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often I read articles about how parents in the Northeast obsess to get their kids in the right preschool which will lead to the best prep schools which will get them into the chosen Ivies.
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Carnation, as usual, you bring up a very insightful comparison. From the little I know about the emphasis placed on Southern rush, it has a lot more in common with college admissions in the Northeast than it does with rush in the Northeast. In my parents' circle, for a child to end up at a nationally prestigious state school like Michigan is seen as borderline embarrassing...at a minimum, a child should go to a school like Smith or University of Chicago, and preferably Princeton, MIT, etc. If a child went to an SEC school, with the possible exception of Vanderbilt, that would be seen as something approaching a parenting failure.
On the one hand, the college admissions system doesn't claim that its goal is to foster sisterhood and friendship, and it is inclusive in the sense that anyone from anywhere who earns a spot in a given school is considered equal, even if (maybe especially if) her parents are illiterate immigrants. On the other hand, it's ultimately as complex and snobby as any rush. So Northerners (from my social class, at least) shouldn't be calling any kettles black when it comes to having ideas about moving in the "right" institutions.
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I doubt anyone interested in the nuances of recruitment or the South in general would ever get bored.
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Justamom, you are right. Count me as one of those. I knew almost nothing about the South before I started reading Greekchat...now I still know almost nothing, but I'm fascinated! I read the Princess Margaret book, Prudence Mackintosh and Florence King's books, and I am still looking for more.
I think it is amazing that this is my own country, and there are whole societies here that I know less about (and in some ways seem more foreign to me) than France or Japan. There is so much that I haven't seen. I'm about to visit a friend (a KAO!) who's working in Birmingham, and I can't wait to see the Deep South for the first time. We're going to the Alabama/Auburn basketball game in Tuscaloosa...roll Tide! (can you say that for basketball?
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Ivy