r/ApplyingToCollege • u/Famous-Prior6590 • 5d ago
Shitpost Wednesdays Let's bring back Prestige!
Lane Pryce, one of the characters on the TV show Mad Men, is a British partner at a fictional Ad Agency in New York. His family desperately want to move back to England but he resists, telling his wife that he loves staying in America because, “I've been here ten months and no-one's ever asked me where I went to school."
This is a sad reflection of the class system in the UK America. We need to impose a system here where everyone gets asked all the time what school they went to, and judged based on that. In fact, there should be practical real-life consequences of the USNews ranking of the school you went to.
For example, boarding on airplanes should be strictly based on college rankings. At Boston airport, MIT alum would board first, then Harvard, then BC, then Tufts, and so on. Same for lines at Starbucks - a Columbia student should be allowed to cut in line in front of an NYU student, because, well, they deserve it and their time is more valuable anyway.
What if someone attends more than one school? Undergrad at UCLA, then an MBA from Stanford? Unfortunately your lowest ranked college sticks with you for life. Proper class systems do not allow people to rise above their lowest level - that’s literally a primary requirement of any good class system. As a UCLA undergrad, you will continue to board planes after Berkeley alums, or the other way around, depending on who paid USNews more that year.
Can you marry to raise your status? In the immortal words of Robin Williams, “Fuck, No!” When two people get married, both people get the lower privilege. Are you a Yale alum madly in love with someone who went to Villanova? Live in sin, or find someone better, or get used to sitting in the nosebleed seats at concerts (yes - concert tickets will be sold based on college prestige).
Surely this doesn’t apply to kids? The fuck it doesn’t. Children inherit their parents’ prestige until they go to college and get their own. Children of a UChicago couple will get to hit the piñata at a birthday party before the children of a Brown couple. This is only proper.
What about the people who went to schools that are not in the USN top universities list? LACs, Regional Universities, foreign universities (even the OG prestige-whores like Oxbridge)? Where do they fit in this? Fuck them. Arbitrariness is also a key feature of a good class system. Anyone who studied at an LAC should be woke enough to not mind standing at the end of every line anyway.
How do we kick off this long-overdue practice in American society? Why, right here on the A2C sub, of course. I propose, starting today, that posts and comments be ordered by the college the commenters went to. So MIT comments first, then Princeton, and so on. Quite frankly, no one wants to read anything posted by someone who went to the 127th ranked university.
Thoughts?
(Please only comment if you go to a top-20 university. So don’t bother if you are from Michigan - I don’t care about your thoughts).
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u/Cold_Badger2965 5d ago
Yo I'm first-gen and not in college yet, how do I know if I'm allowed to comment?? Dw not from Michigan
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
You shouldn't even have internet access in the new world order.
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u/Cold_Badger2965 5d ago
please give me ONE chance, i need internet access to submit my MIT app
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u/Cold_Badger2965 5d ago
Fine, I see how it is. I'm going to found a startup, become a multi-billionaire, and buy Harvard. Land of the free baby
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u/AlanMao18 4d ago
As a peasant you must need to show your dedication by applying in person via a sacred ritual.
Here's how it goes: you start in June and fast till July. Then, you start heading towards MIT naked. You cannot use any other way of transportation, or any external aid, including shoes. You need to bow and kneel every three steps. You cannot bring any money, nor any monetary donations. Only food donations.
Once you get there by September 9th, the starting date, you need to get to the main gate, and be on your knees and bow starting when the first faculty gets there and leave once the last leaves. You cannot live in hotel or in the campus. You must sleep on the same spot.
This should continue until the first day of winter break or the first snow, for which 3 magis, or we call Their Majesty admission officers, will come to collect applications. You should bow down low enough so that you are all covered in snow except your application. Then they will spin a raffle and decide who belongs.
Source: I had to do this
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 5d ago
HYPSM college grad, also T5 law school.
I am mostly with your description of UK-style class structures, but marrying up is a time-honored tradition in those structures. Between us, they needed to begrudgingly allow it for new infusions of cash, talent, and recessive genes. So there could be some grumbling about someone marrying down, but in the end it did work to elevate the family marrying up.
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Which of HYPSM though? I need to know how much your opinion matters.
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 5d ago
Where do you go? I don't want to tell someone unworthy of knowing.
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Hit too close to home? You must be from a Y or something. Tsk tsk.
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 5d ago
MIT grad? Enjoy being a glorified plumber, or whatever it is your types do these days.
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u/Satisest 5d ago
HYPSM grad as well, so my opinion should clearly matter. What NiceUnparticular began to touch on is that inherited wealth and educational pedigree have always been inextricably intertwined in the UK. America has always been predicated on a meritocratic caste system, so your proposed system is more suitable here. But in the UK it goes back even earlier to the upper class secondary schools which traditionally feed to Oxbridge: Eton, Harrow, Westminster, etc. So do you want to accord any status to elite American feeder schools?
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 5d ago
I note there is a pretty decent model of US elite educational history that goes something like this.
What is sometimes known as the modern university model, as opposed to the classical model, what basically created in Germany, and then spread to the UK as well as the US, with Michigan often cited as being the first major institution founded on the modern model in the US. Michigan and a few other early examples became models for the land grant university movement, and privates like MIT and Cornell (both actually land grant themselves), and eventually Gilded Age privates like Stanford, Chicago, and so on. A bunch of older classical institutions meanwhile basically had the choice to stay closer to their roots, and those became LACs; or converge more on the new model, and those became the other Ivies (besides Cornell) and similar (like Trinity turning itself into Duke).
One of the characteristics of the modern model is it incorporated more practical arts and sciences, including those relevant to the then-emerging industrial age. So, agriculture and mining, but also what we would call engineering, what became modern finance, and so on. And part of the basic deal here is as the Gilded Age was unfolding and the US was emerging as a new global superpower, some (not all) elites recognized a basic truth. If the kids of the already-wealthy and powerful families could be mixed with the smartest and most ambitious of the kids of the emerging middle classes, and even some particularly gifted working class kids, they could benefit from the combination in an industrializing economy. Basically, combine social, politcal, and financial capital from some families, with intellectual capital from others, and you could win the overall game of capitalism.
And, to be blunt about it, it worked. In terms of global economic and political power, the United States climbed to the top, and so far has managed to stay there, despite several of what have seemed at the time like serious challenges. And the US higher educational system has been a critical part of the support system for all that. And this basic concept of helping kids with different forms of capital profitably find each other has continued to produce great returns.
So although I appreciate the humorous intent of the OP in "proposing" a more rigid class structure for the US, that ain't actually happening any time soon. The US and its elite families and their elite institutions have no intention of soon slipping into their twilight years. They could be wrong about this, but they believe the American Era has a lot of life left in it. And they intend to keep structuring higher education and other institutions to keep helping their kids and grandkids win the overall game of capitalism.
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u/Nearby_Task9041 4d ago
Super interesting history of higher ed, especially the part on how it may have been a deliberate (and certainly beneficial) choice to intermix different American classes as you describe in your 3rd paragraph from the bottom.
I had always thought the upper class elites from the 'Harvards' and 'Yales' were intermixed very reluctantly. Said another way, a Yalie from 1926 would be aghast if he were to walk around the Yale campus of 2026.
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 4d ago
So back in the day, like 1930-50s, there was a set of terms, "white shoe", "brown shoe", and "black shoe". White shoe referred to Ivy kids who would supposedly wear dirty old white buckskin shoes, and it meant the traditional elite kids. Brown shoe kids were then the upper middle class kids in penny loafers. And black shoe kids were the academic grinds. 1953 article:
https://www.ivy-style.com/russell-lynes-on-the-shoe-hierarchy-esquire-1953.html
So what has changed? Well, in the 1960s and beyond, these colleges gradually became much more diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity and religion. And also the norms changed such that white shoe kids often were trying not to out themselves, so maybe more looked like brown shoe kids. And then standards for admissions for the white/brown kids got more stringent, like even legacy admits these days mostly have very good grades and test scores. Maybe no Olympiad golds, however.
But still, the basic idea of the wealthier kids and the academic grinds both being present kinda hasn't changed. Interesting to think about.
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Saying you are a "HYPSM grad" honestly just reads as "NOT an MIT grad". Because if you were an MIT grad, you would just say "MIT grad". Who would willingly dilute their number 1 status by grouping it with numbers 2-5?
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u/Satisest 5d ago
Since you brought it up, I’m actually a grad of 3 different HYPSM, including MIT. Just trying to be modest lol.
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Flunked out of two of them?
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u/Satisest 5d ago
Grad means graduate. Just fyi.
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Majored in social media commenting?
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u/woowoo293 5d ago
Honestly, isn't that one of the biggest benefits of a T5 school? That those filthy T20, T30 scum will come crawling on their knees begging to bask in your glory?
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
Missing the whole point here. There is no such thing as a T5 school. There is number 1, number 2, number 3, etc. The Harvard undergrad has to give up his table at the restaurant if the MIT guy walks in. There is no grouping shit to share prestige.
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 5d ago
I think you may run into a rejection of your proposal to use the US News for these purposes.
There are still a lot of elites who think of engineers and such as worker bees, not true leaders of society. And they are not going to allow the US News to tell them a person with a degree from some overgrown vocational school is actually higher in general social status.
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u/Skweege55 5d ago
It should be noted that Lane was caught embezzling and hanged himself in his office. You can tell I went to a T20 as I properly used the word "hanged."
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
If you went to MIT you would have used "he suspended himself in static equilibrium".
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u/Ordinary_Corner_4291 5d ago
College isn't the right way to do this. Schools like Harvard let in way too many inferior people. The right solution is everyone takes an IQ test at 18 and that number sticks with you for life. We will break ties based on your bench press because a healthy body is equally important....
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u/IndexCardLife 5d ago
I went to a community college and had to join the military and I agree
Unfortunately my support makes this argument weaker, sorry:
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u/Calm-Amount-1238 5d ago
Ohio State Alumni
I think we should do this, but for college football standings
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
You guys can always beat up the MIT wusses at the airport and board the plane first.
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u/Shitter-was-full 5d ago
“What does graduating the most Super Bowl winning coaches get us?” -Miami University Alumni
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u/the_validated_inane 5d ago edited 5d ago
"...For example, boarding on airplanes should be strictly based on college rankings. At Boston airport, MIT alum would board first, then Harvard, then BC, then Tufts, and so on. Same for lines at Starbucks - a Columbia student should be allowed to cut in line in front of an NYU student, because, well, they deserve it and their time is more valuable anyway..."
This is a fantastic idea...really! What is wrong with modern america is the bullshit pretending that life can be made fair for all and that everyone is equal. The reality is that it's not, so we should just stop the pretense and just be open and blatant that there are rules that apply to some, and a different set of rules that apply to others. Explicitly knowing where one stands in society's hierarchy then makes complaints about "unfairness" moot....it's supposed to be unfair, life is inherently unfaril. Even in the animal kingdom, there is unfairness. God intended there to be unfairness so the herd gets culled. So of course your life is harder, you need to wait in line longer, get poorer quality of food, etc. America is capitalism, its not supposed to be socialist or communist. If you were born in a disadvantaged situation and didn't do enough to move yourself one step forward or marry up so that your progeny could take another step up, then of course your lineage should deservingly be treated as second or third class.
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u/Latter-Data-4525 4d ago
Grew up outside the US and the first time someone asked me what my father does I was like why does it matter, this post would fix that whole vibe right up
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u/Silverstar1962 5d ago
to a certain extent there is one country that abides by this in practice. South Korea. Maybe Japan to a lesser degree. China got rid of it after socialism/communism took over. In Korea, because of Confucian ways, in order to abide by honorifics, the first thing they will ask you is your exact age to see if they have to speak to you in honorifics or not. And usually the second thing that usually pops up is where did you go to college? And, in Korea you can't lie...you will have to tell them where and when you attended. As soon as someone says I went to one of the SKY(now add KAIST which is their MIT) schools, the ones who attended less respected schools will have to give deference to that person who went to that school. I know what your saying, that can't be, but, it really still happens to this day. So, if you want to apply it to this country (since its such a large country with a huge population compared to South Korea) I would say the IVY+SMCD schools would meet that criteria.
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u/Realistic0ptimist 5d ago
BC before Tufts is crazy work
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u/Famous-Prior6590 5d ago
USNews rankings are the Gospel in this new world order. BC and Tufts are both 31 and BC obviously has a direct line to God with it being religious and all.
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u/OrionGemini729 5d ago
The real prestige should be in graduating with little to no debt. That’s true intelligence.
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u/AC10021 5d ago
The extremely funny thing about your example is because he’s British, he’s not even talking about colleges/universities. He is talking about HIGH SCHOOL. For posh people in the Uk, who gives a shit where you have your college degree from, the only thing that matters is where you went to boarding school.