<p>I applied to them both yesterday and by reading the schools' websites and searching the internet for various opinions about their undergraduate schools, I got the impression that both of these schools provide an Ivy League level education in a smaller, liberal arts environment. I'm not trying to delude myself into believing they are actually in the Ivy League because I can't get into any of the Ivies but do you think the education at these schools is comparable?</p>
<p>Academic Ratings per Princeton Review are 98 for Holy Cross and 89 for Bucknell</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.princetonereview.com%5Dprincetonereview.com%5B/url”>http://www.princetonereview.com]princetonereview.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Most of the Ivies are rated in the 90s somewhere.</p>
<p>Interesting. Well if thats the case, why is Holy Cross ranked so low on the USNWR Liberal Arts College section? Is it because its a Catholic school? Not enough endowment?</p>
<p>Catholic schools are marked down severely on US News. Notice that HC is the top ranked Catholic college on the liberal arts national rankings. Apparently US News doesn’t like religiously run colleges. HC has a decent endowment for its size. 2800 students and 500 million (the same as Wesleyan amd same # of students).</p>
<p>What does Ivy League-level even mean? In terms of lay prestige, the answer is an unequivocal no, and unfortunately, that is in large part why it helps to go to an Ivy. In terms of the actual education offered, it’s hard to say without intimately knowing the classroom environment and how well it prepares students for certain fields. </p>
<p>This highlights the self-fulfiling, self-perpetuating prophecy of rankings in general: Better known schools generally attract better applicants and produce graduates who get top-paying/prestigious jobs, which in turn increases the demand for spots at said schools and allows them to select the best, brightest applicants from a large pool. Whether or not the classes are individually good at said schools is immaterial, as they clearly prepare students for desirable work and are unlikely fundamentally dissimilar to classes anywhere else except perhaps in terms of competition and faculty pedigree.</p>
<p>That being said, do some research and talk to current students at Ivies and Bucknell/Holy Cross to get a better sense of what’s offered. Visit if you can.</p>
<p>The only profession I can think of where Ivy League is a requirement is to be a Justice on the US Supreme Court. Pretty much all nine of them went to top law schools and/or colleges. Even then it’s a defacto requirement and not an official requirment. </p>
<p>Top law schools seems to be an absolute requirement – right now the tally is 5 Harvards, 3 Yales, and 1 Northwestern (the Justice appointed the longest time ago). As for colleges, it’s Princeton (2), Stanford (2), Harvard, Cornell, Chicago, Georgetown, and Holy Cross.</p>
<p>(Opposite of de facto = de jure)</p>
<p>Agreed with 1980collegegrad: An Ivy League education isn’t what makes Ivy grads successful. What makes them generally successful are the qualities (e.g., tenacity, intellect) that got them there in the first place. If someone is motivated, bright, tenacious, and ambitious, he/she will have no problem finding work simply because they didn’t go Ivy.</p>
<p>“an uneqivocal no…better known schools attract better applicants…”
So in other words… The University of Utah matriculates better students than Bucknell or Holy Cross because its known by more people? </p>
<p>that makes a lot of sense… don’t you go to any Ivy League school? =/</p>
<p>Spare me your sarcasm - I’m trying to give advice and help answer your question.</p>
<p>You asked, “Are Bucknell and Holy Cross almost Ivy League level?” The answer is, in terms of lay prestige, absolutely not. You declined to define Ivy-League level, hence the vague answer. (By better known I clearly meant more reputable, not simply the number of people who are aware of the university’s existence.) </p>
<p>The USWNR has very specific criteria for ranking schools and does not necessarily correlate with what you personally define as academic quality. I stand by what I said: Do some research and talk to students who go to Bucknell/HC to get a better sense of what it is they offer.</p>
<p>And yes, I go to Penn. I can only speak for Penn and USC, and frankly the academic quality is far better at Penn. </p>
<p>It really depends on the student, though.</p>
<p>Neither. The closest schools to ivy are Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Cal Berkeley, John Hopkins, Emory, Rice, Notre Dame, …etc.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is ranked 20th on US News. Lowest ranked Ivy Cornell is ranked #15.</p>
<p>^^ Point being? Compare statistical measures of student quality between ND and the rest of the Top 20 and ND comes out quite favorably. Gets hammered on the peer ranking, some would argue due to the school’s religious affiliation. Let’s not cling to rankings as though they’re an authoritative determinant of relative academic quality/prestige on their own.</p>
<p>Edit: never mind. Read something wrong.</p>