By Andrea Park
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Thursday, May 4, 2006, The OG, opinions

My Teen Vogue suggests pairing an oversized Ivy League sweatshirt with a mini and leggings. The chic model poses for the camera in a tight white skirt, heather-gray leggings, and perfectly baggy maroon Cornell sweatshirt.

Teen Vogue targets an audience mainly composed of teenage girls. The magazine's use of a Cornell sweatshirt as its example of an “oversized, chic Ivy League hoodie” tells me that Cornell is succeeding in its endeavor to present itself as a Harvard-, Yale-, Princeton-level elite school — at least to Teen Vogue's audience.

Taking a last look at the model before I flip the page, I can tell that Cornell is doing its job in presenting itself positively in front of impressionable teenage girls.

As a sophomore, the college admissions process looms over my near future, and daily I am reminded of those “awesome colleges” that only the best and brightest receive admittance to. For me, those big-named colleges are as daunting as the height of Mount Everest.

Furthermore, getting into one of them is harder than climbing that soaring mountain. My brother, who has already gone through the process, said to me once that after a certain point all colleges are hard to get into and all hold the same amount of prestige as the next one. Keeping that in mind, how can one differentiate between the height of mountains that are all ridiculously tall and excruciatingly hard to climb?

So sure, I agree that Cornell might not have as much thunder as the H-Bomb, but then again which other college does? My first reaction after reading the recent New York Times article in which Cornell students and alums complained about their school's supposed declining prestige was to laugh: “Hahaha! A worldwide-acknowledged Ivy League school complaining about its status? Are they taking crazy pills?”

After spending some time contemplating Cornell's sanity, an overwhelming feeling of disappointment came over me. It seems that everyone — including the schools themselves — is getting so caught up in the ranking that some stupid magazine comes up with every year. Going to college is not about getting a good education anymore, but more about being able to wear that chic sweatshirt and applying that flashy bumpersticker on your car.

Am I the only one who finds this a little twisted?

I really hope that Cornell doesn't have any more articles in The New York Times where students and alums whine about some nonexistent problem about status and prestige. In fact I hope everyone, including the colleges themselves, can step back and stop caring about rankings.

Students should go to a college where they fit in and feel comfortable at — not somewhere that has a sweet sweatshirt and a hot bumpersticker. The college and its students shouldn't feel that its name can determine its worth.