Here is an article in the Columbia Daily that does a pretty good job of describing what it is like to be a conservative on just about any secular or government college campus in America today. With regard to a previous article written on this topic, Jake Goldwasser writes the following:
…he talks about how once we leave Columbia we will leave the domain of constant self-congratulation and enter a world that is skeptical of our institution. It is not that professors collect empirical evidence to support liberal claims that makes the world sneer at places like Columbia. It is the self-righteous attitude, the certainty of conviction that comes from an institution whose purpose is to foster doubt and balanced discourse and critical thinking.
I appreciated the article in its effort to describe the reality of the undergraduate Ivy League world. Nevertheless, I think both this article and the one to which the above quotation refers, overestimate the level of accomplishment required to gain entrance to a liberal arts degree at an Ivy League school. Sadly, the level of knowledge attained by earning such a liberal arts degree is equally as suspect. The “real” world has figured out that ethnicity, money, connections, personal (politically correct) proclivities, ACT/SAT preparation classes, and checking the right social participation boxes is more important than real ability when applying to these schools, especially when it comes to liberal arts degrees. Many of us have too much experience dealing with the products of these institutions to consider them elite in any meaningfuly way.
Still, and I am sincere about this, thanks for trying to understand.