The Ivies also have a well-recognized reputation unrelated to their sports affiliation. They are consistently recognized as being among the best schools in the nation. Each has a huge endowment. Attendance at any one of them is often considered to be a thing of prestige and honor. And that is precisely why I did not apply to any of them.

I didn’t need or want to be part of a group that is stereotyped as being pretentious and arrogant. I had no desire to be one person in a vast sea of undergraduates. Instead, I came to RPI, and I’m proud of it—not because it plays certain other schools in sports or because of plants that grow on its walls, but because of what it is. It is a top-notch engineering school with a spectacular student body and community.

So when Kaplan and Newsweek listed Rensselaer as being among the nation’s “New Ivies,” I thought little of it. The title is moot, as the Institute shares almost nothing with the other schools that received it beyond offering an excellent education. As members of the RPI community, however, we have been reminded of the designation at every turn. A Google search of “New Ivies” on the rpi.edu domain yielded these three pages of results, including press releases, department websites, and the admissions page. As this paper goes to print, I count the term “New Ivies” in at least three other pieces in the Editorial/Opinion section alone.