Prestige

The definition of the term prestige in quizbowl discussions is quite different from its real-world meaning. There are a few variations

• In quizbowl, teams from so-called "good" or "difficult" schools (usually meant to imply Ivy League or similarly ranked institutions) that run crappy tournaments and then complain about their workload and classes screwing them over are labeled as using "prestige". Eric Cohen used this excuse during the discussion of the the 2008 Princeton High School Tournament (which was apparently a fiasco), stating that the tournament director didn't have enough free time because Princeton isn't "an easy school". Note that this tournament was run on an IS set, but had a large field.
• Another connotation of the term involves "good" schools coasting on their reputations to attract unwitting high school teams to their poorly edited and staffed tournaments; this is often followed by said team ignoring all criticism of their tournament (from both participants and others) and continuing to suck, presumably because they can get many teams to show up simply due to inertia. This also occurs in college, but not to the same degree.

Note that the difficulty of ones' schedule is largely dictated by their major - a fact which makes the exceptions listed below even more remarkable, since many of the driving forces behind those teams are scientists with no time.

Examples of the Prestige Rule

• Princeton
• Yale (prior to the TDing of John Lawrence)

Exceptions To The Prestige Rule

• Brown
• Harvard
• Columbia
• Stanford
• MIT
• University of Chicago
• Yale (since John Lawrence)