Maybe we don't understand these things because we didn't go to an Ivy League school. But it would seem to us that the first part of getting yourself perceived as one of the cool kids — as a big front-of-Metro takeout in Saturday's Times explained a crew of Cornell kids is trying to do — would be to not have big front-of-Metro takeouts on how damn hard you're trying to become one of the cool kids.

Especially when the lead activist — a branding expert, no less — is quoted saying that when the school's U.S. News ranking drops, "my value as a human being feels like it's dropping."

No wonder there are so many suicides.

Cornell's Worried Image Makers Wrap Themselves in Ivy [NYT]

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