- Everybody likes to make fun of Cornell.
- NYU is so beneath you. - That's so mean.
(glass shattering)
- See, this is more accurate.
Hi, I'm Morgan.
- And I'm Kennedy.
- And we went to Dartmouth College.
- Hi, I'm Kaiti and I'm a Senior at Brown University.
- Hi, my name's Alish.
I went to Columbia.
- Hey, I'm Sienna and I'm a rising Senior
at Harvard College.
(upbeat music)
(computer keyboard typing)
- Oh my gosh. Of course, of course, okay.
- Oh, this is Elle.
I just saw this movie for the first time.
- I'm gonna tell all of you at Harvard,
why I'm gonna make an amazing...
- Hell yeah, she is.
(Sienna laughs)
- I feel like this is accurate.
This is what the Admissions Department looks like.
- 4,0 from CULA, and she got a 179 on her LSATs.
- Did she say she had a 179 on her LSAT?
That's like unheard of.
- This is true.
You have some people who are like rooting for you
and others that aren't.
- Welcome to Harvard.
- Oh gosh.
I hope the Admissions Committee
looks a lot more diverse than that.
I mean, that is kind of this Harvard stereotype.
It's like a bunch of old white guys
in the Admissions Department and-
- I'd say the holistic review of the admissions,
I think that's something that's very prided upon
by like any Ivy League Admissions Board.
- At least at Harvard,
we have the right to see our application
after we've been admitted
and see our interviewers comments on us
and also the Admissions Officer's comments.
(computer keyboard typing)
(soft music)
- Columbia, Columbia, Columbia.
- That's her first mistake.
She's wearing high heels in New York.
As if you can walk more than two blocks in those.
- Thought I'd come and watch your lacrosse games,
so if you could make sure...
- One thing this gets wrong
is the idea that anyone would go watch a lacrosse game.
But yeah, we were notoriously bad at sports.
But for some reason we were the best at medieval sports
like archery, fencing, or anything that looked like
it involved a torture device.
- We're celebrating.
We just got the most amazing apartment ever.
- You would totally approve.
Pre-war, doorman.
- Who can afford a doorman in college?
- I know. - Who can...
- What you think about falafel?
- Ew. Isn't that the kind of food paralegals eat?
(Morgan and Kennedy laugh)
- Justice for paralegals.
- Oh my God. Are you transferring to Columbia?
- I hope so. NYU is so beneath you.
- Oh, the elitism.
(Kaiti gasps)
- That's so mean.
- We have definitely encountered people
who like looked down at non Ivy League schools.
You know, I think there's always going to be people
who feel like they're better than other people,
For all kinds of reasons, Ivy League included.
- When I first went to Brown,
I did have a culture shock
of like the crazy elite populations
that do run into those circles.
- There were a few people here and there
that dressed like this and threw money around.
And a lot of those kids were part of a house called St. A's.
Allegedly one of the things you had to do to get in
is buy a plane ticket to China and then burn it.
And this clip is shot on the same block as that house.
(computer keyboard typing)
(peaceful music)
- Ooh!
Oh my God, the Van Wickle gates.
(peaceful music)
That's way better than what it looks like in real life.
- I got this at the school store, it's an...
- Harvard does sell art prints at the museum.
- Yeah, they violated a lot of dorm guidelines
by hanging a literal glass-framed thing on the wall.
You will get fined.
- Stewie, I can't use this, it'd be cheating.
- Ooh, fine.
Listen, I'll be out on the quad.
- Yeah, people hanging out on the quad or the green
was something that everyone did.
- Spike ball.
- I was never meaning to play spike ball
or a tossed around a Frisbee.
- Huge Ultimate Frisbee scene at Brown.
(glass shattering)
- (Stewie) Oh, no!
- Brown is often dubbed as the chillest Ivy.
Honestly, I take that title in stride.
I'm very grateful to Brown's culture
for chilling me the frick out.
- I would say the work environment at Harvard is very
like work hard, play hard.
Maybe more emphasis on the "work hard".
- In my experience,
cheating is still taken very, very seriously.
- You would get suspended for like up to three terms
at Dartmouth if you plagiarized.
(computer keyboard typing)
- Oh my gosh, "The Social Network".
Of course.
(intense music)
Those girls are all going to a final club.
They're probably from like BU or another Boston school.
- I feel like in movies, everyone that goes to Harvard,
it's like either this bookish brainiac
who's like him, coding away on a Saturday night,
or it's his friend who's in the back smoking weed.
There's no in between.
- This is so accurate.
Like the guys at the door ushering some of the girls in.
All the guys in suits. So accurate.
- Such bougie parties.
Have never been invited to one of those.
- Everyone in this movie is a lot hotter
than their real life equivalents.
- [Mark Zuckerberg] I need you.
- I'm here for you.
- No, I need the algorithm you use to run...
- Harvard people and some algorithm.
They always want some algorithm from you.
- So final clubs at Harvard are really a different breed.
They're one of the most controversial things
I think about Harvard.
There is a huge history of these being very elitist,
very privileged, very white.
- This does kind of point to an interesting thing
about these schools.
They have this aura of being exclusive,
and then even within them, there are levels of exclusivity.
So you might see people like Mark who feel left out,
even though they're at the most prestigious school ever.
(computer keyboard typing)
- Seemed to lack the basic...
- That's Columbia, right? Yeah.
- My peers just intuitively grasped.
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- Her name...
- I don't know anyone who wears heels on campus.
That's badass, go girl.
- How many people in college do you know
that met randomly like that?
Saw each other on the quad and were like,
"You're cute, can I get your number?"
I know zero.
- Oh, are they going to be making out in the library stacks?
Yup.
(Kaiti gasps)
Too soon, bro.
- Corny. - Corny.
(Morgan laughs)
- One of the biggest misconceptions people have
about the Ivy League is that everyone's super smart.
There are a surprising number of really dumb people
at these schools.
Someone might be really adept at one or two things,
but then totally inept at everything else.
Namely social cues, emotional intelligence.
I know it seems like kind of contrived,
but I know at least like three people
who have been rejected in the rain at Columbia.
- There definitely is, I think,
some accuracy to like the adorkable stereotype or whatever.
The girl's very dressed up though, which I love,
but not a lot of people at Harvard would dress up.
- Yeah. - But I think also,
back in the day, a lot of black people were told
by their parents to dress up for stuff
like school, the airport,
so maybe like a cultural thing.
- It's so weird to see so many black people represented
at an Ivy League school.
'Cause I feel like when you think about Ivy League schools,
I think like white people.
- Yeah, three black people there.
(computer keyboard typing)
- Skull and Bones is a secret society
that some of the students are allowed into.
- Oh, this is intense.
- Very swanky. But I guess they have the budget for it.
'Cause it's Yale.
(Kaiti laughs)
- I'm not gonna say nothing.
- I'm not gonna say anything.
- I'm not gonna say nothing.
- This is very cultish.
- Are they going to like burn each other or something?
I'm getting bad vibes.
- Oh, they're gonna brand them?
- Definitely on the ass cheek, yeah.
- I knew it!
- You know how long you have to hold something like that
on your skin to actually make a brand?
- Like if it's a secret,
then why would you brand your wrist?
- Oh! - Right after?
- Oh, I felt that.
- Besties for life.
I've heard that
the presidents that have graduated from Yale,
like a lot of them have been part of these secret societies.
They are still operating,
but like the recruitment processes are very, very, low-key.
I've heard that, but obviously I've never been recruited.
- So Harvard doesn't really have, as far as I know,
secret societies.
Like they have the final clubs
and those are really out there.
- I feel like every society is really just
like a social club where you can hang out and drink,
kiss a bae or two.
- At Dartmouth when you graduate,
everyone from their different society like gets a cane
so then you can flex and be like,
"I was in this society."
- It's the final social flex.
(computer keyboard typing)
Okay, "Animal House", Dartmouth.
- Omega Membership, champ.
- Larry Kroger. This is...
- Very Dartmouth.
- I would think that Dartmouth is
like a more legitimate school
than the school portrayed in this movie.
- So they're rushing.
- Why are men at Dartmouth portrayed as being ugly?
Is it true? - I know.
It's funny because Dartmouth is portrayed,
especially in "Animal House",
as very legacy, familial, things like that.
But everyone else talks about it as
rough around the edges, and kind of raunchy.
(glass shattering)
See, this is more accurate.
- Is he peeing?
(sounds of urination)
(Kaiti groans in disgust)
- Come on in!
- I love how they're in suits.
- The vibes are already better here.
- I feel like it looks like how GDX or Psi U looks.
Like really... - Dirty.
The random Keep Out signs.
Those were everywhere.
- This is very accurate. This feels a lot more accurate.
- So "Animal House" is based on a frat at Dartmouth.
- Allegedly - Allegedly.
Called AD, that's like no longer a fraternity.
Freshman year of college,
I was dating a guy who was in AD before it got shut down.
And he really talked about it as being
like the most fun house on campus.
Like it was the craziest.
They did brand people. I did see a few brands.
- I used to hear they had a budget for drugs.
Yeah, not the California kind.
The other kind. - [Kennedy] Yeah.
- I wouldn't say that clip is super accurate for Harvard.
It's more like stand around and talk.
- I liked this one.
I think they hit a lot of things on the head.
(computer keyboard typing)
- Ah, Cornell.
Everybody likes to make fun of Cornell in the Ivy Leagues.
I love Cornell.
- I feel so bad for Cornell students
who are fans of "The Office".
I feel like they really ragged on them with this guy.
- People who went to Ivies are like this, though.
- They're all just mad.
- Like protective over their Alma mater,
kind of living in their college days,
a little bit still.
You know who you are.
- And it does also take me back to when I was
doing interviews.
A very, very nerve-wracking process.
- Honestly, the interviewers are kind of arbitrary.
I do know that a lot of them will give comments, though.
Sometimes people have gone back
and read what their interviewers said,
and some of them would make comments on their appearance.
- The only interviewer I remember is my Cornell interviewer
and it was a very pleasant experience.
So very, very inaccurate representation.
- We are going to go to the vastly superior Dartmouth.
- It's true. - It's true.
That's an unpopular opinion.
- I feel like school rivalry is really real.
- No one is ashamed of going to Columbia,
but I don't think we have the sort of pride
that someone who went to Ole Miss has.
- Oh, there's no school pride, pfft.
I think there is inherent like deep individual pride,
but I'd say as a collective,
it is a little harder to rally the troops.
- I would say school pride at Harvard is like really low.
I mean, when people ask you, "Where do you go to school?"
Harvard people will not say Harvard.
- I feel like at Dartmouth,
people are less ostentatious about where they went
because sometimes people just don't even know
what Dartmouth is,
but amongst each other it's like a cult.
- I think the main thing is that
if you have a large group of people,
they are going to resemble any other large group of people.
- A lot of these clips were very like male oriented,
white oriented.
Even the Ivy League institutions,
they are trying to break that trope.
So I do think we're making a lot of progress,
but there's definitely also still a lot of work to be done.
(happy upbeat music)