Bluto and Brown

"Animal House", 1978

A further sign my alma mater losing out : Brown not ranked in the Playboy-Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Top 10 party schools (Univ of Virginia #1).  When I was in college , we took some pride in being #13 and sniggered at places like Columbia and their uptight core curriculum and Latin requirements.  This was Brown in the '80s, trendy and full of confidence : the "experiment", introduced in '68 by Ira Magaziner, of zero academic requirements, pass or no-pass classes and no pluses nor minuses on traditional alphabet grades and anything lower than a "C" gone from the transcript  - well, that was all so vanguard. ..

I still get a lot of heat from my i banking friends who went to Harvard or Wharton Undergrad or some such place where the students forced to, you know, show up.  I recall, post college, interviewing candidates for Financial Analyst jobs and, without exception, the UPenn applicants presentable, able to use an HP12c, and could tell me the difference between a stock and a bond. Brown, on the other hand put up some awful kids ( tweed jackets, corduroy trousers .. one gal told me she had dyslexia) but also the very best . Brown always had something interesting to talk about.

Overall I felt the school got it mostly right : a fun place to learn, be challenged, find one's way and to party. This is all a part of the growing up (of course I did not think this at First Boston, where I was murdered for not knowing a balance sheet . .. ).  And these memories become all the more valuable the farther from the experience