Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States

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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - kept - SimonP 14:45, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

HYP (universities) (see also College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States and Harvard-Yale-Princeton)[edit]

User:Vciousangel placed a VFD tag on top of this page on June 1; however, this user failed to list the page on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 June 1 and also linked to the old VFD debate six months ago at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYP (universities). I am listing this article on VFD on behalf of User:Vciousangel even though I personally believe this article should not be deleted. Warning to anonymous users: Your votes are not counted on VFD. —Lowellian (talk) 23:39, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

User:Uncle G moved this page from HYP (universities) to College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States after the VFD was under way. I have moved it back. Let the VFD vote finish first before moving the article. Additional note: Uncle G might want to seek concensus to move the article before moving it. —Lowellian (talk) 01:26, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
User:Uncle G has now moved this page again from HYP (universities) to College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States and also split it up that article and to Harvard-Yale-Princeton. Also, Uncle G deleted my comment [1], which is a clear violation of Wikipedia policy against erasing other people's comments. —Lowellian (talk) 01:47, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
Uncle G deleted more of my comments, again violating Wikipedia policy [2]. —Lowellian (talk) 01:54, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
Page history is working oddly due to the frequent page moves and server lag. —Lowellian (talk) 01:54, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
Can I ask another admin to protect the page to its location when this VFD started on HYP (universities)? Most of the votes thus far on this VFD page were for that page, not the rewritten and different and split-off pages College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States and Harvard-Yale-Princeton. If Uncle G wants to write those articles, he should do so when this VFD is over. Also, Uncle G's deletions of my comments are very inappropriate. —Lowellian (talk) 02:00, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
Uncle G did not delete any of my comments. They were moved below, so I missed them. My apologies to him for accusing him of deleting my comments when he did not. I have stricken out my wrong accusations above. —Lowellian (talk) 03:18, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. First, the term is formally used in the names of sports meets held by the three schools. Second, it is widely informally used in the academic and student world, especially in the United States, but it is not even limited to the United States, as for example these articles from the South Korean Korea Times [3] and the British New Stateman [4] attests. Third, consider these Google results which demonstrate how much more common this term is as opposed to other variations (which have recently been making the rounds on Wikipedia; see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPS, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPSM, and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPSMC):
    • "hyp AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton)" - 31200
    • "yhp AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton)" - 1410
    • "hyps AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton OR stanford)" - 978
    • "hpy AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton)" - 653
    • "hpysm AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton OR stanford OR mit)" - 8
    —Lowellian (talk) 23:39, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
    • The problems with those latter searches are (a) that they presume that HYPS is always going to be expanded to include one of the actual names (which it isn't — When researching the initialism for Wiktionary I found instances where it was used without expansion, with the apparent presumption that readers would know what the letters stood for without having to be explicit.) and (b) that the initialism under consideration is actually HYPSM not HPYSM. ☺ Uncle G 03:09, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
    Regarding your point (b):
    • "hypsm AND (harvard OR yale OR princeton OR stanford OR mit)" - 225
    —Lowellian (talk) 12:25, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree, keep. Bbpen 01:32, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep: with a change in title, the article is no longer claiming priority over the letters. Although I still think there is a limited amount to say about the acronymn qua acronymn and that the thing could be done with a simple link page, my own objections from before have been answered amply, and I am happy to change my vote. Geogre 23:53, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • keep Some unfamiliar with this term may raise POV issues, but there is no doubt these are the three most prestigious universities in the country. The law of of the land (the US News rankings) has ranked these schools in the top three in almost every year of the ranking's existence. Some would argue this term still favors Harvard. But outside of partisan school spirit bickering there is no question which school is the nation's preeminent. lots of issues | leave me a message 00:06, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Verifiable and notable. Has this term been included in the articles for the three universities? Harro5 00:14, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Lowellian knows the exacting and proper use of Google. :) This article is well written, verifiable, and NPOV. func(talk) 00:18, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I disagree. See above. Uncle G 03:09, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
    • Sigh...so now I'm just confused by this whole issue. No vote. func(talk) 01:51, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I still vote delete. From the second article "I had no idea what it stood for, and I am an alum of the H part of this acronym." I just don't think it's notable. Worthwhile in the wiktionary? Perhaps. Wikipedia? No. Wikibofh 00:15, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. I fixed the format--VfD isn't a place for straw polls. See this for an explanation. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:38, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, but look for a more proper name. Indeed, the most real usage is for namins sports events. General-purpose naming for "Big Three universities" is not so wellestablished. mikka (t) 01:06, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Verifiable, well-sourced, NPOV, and in common use. Maybe move to Harvard-Yale-Princeton or a similar title. --Carnildo 01:15, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • NEW INFORMATION: Strong delete -- this Google-based analysis is completely fallacious. "Hyp" is a common prefix and abbreviation which appears in thousands of documents. While "HYP AND (Harvard OR Yale OR Princeton)" has 32000 results, "PHY AND (Princeton OR Harvard OR Yale)" has 673000 results, and "HSM AND (Harvard OR Stanford OR MIT)" has 474000 results! Are Harvard, Princeton, and Yale often referred to together? Sure. Is HYP a term that anyone recognizes out of context? No way. It's an interesting acronym for a dictionary site, completely unsuitable for a Wikipedia entry. That's why this was deleted before. -- Fenster 01:46, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment. It was only undeleted for the history. This should be kept for GFDL purposes unless the derived article has been deleted. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 02:50, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment. As I mentioned before on Talk:HYP (universities), "PHY AND (Princeton OR Harvard OR Yale)" only returns as many results as it does because PHY is an abbreviation for "physics" that is often used in course catalog names. As for "HSM AND (Harvard OR Stanford OR MIT)", the problem is that the search is skewed by German language results ("mit" in the German language means "with"). If you restrict to English-language sites, then "HSM AND (Harvard OR Stanford OR MIT)" returns 27,300 results (a mere 6% of the 474,000 in all languages), while "HYP AND (Harvard OR Princeton OR Yale)" still returns 30,100 results (as compared to 32,800 in all languages). —Lowellian (talk) 12:40, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
      • Comment. Yes, and as I mentioned just above, the reason that HYP returns results is because Hyp is a common prefix and abbreviation in the English language. If it's a single word or abbreviation, and it's not even recognized by the dictionary, then it's not enough of a real term to warrant an encyclopedic entry. Fenster 08:39, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It does indeed seem to be a term in actual use, and not a fluke, an in-joke, etc. But that's all it seems to be -- a term. I agree with the reasoning of Wikibofh and Fenster: delete. -- Hoary 03:00, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
  • Keep, this one I'd keep as opposed to others that have been previously debated. HYP is a subset of the ivy league that is a commonly used term, especially among sports within the three. Harvard, Yale or Princeton couldn't don't care at all whether they are number one in the ivy league--they just want to beat each other. (Although, Yale couldn't give a shit about Princeton.) Take a look at the Yale athletics site: "HYP champions," it will say (some years). CoolGuy 03:02, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • At Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPS and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPSMC I initially agreed with Func on a redirect to Ivy League. I've changed my mind. Both of those articles (and also HYPSM and hyps) should redirect to this article, wherever it ends up. Geogre makes a good point that this article isn't really about the initialism. Wiktionary can (and now does) handle the initialisms. This article is about the facts that a small group of universities is generally regarded as being distinguished from all of the rest and that that group is considered as a unit. (These facts are hardly unique to the United States, either. They are true for several countries.) The problem, as mikkalai says here and as Dpbsmith says in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYPSMC when talking about having articles for all of the combinations of letters, is the name of this article. hyps, HYPS, HYPSM, HYPSMC, and this article are all basically POV forks of a single article dealing with the single concept of a small group of institutions. When it comes to admissions, people don't agree which universities are generally regarded to be in the group, and in what order to rank them within the group. There's a perfectly fine encyclopaedia article to be had here, about these very things. As per the NPOV, Wikipedia should stay out of the argument, though. All of these articles should be redirects to a single article with a neutral title, which I suggest this one be Renamed to. Unfortunately, I suspect that the name is going to be cumbersome, and nothing springs to mind that isn't problematic. Harvard-Yale-Princeton has the same problem as the other titles of being too definite and too ordered. Big Three universities is out because (as shown by this rash of little articles, and by real-world usage) people don't even agree that there are solely three universities in the group. Something like Highest ranked universities in the United States probably encompasses too broad a scope. Elite universities in the United States is just as controversial a title as these initialisms are. A merger into Ivy League ignores the fact that this isn't quite the same thing; some people including at least two non-Ivy institutions in the group, and equally excluding some of the Ivy institutions. College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States might work, although that would involve factoring out the three-letter athletic meets into a separate article (for which Harvard-Yale-Princeton is a good candidate) and disambiguating more finely between the meets and the admissions shorthands at HYP. Uncle G 03:09, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
    • Comment: Uncle, you agree with Geogre, but while Geogre votes keep, he/she adds "there is a limited amount to say about the [acronym] qua [acronym]". Meanwhile, all I've learnt is that the term bunches together three universities for somewhat self-congratulatory, PR purposes: if they're "selective", this must be qualified by consideration of "legacy" dullards, etc. As you've pointed out, there are plenty of these acronyms; I say, let those people who are interested google for them, and let the snobs and PR industry produce pages for them. -- Hoary 07:07, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
      • Clarification: I take it as our mission to NPOV to ask only that it be verifiably in use and potentially needed to answer a researcher's question, so I voted keep. The reason is that I think that HYP ain't no great thing, myself (how hard is it to turn out great scholars when you only accept people who need no teaching in the first place?), but the effective use of this hype is sufficient to have a smallish article that answers the need of potential researchers. If the article is safely away from other "hyp" lemmae, I can't object or see that it violates deletion policy. So, even though I don't think it's a good idea, I have to presumptively keep. (Besides, Cornell is kicking their rears in most fields, and Stanford and CalTech do, too, and the old sisters of the south are nipping at their heels.) Geogre 14:29, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • I've expanded the discussion of admissions shorthands to include all of the initialisms and renamed the article to College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States, the best name that I could come up with (better names are welcome). I've also separated out the Harvard-Yale-Princeton athletic league into Harvard-Yale-Princeton (which was a redirect with no significant prioer history and so wasn't a merger). Please re-read the articles now. Do you now learn more than you did? Uncle G 01:37, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
  • Comment looks rather like [5] with some typos and changes to pass a copyvio test. Since the term appears to be real, it may in fact belong. I'm just not sure that this is the correct article text. Vegaswikian 04:55, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - Ive heard this term quite a lot, quite notable and should be kept -CunningLinguist 08:16, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep: common abbreviation for a collection of famous universities. Capitalistroadster
    • At 21:20, 2005 Jun 8, 64.12.116.69 altered Capitalistroadster's vote from "Keep: Common abbreviation..." to "Delete: ? abbreviation" Here is the diff. I'm changing it back now. It's alarming to realize that this went undetected for over a week. -- Hoary 13:38, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is a real abbreviation that has been in common use for at least half a century. I hate academic boosterism and I hate the tendency of our university articles to accumulate fat paragraphs that shove cardinal-and-gray or big green peacock-feather-butts in the reader's face. The present article on HYP isn't very good. Nevertheless, it is quite conceivable that someone might encountered the abbreviation somewhere and look it up for an explanation. Furthermore, a factual, neutral description of academic prestige in the United States--as opposed to assertions that "my own school has it"--would be in order somewhere. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:24, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Though I voted to delete last time around, and still don't believe the term to be very common or more than borderline notable, I take the repeated re-creation of the article as evidence that there's a need for it to exist in some form. (In brief, I agree with Geogre and Dpbsmith.) -- Rbellin|Talk 16:00, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete drini ☎ 19:07, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • User:Uncle G moved this page from HYP (universities) to College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States after the VFD was under way. I have moved it back. Let the VFD vote finish first before moving the article. Additional note: Uncle G might want to seek concensus to move the article before moving it. —Lowellian (talk) 01:26, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • And I moved the VFD page to match, too, to ensure that the link wasn't broken. As for consensus, there are four editors above who state that a better name is called for. I've given you a better name to discuss. I've also broken out Harvard-Yale-Princeton to address Hoary's concerns. Uncle G 01:37, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
  • User:Uncle G has now moved this page again from HYP (universities) to College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States and also split it up that article and to Harvard-Yale-Princeton. Also, Uncle G deleted my comment [6], which is a clear violation of Wikipedia policy against erasing other people's comments. —Lowellian (talk) 01:47, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • False. I refactored it into chronological order, just as I have done this one. Read the diff that you linked to more closely. Please add your comments to the bottom of the discussion. Uncle G 01:51, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
  • Uncle G deleted more of my comments, again violating Wikipedia policy [7]. —Lowellian (talk) 01:54, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh do please learn to read Lowellian. Start with properly reading the diff that you yourself pointed to, as I've already pointed out once. The only person around here deleting comments is, ironically, you. You deleted one of mine. More ironically, it was the very one telling you that no comments had been deleted, merely moved into chronological order, and that you simply hadn't read the diff properly. To make a point, I've left your duplicated comments in, this time around. Uncle G 02:18, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
  • Uncle G did not delete any of my comments. They were moved below, so I missed them. My apologies to him for accusing him of deleting my comments when he did not. I have stricken out my wrong accusations above. —Lowellian (talk) 03:18, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • No worries. I in turn take back my exasperated comment above. Anyway, back to the discussion at hand. ☺ I've dinged some talk pages. Uncle G 04:47, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
  • Merge College admissions and ranking shorthands to HYP and clean-up I think we should cover the considerable distance HYP has in money, alumni, etc. compared to all other schools...although it's unclear to me whether this is a minor social thing of people associated with top schools or an actual issue (ie I don't have sources). DirectorStratton 02:30, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
  • By the way, Lowellian is a Harvard student. CoolGuy 03:09, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I wonder what house he resides in? Dpbsmith (talk) 17:29, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • comment Let's not forget about AWS - Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore - the top LACs lots of issues | leave me a message 05:08, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • comment Sigh! Can we please try to discourage the use of acronyms altogether? To me, AWS stands for "Automatic Warning System", used to advise British train drivers of what the next signal is showing. And what the hell is a LAC? -- Arwel 11:32, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • A Little Arrogant College. But what's with AWS? Everyone knows Haverford is the best. Heck, its name even sounds like "Harvard," what more proof do you need? Dpbsmith (talk) 19:43, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep this one (College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States) and redirect the other variations to here. As other variations come up for VfD merge and redirect to here. Then, take this subject out into the woods and shoot it.  :) Wikibofh 15:39, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete this political propaganda page. It is mainly used by Princeton and Yale people to forever tie their schools to Harvard. In reality, there is no HYP league, only the Ivy League, and barely, Ivy Plus. Furthermore, the votes for Keep are heavily biased and self-selected since random people are unlikely to have heard of this phrase, but among H Y or P graduates, even if the phrase is unfamiliar, they have an incentive to try to popularize it and "shrink" the Ivy League. As to previous historical agreements, so what? There have been lots of athletic or two way sports agreements that ebb and flow - this page is NOT about sports, but instead is simple academic boosterism. DELETE! - Anon 4582.
  • Keep User:141.157.157.100 4:28, June 6th, 2005 (EDT) (vote erased by 64.12.116.69, and replaced with the following; restored by Uncle G 13:57, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC))
  • Delete What the???
  • Delete Put it in the wikitionary. -Phantym 06:57, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete I agree put it in the dictionary. Ken. .....unsigned would-be vote made at 19:11, 2005 Jun 15 by 205.188.117.65
  • Keep. Definition is far too long for dictionary entry. Uris 19:37, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep ....unsigned would-be vote made at 11:16, 2005 Jun 17 by 82.127.193.210
  • Delete
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