“Tell ‘em you go to Harvard.”

When I was at university, I ran track, and because the winters in Providence, Rhode Island are not conducive to preparing to run fast outdoors, the track team normally went somewhere warm(er) during spring break.

The team had an almost nonexistent budget, so our trips were done on the cheap, but we did manage to go to Bermuda one year (great place, but I was the only guy on the team who faced any competition, getting my ass kicked over 800 meters by Bermuda’s only Olympian), and a couple of times we went to Florida for the Florida Relays (where the quality of competition is high, especially in the sprints).

But this is not a story about track and field.

On one of our Florida Relays trips, we were staying at a no-tell motel outside of Gainesville, miles from the town (which was presumably jammed with sunburned, drunken college girls we never got a chance to meet).

It was a long walk to the nearest supermarket, but our shotputters, hammer and discus throwers quickly identified that Busch beer was on sale there for $2.99 a case (24 cans, cheaper than water!!!), bought many cases, and set themselves up next to the (very small and not at all clean) pool, occasionally trying to surf across it on the lids of their Igloo coolers.

A few of us skinnier guys decided we would venture further afield, having noticed that on the opposite side of the divided highway on which our motel was located, there was a bar. A Florida bar, the kind you’ve seen in a hundred movies about Southern rednecks: a one-story cinderblock building with the word “BAR” on the roof in red neon.

So, a few nights into our trip, Steve and Tim and Jan and I decide to check it out.

We dodge long-haul truckers and mosquitoes to get across the highway, pull open the door, and walk in.

Every head turns. All conversation stops.

Not exactly like the redneck bar scene in Eddie Murphy’s 48 Hours, but kinda.

The room was laid out with booths along the walls, with the bar as a central island. Every booth was occupied, and no one was sitting at the bar. In every booth was a couple or pair of couples. Everyone was blonde, all the girls were wearing American Graffiti-style sweaters over perky breasts, and all the guys had cleft chins and were presumably named Chad and Biff.

For our part, Steve and Tim and Jan and I looked like typically scruffy Ivy Leaguers. Jeans; t-shirts; long, unkempt hair.

That first glance around the room confirmed that none of us were going to get laid that night, and all the Chads and Biffs decided we were not an immediate threat, so they went back to their (presumably monosyllabic) conversations, and we headed straight to the bar, where the bartender looked a lot more like us than his customers.

He greeted us warmly, took our order for Budweisers (when in Rome!), and asked where we were from.

In Florida during spring break, almost every university student is from somewhere else, somewhere colder, and we explained that we were from Brown University, down for the Florida Relays.

The bartender nodded appreciatively, and said, “Brown, wow, great school.”

“But let me give you a tip. The girls down here don’t know Brown from blue. Tell ‘em you go to Harvard.”

We didn’t get a chance to talk to any girls that evening (silver lining: we didn’t get beaten up either!), but I’ve never forgotten that bartender’s advice, and eventually came to understand that globally, the only education brand that has any real value is Harvard.

Bullshit, you say? Well, I challenge you to walk down the street in Nairobi and ask 10 people what they know about Princeton or Cornell or Stanford or Oxford … or Brown.

Not planning a trip to Nairobi? Try it in Frankfurt. Or São Paulo. Or Bangkok.

Or hell, Dallas or Detroit.

Will they have heard of Harvard? Well, if they’ve heard of any overseas institution of higher learning, my bet is it will be Harvard.

Fast forward 30+ years and I’m in a meeting in Singapore. The attendees are from a half-dozen Asian countries, and include one American guy who runs a business in Hong Kong. I knew Eric had gone to Harvard (he ran track there!), and before our post-meeting dinner, he told me that the attendee from Thailand – I’ve forgotten his name, but let’s call him Somchai – wanted to speak with me about Brown, because his son was interested in applying.

We sit down to dinner, order drinks, and before the food comes, I tell the story – I can’t remember why – about walking into the bar in Florida.

I deliver the punchline (“The girls down here don’t know Brown from blue. Tell ‘em you go to Harvard”) and everyone laughs.

Somchai, working in his second language, takes a moment to absorb the story, then turns to Eric and says, “Wait, Eric, you went to Harvard, right?”

Without missing a beat, Eric says, “Nah. That’s just what I tell people.”

Which I loved, for its self-deprecation, so, so rare in that context.

You may have heard the old joke (with apologies to my Harvard friends!):

 “How can you tell if someone went to Harvard?”

“They tell you.”