Of course, the schools do their part, providing cheerleaders, spirit captains and mascots, alumni organizations, bumper stickers and entire color coordinated bookstores, all devoted to fostering this institutional pride.   After all, it behooves colleges to create loyalty amongst its students (more school pride = more alumni donations).

But along with the rather benign respect for one’s university, there is a more virulent strand of hubris taking over our campuses.

This isn’t your normal, everyday baseball-cap-with-my-school's-name-on-it wearing school spirit – this is really, really egregious School Narcissism.  This is over the top, everything-in-my-wardrobe-is-my-school's-colors, I-mention-my-alma-mater-twelve-times-a-conversation, I'm-obsessed-with-my-sorority have-you-SEEN-our-pledge-class School Pride.

Every school manufactures these walking irritations.  If you’re lucky, you’ve managed to avoid them – they all seem to flock to me.

I once knew a woman who was so proud that her two sons went to Ivy League schools, she made them wear sweatshirts emblazoned with their universities on the family Christmas card for years.

When I was at USC, I knew a fraternity that repeatedly insisted that they were “better” than the guys at UCLA – academically, economically, athletically, and in that highly competitive arena of shoe size.  My UCLA grad cousin reminded them that USC stands for “University of Spoiled Children,” and questioned the veracity of their supposed large feet.  “Everyone knows that UCLA men have bigger sneakers,” she sneers.  (What does that even MEAN??)

Then there’s my friend Sarah, whose resume reads like a dissertation on where to go to school if you want to really, really intimidate men.  Princeton, Harvard Law, Cambridge Ph.D (and she’s only 24).  She doesn’t deny her academic pickiness.

“I’m a snob when it comes to the schools of guys I date,” she admits, but claims she’s toned it down.  “I did once consider Penn slumming.”  She might as well just wear a shirt that says, “THE ODDS YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH ARE EXTREMELY HIGH."

Of course, it’s not just Ivy Leaguers who name-drop their institutions of higher learning. Southern schools, sororities, the Big 10, the techies, and the athletic powerhouses are just as bad.

“People in Ohio name-drop their schools all the time, but it’s all football related,” says Andrew, a University of Illinois graduate.  “One guy who played football at Villanova mentions it at least 10 times a week.  Another guy thinks his school and football team was unbelievably amazing, so he talks about it constantly.  Of course, he was the kicker, but he leaves that detail out.”

Of course, School Chauvinism, like most sins, is merely an extreme form of a universal human tendency – the desire to be part of an exclusive community.  The consequence of selective admissions is that with every group of accepted students, there’s also an out-group filled with those who were rejected.

For the latter group, the overzealous school spirit of the admitted students can rub them the wrong way.  After bragging that my mother graduated from Stanford for years, the venerable institution rejected both my younger brother and me.  Suddenly I wasn’t too keen to boast about it anymore.  I was now officially in the out-group, attending an institution with a lower rank – and therefore, I wasn’t as good.

“Identity politics by its very nature is based on those judgments,” says Dan, a political science senior at UC Berkeley.  “In order to motivate people, you assign them an identity and you frame that identity in opposition to an enemy – Harvard has Yale, Berkeley has Stanford, Ohio State has Michigan, and so on.  Competition is no fun without a rival.”

US News and World Report rankings are merely a symptom – the disease is human nature and its tendency to judge.  Who's the smartest, the prettiest, the richest, the best athlete?

In American society, one’s educational pedigree is a defining characteristic.  Until you get a job, it is arguably the defining characteristic.  And despite what your professors tell you, it’s not how much you learned, but the name on your diploma that people remember.  Believe me, they won’t shake your hand and ask for your transcript.

Whatever your desire, schools remain the fastest way to assert your (fill in the blank) favorite characteristic.  Some people want to be thought of as really smart, others want to be thought of as athletic, others want to be known as the best beer-pong champions in the nation. 

That these characteristics are almost always stereotypes is part of the bargain.  Whenever I need iron-clad proof of my preppiness, I pull out my Georgetown card (uh, not literally).  I suppose I could wear a green ribbon belt with the collar on my pink Lacoste polo turned up, but oh-so-casually mentioning that I’m a Hoya achieves the same result, with no fashion don’ts.

Some people aren’t into the stereotype their university bestows upon them – like Beth, a graduate of University of California Santa Barbara, which she describes as a “slacker party school.”

In her family, “UC Berkeley is the mecca of school pride. My grandfather went there, my grandmother went there, my father went there... and if you just subtract the ‘Santa’ out of UCSB, well, then they would all be happy to lie and say I went there too.”

Still, she continues, “I’m pretty sure if you graduate from Cal, especially if you’re from the Greek system, you’re a part of a cult of Skull and Bones proportions.”  While Beth laughs at their devotion from a distance, she’s still “a little perturbed that my family can claim to be magically smarter, more important, and a more prized member of the university food chain than me.”  She sighs, “But what can you do?”

Well, you can shun that type of outlook, like my friend Sean, a Wesleyan graduate, does.  “I try not to hang out with that kind of people.  I tend to believe that my college experience was the best, but I don't feel the need to brag.  I know, and that's enough.”

You can remind yourself that you are not your school, and that stupid people go to the best universities in the world – while smart people may go to some of the “worst.”  Remind yourself that great athletes have been known to attend some pretty athletically challenged universities.  And finally, remember that good-looking students do theoretically exist on MIT’s campus (although I have no proof of this).

It’s great to have a healthy pride in the place your parents (or you!) sunk thousands of dollars into.  But school spirit starts to become unhealthy when robust college esteem becomes narcissism, a substitute for your individual identity, or a crutch.

Of course, ultimately, says my friend Dan, “the a-hole who name-drops their college as a sophomore will, in five years, probably start name dropping their law firm, their investment bank, or their yacht club.  You just have to ignore them.  Or just lie and say you went to Harvard.”

Did I mention I went to Harvard?