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I do not buy for a second that the majority of classes offered in California schools are more advanced than in other states.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think dstark or anyone else said that they did.</p>
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I believe that a analysis of the average SAT and SAT Subject Scores at the UC would provide sufficient evidence that having an academic seal of approval does not make the class...superior
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</p>
<p>Who implied that it did make the class superior? btw: Have you joined hawkette on the SAT dark side? :D</p>
<p>One problem with SAT scores is that they are income-related. For various political/social reasons, the UCs go out of their way to fill their classes with 33% poor kids. Poor kids typically mean lower SAT scores. The UC also have a demographic issue since many students are not native-born, which makes the CR particularly difficult. If Cal and UCLA did not give such a large admission tip to poor kids and immigrants, I would predict that their SAT scores would be significantly higher. The class makeup and scores are what they are, and I make no claim of "superiority" one way or another.</p>
<p>
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think you'll find plenty of dubious subjects with fancy names in California.
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<p>Of course, but the real question is will such dubious courses receive UC credit? I would opine No.</p>
<p>columbiahopeful,
Your data set it too small. You are talking primarily about those banks whose primary business is investment banking. Nearly all are headquartered in NYC; hence, their affinity for schools in their region, of which there are many very good ones. But go to other regions (including the regional offices of the firms you mention) and their offices are mostly populated with folks from the leading private and public schools in that region. The LA office of JPM is not going to Cornell to recruit, but they sure as heck are going to USC. The Atlanta office of Morgan Stanley is going to Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, U Virginia, U North Carolina, Wake Forest, U Georgia, Georgia Tech to recruit. They are not going to Brown. This is not to say that the Cornell student can't find his/her way to the LA office of JPM or that the Brown student can't find their way to the Atlanta office of MS. It's just that there are several natural points of entry for the locals that those further away would not normally enjoy. </p>
<p>The same thing happens in many industries. Look at the great real estate boom of the last decade which has been a huge source of growth in the Sunbelt, both residential and commercial. Firms like Trammell Crow and Hines aren't going to make a big recruiting effort at colleges in the Northeast and, if they do hire from a Dartmouth or even a Harvard, it probably is not to bring these kids down to Houston or Dallas to work for them there. For the record, Crow went to SMU and Hines went to Purdue. </p>
<p>Or look at the businesses in Philadelphia (you're at U Penn, right?). Is a Rohm and Haas or Comcast or Unisys (etc) expecting to hire a bunch of students from Wash U or U North Carolina or some other distant (but still very fine) college? Not likely. They are going to draw far more commonly from U Penn, Villanova, Temple, Drexel, St. Joseph's, Penn State, etc. </p>
<p>I could go on, but I'm sure you understand my point. There are smart students all over and employers, particularly at the undergrad level, are hiring the individual and not the college. Employers can certainly gain informed opinions about the quality of students that they encounter in the interview process as well as the quality of their work (and if a student from a higher branded school actually produces at a level commensurate with his/her school's reputation).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Firms like Trammell Crow and Hines aren't going to make a big recruiting effort at colleges in the Northeast and, if they do hire from a Dartmouth or even a Harvard, it probably is not to bring these kids down to Houston or Dallas to work for them there.
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</p>
<p>And, more likely, that kid was from sunbelt to begin with and wants to "go home."</p>
<p>bluebayou,
I know you love to tease me about the standardized test issue, but I feel we have to use the tools that are available to us to make some judgments. College adcomms mostly see it that way and they use the standardized test scores as an important data point. Not the be-all, end-all determinant of student quality, but still useful and probably especially so when considered in concert with a student's overall transcript. </p>
<p>Given your challenges re the use of standardized test scores, I'm curious to know your opinion.
Pick one group which you think best represents a list of the ten colleges in America with the strongest students. </p>
<p>GROUP A</p>
<p>Harvard
MIT
Princeton
UC Berkeley
UC Davis
UC Irvine
UC S Barbara
UCLA
UCSD
Yale</p>
<p>GROUP B</p>
<p>Brown
Cal Tech
Dartmouth
Duke
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Wash U StL
Yale</p>
<p>GROUP C</p>
<p>Princeton
Stanford
U Chicago
U Florida
U North Carolina
U Virginia
UC Berkeley
UCLA
UCSD
USC</p>
<p>"I could go on, but I'm sure you understand my point. There are smart students all over and employers, particularly at the undergrad level, are hiring the individual and not the college."</p>
<p>Then why are the college rankings so important?</p>
<p>I tried an experiment. I created my own formula, leaving out Peer Assessment.</p>
<p>I tried to convert everything to a roughly 100-point scale and then weighted the factors.</p>
<p>I added SAT 75th percentile (divided by 4, which means it is weighted 2X), percent of full-time faculty, percent of classes over 50, and then subtracted financial resources rank (weighted one-half).</p>
<p>new rank, school abbreviation, US News rank, US News score, my new score, peer assessment</p>
<p>
[quote]
I know you love to tease me about the standardized test issue, but I feel we have to use the tools that are available to us to make some judgments. College adcomms mostly see it that way and they use the standardized test scores as an important data point. Not the be-all, end-all determinant of student quality, but still useful and probably especially so when considered in concert with a student's overall transcript.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not sure I would call it 'teasing', but you are obviously being kind. :)</p>
<p>I totally concur with your quote above hawkette, but as you note, unfortunately, we don't usually have that second data point, "a student's overall transcript." Thus, your frequent posts rest almost solely on SAT score as a measurement of "strongest students", to which I do not agree.</p>
<p>But, since I'm poor, I'll vote for group B only bcos I know that they are filled with many full pay students, the kind I would like to get to know. However, not sure my definition of 'strong' would necessarily include the two tech schools bcos I expect strong students to also be able to write 10 page papers on comp lit.</p>
<p>precisely my point....people on CC are too concerned with the minutiae of sat scores, PA, gpa's, class rank and all that stuff.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think a lot of schools in the top tier (by most accounts the top 100 schools, though some would pare that down to 75 or 50 or even 25 USNWR uses top 100, then second tier then third and fourth tier) have more in common with each other in quality of education than differences. </p>
<p>dstark: I think Vanderbilt is a fabulous school. Its School of Music is stellar. Its a superb feeder school for graduate and professional schools (including its own graduate and professional schools!). It is a bit of a bubble and it tends to recruit more girls with pearls and boys with toys, however. They are trying to fix that, I have read. Their financial aid is reportedly very generous. But the rub on them is that they are still quite fixed on recruiting from private prep schools and legacy, which makes them very quirky. But I have tremendous respect for the school.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is also an excellent school with similar problems. It also has quirky admissions due to legacy and a bias towards private prep schools.</p>
<p>We are not as favorable about big state schools as you are perhaps. But that has more to do with size and the dorm life than anything. My D did not want to be in a class of 400 kids in Psych 101 freshman year. Sports are part of her life but not the main thing so she could take it or leave it...in other words, being a top Div 1 school was not one of her criteria.</p>
<p>and yes, being street smart is a valuable asset in many professions, as well as getting along with people from all walks of life.</p>
<p>"If you can make it here (New York), you can make it anywhere!"</p>
<p>friedokra, I wasn't commenting on the quality of Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame. I'm sure you can get a great education at those places. Although, the pearls are a total turnoff.</p>
<p>Those schools are just not for me.</p>
<p>Which means I don't care where those schools are ranked.</p>
<p>My daughter goes to a big school. This year she is taking a class where almost everybody else in the class is a grad student. Many if not all are super bright and hard working. I believe many have graduated from some of the schools that are talked about highly here. She is working very closely with those grad students. She is learning so much from this one class. What is not to like? ;)</p>
<p>And all the macro stats in the world and all the SAT scores in the world don't show the possibilites at my kid's school and what is really happening at my kid's school. I bet those stats don't show the possibilities at your kid's school either.</p>
<p>Which is why I am not very impressed with these macro stats, especially average SAT scores of a student body.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I tried an experiment. I created my own formula, leaving out Peer Assessment.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>CH, I think that your experiment shows much promise. As I wrote often, my preference would be to see two separate rankings: one that looks like your recent one AND another one based on a reputational index, be the current PA or an expanded version that better presents a number of sub-categories. </p>
<p>I'm glad my son (and I) never heard that little ditty before he applied to V. Half of the students are from public schools, both merit aid and need-based aid are fairly plentiful, and legacy--at least officially--is no longer considered.</p>
<p>dstark hit upon one of the less known things about the large "grad oriented" schools. Many of the grad level classes are open to all or select undergrads too. This means you are in a class with a number of bright mature and serious students. Class sizes are usually small too. These classes are always taught by senior faculty too.</p>
<p>midmo, if your son is at Vanderbilt and not experiencing that term or those people, then I congratulate him on being admitted to a fine school and being a public school kid not from legacy.</p>
<p>We toured Vanderbilt and got some comments from some students that the girls with pearls still exist and in fact go to football games dressed like that....though we have nothing against pearls per se and I happen to think that kids dressed well and behaving well at a football game is a welcome change from what college kids often do....lol.</p>
<p>I know three kids from our hometown who were admitted to Vanderbilt this year and were in fact from private school and wealthy parents. Public school kids were either rejected or waitlisted, with the exception of another kid who lives in a country club neighborhood and went to a well to do public school. So that is three-four anecdotal comments to support what we know, and in my hometown Vandy grads are plentiful. I do agree that officially they are trying hard to shed the image, but legacy still counts big time.</p>
<p>I am not picking on Vandy however. The same thing occurs at Duke and Wake and Washington and Lee (bigtime!), UVa and even Chapel Hill where they openly ask you if you are legacy or not on the application and where your parents went to school and what they do for a living. I am not talking about financial aid applications either.</p>
<p>Old stereotypes sure die hard. For the record, Vanderbilt takes 60% of its class from public high schools, which is in the middle of the pack for the USNWR Top 20. Princeton, Yale, Columbia, U Penn and maybe Cornell all have fewer students coming from public high schools than Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>Notre Dame has 50% coming from public high schools but don’t forget how this number is inflated due to the fact that many are coming from parochial schools. </p>
<p>Rice, Duke, and Emory are among the leaders for highest percentage of students that come from public high schools. Maybe this explains why they are not viewed as positively because of their stronger record accepting students from among the hoi polloi. </p>
<p>Here is the complete list for the USNWR Top 20 using data from collegeboard.com:</p>
<p>% of students coming from public high schools, college</p>
<p>75% MIT
74% Cal Tech
73% Northwestern
71% Rice
69% J Hopkins
65% Duke
65% Emory
65% Harvard
63% Wash U StL
62% Stanford
61% Dartmouth
60% Brown
60% Vanderbilt
59% U Chicago
55% Princeton
55% Yale
52% U Penn
50% Notre Dame
49% Columbia
na Cornell</p>
<p>I like to read the percentage of public schools and private schools students come from.</p>
<p>I also like the Pell Grant stats.</p>
<p>To many colleges to list them all.</p>
<p><a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_ecodiv_brief.php%5B/url%5D">http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_ecodiv_brief.php</a>
Univ. of California–Los Angeles * 37%
Brigham Young Univ.–Provo (UT) 33%
University of California–Berkeley * 31%
University of California–Davis * 31%
Univ. of California–San Diego * 31%
Univ. of Southern California 17%
Clemson University (SC)* 14%
Cornell University (NY) 14%
Dartmouth College (NH) 14%
Georgia Institute of Technology * 14%
University of Colorado–Boulder * 14%
Clemson University (SC)* 14%
Cornell University (NY) 14%
Dartmouth College (NH) 14%
Georgia Institute of Technology * 14%
University of Colorado–Boulder * 14%
University of Georgia * 14%
U. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill * 14%
University of St. Thomas (MN) 14%
Worcester Polytechnic Inst. (MA) 14%
California Institute of Technology 13%
Golden Gate University (CA) 13%
Marquette University (WI) 13%
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 13%
Texas Christian University 13%
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor * 13%
University of San Diego 13%
Brandeis University (MA) 12%
Carnegie Mellon University (PA) 12%
Emory University (GA) 12%
Samford University (AL) 12%
Stanford University (CA) 12%
Virginia Tech * 12%
American University (DC) 11%
Boston College 11%
Brown University (RI) 11%
Harvard University (MA) 11%
University of Chicago 11%
University of Dayton (OH) 11%
University of Pennsylvania 11%
Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison * 11%
Vanderbilt University (TN) 11%
Yeshiva University (NY) 11%
Boston University 10%
Catholic University of America (DC) 10%
Georgetown University (DC) 10%
Immaculata University (PA) 10%
Johns Hopkins University (MD) 10%
Northwestern University (IL) 10%
Duke University (NC) 9%
George Washington University (DC) 9%
Lehigh University (PA) 9%
Rice University (TX) 9%
Tufts University (MA) 9%
University of Notre Dame (IN) 9%
Yale University (CT) 9%
College of William and Mary (VA)* 8%
University of Delaware * 8%
Princeton University (NJ) 7%
University of Virginia * 7%
Wake Forest University (NC) 7%
Washington University in St. Louis 6% </p>
<p>Southwestern University (TX) 15%
St. Norbert College (WI) 15%
Wellesley College (MA) 15%
Beloit College (WI) 14%
Bryn Mawr College (PA) 14%
College of Wooster (OH) 14%
Drew University (NJ) 14%
Roanoke College (VA) 14%
St. Michael's College (VT) 14%
Susquehanna University (PA) 14%
Union College (NY) 14%
University of Puget Sound (WA) 14%
Wheaton College (MA) 14%
Wofford College (SC) 14%
Amherst College (MA) 13%
Bowdoin College (ME) 13%
Centre College (KY) 13%
Goucher College (MD) 13%
Hope College (MI) 13%
Presbyterian College (SC) 13%
St. Anselm College (NH) 13%
St. John's University (MN) 13%
St. Mary's College (IN) 13%
Wesleyan University (CT) 13%
Wheaton College (IL) 13%
Williams College (MA) 13%
Birmingham-Southern Col. (AL) 12%
Colorado College 12%
Oberlin College (OH) 12%
Randolph-Macon College (VA) 12%
Skidmore College (NY) 12%
St. Olaf College (MN) 12%
Trinity College (CT) 12%
Virginia Military Institute * 12%
Westmont College (CA) 12%
Carleton College (MN) 11%
Christopher Newport Univ. (VA)* 11%
Denison University (OH) 11%
Gettysburg College (PA) 11%
Grinnell College (IA) 11%
Hamilton College (NY) 11%
Harvey Mudd College (CA) 11%
Macalester College (MN) 11%
Scripps College (CA) 11%
St. Mary's College of Maryland * 11%
Stonehill College (MA) 11%
Swarthmore College (PA) 11%
Sweet Briar College (VA) 11%
Whitman College (WA) 11%
Bucknell University (PA) 10%
Claremont McKenna College (CA) 10%
DePauw University (IN) 10%
Hampden-Sydney College (VA) 10%
Haverford College (PA) 10%
Illinois Wesleyan University 10%
Pomona College (CA) 10%
Sewanee–University of the South (TN) 10%
Vassar College (NY) 10%
Bates College (ME) 9%
Colgate University (NY) 9%
College of the Holy Cross (MA) 9%
Connecticut College 9%
Dickinson College (PA) 9%
Franklin and Marshall College (PA) 9%
Furman University (SC) 9%
Kalamazoo College (MI) 9%
Merrimack College (MA) 9%
Colby College (ME) 8%
Lafayette College (PA) 8%
Middlebury College (VT) 8%
Rhodes College (TN) 8%
University of Richmond (VA) 8%
Davidson College (NC) 7%
Kenyon College (OH) 7%
Muhlenberg College (PA) 6%
Washington College (MD) 6%
Washington and Lee University (VA) 4%</p>
<p>Can't Washington and Lee find any poor people to go to that school? :)</p>
<p>some of your favorite schools (you know who they are) are WAAAAAYYYYY down the Pell Grant list. But, hey, they have great test scores, huh?; must be a random coincidence!</p>
<p>Props to USC -- they have historically had a very high % of Pell grantees relative to other top private Unis, something the school does not promote.</p>
<p>UVa should be embarrassed. At least they finally recognized their prep school image and rolled out a great finaid program which benenfits OOS kids as well.</p>