular Guide to the Hippie Colleges of America start here and then move forward to the next entries. There are reviews of Hippie Colleges in the Pacific Northwest, Ohio, and two trips to the Northeast.

Now new and improved with the addition of:

“Your Mom’s Guide to the Ivy League”

“Your Mom’s Guide to the Personal Statement”

“Your Mom’s Guide to College Rankings”

“Ten Questions I’d REALLY like to Have Answered at a College Information Session” and

“10 Types of Guides You Meet on Campus Tours”

Follow me on Facebook for updates! And if you enjoy this blog, please share it with your friends!

Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Day 8)

Today was a momentous day because it marked the likely end of my part of our college tours. Which is fine because I’m exhausted.

We had a lazy morning before we hopped on the train uptown for Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University. I liked it. Boo did not. Why you ask? Because while they allow trans women to enroll, they do not allow non-binary gendered people to enroll. Only people who consistently identify as women can enroll. That was the reason Boo didn’t like Barnard. Totally not kidding.

I had one of those “kids these days” moments, and we ended up irritated with each other. I swear that we hardly ever quarrel but when we do, it’s usually about gender identity issues. Not her gender identity (she’s totally cis-gendered), but the gender identities of other people. I often wonder what other families quarrel about. I’d be willing to bet that very few other families have had a major blowout over pronoun usage like we have. Seriously, our biggest argument in the last year or two was over pronouns. #firstworldarguments

We managed to reach enough detente that we stopped by the TKTS booth in Times Square for theater tickets. Then we headed back to the apartment for a short rest before we went out for Japanese food and headed to the theater to see “The Color Purple.” It was absolutely brilliant. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a show before that was literally stopped mid show because of cheering from the audience. By the end I was crying so hard that I was afraid I was going to start audibly ugly-sobbing.

Tomorrow is my last full day with my baby before I head for home and leave her in New York. Sniff! I’ll be studiously avoiding discussion of pronouns.

Next up — Day 9

Follow me on Facebook

Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Days 6 and 7)

You know those dreams you have where you are in familiar surroundings but everything is just a little off? Yesterday was the lucid version of that dream for me.

Day 6 of the college tour dawned with considerably less drama than the previous morning. I found the car keys. I found the car. And I found the best parking space ever on College Hill in Providence (no mean feat) — just steps away from where we needed to report for the information session and tour at Brown. It was as if the gods were making nice for the mean trick they had played on me the day before.

Apparently, many kids these days would like to go to Brown. I like to think that’s because I went there. The info session was crazy crowded. Given the massive turnout, I half expected to see Brown alum Hermione Granger leading the info session.

The info session was blah, blah, blah. Systemically, Brown remains pretty much unchanged from my days except that what used to be called the “New Curriculum” is now called the “Open Curriculum” — a reminder that a few years have passed since my Brown days and that what was “new” back then is now “not-so-new anymore.” I guess they figured that “open” was a better descriptor than “middle aged.” Because it is officially middle aged. Boo’s eyes did widen when they talked about how you can take all your courses pass/fail, but otherwise, she was unmoved.

After the info session, we broke up into smaller groups for the campus tour. The tour guide asked a couple “can you guess this?” style questions. I appeared to be a genius by answering all of them correctly until I fessed up that I was an alum — and immediately became less a genius and more an annoying know-it-all.

And while Brown remains systemically the same, physically, I barely recognized it. There are all sorts of new buildings and even the old ones that I could recognize from the outside have been completely modified inside. I felt like Alice through the Looking Glass. They also have electrical outlets in all the street lamps. If they had that back in my day, I was woefully uninformed.

So what did Boo think? Her thoughts were succinct — “nice school, too big.” I agreed. So it looks like the Barnes family is one and done at Brown.

After our tour, we hopped into the car for the drive to NYC. We had to drop the car off at JFK and then get into the City, so it turned out to be a 6 hour affair before we made it into the apartment we rented. We dropped our bags and immediately headed for the TKTS booth at Times Square to try to get tix to “The Color Purple” only to discover that it starts at 7:00 instead of 8:00 on Wednesdays and we were too late. So instead, we got tickets to a frothy little off-Broadway musical starring Diana Degarmo from American Idol! Squee! (Actually, she was very good.)

And on the 7th day, we rested — except for a trip to Kmart to buy some supplies for Boo’s summer at NYU and a delicious Peruvian chicken dinner. I was seriously tempted to drink the chimmichuri sauce. It was that good. I think I may need to move to Peru.

And tomorrow is a momentous day. Tomorrow will likely be my last college visit. Unless I can figure out a way to make money by visiting hippie colleges. Any takers?

Next up — Day 8

Follow me on Facebook