Re: Ivy League Schools

• From: shawn_pickrell
• Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 20:47:50 -0700
• Message-ID: <000TDI6F6.000SVQF61.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

Hi Brian, hope you're doing well. 

You
pose a good question. I remember when I was a
parliamentary debater in freshman year of college (I was as bad
_at_ debate as I was skilled in quizbowl), our captain
said his favourite thing to do was to face Harvard E
in the first round (after that things were Swiss
paired) and watch their faces as they slammed Harvard E.
Spite is an important motivating factor.

Who
have been the top programs over the
years?

Harvard has probably been the best of the Ivies. Maryland
has been good. Georgia Tech has been good. Chicago
has been good. Michigan has been good. UC-Berkeley
has been good. Virginia has been good. Those seven
schools have won most of the titles that there have been
to be won. Stanford, Illinois and others can lay
claim to be part of this elite group. 

Of those
six schools, Maryland is probably the least stringent
of them in terms of admissions requirements and
general reputation. The other six IIRC were all listed as
Most Competitive in my dog-eared copy of Barron's
Guide to Colleges dating back to 1991. I seriously
doubt anything has been changed since then. 

A
great program is created through several
coincidences:

1. A founder, someone willing to expend the energy
to see this endeavour off the ground. This need not
be a student.
2. People willing to follow the
founder.
2a. Either the founder or the followers are naturally
talented. (Note the Jon Lazar effect, he created a briefly
prominent program _at_ UMBC but was only the 3d or 4th best
player there.)
3. The creation of a culture where a
significant subset of students _at_ that school feel that (a)
studying for QB and other QB/intellectual preparation is
fun/cool/good and (b) where other students are welcome. A few
briefly good programs have unfortunately been more or
less closed to 'outsiders' and have withered after the
founders graduate. 

If (3) is created, then random
freshmen will come in and only a severe drought of natural
talent will ruin the program. However, the leaving of a
non-student founder coupled with inadequate preparation for
the life after can also sink a program. Notice the
steady decline of Georgia Tech after Jim Dendy left.


Of your theories, Brian, I would wager (c) is the
most likely, also keeping in mind that (1) the Ivies
don't have a monopoly on reputation and (2) it only
takes a core of 3-6 students to form a good club. This
core can be found in many places, notice the brief
success of Quincy, Randolph-Macon, Earlham and
others.

Shawn Pickrell