While it’s obvious that there are situations common to all college students whatever campus they may call home, every campus has its own unique traditions. Some, like walking through a certain fountain upon graduation, date back hundreds of years. Others, like puking under a table at the late night Mexican restaurant on the night of your 21st birthday, are simply infamous amongst the student body.

And it is these things that unite students and make us proud to call our specific school home. So this week I asked the CollegeCandy writers to show a little school pride and share their university’s eccentricities with the world.

Tell us: what campus “tradition” sets your school apart from the pack? Read More »

It’s Sweet Sixteen time, baby! And you know in this case there are no birthday cakes, cute presents, or super spoiled kids living it up on MTV.

We’re talking hardcore, fast and furious, make it or break it time.

Only 16 teams left. And only 8 spots remain to be filled in the Elite Eight. Who will make it? I give you my predictions below, after watching the action-packed first two rounds of the tourney.

First of all, we can finally settle the debate on which conference is the best this year, and possibly even in history. For the first time in the history of the NCAA tournament, five teams from one league advanced to the Sweet 16. The Big East is home to Connecticut, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Villanova, all of which made the cut and will play in the regional semifinals on Thursday and Friday.

The ACC, which was the other conference in the debate, only has two of its members left, although they are reputably two of the best college teams and have one of the biggest rivalries in sports history: UNC and Duke. (Sidenote: dark blue is wayyy better than that gross baby blue color. Eww.)

Anyway, do you remember last year when, surprisingly, all four #1’s made it to the Final Four? Well, this year marks the first time all the 1-, 2-, and 3-seeds are in the Sweet Sixteen. Looks like Cinderella is going to be hard to find this year.

But what a great first two rounds it’s been. Read More »

And so it begins. After 11 long, tortuous, pain-staking months of waiting… the Big Dance is finally here.

Once you get past the fact that the NCAA Selection Committee made the mistake of not including some of the best teams that could have been this year’s Cinderella (Arizona State instead of St. Mary’s? come on), the board actually came up with a pretty good draw. And for the next 2 weeks, I will be fully immersing myself in the insanity and awesomeness that is the most exciting sporting event of the year: March Madness.

The best conference in the country (and maybe in history) is hands-down the Big East. 3 out of the 4 number 1 seeds are from the Big East: UConn, Louisville, and Pitt. Even Barack Obama believes in the dominance of this conference, since his bracket that he filled out on Wednesday (live on ESPN! what a cool prez) shows it filling half of his Elite Eight. Although Obama didn’t have our lovely school in his Final Four, Coach K isn’t worried. Read More »

Did anyone else feel like their world turned upside-down last night, what with NO GOSSIP GIRL ep on the CW? I personally didn’t know what to do with myself, so I worked off my weekly-dose-of-Chace-Crawford- cravings on the elliptical for an hour. Maybe when the season ends, I too can have a Blake Lively body. Yeah right.

Since, sadly, there was no new episode to recap last night, I thought I’d do a brief refresher on what has unraveled so far this season. Feel free to post your fave GG moments of the year below, since there is simply too much for me to fit into one little post!

Nate Archibald

Early season partner: Catherine, the married cougar who turned out to be a Duchess. Nate walked the fine line between “partner” and “prostitute” with Catherine, after Catherine paid off some of Nate’s family’s debt in order to keep her sexy young stallion around.

Mid-season partner: Well… early-mid-season, Nate had a mini-fling with Vanessa, until Catherine scared V off. Then there was the hot Yale girl, who Nate posed as none other than Dan Humphrey for, in order to get into her lofted bed. Read More »

Let’s face it: We LOVE to gossip. We gossip about friends and we gossip about foes. Such idle talk allows us to convey information quickly, although not always accurately. This being said, it is no surprise that the website Juicy Campus has been increasing in popularity since it was founded on August 1, 2007.

When my friends first introduced me to Juicy Campus, I wrote it off as another place for people to share their college exploits online. But I quickly realized that this site was different; I actually knew the people that were being discussed! Friends, classmates, hookups—no one was free from the wrath of this critical group. Let’s just put it this way, if the “Burn Book” from Mean Girls was published online for all to see and comment on, I would imagine it would look similar to Juicy Campus.

The site was created by Mark Ivester, a Duke University Alum, with “the simple mission of enabling online anonymous free speech on college campuses.” (Editor’s Note: That’s a nice way to refer to sh*t talking!) There are currently 64 colleges listed on the site, including many prestigious institutions such as Harvard, UPenn, and Brown. The topics on the site range from the innocent (“Best Frat on Campus”) to the scandalous (“Sex with Professors”). Each post gets a rating ranging from 0% Juicy to 100% Juicy, so the juicier the gossip, the better the rating. Read More »

Does the food at your cafeteria suck? Want to make some extra cash? Can you cook candied olive crumble with fish, braised short ribs with scallops, robiola cheese with fizzy carbonated grapes or chai ice cream with miso-sesame chocolate and powdered peach and pineapple? Didn’t think so.

Fortunately for Duke senior Bryan Zupon, who just loooves food, all this was a possibility. So, he opened a restaurant…in his dorm room.

Those Duke kids, they’re always going the extra mile. Damn overachievers.

“I don’t think that New Southern cooking has changed since the mid-’90s,” Zupon said to the New York Times. “I’d talked to a lot of big-name chefs in the area — for personal reasons and also for the newspaper — and they were so apprehensive to change. I was like, this is frustrating, so I’m just going to do my own thing and see where it takes me.”

Now I know, having grown up in North Carolina, that the state is not known for its culinary wiles. Although there aren’t any top restaurants, there are still some delicious places I look forward to eating every time I go home that could rival some of the best southern cooks out there.

Allow me to share: Read More »