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Interesting double-enter you have going on there. :eyeroll:</p>
<p>Whatever elite-school acronym you use, I’m completely okay with adding Columbia to it. But come on, that’s a pretty stupid point you’re trying to drive with that extra line break.</p>
<p>lol 10char</p>
<p>^ well put.</p>
<p>Viennaman and adgeek, I loved reading your posts on the 4th page, did not realize any of that, it’s amazing how short our memories are when we predict that the status quo is static. the incredible changes in hierarchy give me hope and our recent endowment performance (past 5-7 years) gives me great hope for Columbia’s future, there is some great forward momentum.</p>
<p>before the perception was hyp and then a chasm and then a whole bunch of other schools and now I can see people in the north east saying, hyp then Columbia then the rest, I’m not arguing this based on changes to actual universities but just perceptions.</p>
<p>back to the thing on the 4th page, yeah its true the most influential or outstanding institutions of education in the U.S in the early 1900’s were Harvard, Columbia, and the U of Chicago</p>
<p>and LOL at monstor. lolumad bro?</p>
<p>Guys- there’s a lot more to a how good a school is than acceptance rate. If that were the case I would be pretending Brown (at 9%) is better than MIT (10%), Dartmouth (10%), and Penn (12%) when in fact they are all peers. USNEWS is also pretty fickle, things move around all the time and people tend to look holistically. I don’t think people though Penn was better than columbia when it was higher ranked, and vice versa.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind is the wealth of the schools. Columbia is on the poorer side of the spectrum of Ivies (admittedly so is Brown), but Princeton is much much richer. Princeton is like Brown and Dartmouth - undergrad focused schools. Columbia might be a top 5 University given its grad schools, I have a hard time accepting that its top 5, or specifically Princeton level for undergrads.</p>
<p>I actually totally agree with you. I wish people like admissionsgeek were a little more objective about Columbia. As an alum, its hard to be honest because out of self-interest I want columbia to be doing well but the reality if I could go back in time I probably would not have chosen Columbia. Its not just a grass is greener issue, based on everything I’ve heard Columbia just has so much to go before it offers what Dartmouth has let alone Princeton.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense to say that Columbia has so far to go to offer what Dartmouth or Princeton does without specifying the relative importance of the various factors involved. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to go to Princeton over Columbia for example. Not that Princeton isn’t good – it’s just that its advantages at aren’t as numerous or important to me as the advantages Columbia has. The differences can be in so many areas from the type of community, to the opportunities outside the campus, to the feel of the campus, to the type of student body, to the relative strengths of different departments, to the core, etc etc. With schools at this level, the most important thing is individual fit and how you weigh all the factors.</p>
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So mad, in fact, that I’m going to do the same thing:</p>
<p>USNEWS Rankings
1 Harvard
2 Princeton
3 Yale</p>
<p>4 Columbia
5 Penn
5 Stanford
7 Caltech
7 MIT</p>
<p>that is so last year.</p>
<p>almamater - if for instance i were the only person on this board, yes i’d be more objective. but what is the point in me being ‘objective’ unless you’re going to be equally so. objectively, columbia is amazing. i mean on almost every single measure it is leaps and bounds above the vast majority of colleges.</p>
<p>now i agree with herenow - the only way that columbia has a lot to go is if you care about some measures and don’t care about others. my only interest has been here to raise the profile of columbia such that we realize that it ought to be in the conversation with HYPSM. now you could disagree with my political take here. but you really ought to be specific about why columbia is worse.</p>
<p>and not just in relative terms between two schools, but within the pantheon of universities, what makes you say columbia ought not be in that conversation.</p>
<p>and lastly - by referencing dartmouth and princeton, it sounds like you are interested in a specific kind of ‘collegiate culture’ that seems to color your opinion of what is ‘good.’ i think clearly you feel like you would’ve been a better fit at d or p, but does that mean somehow c is not objectively (to use your word) good?</p>
<p>I can’t wait to read monstor344’s opinions AFTER he gets rejected from Princeton.</p>
<p>^yeah, but he supposedly already got a likely letter…which is kind of weird considering how they haven’t even sorted out all the applications and put up tracking sites yet…but he might be a recruited athlete, in which case it would be weird he’s so into this forum
o.0</p>
<p>anyways, almameter, I think ur kind of ____. You told admissiongeek to be objective, but how the hell do you know hes NOT being objective? So is everyone suppose to hate columbia’s environment like you did?</p>
<p>And dartmouth…the only way you can argue dartmouth is a lot better is if you, SUBJECTIVELY, think dartmouth has a social environment. But basing a college’s perception and talking all the smack you did about columia on solely the social environment is lame as hell. I for one know I didn’t apply to college with overwhelming emphasis on its social or partying environment, but rather 95% on its academics and how it will prepare me for my future. If you did, too bad bro, should have done ur research on social climate before you picked columbia</p>
<p>i kno theres gonna be someone thats gonna be like “o collegeftw, that was too mean! you should be super nice to everyone else on this forum!” so im just gonna apologize in advance</p>
<p>When one considers how far Columbia has come from its nadir in 1969 to today, it is very easily conceivable that it can go the last several yards and enter the top three or even the number one position. A safe vibrant New York City with all its cultural, communications, financial and sports institutions gives Columbia the trump card over every other competitor in recruiting the very best students and faculty. It would have been inconceivable, maybe even amusing, to think that Columbia could take a Jeffrey Sachs from Harvard or bring a Glenn Hubbard or Joseph Stiglitz to Columbia Business School in 1973 or 1974, like it has actually done in the past ten years. The world is not a static place and there is a lot of momentum in Morningside Heights today.</p>
<p>^yeah, the one thing HYP have on us is money, and while that is a dynamic factor it is not an easy one to change at all. But Columbia endowment performance has been great recently as have total donations to the school, so momentum there is.</p>
<p>I think the only thing static is Harvard’s position as the most prestigious institution in the country, there are certain social advantages to being number one, like everyone citing brand name in conversation or using the brand name in hyperbole about elitists or smart colleges. I think Columbia has a legitimate shot to be #2 in 15 years, but there’s still some work to be done and some way to go</p>
<p>vienna man, your posts on the last page were pretty interesting. I actually had no idea Columbia was that influential in the early 20th century. However, the idea of “HYP”, especially among blue-blood, WASPY Americans, has been around far before that right? You noted yourself that even in the time period where you consider Harvard and Columbia to be “the most important institutions”, Y and P, together with H, still had a type of prestige which continues today. This entire discussion of whether Columbia can be considered a peer of “HYPS” isn’t concerning academics from what I can deduce, and it would be stupid to argue about that because every top 10 school today is so similar in academic strength that differentiating them would be splitting hairs. Rather, many people are putting forward the argument that Columbia can surpass one of the HYP schools in terms of prestige, and in terms of prestige alone, I don’t see it happening.</p>
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<p>Nobody can say for sure where any university will be in terms of prestige going forward, but I think it is important to note that what defined “prestige” in the early 20th century is a little bit different now. Look at how Stanford rose in terms of “prestige” during the 70s and 80s. This was due largely to the rise of Silicon Valley and the contributions Stanford as an institution made to the industry. It had little to do with what blue blood “elites” on the east coast thought of the institution historically.</p>
<p>“Prestige” today changes more rapidly. The WASP establishment isn’t as culturally influential anymore. Just look at the efforts all Ivy schools have made in terms of financial aid. Now, just about any student who is accepted will be able to attend due to financial aid enhancements. Ivy schools are more about building a true meritocracy now rather than being the home of blue blood sons and daughters.</p>
<p>With that in mind, I think what will truly drive prestige going forward are metrics that are more oriented toward the academic output of an institution rather than historical WASP prestige. This is why schools like Harvard and Yale are really focusing on expanding their engineering programs. Innovation, research, cultural contributions, and attracting the best and brightest will be more important than how the Northeast WASP establishment felt about an institution in the early 20th century. This is why some believe Columbia has so much potential going forward. It has already risen rapidly over the past 20 years, and by looking at recent faculty additions, increasing selectivity and rankings, the increasing popularity of urban universities and New York City, and now nearly doubling space dedicated to research efforts through the Manhattanville expansion, there is a lot of excitement about the future of Columbia.</p>
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<p>This absolutely true…until the day that it isn’t.</p>
<p>New York will fall once again (and rise, and fall and rise as cities do). It’s just a question of when, and whether the decline will be kicked off in earnest by matters fiscal (the city and state are broke), economic tectonic shift (the long-term decline of Wall Street vis-a-vis other centers of global finance, and the decline of traditional media organizations) climate-change, or terrorist with a dirty bomb that makes a chunk of Manhattan uninhabitable, or something we haven’t even yet foreseen.</p>
<p>The biggest determinant of the fate of Columbia is not really in Columbia’s control. That said, for the immediate and foreseeable future, things look great for Columbia. If there is any Ivy that could break into the “HYP” cluster it would be Columbia–for the time being.</p>
<p>haha i like your pessimism ilove. i just don’t think it is tenable to believe that the world that has gone from mostly agrarian to mostly urban over the past 50 years will somehow alter all that much, without a great fear being promulgated. </p>
<p>there were things in the 50s, 60s and 70s that constructed an americanized reality of the suburb, which was above all the reason for NYCs decline. i mean you ought to read Nature’s Metropolis or Crabgrass Frontier if you want a good history of what happened, why it happened, and also why in a post-industrial age the city becomes the most logical movement because it promises to be more efficient, cheaper and easier to use than suburbs. i mean if you’re going to tell me we are going to re-experience white flight? honestly it sounds pretty unlikely, especially with recent dynamics and especially with Bloomberg admins efforts and cooperation with folks like Columbia in making the inner city the hub. it seems like it took the US until now to finally realize what European elitism has known for so long - it is best to mix desirable cultural, commercial and residential spaces as closely together - and because of ease of transportation you are able to push the labor force further and further into the periphery without sacrificing quality (the latter being the sad and true nature of that which we call gentrification). the urban area and urban policy only faces one major problem in the US - the automobile. solving that conundrum is the biggest task of the next 20 years or so, but i’m sure oil tapping out will accelerate that substantially.</p>
<p>i mean if i learned anything from simcity it was this.</p>
<p>Hardly pessimism…simply realism.</p>
<p>It seems the 50s 60s 70s fear was that the American metropolois would be drained of its energy by the suburbs. The current fear is nothing like that. The American metropolis won’t lose out to the American suburbs but it will lose out to the metropolises of the entire planet.</p>
<p>There will be little if any “white flight” but the world’s energies, attention, and capital flows will be ever more diffuse, and the best NYC can hope for would be primus inter pares. The advantage of being in New York in 2031 will be measurably smaller than the advantage of being in New York in 2011</p>
<p>Not to say NYC will turn into Detroit anytime soon, let’s not be silly here. But still, the cycle of urban decay and rebirth isn’t going to be broken.</p>