Naturally, I remember the night I met my husband. We were walking along the seawall on a lovely evening in San Diego, having met over dinner at a nearby hotel, and were exchanging all the usual get-acquainted questions. Eventually, he asked where I went to college.
“Back east,” I said.
“Where?” he persisted.
“In New Jersey.”
“Oh, come on,” he said kindly. “It can’t be any worse than where I went to school.”
He was right on that score. Before he went to medical school, my husband attended Cal State Los Angeles, which is a fine state college but not in the same echelon as—well—Princeton. Which is where I went, and didn’t want to admit to him. Not in the first hour of our acquaintance, at least.
A long time has passed since that meeting, but apparently nothing has changed—young women still hesitate before admitting to potential suitors that they went to an Ivy League college. Nikki Muller, who graduated with Princeton’s Class of ’05, just posted a YouTube video on this very subject that’s gone viral, with over 100,000 hits so far.