A Priest, a Rabi, and a Williams Professor Walk into a Bar

The gold standard for college letters is the University of Chicago. One half of the postcard gave you an idea of student life through tidbits about school events--a goal of their scavenger hunt was to make a bat signal over the campus, a past admissions essay asked students to relate themselves to a Cartesian plane, silly bits of information like that. The other half of the card was for a response. It would ask what was on your bookshelf, or tell you to color the school's emblem, then send it back so they could hang it on a wall in the admissions office. The university used wit and brevity to create a memorable advertisement.

Williams College in Massachusetts apparently decided to try to be just as funny. I know this, because their cover letter told me.

"You hold in your hands the Williams Prospectus. I hope you will find its slightly irreverent tone both refreshing and informative. I also hope, after sometime perusing its pages, you'll decide to pay us a visit."

Okay, if you want to be irreverent, don't use the term irreverent, or prospectus, or perusing.

The Prospectus (which is apparently the proper name for the college booklets I keep getting) tries. On the front page it cites the percentage of alumni who think Williams is a good enough school that it shouldn't need brochures. They also try to lighten the statistics portion by including the percent of Williams students who watched less than an hour of TV each week. As someone who often watches more than an hour of TV per night, the number makes me think of Williams students as stuck up fuddy duddies.

This period of joviality (at least, by Williams' standards) could not last. By page twelve of the daunting 53 page "brochure" they're back to their old highfalutin ways.

"These are but three of 315 stories of faculty members who make their livelihood by contributing on both micro and macro levels--to their students' development, to their respective fields, and to the world at large."

Boy, those Williams kids sure do know how to have fun.