According to an article in Sunday’s New York Times, schools once institutionalized as safeties for Ivy aspirants are becoming first choices themselves due to higher application rates. It’s a pretty no-fucking-shit argument, but the Times goes further and offers the kids this juicy morsel:

If you want an intellectually rigorous, urban campus, the University of Chicago may be a fallback for the University of Pennsylvania. If you fell in love with Columbia for its international studies program, consider Georgetown as a safety.”

Whosawhatsitnow? I thought Chicago and Georgetown were like, hard to get into and stuff. Didn’t U.S. News & World Report rank Chicago and Columbia as a tie for ninth in 2007? Isn’t Georgetown ranked sixteenth for selectivity, six spots above Cornell? Sounds like this “world report” should read the Times‘ naughty little secret: any Ivy League wannabe can get into Georgetown and Chicago. How ignorant we all were before this tell-all!

Read the Times, you bright-eyed 16-year-old Ivy gropers. The old standby safeties may be competitive now, but you’ll always have stinky Georgetown and Chicago to land on. Lying liars like U.S. News might rank them as top-tier, but, um, do you see an “Ivy” in the names of their leagues? If you can’t get into those “schools,” then stop masquerading as a student and go to voky.

And don’t say the Times might be wrong. When has the Times ever been wrong about serious issues in recent years?

If you hadn’t caught onto the sarcasm, hopefully that last sentence cleared it up. It’s not that I hate the Times. I enjoy Frank Rich’s columns instantly confirming my predetermined views as much as the next guy. But describing Chicago and G’town as safety schools for anyone is like saying that I have job prospects. I know only one person who ever got into Georgetown but 3.5 who got into Princeton. Does the Times want no one to go to college, like heartbroken Colin Hanks in Orange County? Find some real safety schools. We can’t all be like that girl who refused to read Romeo & Juliet:

–JIM NEWELL