Going for the Green: What’s the deal with Ivy League?
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Related Items:
Take our Facebook Quiz!: Which Gossip Girl character/college are you?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Ivy League recently. I know that doesn’t sound like the most exciting train of thought. One might, perhaps, prefer to dwell on the awesomeness of the new Star Trek, or the fact that it is almost beach season. Still, it’s in my head because this week, the Harvard class of ‘09 will be graduating. As this year’s future leaders of America graduate, next year’s candidates to the nation’s top-universities are beginning their long and anxious application process.
Why to so many bright high school students feel driven to reach for the brass-ring of the Ivy League? Sure, they’re all excellent schools. But by now the assumption that Ivy League schools are the only choice has been pretty much erased. Everyone knows that MIT, Stanford, Swarthmore, and Northwestern are all pretty damn good, and they’re not Ivies. So if it’s not just academics, why is there still the big to-do about the Ivy League?
I have this theory, and it involves Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl is popular not just because it shows a bunch of beautiful, rich people leading melodramatic lives in great outfits, but because it shows a glimpse into the lives of the upper-class. Yes, that’s right, I said the c-word. Just compare Gossip Girl to Josh Schwartz’s other tou
r-de-force, “The OC.” The main difference between the two shows, beside the locale, is class. In Gossip Girl, wealth does not just stand for fashion, hotel apartments, and limousines, it stands for legacy. If you watch any episode of Gossip Girl (and I have watched many) you will notice that that they always make a big stink about how exclusive their world is. Not surprisingly, a big plot-point this season was the cutthroat competition in their fictional prestigious prep-school to get into the Ivy League. And why? Because the Ivy League represents an elitism as exclusive as the Park Avenue students who dominate the show. Maybe the Ivy League is the brass ring for college applicants, not because it provides the best education, but because it represent the most privileged and influential sector of our society.
Everybody wants to be one of the pretty people. In America, where class is a foreign notion, higher education stands out as one way that the “worthy” are selected. The promise of an Ivy League education is more than just job security, academic merit, or even connections. It is the promise that you too are worthy of rising to the top. And so we cram for the SATs, volunteer, and jump through hoops, in hopes that one day our names will be along those of the Vanderbilt’s, the Carnegie’s, and the Blaire Waldorf’s.
