Duck Penises, Perfect Chins, and Cornell's Inferiority Complex

The quick and dirty about what's been going on around the Ancient Eight (and other schools too).

While Harvard traverses the murky and scandalous waters of cheating and lying, Yale's biggest scandal of late concerns duck penises. Apparently, some (mostly right-wingers) aren't too happy that the National Science Foundation has dropped a cool $384,949 so that Yale scientists can investigate "Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia." What exactly are they going to do with all that money, you may be asking? Hopefully, they'll answer that pressing question of just how much duck penises shorten or lengthen depending on the time of year, the age of the duck, and its "social environment" (we'll leave it up to you to figure out what that means). Fascinating.

Over in New Jersey, something that's definitely lengthening is Princeton's Thanksgiving break. As of 2013, Princeton will have an extra day tacked on to their November break. Welcome to the five day club, friends.

Back in the realm of questionably worthwhile scientific pursuits, a Dartmouth study recently concluded that there is no single sexy chin shape. Really, guys, anything goes! So if you've been spending sleepless nights worrying that you're a freak because you're a fan of both the pointy and the square, you can finally put your mind at rest.

While Cornell hasn't produced much of note lately, it was ranked fifth on Buzzfeed's "Elite 10 Smart Party Schools" list. Despite the, erm, hard partying ways of our friends in Ithaca, their acceptance rate for the Class of 2017 still proved to be the least competitive of all the Ivies, and boy wasn't that sure to get their well-documented inferiority complex kicking in once again. An op-ed in The Cornell Daily Sun addressed students' concerns that the school is less prestigious than its Ivy peers, then ultimately concluded that Cornell is the "best Ivy League school" out there.

While that's something that no study could prove, we do know empirically that Cornell isn't topping anyone's list of dream schools. Sorry 'bout that.