How important is College/University alumni pride to you?
I went to what is considered a very good business school in Toronto, and I’m currently enrolled in a Masters program for a NY based university.
Being Canadian, I don’t see many of us wearing the advertising sweatshirts, etc for our academic backgrounds. Basically none in fact, except those IN school or recently graduated. There doesn’t seem to be the whole rah-rah-rah that there is in the US.
As a hiring person in a Fintech organization, I absolutely never consider where the degree is from. Do. Not. Care.
How important is it in your life?
40 comments
None whatsoever. They sold education and I bought it. Money exchanged for services provided. Nothing more. I have more affection for my plumber than that university.
Hector. Good dude. Quality work. Fair prices.
a little. major state flagship school in the u.s. i follow their sports, notice when someone else does. i get requests from the alumni association for money. i’ve never donated, but i can’t bring myself to get off the mailing list, either.
From the UK in a decent manager role. Unless, it is social conversation – the fact that I have a degree or what uni I went to has never been brought up.
No one else I know in a work context have ever brought it up either unless they were talking about a course they are currently doing that is related to work.
Edit: In fact it was only a few months ago that I found out a colleague I have worked with for years who is more senior then me (and 10-15 years older) had never actually been to uni.
Talk about disingenuous…
People who went to Oxford and Cambridge for sure know and care about others who went there, and those who didn’t.
Bringing it closer to your home, people who went to McGill are darned sure proud of that fact, and I’m pretty sure if they see McGill on a CV, that will catch their eye and spark conversation that wouldn’t happen with someone who went to UT.
It’s another way to separate people into the “proper” circles.
I have pride, you could say. Major state university. I’ve come across people wearing school gear while traveling and it’s a nice icebreaker. I’m still very close with friends I met there. Like watching the football and basketball teams. Those years had an impact on my life. It would be silly for me to deny that.
My alumni pride is limited to profs I knew and sports.
Almost none. Seeing my Uni drop in the engineering rankings and seeing the quality of students they put out now makes me sad. UCR needs to focus more on their software development classes.
The university where I met my wife has changed so much in the last theory years I barely recognize it. Most of the dorms are gone and there are more new buildings than old buildings. It’s impressive to see how much it’s transformed, but unfortunately I can never visit the dorm cafeteria where my wife and I met, the computer lab where we because close, the bookstore we used to get snacks before we went back to one of our rooms to VHS and chill.
Significant for sports as I went to a school with major conference athletics.
Where I went does come up a decent amount. Finding out where people went and what cultural experience they had there is great conversation fodder. My colleague just the other day found out a client we were talking to went to the same school at the same time, a smaller school not many around here attended, and they had a lot of fun remembering the same bars, bands, etc.
It was for a time, but now, not at all. I went to what is widely considered the best engineering school in the region, and one of the top nationally. I left school with a chip on my shoulder. After a few years of working with grads from all sorts of schools, I have learned that the person matters a hell of a lot more than the school.
Not at all really. I had a great time at college and have fond memories of it, and I’m glad I picked the school I did, but I wouldn’t call it “pride.” I’ve got one T shirt with the logo on it bc I got it for free as a student, and I wear that to work out sometimes, but that’s about it.
I can’t even remember where I went to school. 😆
Zero
Not one bit, however athletics brings in insane amounts of money to the institution, so working at a university with a ranked sports team guarantees that you’ll be wearing school colors on friday as part of the dress code. Sports fans love seeing people represent their colors & sports fans pay to see games…
Zero …. I paid alot of money to be there, did what I have too, and now I don’t think about it much at all.
I went to a small liberal arts school. Loved the experience, still keep in touch with a handful of friends. Pride? Not so much. I send a small donation every year but that’s about it.
Absolutely not even a thought in my mind.
Zero
I still vividly remember my university fining me $100 because *my grant* was late paying my tuition. Not me. My grant. Now, I was living on $600 / mo in SSI disability at the time. That $100 was basically my *entire* grocery budget for the month.
I thought surely, I could talk to the administration and they would be rational and understanding about it. They didn’t care. They told me if it was such an imposition that I could probably get a short term payday loan or something. I literally went on food stamps because of this.
Years later, after graduating with a degree in CS, I get a call from my alumni organization. I recounted my experience to the girl on the other end of the line and you could just hear her dying inside. As politely as I could manage, I told her that in their zeal to squeeze blood from a stone for $100 they probably missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m a strong believer in donating to educational causes, but it will be a cold day in hell before my uni sees another *cent* from me. I have fond memories of my classmates and professors but absolutely no love for my university.
None. Lol. I’m a Canadian living in the US, and I think their obsession with what school they went to is very odd. Lol
It went away about the time a scandal came to light on the news.
Got a twitter notification right as I left the bursars office and paid my tuition plus a dumb mandatory $120 parking pass despite me parking off campus and walking.
They’d paid a bunch of old coaches and people they weren’t supposed to be paying millions over the decade prior.
Pissed me off that they did all that AND made me pay for a $120 mandatory parking pass I wasn’t going to use!?!
I root for the sports teams and keep up with their paper – although that’s happening less and less because most of the professors I had have moved on. They call for money constantly I enjoy telling them they’re not getting a dime.
It’s so not. In any singular way, at all. I mean MAYBE as a sports fan if I had gone to a big name sports school like Penn State, Notre Dame etc… but yeah I have them an ungodly amount of money, put myself into 80k worth of debt only to end up in a career that has NOTHING to do with what I studied. They got my money, they don’t get my pride too.
I used to donate to the college team that I played for, and then they hired an abusive coach and ignored all of the complaints about him from players. No real pride/desire to act on previous pride anymore.
I’m likely going to benefit from the name associated with my graduate program, but I feel absolutely zero pride about it.
It depends on the person.
Both my brothers went to the same campus of the same very well known division 1 state school, and were in the same frat and lived in the same frat house (they’re 2yrs apart in age).
My one brother is all about alumni pride. Has the flag up on his wall in his home office, season tickets to their football games, he runs recruiting campaigns for his employer at the school, and it was a big thing that whomever he married went to that school so they understood the sports culture. He met his now wife about 3yrs after he graduated while living in a major city 300mi away and she just happened to go to that school. She doesn’t really care about , but she does understand why he wanted someone who went to the school.
My other brother doesn’t give a shit. Him and his wife met in college and to them where they went to school is not a very interesting fact about their life. She grew up 20min away so her entire family went there by default, and my the school wasn’t my brother’s first choice
I couldn’t give less of a f*ck about my college. I went to the place where I’d get a 4 year degree as cheap as possible – local state school. It got my foot into my industry and that’s all I needed it for.
Literally 0. I had to fight to get off all their dumb alumni mailing lists, etc.
My relationship with them concluded when I graduated.
Absolutely none.
Zero, and I usually think less of people who do
I actively hate and root against the success of the university I went to, but I still volunteer as the alumni advisor for my fraternity.
None whatsoever. I went to a college with a very high acceptance rate and most of my classmates were not very bright, motivated, interesting, or even interested in their education. I regret not having done better in school when I was younger because I would have gone to a better school and then maybe I’d have some pride.
Not at all. I paid them a lot of money for my degree (in addition to working my ass off to pay what was not covered by loans/financial aid while attending).
School/alumni pride is just another way for universities to squeeze more money out of us.
A bit, but not much. I’ve visited a few times and half of the campus is unrecognizable. The old restaurants, stores, and coffee shops I used to go to? Like 80% of them are gone.
My memories of my time there are checkered. Some great, some horrible, mostly somewhere in between.
I started college at 28 so I was only there to take care of business.
My friends who went to other state universities at 18-22 (A&M, Texas Tech, etc) still rep their Alma mater and it’s a core part of their identity. It kind of annoys me and makes me think they are simple minded.
Zero. My identity and school have never been connected beyond “this is a place I went to learn.” I don’t talk about high school or college or grad school much at all beyond the fact that it’s something I did. I own no school swag, and I wouldn’t buy or wear any.
I went to Walsh College in Troy, MI and I take a lot of pride in my degree.
It’s been 12 years and I’m more proud now than when I was 12 years ago. The current president is kicking ass and taking names. Introducing all sorts of new programs, elevating the academics, and has a plan to get the college 100% off federal funding within 5 years. She’s truly increasing the value of everyone’s degrees.
Zero. Absolutely zero. Below zero, actually, because I hold active contempt for the university I attended, and don’t care about any others. I paid them for the privilege of teaching myself the material because the professors sucked, and the university staff were so unhelpful that I basically had no support through my entire degree. I didn’t even go to my graduation, I just told them to mail me the diploma and leave me alone.
I resent going to my university. I paid money and took out loans expecting an education. Instead, I got heavily impacted classes, incompetent professors, and irrelevant career networking/advice. I got just enough of an education to qualify for a diploma.
Not important but I generally don’t take pride in anything.
I went to multiple colleges and don’t particularly care about either one now that it’s 20 years down the line.
Not as a college anyways. I still root for some random sports teams from there and other places too