Week in Review: July 20 - 26

Slow week here at the Ink desk, but we've scrounged around some bits for you. This week's theme is "disappointment." Princeton gets beat out in two things it holds most dearly: being compared to Hogwarts and making money. There's a band called Princeton, but not at all related to the university. Also, we reconsider the Derek Zoolander Center for Ants.

• IvyGate brings us our first disappointment of the week, a list of the "5 Campuses if you want the Harry Potter Experience." Katherine Cohen, one of those newfangled college application counselors, compiled the list, and seems to have used no method or reason to make the choices she did. Yale made the list (alright), and so did Cornell (what?). Cohen's reasoning: "Like competitors in the TriwizardChallenge, Cornellians wear their red scarves when they compete against their Ivy League rivals." Uh, cool, I guess. This might outrage Whitman kids, what with their Harry Potter nights and all, but come on guys, this is a blessing in disguise. We hope high school students don't seriously consider "the Harry Potter experience" when applying to colleges. Oh, wait, what's that Ms. Cohen?

Although none of my students have listed being a "muggle" on their resumes, many students have wanted to attend a campus that is reminiscent of what they have read or seen in Rowling's books.

Alright, Cornell, you can have those.

• So we're not as Hogwartsy as we thought, but we still have our money, right? Not so fast Richie Rich - Payscale.com reports Princeton alums rank 6th in starting salaries when entering the workforce, behind Harvard at number 3 and ahead of Yale at 9. "According to the study, a Princeton grad will take home a median starting salary of $65,000, with $124,000 the average yearly pay for a professional mid-career." That doesn't sound so bad compared to the rest of the nation (Rutgers' figures are 100 places down on the list), but you know who's beating us? Dartmouth. Yes, the same Dartmouth that produced this (admittedly great) video, inspired scenes of Animal House, and sports Keggy the Keg as an unofficial mascot. Something's not quite right.

• So there's a band called "Princeton." They're from Los Angeles, have released a new single, and didn't attend Princeton. Sorry, if you were expecting your own orange-and-black Vampire Weekend. But, according to their website, each track on their first EP "is lyrically focused upon a member of the influential Bloomsbury intellectual collective that existed in London during the early 20th century. Lyrical portraits of Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes are each presented in a different musical framework with lush orchestral arrangements." Wow. That's sooo Princeton.

• Some researchers from Arizona State and Princeton released a study this week that finds ants are more rational than humans. That's not to say they're "smarter" than us, but they just make more rational decisions because of the "collective decision-making" ant colonies engage in. Derek Zoolander is reportedly regretting his hasty decision.