<p>let me just state, before this gets out of hand, that i think penn is a fine school, certainly one of the top 10 or 15 in the country. its professional programs have long been among the strongest in their fields, and the undergraduate program has made tremendous strides in recent years, evidenced by the fact that we are even having this conversation, penn vs. princeton. with amy gutmann, former princeton provost, at the helm, and the recent acquisition of the postal properties' urban wasteland, these strides should continue well into the future. that said, i don't think it's at all arguable at this point that princeton has a stronger student body. that's not a knock on penn, whose student body is itself quite accomplished, but the reality for the purposes of a comparison thread like this.</p>
<p>National Merit Scholars? You're basing your decision off of a test taken junior year of HIGH SCHOOL to determine which COLLEGE student body is stronger? That sounds reliable, especially considering that the test is studied for by many while others show up 1/2 asleep and take it without a care in the world. Good choice of data set.</p>
<p>As for rhodes scholars, would you like to include data on a shorter time frame? Throughout the years, Penn has never actively encouraged students to apply. This has changed recently and the school now seeks students to apply. Thus, maybe data over a more recent time frame would be more relevant.</p>
<p>Furthermore, neither proves that your student body is stronger. Although Penn may be less well known, in no way is this related to the strength of the actual student body. Thus, your argument of minority/majority views is fallacious at best. Take a logic class some time and you'll realize that your argument is suffering from a few common logical fallacies.</p>
<p>By the way, in case you haven't realized, you have still yet to define "stronger" making all of your points moot at best.</p>
<p>yeah i agree with username321.
princeton is more established and its students are more likely to apply for such things as the rhodes scholar program. it would be better to compare them in a couple more decades.
national merit: take a look at standardized test scores.
SAT Reasoning Verbal: 660 - 750 97%
SAT Reasoning Math: 680 - 770 97% </p>
<p>SAT Reasoning Verbal: 680 - 770 100%
SAT Reasoning Math: 690 - 790 100% </p>
<p>the top one is penn, the bottom one is princeton. i don't see much of a difference in SAT scores. so national merit/other things that have to do with standardized testing...clearly not a big enough difference.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting that, F. Scottie. Going you one better, I will say publically that Princeton is definitely one of the top ten schools in the U.S.</p>
<p>sigh, these are fairly standard measures of student body strength, user. but if you happen to have a better definition, or a better set of measures, by all means: throw it out there. as i said, i'm all ears. you, on the other hand, seem to have your fingers in your own.</p>
<p>quaker, i of course meant praise and not insult. it's simply that case that not everyone would put penn in the top 10. one could have, for example, HYPSMC plus brown, columbia, dartmouth, and chicago. personally, i would probably put penn somewhere between #8 and #12. (note: u.s. news had penn at #16 as recently as the 1990s, and it has penn at #13 now in "peer assessment," the all-important rating by fellow presidents, provosts, and deans. who should perhaps know best.)</p>
<p>that said, i don't think it's at all arguable at this point that princeton has a stronger student body. that's not a knock on penn, whose student body is itself quite accomplished, but the reality for the purposes of a comparison thread like this.</p>
<p>Again, any form of data showing causation and not simply correlation would be proof. Feel free to PROPERLY support your point.</p>
<p>I never made the claim therefore I feel no need to define the term. I'm just saying that logically your argument is moot as A) you cannot define the point and therefore B) you cannot support your point.</p>
<p>Truthfully, I'm just letting you ramble because in ANY standard definition of "stronger," you will have no way of proving the student body of one school is "stronger" than the other (except maybe in a physical sense). So your claim can never be anything more than an opinion. Really, I was just waiting for you to realize that.</p>
<p>i fail to see how causation and correlation are relevant here. and if you deny the very possiblity of ever properly defining student body strength, and you refuse to hear any evidence proffered on the point, then yes, i'm afraid this whole exercise is a "moot" on. so, i guess i'll just let you get back to thinking you're some skilled logician, and denying the manifest reality of the situation.</p>
<p>f. scottie, i think what username and i are saying is this: you can only compare the strength of two student bodies very roughly with some rather imprecise standards (test scores, grad school acceptance rates, etc etc). it's certainly not a precise science, and when you're comparing two student bodies that are very close to each other it's pointless to try to use rough standards to come to some sort of exact conclusion. that's all we're saying.</p>
<p>i agree, of course, that the comparisons are "rough" and the standards and science are "imprecise," but i disagree strongly that the exercise is a "pointless" one - especially when the standards selected by me or anyone else point to the same result, and with a large enough gap between the two schools to assign meaning and value to this uniform result. you mentioned, for example, grad school acceptance rates as one standard, and one as yet unused:</p>
<p>princeton #3, penn #16 (7th in the ivy league)</p>
<p>I never claimed I was a skilled logician, merely a person with a functioning brain. You sir howevershould continue using terms like manifest reality in your arguments. Not only does it show you are desperately trying to sound intelligent (even though you are sounding quite hollow), it provides a good laugh to all those you're speaking to.</p>
<p>Please just give up scottie. What will it take to make you realize that "stronger" is a subjective term. Grad school stats, rhodes scholars, national merit scholars, sat scores, etc are not going to be able to prove it.</p>
<p>And in case you didn't realize, there is an inherent bias in almost any survey. For instance, most of Penn's best and brightest go straight to work (being a pre-professional school) rather than grad school. Additionally, the article's "feeder score" is defined nowhere on that page.</p>
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<p>Thus, your argument of minority/majority views is fallacious at best. Take a logic class some time and you'll realize that your argument is suffering from a few common logical fallacies.</p>
<p>I never claimed I was a skilled logician</p>
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<p>as for which of us is more intelligent, and has been more persuasive (logically sound, if you prefer, "kind sir"), i'll gladly leave that to any readers of this thread to decide. your thoughts, anyone?</p>
<p>response to your second post: WSJ rankings explained here:</p>
<p>also, "inherent biases" (yes, i realize) don't explain away a clear and consistent result across all such "surveys." and by the way, students at a pre-professional school should be even MORE likely to go to grad/prof school over work. pre-law students go to law school, pre-meds to med school, etc. you might call this "logical."</p>
<p>A) Knowing common logical fallacies in no way implies one being a skilled logician (or claiming to be).</p>
<p>B) Being persuasive does not make your argument correct. Hitler was quite persuasive. One of the key requirements of being persuasive is being on the offensive. I've never attempted to prove a point, only disprove yours. Thus, it would be quite difficult for me to be persuasive about anything in this conversation.</p>
<p>C) While saying pre-professional, I was referring primarily to the engineering/wharton students. How many of them do you think go to grad school? And let me give you a hint, most of Penn's engineers don't actually go into engineering making grad school for them quite uncommon.</p>
<p>D) Did you actually read that link? It only considers a few schools of their choice and doesn't even give the formula so that one may analyze how they weigh various factors. The argument of their validity is that no one wasted their time to dispute it. Furthermore, their great ranking is based on 1 year of data. Great sample size, eh?</p>
<p>A) insulting someone's argument as "fallacious at best" and then telling that person to "take a logic class" certainly implies the possession of a superiority complex on the part of the teller.</p>
<p>B) "it would be quite difficult for [you] to be persuasive" not because you are on the defensive/disproving side of this argument, but because you are largely wrong. and thus not persuasive.</p>
<p>C) many if not most of princeton's engineers don't go into engineering, either. but whatever the differences between the two schools (and remembering that you, yourself, called penn the more pre-professional of the two), neither they nor any methodological shortcomings with the survey explain away the substantial gap between princeton at #3 (15.78%) and penn at #16 (5.49%).</p>
<p>D) i read the link. there is no "formula." it's just the percentage of graduating seniors in each class who matriculated to "15 select grad programs." the year chosen was a recent one, and there's no reason to doubt the representativeness of that year. again, any shortcomings of this choice don't explain away the gap.</p>
<p>E) i'm done with this thread. good luck to you.</p>
<p>I think that the thing that people fail to realize is how much rankings have influenced us. </p>
<p>F. Scottie points out: "any gaps among HYP, however, are minor in comparison to the huge one between those three and their ivy peers"</p>
<p>You know how ridiculous that sounds? When looking at any of the top 25 USNWR there is a miniscule difference between a #1 and a #20...however, the ultra-competitive American culture that we live in forces companies like USNWR to provide a "pseudo-ranking" of universities based on a lot of insignificant factors like alumni giving...</p>
<p>People get too caught up in these silly ranking and end up applying to schools which they shouldn't be applying to in the first place because of fit. For instance, I know a guy who just applied to all 8 ivies+MIT mainly because of ranking although he failed to realize that he could get essentially the same quality education at a school like UC-Berkeley, UVA, etc. </p>
<p>Trying to compare the student bodies of most of these top schools is also relative ridiculous...how can you compare the the student bodies of places like Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell. There are a plethora of people who get rejected from some of the Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth but are admitted into HYP. You could mix and match the students at any of these schools and end up with similar student bodies. The students in schools like HYP aren't admitted because they are stronger than other equally qualified candidates...they are admitted because they "fit" into the class that the university is trying to craft. They might have 2 applicants that on paper are equally strong (high GPA/1600 SAT (ok 2400 now)),etc. but one student just fits better with what the class that the school is trying to craft for the year...doesn't mean that the admitted one is stronger. </p>
<p>Just to illustrate the above point...here at Penn for example I know a ton of people in Wharton who have SATs (old ones) in the 1250-1350 range. They were admitted because of their potential to be leaders in the business world, their personalties, etc. The school saw more potential in them than the 1600 guy they rejected. Doesn't mean these students weaker than the 1600 guy they just fit better with the class that wharton was trying to craft. </p>
<p>A lot of you will get a big shock one day when you're out working in the real world and your boss is a University of Alabama graduate. You know the average millionaire in the U.S. didn't go to an HYP and has an average SAT in the 1200s.</p>
<p>Bern,</p>
<p>Great point. College is much more than just academics and rankings. Some may prefer the cold weather recreation at Dartmouth over the other Ivies, others the vibrancy of the cities surrounding Penn & Columbia, etc. In addition, there's something to be said to going to a state U with big time athletic spirit and cost savings. The NMF val in my school whose parents own half the county chose this option, he will be third generation at this particular state U. I have seen studies showing that future success for the same student will be little, if any different.</p>
<p>Here's what it boils down to.</p>
<p>I don't care what school ranks what number on which lists. It doesn't matter which schools have higher averages or higher prestige factors -- what matters is whether or not you can see yourself having a good experience. A school's "averages" don't bind you -- you can certainly be an outlier. Nobody's going to deny that there are not-so-deserving or unintelligent people at Ivy schools, so what is the point of generalizing an individual student's standing by the school he or she attends, especially when so many of these schools are already top-notch? </p>
<p>The differences in quality of education are so miniscule at the top schools. It becomes a matter of personal preference. A lot of people gave me crap over attending Penn at first because I had other letters to schools of higher "prestige" and name recognition, but it's a horrible way to decide your life's launchpad. If someone gives you crap over these things, it shouldn't matter. If you know you meet or exceed the "averages," then who cares? Ask anyone in the real world: A degree won't make up for shortcomings -- it all starts with you. Therefore it's absolutely useless to generalize at such a level. </p>
<p>It's an age-old discussion that probably will never die, because people are naturally attracted to rankings. Nothing new has really been introduced into the mix of things. People will still say the same things and argue with the same counterpoints similar to the ones I've just said. So, I say, let bygones be bygones -- just work on your own steam and pwn face -- you'll be alright. Forget rank.</p>
<p>all of you know that if the rankings were reversed, and Penn was ranked higher than Princeton, you would all be preaching the rankings, but since Penn is not, you want to dismiss it. you can tweak your argument for either school, but who really cares. If you attend one of the top schools in the country, the biggest difference is your personal preference and academic interests.</p>
<p>I do not want to read this whole thread, but I still want to say something. College is what you make out of it. If you go to a top college but you do not take hard classes but rather take easy classes in an effort to boost your GPA, you are not getting the full experience of college. I say this a lot about high school kids as well: there are the peopel who memorize everything and get crazy averages, there are alos those people that go to school for the material and the skills as well. I know that the fact memorizers forget a lot of things. But the other peopel i was referring to might forget as well but they walk away with the skills that they learned. I feel that i can use the same analogy with college. (I am not sure since i am only a senior in high school).</p>