I was relegated to that "second-tier" Vanderbilt , then received my MBA from another "second-tier" institution, Case-Western Reserve University (but my employer footed the entire bill while paying me a handsome salary, so how could I turn my nose up at that "demeaning" opportunity).

My brother and step-brother were both Yale-ies. My brother then received his PhD in Math and Physics at Stanford. My step-brother went to Vandy for LLB, then on to Harvard for LLM, then taught at Vandy Law School, then became Chief Justice of the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for 45 years.

My Sister was an accomplished pianist. She majored in English at Randolph Macon, then became Society Editor of The Chattanooga Times (which was co-owned with The New York Times by a Chattanooga Family, Adolph Ochs).

My father, aunt and uncle all graduated from Vandy. My grandfather, who was the 5th generation "gentleman farmer" of our 1780 land-grant, decided that since "the kids" were going into town every day, he would join them, and graduated from Vandy too . I had thought about Princeton, and would have easily made the cut, but now you see why I was more or less stuck with my "second-tier" legacy.

Then, as "give-back", I served as Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Vandy (basically pro bono) for 13 years while VP of IT at a $15B privately-held corporation.

JuJu received her Masters in Education from Vandy and taught in elementary and middle schools.

We all went to prep schools: McCallie, GPS, MBA, University School, etc.

McCallie pumped more knowledge and insight into me than any other institution. It was an awesome experience, about as rigorous as ere there be. But they never pushed ... they led and challenged, and made the difficult do-able.

I guess we simply didn't put enough stock in education, so there was no hope for us to have much in the way of "wisdom and ethics".

/snicker/

BTW, what was your undergrad? And what inspired you on to Columbia? I'm kind'a proud of what you did.