Remember when the football team won the Ivy League title? Though the basketball season may now capture our hearts and minds (and our sympathy), now there’s bling to remind us of the football victory. We bumped into some quarterback friends who showed us their new diamond-studded championship rings.
Let’s get ready to rumble recycle! Penn’s latest green campaign, RecycleMania, kicks off this Monday in Houston Hall from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. with the Recycling Bin Rally. The first 200 Penn staff/students to show up get free personal recycling bins, and, assuming they have any sense of beauty in this world, will immediately go home and Bedazzle them. Running through March 28th, RecycleMania includes panel discussions, brown bag lunches, and plenty of tips and tricks to become a full-fledged member of the Green Fad Movement.
As always, our priority is free stuff, and we’re happy to see Penn’s got us covered with “RecycleMania Mondays” at Au Bon Pain and “RecycleMania 2-5pm Mondays and Fridays” at Accenture and Houston Market. Both events feature free coffee if you bring your own mug, and the Penn Dining spots will even throw in a fountain drink too. Finally, a use for all those stockpiled College House mugs we stole during NSO!
Apparently throughout this we’re also in a really intense competition with the Ivy Plus people to see who loves the earth more. If it’s anything like our other Ivy competitions, we’re not expecting much in the winning department. We placed in a mediocre fifth last year, but hey, we beat Yale!
Back in the day, we visited Yale. Some pretentious dude in a cable-knit sweater was all, “Hey look at us, we’re really smart and everyone is in an a capella group and our campus looks like Hogwarts.” Then we came to Penn, and some hungover chick was like, “No, I swear it’s safe here. Really, West Philly isn’t that bad.” And then everyone was probably drunk on College Green and we were like, yeah, we’re coming here.
And then, four years later, we saw this video. And we were really, really proud of our decision.
Prepare to want the next sixteen minutes of your life back after watching, “Why I Chose Yale,” a musical brochure created by Yale undergrads in coordination with the admissions office. If you’re going to go all High School Musical 4 on us, at least give us a good Zac Efron lookalike!
To serve and protect
If there was an impending attack on Cherry Hill by Princeton, would you know what to do? Well, if you’re one of the 440 stoic Quakers playing GoCrossCampus, we’re sure you would. But for all the heartless citizens standing on the sidelines, here’s what’s going on.
A few years ago the “Ivy Council” created this Ivy-only Risk rip-off “locally social online sport” as a way to increase collaboration among the schools. It allows students with possible anger issues to battle for control over New England and defend their institutions to the bitter end. (Yeah, we’re kinda not getting it either.)
All you need to get started is a Penn e-mail address, and you can do your part to lead a battalion trying to steal Long Island back from Yale. We’re currently in 4th place — which is definitely better than 83rd — but we have a lot of ground to make up. If you aren’t feeling it, there’s always that other stupid Ivy-only thing — but the “game chat” section is a gold mine for Ivy leaguer humor and Battlestar Galactica debates.
[via Cornell Daily Sun and the DP]
We’re not sure if we even care anymore, but it appears as though Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe went all loose-lipped over at the Guardian and spilled the beans that Hermione Emma Watson is officially headed to Brown. Scout Willis (Demi and Bruce’s other daughter, who was born between the one who is all up in the tabloids and the one who is “interning” at Harper’s”) is going there, too. The Roundup is so jealous. But, hey, at least we get Denzel’s kid!
Since we just extorted you to send us tips, we should probably share some of the ones we’ve been meaning to share for the past few weeks. It’s round-up time, bitches.
Restaurateur Stephen Starr has set his sights on DC. What are we gonna do tonight, Stephen? Same thing we do every night, try to take over the world by opening yet another luxury asian-fusion pretentierie, this time in our nation’s capitol.Last night’s final Jeopardy category: “Colleges and Universities.” (Okay, cool, we got this one…) Answer: “This two word term for a famous group of colleges 1st appeared in an AP story that ran in the Providence Journal in 1935.”
Question: What is… umm… damn it, we know this, just give us a sec…
True story: Out of three theoretically intelligent contestants on last night’s show, only ONE person knew the correct question: “What is the IVY LEAGUE.” (The two who got it wrong guessed “Seven Sisters.”) In honor of this man’s intellect – despite his awkward ears and scribble-y handwriting — we are rewarding him with UTB fame:
Thanks to Corey Hulse, W’ 07, for the tip and picture.
Typically, we find all Facebook applications to be fairly stupid/ridiculous. Fortunately, this one fits the mold.
This highly scientific quiz allows you finally answer that burning question: should you really have gone to Penn?
After taking the survey, we wound up with Yale…Blair Waldorf would be green with envy.
A fine merlot: frothy, yet pompous
Getting into Penn’s wine-tasting preceptorial is much harder than getting into Penn itself, or, what’s more, any of the Ivies: we just got an e-mail that we were waitlisted :( The e-mail reads:
You have been currently placed on the waitlist of the Wine Preceptorial. Some 870 students applied for 20 spots. But, there is still a fairly good chance you may be able to get in.
Um, we don’t know what class you took to fulfill your quantitative data analysis requirement, but a waitlist of 850 does not add up to a “fairly good chance.” Your chances of getting into the wine-tasting preceptorial are roughly the same as your chances of getting hired at Google any time soon. However, if you’re still dying to wax pretentious about wine, Philo offers a six-week wine-tasting course of its own for $140; details are here.
CalTech grad student Virgil Griffith has taken two of Penn kids’ favorite things to brag about — intelligence and taste in music — and put our boasts to the test. In another example of Facebook exploitation, Griffith compared the incidence of artists in students’ profiles with the average SAT scores of their respective institutions of higher education. In his own words, “Their unity is hilarity incarnate.”
Not-so-surprisingly, Beethoven fans are on top of their studies, pulling in an average score of 1371. Lil’ Wayne fans on the other hand, seem to be too busy pondering just what exactly a goon is to a goblin to hit up their Princeton Review courses, averaging an 889. It’s unclear whether listening to everything at once makes you a genius or a complete idiot. Fingers crossed, Girl Talk fans.
Other notables: John Legend writes smarter songs than Justin Timberlake; Sufjan Stevens only got a high score because dumb kids can’t pronounce his name; and unless you aspire to a life of devastating mediocrity, stop listening to Dave Matthews.
Griffith has kicked out a similar list for books, and while the site is currently down, you can still peep the chart here. Word of advice: go Fahrenheit 451 on anything that’s been made into a movie and pick up some Nabakov. You’ll thank us later.
Take a look-see and decide if you need to update your profile so we don’t judge you.
There’s only one group of people that the Ivy League schools love more than trust fund babies: celebrity students. Columbia has James Franco, Harvard had Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones, and it appears that Yale might soon have Emma Watson. Indeed, Hermione was accepted to Yale, which means that all of those smug Elis might get to party with the hot actress next year, while Penn is becoming increasingly like a jealous Muggle sister (Petunia Dursley, Nursing ‘88?). We mentioned Emma’s Ivy tour — which notably excluded Penn — back in October, and as admissions decisions continue to be released, we’ll be keeping our eye on the celebrities and their children who might be gracing us with their presence next year.
It’s preceptorial time! You know, preceptorials, those random non-credit just for the hell of it (and/or love of learning) seminars that meet a few times each semester. Some casual reconnaissance reveals that most Penn students have never actually participated in a preceptorial, but don’t let that dissuade you: this semester’s offerings look very promising indeed. We suggest opening Penn InTouch in a new tab–here are some UTB-approved selections:
PREC 240 001. Why Does Everyone Love to Talk about Britney Spears? Renowned Sociologist of Media and Pop Culture and occasional butt of Street’s jokes David Grazian will lead this searing inquiry into the zen of one Britney Jean Spears.
PREC 290 001. Wine Tasting F yeah, seniors get wasted! This perenially popular preceptorial is always the toughest to get into, but we hear budget cuts will make it even tougher this year: the formerly 100-person-accommodating roster may have been whittled down to less than half that.
PREC 330 001. Making Sushi! We’d rather go to Pod, but if you’re the DIY type, perhaps this is for you. BYO seaweed?
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Emma Watson, Ivy League aspirant.
Apparently, the Ivy League has been wrought with celebrities this week. Emma Watson (Hermione from Harry Potter) made a trip to Harvard, Yale… and Brown. And yet not Penn. If that weren’t enough, both Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher were seen at the Harvard admissions office (and no, we don’t think Ashton Kutcher is going back to college anytime soon–though, lord knows he needs it).
This just begs the question: what do these other schools have that Penn is lacking? I mean, I know it’s exciting to have Ray Romano’s daughter on campus, but who would you rather see on Family Weekend? Ray Barone or Kelso?
And for that matter, wouldn’t you frat boys love to party with Hermione? After all, you know how great she is with a wand.
CollegeOTR tipped us off to Trojan’s sexual health report card, a glorified survey on campus resources masquerading as some sort of racy report rather than what it is, a press release that they hope will get picked up on blogs like this one. Mission accomplished! Penn ranks 21, behind Columbia, Cornell and Brown, but ahead of Harvard and Yale. We’re not sure what the implications of this are–can we expect to get more severe STD’s when we hook up with Yalies? Will this harm Penn’s permanent sexual transcript?
View the full report here.
Einstein was a tutor once... wasn't he?
You may just be able to leverage your degree into a job as a tutor!
As the NY Sun reported today, our Ivy League credentials can let us ask for the big bucks — think rates of $100+/hour — when helping high-strung high schoolers craft their personal statement and prepare for the SATs.
Though Benjamin Franklin said that only death and taxes are certain, clearly college admissions anxiety should be included on that list. And with the economy tanking, it is nice to have something to count on… especially if we can’t count on our degrees for much else.
