{"id":17325,"date":"2013-11-20T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=17325"},"modified":"2013-11-20T08:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:49:42","slug":"college-admissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/20\/college-admissions\/","title":{"rendered":"COLLEGE ADMISSIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A college kid<\/strong><\/span> told my band’s guitarist he went to Columbia University, and my guy said, \u201cWhere\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

That knocked the college boy back a few SAT points.<\/p>\n

College quiz question: What college narrowly missed being in the original Ivy League football conference?<\/p>\n

Answer: Colgate University.*<\/p>\n

Another<\/strong><\/span> fact:<\/strong><\/span> Yiddishe Cup once shared the bill with the Colgate glee club at a Cleveland wedding.<\/p>\n

More: Former MIT folk dancers are a solid market for Yiddishe Cup.\u00a0 Yiddishe Cup has played several simchas <\/em>for MIT folk dancers.<\/p>\n

Regionally speaking, I was loyal to Ohio State for many years.\u00a0 My dad took me to Ohio State homecoming games every year. \u00a0My father lived in a corner of Ohio Stadium, in the scholarship dorm, the Tower Club, which was actually a barracks with cots. My dad often said some of the gentiles at Ohio State, back in the 1930s, thought Jews had horns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A New<\/strong><\/span> Jersey woman — a potential bar mitzvah customer — called me and said, \u201cI went to Ohio U. in the 1980s.\u00a0 All the kids from Mentor and Madison [Ohio] thought I had horns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Buckeye marching band had horns.\u00a0 (Horns and percussion. No clarinets.)<\/p>\n

The only time my father yelled at a TV was when Ohio State played Cincinnati for the 1961 basketball championship.\u00a0 Who won?\u00a0 [Cincinnati, 70-65.]<\/p>\n

I attended<\/strong><\/span> a college-rejection shiva<\/em>. The shiva<\/em> — at Corky & Lenny\u2019s restaurant in April 1968 — was for a friend who was rejected by every college he applied to. He got in nowhere!\u00a0 He was ranked fifth, or so, in our high school class, but every college turned him down because the high school guidance counselor didn\u2019t like him and wrote a negative recommendation.\u00a0 (He was way too political for my school.)<\/p>\n

We sat in the corner booth at C&Ls and drank chocolate phosphates, commiserating with our friend.\u00a0 We were all in somewhere, and he wasn’t.<\/p>\n

He eventually got accepted to Ohio State on a late application. Back then, if you had a heartbeat you could get into OSU.\u00a0 He wound up in an OSU high-rise dorm with 16 guys per suite.\u00a0 It wasn’t anything like the house system at Harvard.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I knew<\/strong><\/span> a college counselor at University School, a private boys\u2019 school in Cleveland.\u00a0 If the counselor put in a good word for you, you were in.\u00a0 Harvard, Yale, you name it.\u00a0 Harvey Mudd. Deep Springs.<\/p>\n

The counselor didn\u2019t believe his own myth.\u00a0 Go to a school that was a “good fit,” he\u00a0 said.\u00a0 (“Good fit” was the watchword of\u00a0 college counselors.)\u00a0 This counselor went to Harvard, a “good fit” for a college counselor.<\/p>\n

Here’s a tip for high school kids: on your application, focus on something esoteric.\u00a0 Write:\u00a0 \u201cI want to be a klezmer musician because it is the cornerstone of my existence.\u201d\u00a0 Describe a setback you have faced.<\/em> \u201cMy parents don’t like klezmer music. They are so<\/em> wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been thinking about klezmer my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

No guarantees, but give it a try.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

*The statement about Colgate narrowly missing out on the Ivy League football conference may be apocryphal.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

OSU Tower Club residents, 1937.\u00a0 Click on the photo to make it bigger.\u00a0 “Tower\u00a0 Club,” a sign,\u00a0 is on the stadium entrance to the left of “Toby.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A college kid told my band’s guitarist he went to Columbia University, and my guy said, \u201cWhere\u2019s that?\u201d That knocked the college boy back a few SAT points. College quiz question: What college narrowly missed being in the original Ivy League football conference? Answer: Colgate University.* Another fact: Yiddishe Cup once shared the bill with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-klezmer","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17325"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17473,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions\/17473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}