It’s a fact of life: Facebook has made incoming Ivy League freshmen retarded - at least until they arrive on campus and reveal how awkward and un-cool they truly are. Meet “Stephany Her RoyalHighness,” Princeton ‘12, author of a ludicrous post on the discussion board of the Princeton 2012 Facebook group. She writes:

Dear Class of 2012,

I only hold you to the same standards I hold myself to and I HATE being disappointed.

Having said that, do not let ANYONE tell you that you are not better than them, because you are. We are the elite, we are the 0.0000001% of the world who have spent the last four years of our lives either blackmailing or working our asses off. There was something that got you here—whether it was daddy’s money or your #1 ranking in the nation, you are here and you are better. You have mercilessly beaten out your friends, your girlfriends, your boyfriends, your brothers, your sisters and every one you have loved. Don’t apologize for it, revel in it. YOU. ARE. BETTER. Why deny it?

Don’t be held back now—you are in your prime. Starting from the first day you step on campus, there is no past, there is no judgment. You are beautifully brand new. Wherever you came from, whatever you have been through, whoever you knew: that counts for nothing now. It only matters who you are now.

Try everything once: Pilates, squash, open mic night, tantric sex. What do you have to lose? When you risk everything, you have anything to gain.
If someone says you can’t. Don’t answer. Walk away and prove them wrong.

Princeton is famous for its elitism and for fostering loyalty among its students and alumni but “Stephany” - if there’s really an incoming Princeton freshman behind that facile alias - is someone different altogether. Read her post in its entirety after the jump.

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Certain things: death, taxes, pre-frosh baring their innermost secrets on Faceook, never seem to get old. Remember back when the now-esteemed Class of 2011 discussed their favorite drinks with the world (consensus: beer is gross, but foreign beer is like okay)?

Well, members of the Class of 2012 are not so different than their intrepid predecessors: they still like to talk about how much they love mojitos and margaritas and that “jager = good taste” (!!!!) and that they hate beer because it “smells funny and looks kind of funny too.”

Indeed, worried that Princeton is for squares, Mary-Jane Smith (what a clever pseudonym!) writes in:

I made a fake ID (ok, the name’s really lame… whatever) Do a lot of people smoke weed? And since the 17- 19 preview is near 420, will there be a lot of smoking? Because personally I smoke at least once a week and I was wondering if anyone else at Princeton did the same…

Still the vast majority of the 2012’s have moved on to a more important subject: themselves. They want to answer the most burning of questions: in this, the most competitive of all college seasons, how did they get in?  We’ll let them tell you themselves:

You guys think you have tough choices! Ha! Listen to this… I got into Harvard, UPenn, Yale, Brown, CalTech, Stanford, MIT, and Dartmouth. Unfortunately, I somehow got denied from Cornell, which I really liked, but I was in all likelihood overqualified. This was unfortunate.

One Yalie on how “funny” life can be:

omg its so funny. like i got accepted here, but waitlisted at harvard and princeton. i mean what the fuck

After the jump: the academic records you never wanted to see.

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From our inbox:

On last Sunday evening, the Yale Society for the Exploration of Campus Secrets (YSECS) held a meeting for freshman recruits.  Basically, they promised that all YSECS members are actively recruited for the CIA.  For the past week, tons of freshman have been aimlessly wandering Sterling library in search of a secret room where supposedly professors would go to hide from their students (freshman were told of this room at the meeting and told that if they found it or other hidden places, they could be tapped for ysecs).  A group of four freshman (1 girl and 3 boys) were told the location and wandered into the room.  The room is actually on top of the L & B Reading Room in Sterling Library.  At 9:45 Thursday evening, they were crawling in the room and broke through the ceiling of the reading room sending large chunks of plaster to the ground, within a packed room of studying students.  They came down and then stood around gaping at their hole in the ceiling.  A Yale security walked in and they quickly left.  A student studying and observing this whole escapade ratted them out.  New Haven police were then seen interrogating them outside Sterling Library.  There are rumors circulating Yale campus of them being sent to the ex-comm.

Eh, who cares. We’ve seen this before in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Pictures of the alleged damage after the jump.

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As they await further word on *allegedly* libidinous Admissions Dean Lee Stetson’s departure, the playful scribes at the Daily Pennsylvanian are venturing into more frivolous subject matters. Yesterday’s edition featured an unusually long feature about shitfaced freshmen pissing on one of the school’s 432,542 Benjamin Franklin memorials (right). It’s a little bit amazing.

Erotic peeing after the jump.

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Because after only two weeks with strangers in a strange land, you might get made fun of by a jackass 14,000-circulation magazine you’ve never heard of, by soulless editors you’ve never seen, for trying to appear confident/fetching in a headshot taken at Sears that your mom probably made you dress for. Penn ‘11, meet 34th Street Magazine’s “Freshmen Superlatives.”

(Let’s get full disclosures out of the way: I was Editor-in-Chief of 34th Street in 2006. Go ahead and complain, but I don’t even know half of these people anymore.)

Street, the Daily Pennsylvanian’s weekly culture magazine, released in today’s first issue its annual–and highly popular, as these things go–”Superlatives.” In years past this meant stealing a copy of the freshmen directory, scanning funny headshots and writing a superlative for each (think high school yearbook). “Superlative” eventually became “random asshole comment,” and this year the University didn’t even publish a freshmen directory. Street editors took shots from Facebook instead.

Click on the top image for a JPEG of unrelenting abasement. And if you’re a Penn freshman not seen here, you’ve dodged your first bullet.

• Brown: You will change in college. Did I st-st-stutter? 
• Columbia: College rankings should consider quality of life, Columbia’s forte
• Cornell: More like Barack Schmo-bama! Joe Biden, now that’s the ticket
• Penn: Provost encourages freshmen to “experiment and play.” Aaaand wow
• Yale: Welcome to “Yale’s hallowed grounds,” youse illegals

And a special treat from the August 27 Columbia Spectator, as introduced by Jacob Savage: “I recently sponsored a pre-frosh writing contest for Poetic Excellence in the Field of Inane Drivel in my head. There were no contestants, but there is a winner.” Envelope please: “Tread Softly, for You Tread on My Dreams.“

Want to write RagTime? E-mail us saying you want to write RagTime and are qualified.

IvyGate paid close attention to the Columbia Class of 2011 this summer. Some claimed to party hard, others waxed robotic and one was *allegedly* a Kazakhstani target of a consultant’s mindfucking. None, we assume, had actually met each other until the last week. As the Columbia Spectator’s Josh Hirschland reports from in the field, our high expectations for this bunch were unwarranted. The Columbia Class of 2011 is neither chic, nerdy or nerdy-chic. They’re just freshmen.

Hirschland oversaw a group of freshmen during Columbia’s New Student Orientation Program (NSOP). He dreaded that they’d live up to their Facebook rep–”as annoyingly too-cool as past years’ classes, but their collective haughtiness would be better organized.” IvyGate salivated at the the possibility.

The “annoying” manifested itself all too quickly:

On Tuesday, students neglected to forfeit their seats on a crosstown bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to elderly New Yorkers who were trying to get home. And yes, they walked five abreast on the sidewalk, blocking anybody on their path.

Take that, you old fucks. But after solidifying the Ivy League freshman’s reputation as the worst thing to happen to a community, the ’11s suckified and spent the week eating ice cream:

At the big party on Ellis Island, people not only showed up but kept grousing to a minimum despite long lines and being stranded in New York Harbor. Even at CU: Take One-neé The BlaZe and formerly CUnity-orientation leaders had to restrain their groups-afterwards, my group ate ice cream on Low Steps. …More people attended a free ice cream event put on by Hillel than the biggest party of the week held in a first-year residence hall.

Harumph. What about sex? Did anyone have sex? People must have hooked up after the first-year mixer:

At the last formal event of the week, students dressed to the nines in suits, dresses, and fedoras–

“Fedoras” means a) no one reached second base all week b) it’s time we never read another word about the Columbia ’11s. What a disappointing batch of potential fuckwiths. Could someone please destroy Facebook groups now?

We’ve already brought you some of the Class of 2011’s incredible exploits. Yet there’s something infinitely worse than pre-frosh acting dumb: upperclassmen who deign to give freshmen advice in campus newspapers. Year after year, we are subjected to the selfsame verbal diarrhea as semi-nostalgic upperclass columnists blow smoke up their own asses.

These advices employ a time-old formula of mixing general banalities with college-specific banalities, i.e., “you have such wonderful opportunities at [school] and should totally take advantage of [local record shop or bar in town].”

After the jump, a round-up of the inane “wisdom” to which the Class of 2011 is being so cruelly subjected.

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It’s us: Hal Parker, Jacob Savage and Jim Newell. Regular readers may remember us from our summer guest editing stints. We offer them a truce.

We’re excited to be editors for infinity and will try to build off of Nick and Chris’ model. Big ups to them, of course. Thanks for trusting us with your baby. Nick and Chris still own things, but probably won’t show up unless we get sued >3.76 times a week.

Also, thanks to other summer guest editors and regular tipsters for maintaining the foundation these lazy last few months. We want to build up our contributor base in the next few months, so if you have any interest in getting involved please e-mail us at ivygate@gmail.com.

This week we’ll be making fun of freshmen a lot, a lot a lot, for they are a curious breed. Send in your best stories from the first couple weeks of school involving freshmen iconoclasm. We will also have real things.

Looking forward to making new happy friends,

Hal Parker, Jacob Savage & Jim Newell 

IvyGate’s AA bureau chief checks in with a public service announcement for the Yale Class of 2010:

After a week of Camp Yale and a week of classes, you’re tired of entryway parties. But with the CONSTANT TERROR OF ANNIHILATION, you still need a drink to steady your nerves. Off campus, New Haven is a minefield of humiliating establishments, so we offer this idiot’s guide to the Have’s diamonds in the rough:

BAR
Don’t be fooled by the contrived, minimalist name. BAR is a solid choice for an evening out. They brew their own beers and the pizza gives Peppe’s and Sally’s a run for their money. Unless you’re the kind of freshman who runs the floor Xbox network, you should know by now that Thursdays at BAR are a keystone of the Yale social scene. Only Freestyle Dueling Association members and DSers whose Kant papers are due Friday at 9 can afford to miss it.

Rudy’s
Many would call this New Haven’s best bar, and they’d almost be right (see next entry). Rudy’s has it all: genuine Yale memorabilia, surly bar staff, and townie punks who hate you and everything you stand for. Bring a good fake though, because the bouncers are pros and they’ll keep your McDougall Street ID before you have a chance to tell them who your father is.

Anchor
The sleeping giant of the Elm City bar scene. The vaguely nautical decor is effortlessly hip. Anchor is known as a bit of grad student hangout, so it’s a great place to watch your TAs at play. The only mistake you can make there is getting stuck in the overflow space (the “Mermaid Room”) in the basement, which is too reminiscent of a rapist’s rec room to be any fun.