I'm a little late to this party, but I suppose I should add my two cents.
As has already been mentioned, I've written extensively on this topic:
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Post 4
Post 5
Post 6
Post 7
This thread (from this post forward)
This thread (in which I placed several posts)
This Entire Thread
There are probably more floating around, but that's what I was able to dig up on a quick search.
Now, on to the thread at hand...
While the white-knight/uber-beta quotient is certainly much higher here than most other environments, I'd say the type of outspoken male feminism outlined by OP here is not quite so common. Very few guys here fit that particular bill.
People do not fuck here quite as much as your run-of-the-mill state-schooler is used to, this is certasinly correct. Some ivies may have more hook-ups than others, but generally even the most loose Ivy is nothing compared to even a fourth-tier state school.
Kids here simply don't get wild enough on a sufficiently regular basis to make that happen, and they have far too much in the way of social awkwardness, insecurity and raw caution (the type of caution/conscientiousness that got them admitted, remember) to make an abundance of hookups happen.
Does this side effect occur? Yes. A quick glance at many of my peers can reveal some of the pretentiousness you mentioned-it exists. I attend a "lesser known" Ivy (read: not H,Y or P), so I can imagine that this may be an even greater problem with students at such schools with great "lay prestige".
That being said, coming to an Ivy can also humble you greatly. It isn't always easy to leave an environment where you were unquestionably the smartest kid around and enter an environment where you are merely average. It isn't easy to have to completely re-learn how to study, take notes, and approach school when you never had to put much effort into academics before. It isn't easy leaving a firmly middle class environment and then entering a world where the majority of your peers are of the 1 percent, inhabitants of a world you didn't know existed and have no idea how to fit in with.
I can't speak for everyone, as many (perhaps most) of my peers do not deal with these issues. Most come from economically elite homes, making the Ivies no adjustment-they're around peers. Most come from highly selective and competitive schools (private or public), and so are more well prepared for Ivy level coursework-no need to completely reshape their academic habits.
But for a small but significant portion of any given Ivy's student body, attendance is cause for a growth of humility, not pretentiousness.
I would say that I was greatly matured by my experience here, and I can back that up with anecdotal observations given by peers and family over my three years as an Ivy Leaguer. I was miserable most of the time (lots of BS-some descriptions can be seen in the older posts linked above) and I found most of the experience very painful, but it did forge me into a man. I entered a naive child-I'll leave with far better inner-game, style, conversational ability, and just general higher levels of humility, realism and maturity.
I'm more grown up now. Not every Ivy Leaguer is BSing when he says that.
I agree with most of this post, save for this part. It may just be my school or it may not be, but I can say that the folks at my Ivy are VERY different. Aside from being much more academically inclined than average, they are very much physically (ex: guys are taller, girls not quite as hot) and socially distinct from what I'm used to. I feel at times like I'm in the twilight zone, and I had a very hard time getting used to it early on. Only now can I really step back and look at it all objectively.
Again, maybe this isn't the case at all elite schools, but at mine this is the reality.
Are Ivies filled with higher quality people? In the general moral sense, no. People here are wealthier and perhaps more academically successful than most, but morally they can be just as (if not more) bankrupt than humans anywhere else. In my particular environment, I find loyalty especially lacking. This world is more about what you can offer (pedigree, money, etc), not who you are. People also seem more honest in other environments I've been, less willing to put on a face for one end or another. Appearances sometimes take on a bit too much importance here.
But academically? You're free not to believe it if you wish, but the fact will remain regardless. It is true that the top 1-2 percentiles of students at most first-tier state schools could do well at most Ivies and the very absolute bottom tier at most Ivies isn't that special, but beyond this there is little overlap. These schools are far too selective for there to be any other reality.
Firstly, don't forget Brown.
Secondly, as a student at one of the "nowhere-to-go" schools mentioned here, I have to take some issue with the description of the women.
They're plain, not ugly (though, admittedly, those two may be synonymous to some guys with higher standards than mine).
To put it simply, the distribution of looks here doesn't follow the usual curve at less selective schools. At your standard private/state institution, you'll have a large mass of fairly cute (6-7 range) girls in the middle (say 70% of the total female student body), and smaller pools (each perhaps at around 15%) of unattractive/fat and model-hot girls on the extreme bottom and top ends. At many of these places (the ones with the rep for having very attractive student bodies), the top end may be slightly larger than the bottom (say 20% or more instead of 15%) and the low end smaller, but your run-of-the mill school will probably follow this distribution.
At my school and many other Ivies, this distribution seems to go more like this: The 6-7 range is much smaller, and probably accounts for maybe 40% of girls here. 4s and 5s are likely another 40%. 15% are fairly unattractive/fat (read: below a 4). 5% are 8's or above, and contain within this elite group may be one or two girls who could be called "model hot" (well above an 8, approaching the 9 range, worthy of being called genuine "smokeshows"). Obviously this is hearsay/opinion on my part (my 8 may not be your 8), but that is how I perceive the distribution of attractiveness based on experience.
There are actually relatively few fat/obese girls at my Ivy-most are, at the very least, in decent shape. It is the top end of the spectrum here that is lacking. The middle/above average tiers of girls at most less selective private and state schools would match the top tiers here. If a girl is widely considered a 6-7 at a school like Villanova, you could probably call her a solid 8 here, and she'd be treated accordingly (guys are quite thirsty).
The top end girls I've seen at schools like that would absolutely run my Ivy-there'd simply be no competition. Similarly, I can think of many girls from my high school (which was in middle-of-nowhere New York, not Beverly Hills, Miami or some other hot-girl hotbed) who were considered merely "cute" there but could easily walk into top sororities here and outshine many (or even most) of the girls in them.
It isn't that the girls here are particularly ugly or fat...they're just not particularly attractive either.
The attitudes of girls here are another story, however. Those are definitely particularly ugly, at least in my experience.
Aside from being good high-earning husband material the guys at my Ivy are also a) much taller (I'm 5'10" and I feel short there) and b) much more athletic than average.
Add to this the fact that most of these guys carry solid pedigrees (read: wealthy, reasonably well connected families, almost all firmly upper-middle class at a minimum) and you've got a pretty solid pool to choose from. Girls here are not in an objectively bad position selection wise. If your goal is to get close to a guy who is at once tall, fit, athletic (D1 sports) and affluent, your chances of doing so are much higher at my school than just about any other-the sheer abundance of athletes and the wealth of the student body ensures this. Most guys here will fit at least three of those four criteria, and even the guys who don't will probably still be loaded and well pedigreed at a bare minimum.
I've also run into at least two dozen or so guys who, on paper, seem almost too "perfect". Very good looking, tall (at least 5'11"), super athletic (often all-conference athletes), and affluent. To top it off, they were also all very nice guys-nobody has anything bad to say about them, and quite a few won team/school awards for their decency. When I say "nice guy", I'm talking up to a Tim Tebow level here-they're almost too good enough so to be unbelievable (though it is authentic). Many of them were in fact very religious conservatives (more of those here than you'd expect at an Ivy), so the Tebow comparison has some legs.
This may sound like I'm man crushing here, but I'm really just being objective and honest: these are people who fit the bill of stereotypical male attractiveness so closely that they wouldn't seem out of place on a TV screen, like hollywood characters come to life. Other dudes on campus would joke about how "perfect" they were. I credit them in many ways for my improvements in style and fitness over my time here-you have no choice but to step it up with competition like that. I've never seen so many of them in one place, don't think I ever will again unless I decide to make Norway/Sweden home one day.
There aren't many girls here who hit the buttons for what is considered stereotypically attractive in their own sex quite so closely. I can think of maybe two dozen or so guys off the top of my head who fit the bill for men (smart and athletic, but also good-looking and very kind all at once)-they have maybe three or four female peers who are similarly striking (not just smart or athletic, but also very beautiful while at the same time feminine and kind almost to a fault). There is certainly a gap.
Bottomline: Girls have plenty of high quality options here, and I'd assume that is true at many other top schools. That being said, I would posit that the larger elite schools have more diluted levels of quality (ex: fewer athletes in proportion to entire student body).
Also, as a final note: Just about everything JoeHoya said in this thread was directly on-point. Listen to that man, he knows what he's talking about. I fully co-sign every post he has made in here.
As has already been mentioned, I've written extensively on this topic:
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Post 4
Post 5
Post 6
Post 7
This thread (from this post forward)
This thread (in which I placed several posts)
This Entire Thread
There are probably more floating around, but that's what I was able to dig up on a quick search.
Now, on to the thread at hand...
Quote: (07-04-2012 12:19 AM)Veindarlin Wrote:
This was about 2 years ago, he went off to college, completely different from where I would end up my first two years of college. He ended up going to an Ivy League school. Just after two years of meeting him we chatted and stuff and one guy we were with talked about how it is fun being young, single, and trying it out with different women. My friend yells and tells him to "grow up" and says this whole stuff is for immature folks who have emotional and mental issues. Then he goes off on a long speech by starting off saying "this is whats wrong with men like you!".
The guy we were with and I look at each other awkwardly, we were like "okaaayyy". So I go to talk to my friend who tells me to never do that to a woman and then says about how women are already "abused" and put in such "unfavorable" situations. He yells at me and says "don't ever be that guy".
While the white-knight/uber-beta quotient is certainly much higher here than most other environments, I'd say the type of outspoken male feminism outlined by OP here is not quite so common. Very few guys here fit that particular bill.
Quote: (07-04-2012 03:10 AM)P Dog Wrote:
Maybe it's because they didn't get laid once in college.
People do not fuck here quite as much as your run-of-the-mill state-schooler is used to, this is certasinly correct. Some ivies may have more hook-ups than others, but generally even the most loose Ivy is nothing compared to even a fourth-tier state school.
Kids here simply don't get wild enough on a sufficiently regular basis to make that happen, and they have far too much in the way of social awkwardness, insecurity and raw caution (the type of caution/conscientiousness that got them admitted, remember) to make an abundance of hookups happen.
Quote: (07-04-2012 10:09 PM)rlongo924 Wrote:
A TON of people I know that went to really good colleges have a totally different attitude now that they did before hand. Like they're completely different people and think of themselves as more "mature" and "grown up". Honestly, a lot of them are just really pretentious and basically assholes.
Does this side effect occur? Yes. A quick glance at many of my peers can reveal some of the pretentiousness you mentioned-it exists. I attend a "lesser known" Ivy (read: not H,Y or P), so I can imagine that this may be an even greater problem with students at such schools with great "lay prestige".
That being said, coming to an Ivy can also humble you greatly. It isn't always easy to leave an environment where you were unquestionably the smartest kid around and enter an environment where you are merely average. It isn't easy to have to completely re-learn how to study, take notes, and approach school when you never had to put much effort into academics before. It isn't easy leaving a firmly middle class environment and then entering a world where the majority of your peers are of the 1 percent, inhabitants of a world you didn't know existed and have no idea how to fit in with.
I can't speak for everyone, as many (perhaps most) of my peers do not deal with these issues. Most come from economically elite homes, making the Ivies no adjustment-they're around peers. Most come from highly selective and competitive schools (private or public), and so are more well prepared for Ivy level coursework-no need to completely reshape their academic habits.
But for a small but significant portion of any given Ivy's student body, attendance is cause for a growth of humility, not pretentiousness.
I would say that I was greatly matured by my experience here, and I can back that up with anecdotal observations given by peers and family over my three years as an Ivy Leaguer. I was miserable most of the time (lots of BS-some descriptions can be seen in the older posts linked above) and I found most of the experience very painful, but it did forge me into a man. I entered a naive child-I'll leave with far better inner-game, style, conversational ability, and just general higher levels of humility, realism and maturity.
I'm more grown up now. Not every Ivy Leaguer is BSing when he says that.
Quote: (07-04-2012 10:14 PM)HiFlo Wrote:
Elite universities do NOT hurt game.
In fact, having attended both, folks really aren't that much different, except that you're gonna become friends with a lot more well-connected guys (& their families) in elite unis that state unis.
I agree with most of this post, save for this part. It may just be my school or it may not be, but I can say that the folks at my Ivy are VERY different. Aside from being much more academically inclined than average, they are very much physically (ex: guys are taller, girls not quite as hot) and socially distinct from what I'm used to. I feel at times like I'm in the twilight zone, and I had a very hard time getting used to it early on. Only now can I really step back and look at it all objectively.
Again, maybe this isn't the case at all elite schools, but at mine this is the reality.
Quote: (07-05-2012 08:21 AM)Hades Wrote:
I will never believe that the quality of kids is higher at an Ivy League school. I will believe that the egos of professors are much larger, however. Many of them believe that because they teach at a prestigious school, they are celebrities. This is not true.
Are Ivies filled with higher quality people? In the general moral sense, no. People here are wealthier and perhaps more academically successful than most, but morally they can be just as (if not more) bankrupt than humans anywhere else. In my particular environment, I find loyalty especially lacking. This world is more about what you can offer (pedigree, money, etc), not who you are. People also seem more honest in other environments I've been, less willing to put on a face for one end or another. Appearances sometimes take on a bit too much importance here.
But academically? You're free not to believe it if you wish, but the fact will remain regardless. It is true that the top 1-2 percentiles of students at most first-tier state schools could do well at most Ivies and the very absolute bottom tier at most Ivies isn't that special, but beyond this there is little overlap. These schools are far too selective for there to be any other reality.
Quote: (07-05-2012 09:57 AM)beta_plus Wrote:
One thing that one has to realize about the Ivy League schools just how ugly the women are at these institutions.
To keep it simple, let's just stick to the Ivys:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Dartmouth
Cornell
Columbia
U Penn
While at Harvard, Columbia, and Penn you have the possible option of venturing into the city to get better prospects, the chances that you will have the time and the resources to do so is unlikely due to the workload and extreme expense of the cities in which they are located. At Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Yale, you are just stuck around incredibly unattractive women with no where to go.
The women at these places are just awful. Fat with bad attitudes and faces that would be pretty bad even if they lost weight and dressed more feminine.
Firstly, don't forget Brown.
Secondly, as a student at one of the "nowhere-to-go" schools mentioned here, I have to take some issue with the description of the women.
They're plain, not ugly (though, admittedly, those two may be synonymous to some guys with higher standards than mine).
To put it simply, the distribution of looks here doesn't follow the usual curve at less selective schools. At your standard private/state institution, you'll have a large mass of fairly cute (6-7 range) girls in the middle (say 70% of the total female student body), and smaller pools (each perhaps at around 15%) of unattractive/fat and model-hot girls on the extreme bottom and top ends. At many of these places (the ones with the rep for having very attractive student bodies), the top end may be slightly larger than the bottom (say 20% or more instead of 15%) and the low end smaller, but your run-of-the mill school will probably follow this distribution.
At my school and many other Ivies, this distribution seems to go more like this: The 6-7 range is much smaller, and probably accounts for maybe 40% of girls here. 4s and 5s are likely another 40%. 15% are fairly unattractive/fat (read: below a 4). 5% are 8's or above, and contain within this elite group may be one or two girls who could be called "model hot" (well above an 8, approaching the 9 range, worthy of being called genuine "smokeshows"). Obviously this is hearsay/opinion on my part (my 8 may not be your 8), but that is how I perceive the distribution of attractiveness based on experience.
There are actually relatively few fat/obese girls at my Ivy-most are, at the very least, in decent shape. It is the top end of the spectrum here that is lacking. The middle/above average tiers of girls at most less selective private and state schools would match the top tiers here. If a girl is widely considered a 6-7 at a school like Villanova, you could probably call her a solid 8 here, and she'd be treated accordingly (guys are quite thirsty).
The top end girls I've seen at schools like that would absolutely run my Ivy-there'd simply be no competition. Similarly, I can think of many girls from my high school (which was in middle-of-nowhere New York, not Beverly Hills, Miami or some other hot-girl hotbed) who were considered merely "cute" there but could easily walk into top sororities here and outshine many (or even most) of the girls in them.
It isn't that the girls here are particularly ugly or fat...they're just not particularly attractive either.
The attitudes of girls here are another story, however. Those are definitely particularly ugly, at least in my experience.
Quote: (07-06-2012 12:45 AM)P Dog Wrote:
If by high quality you mean high-earning potential husband material then sure but remember at the very top end of academic achievement you're talking about guys who predominately (there are exceptions) are socially awkward nerds.
Aside from being good high-earning husband material the guys at my Ivy are also a) much taller (I'm 5'10" and I feel short there) and b) much more athletic than average.
Add to this the fact that most of these guys carry solid pedigrees (read: wealthy, reasonably well connected families, almost all firmly upper-middle class at a minimum) and you've got a pretty solid pool to choose from. Girls here are not in an objectively bad position selection wise. If your goal is to get close to a guy who is at once tall, fit, athletic (D1 sports) and affluent, your chances of doing so are much higher at my school than just about any other-the sheer abundance of athletes and the wealth of the student body ensures this. Most guys here will fit at least three of those four criteria, and even the guys who don't will probably still be loaded and well pedigreed at a bare minimum.
I've also run into at least two dozen or so guys who, on paper, seem almost too "perfect". Very good looking, tall (at least 5'11"), super athletic (often all-conference athletes), and affluent. To top it off, they were also all very nice guys-nobody has anything bad to say about them, and quite a few won team/school awards for their decency. When I say "nice guy", I'm talking up to a Tim Tebow level here-they're almost too good enough so to be unbelievable (though it is authentic). Many of them were in fact very religious conservatives (more of those here than you'd expect at an Ivy), so the Tebow comparison has some legs.
This may sound like I'm man crushing here, but I'm really just being objective and honest: these are people who fit the bill of stereotypical male attractiveness so closely that they wouldn't seem out of place on a TV screen, like hollywood characters come to life. Other dudes on campus would joke about how "perfect" they were. I credit them in many ways for my improvements in style and fitness over my time here-you have no choice but to step it up with competition like that. I've never seen so many of them in one place, don't think I ever will again unless I decide to make Norway/Sweden home one day.
There aren't many girls here who hit the buttons for what is considered stereotypically attractive in their own sex quite so closely. I can think of maybe two dozen or so guys off the top of my head who fit the bill for men (smart and athletic, but also good-looking and very kind all at once)-they have maybe three or four female peers who are similarly striking (not just smart or athletic, but also very beautiful while at the same time feminine and kind almost to a fault). There is certainly a gap.
Bottomline: Girls have plenty of high quality options here, and I'd assume that is true at many other top schools. That being said, I would posit that the larger elite schools have more diluted levels of quality (ex: fewer athletes in proportion to entire student body).
Also, as a final note: Just about everything JoeHoya said in this thread was directly on-point. Listen to that man, he knows what he's talking about. I fully co-sign every post he has made in here.
Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.