The conclusion of the awards ceremony for our recent college tour:
Best Mascot: My son says, “Obviously, MIT. Tim The Beaver.” Tim is MIT backwards, and the beaver is
nature’s best engineer. I think MIT
calls its sports teams The Engineers, though. “The Gnawing Beavers” just
wouldn’t be respected on the sports field.
Rochester has a wasp called Rocky the Yellowjacket. Lehigh has the
Mountain Hawks. Penn’s mascot is the guy
you find pictured on your oatmeal box.
Most Forgettable Mascot: Harvard. We can’t remember what it is, or if they even
have a mascot. Maybe if you are Harvard,
you don’t need a mascot.
 |
| Common Household Mom and Son at the gates of the mascot-less Harvard Yard |
Best Marching Band: Not enough info to determine, but perhaps
Lehigh, whose “Marching 97” play at every football game, some basketball games, and,
if invited by a student, in the lecture hall during the lecture right before
exams.
I am guessing that marching band
will be way different at college than at high school. Does anybody know from their own experience
in both high school and college marching bands if the two are very different?
Best Pranks: MIT.
Except they call them ‘hacks,’ not pranks. The top prank of all time (so far):
displaying a campus police car on top of the MIT dome.
Another: stealing a cannon from Cal Tech.
Largest Carbon Footprint: We couldn’t figure out
how to determine this – most students? Largest campus? Lack of LEED-certified
buildings? I do know that the MIT had
the largest number of bicyclists riding around.
There were a lot of bikes at U Penn also.
Most Beautiful
Library: Lehigh. We can’t tell you anything about Harvard, MIT,
or Penn libraries because we didn’t go in them. Maybe nobody at those schools studies in the library.
Most Obscure Engineering
Project: Robotic Bees at Harvard. We figured they were working on this for the
military, because the info session and the tour gave us no idea what the goal of this project was, although it
was mentioned several times. It was also unclear if this project related in any way to undergraduate engineering students.
Most Destructive of
Pianos: MIT.
The students in one of the dorms drop a piano off the roof at the end of
the drop/add period (for dropping or adding classes). Ach! How can they?!
Most Amusing Story about
Application Mistakes: Here are the stories we heard. You can choose which one you like the best.
Penn: a student applied to the Wharton School of
Bunnies.
MIT: an applicant wrote about ‘torturing 6th
graders’ (meant ‘tutoring 6th
graders’)
Lehigh: the essay talked about ‘hunting peasants’
instead of pheasants.
3 comments:
Ahh . . . editors. Worth their weight in gold :-)
Have you guys seen the movie "Real Genius"? It's dated now, but still one of my favorite movies. Excellent pranks.
Don't know the answer about marching band. But Andrew intends to stick with it, too.
I almost DIED reading about torturing sixth graders and hunting peasants. I'm still laughing.
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