What's this op-ed missing?

Cornell is an Ivy League school. There would be nothing for Olbermann to append. That whole "Olbermann / non-Ivy League part of Cornell" nonsense came from Ann Coulter a few years ago. She knows better, because she is a Cornell grad too.

First, the Ivy League is simply a sports conference. It doesn't designate anything officially beyond that. Secondly, Cornell isn't divided into "real Cornell" and "non Cornell" schools.

Some of the COLLEGES within Cornell are endowed by New York State -- and students from New York get a tuition break. Which makes those colleges great deals for New Yorkers if they can get in. For many, who don't qualify for a lot of financial aid, getting into one of those endowed schools is the only chance they have of being able to afford an Ivy League education.

But if you graduate from Cornell you graduated from Cornell, whether it was from the College of Arts and Sciences or the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (as Olbermann did). It's difficult to get into any of Cornell's schools, and no matter your school or major, you take classes in all of Cornell's colleges.

The looking down on the endowed colleges is a snob thing (as in, they are getting their education at a discount, so they are not legit). ... Ann Coulter took that snob thing to a whole new place to suggest that Olbermann's degree isn't legit or it is somehow from a Cornell that is not the Ivy League Cornell or that he is somehow claiming to be something he's not.

 

Olbermann comes off as a douche in that video. But he's still a douche with his Cornell degree -- which apparently he'd pin to his lapel if he could. It's as legit as Ann Coulter's degree, even if they both have serious problems.

I have no idea what the relative acceptance rates were in the 1970s for Cornell's various colleges. I would guess that it was always difficult to get into any of them.

Cornell's motto is “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study,” supposedly said by Ezra Cornell.

The University has world-class departments in just about any esoteric field of study you can think of -- and many of then fall within colleges other than the College of Arts and Sciences (which is essentially for the liberal arts majors).

One of the other endowed colleges is the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. There is a School of Human Ecology, which is also endowed by the state.

There are also specialized colleges that are not endowed -- it would be interesting to see Ann Coulter's take on graduates from the School of Hotel Administration, for example (which is the one that usually gets joked about). Or the Engineering or Architecture Colleges.

You can name any of Cornell's colleges and you could put together a pretty good list of alumni who were CEOs or judges or diplomats or Nobel or Pulitzer winners. From a google search, I just learned that Cornell's ag school alumni include the inventor of the chicken nugget, the president and GM of the Toronto Raptors, the inventor of birth control pills and a Nobel Laureate / plant geneticist.

 

Tailored by who, and in what way?

For what it is worth, the kid got rejected by Princeton, Yale, Vanderbilt and the University of Pennsylvania.

She wrote the thing and sent it to the WSJ. They printed it as an opinion piece.

The fact that her sister used to work at the Journal answers your question about why a kid from Pittsburgh would write something and send it to the WSJ.

Why is any of it so hard to believe?