@CU123 "why wouldn’t (Princeton) come out on top in undergrad rankings? "
Because if you are going to rank schools on undergrad focus, then there is no reason to remove the LACs. The problem is that if you don’t remove them, Princeton won’t be on top.
So they have to come up with a ranking that essentially focuses on only undergrad, but removes all the schools that completely focus on undergrad. Very strange.
@CU123 you can say the same about Dartmouth, but they are currently the " lowest ivy"
@suzyQ7 True, but they don’t have the same “bank” as Princeton and that’s a big difference.
How? How does the bank make a big difference in undergrad education, when you are talking about big Banks anyway (Dartmouth is not hurting)? Research spending is not a focus of undergrad education.
@Much2learn I really can’t argue with that except that Princeton might still come out on top even if it were included with the LAC’s, its got a big bank account. Still I think Princeton belongs with the research unis as it still awards MS and PHD’s, it just doesn’t have the business/med/law schools.
@suzyQ7 Its endowment dwarfs Dartmouth’s (22.5 to 4.5 Billion), hate to say it, but it mostly comes down to numbers and Princeton can far outspend Dartmouth on its undergraduates.
Rich is Rich.
No, some are richer than others, like I said, I have no connection to Princeton.
It is just odd to me for a university to not have business, med or law. I mean even MIT has business.
I can’t think of a single other school in the top 50 that calls themselves a university that has none of those three programs. Can you? Hmm…
There’s no competition between Princeton and Dartmouth in terms of endowment per student. Bigger bank means ability to hire big name professors, Nobel winners, McArthur geniuses, poet laureates, etc. who have one-on-one with students with the teacher-student ratio (5:1 at Princeton), not to mention the ability to enhance student experience through fully funded study abroad and other well-funded programs in just about every aspect of the college life.
@Much2learn - That was intentional on the part of Princeton, not accidental. If I recall its history correctly, I believe Woodrow Wilson had something to do with it. Whether the decision was right or wrong, of course, is open to debate. Had Princeton opened Med, Law and Business shops, would it be #1 in undergrad education today? Would Princeton have been better off having overall worldly reputation by having these shops? Who knows. I for one don’t care. I know that I can’t be happier with its undergrad quality education being provided for my kid. For a grad school, he’s got lots of great options. No need for one school to be #1 in everything for everyone, if that’s a possibility at all.
@Much2learn - maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t this because Princeton has multiple schools under its umbrella (an undergraduate division and a grad division), and colleges are just one contiguous unit? I always thought that was the difference.
It’s why Dartmouth College is grouped with the Us, as is Boston College, but Amherst, Swarthmore, etc. are colleges.
So Princeton, for example has an Undergraduate school and a Graduate School - something I don’t believe any colleges have.
This being said, nice throwing U. of Penn into the mix when discussing Princeton’s standing - never bad for our West Philly school to be mentioned in the same breadth as Stanford, Harvard, etc.!
“This being said, nice throwing U. of Penn into the mix when discussing Princeton’s standing - never bad for our West Philly school to be mentioned in the same breadth as Stanford, Harvard, etc.!”
Well, that is another funny thing. If they were to say, “We don’t care about salary, we are all about grad school admissions.” Well, if you shift the criteria that way, then I think they will still be stuck behind your Maroons!" lol
Actually Caltech is the number 1 undergrad college according to USNWR criteria… add a logarithmic adjuster because of politics and curve fitting and you get new results.
let’s not kid ourselves:)
@Much2learn That question was an easy one for me - UCSB at #37 has no business, law, or med school. It does seem to have more of a focus on undergrads than other UCs, because out of about 24k students, only about 3000 are grad students.
@youcee I am definitely weaker on UCs in terms of obscure college trivia. lol Thanks for the answer!
But who -really- wants to go to Caltech??
Not one of my high achieving STEM kids and almost none of their friends (Silicon Valley)
I never asked them why.
I was bored one day and looked up the proportions of undergrads and grads at like 50 schools, and to my surprise some of the schools at or near the very top – in terms of percentage of undergrads – were big flagships like UW-Madison, Cal-Berkeley, and Michigan. So I’m not at all surprised to hear of UCSB having such a high percentage of undergrads.
But those schools, along with privates like Bown, Cornell and Dartmouth – who have undergrad proportions roughly equal to (Cornell) or greater than (Brown, Dartmouth) Princeton – just can’t compete in terms of resources. Princeton has the highest endowment-per-student of any major university in the country, and most of the students at the school are undergrads. So they not only have the most undergrad-focused campus among the HYPSMCCCP group, but they can also afford to spend a ton of money on them. The combination of those two factors is probably the driving force behind why undergrad-prof interaction is (reputedly…) so high there. And if you get to spend a lot of time with profs, you’re probably going to feel like you are getting a WASP-level education with the benefit of the Princeton name and post-grad prospects, and that – plus all the fun things kids tend to do – equals satisfaction.
I think you answered your own question with “Silicon Valley”.
A driven person would not be attracted to caltech.
I’ve always thought of caltech as a place for people with different career priorities, who would be bored with normal jobs. Or beyond normal jobs. Brilliant.
Your normal high achiever isn’t brilliant just driven… That is for the “test” the driven can do the math and get the right answer. But a year down the road they won’t remember how to do the math or the fundamental laws why the math works in the first place.
A brilliant person doesn’t forget and continues building and finds connections between things that other people overlook. They see the non obvious.
A driven person moves into project management so they don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore. 99% of the kids at Stanford are driven.
I’m in my 40s and work in high tech, I’ve met less than 10 people that I consider brilliant.
ok