<p>Short-sightedness? Maybe. Ignorance? Definitely. But I don’t feel as if I am being arrogant at all. How is condemning other people’s arrogance arrogant? Northwestern is an okay school, but it is no Berkeley or Duke. That doesn’t mean it is bad school or anything to that effect, but the assertion that a NU degree is preferable to UIUC degree is ridiculous–especially if that degree is in engineering. So yeah, Northwestern should get over itself.</p>
<p>Also according to this link 40% of the student body hails from the midwest which indicates that is a strong regional preference for college and, as a consequence, it is logical that its prestige would be localized as well.</p>
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<p>You obviously haven’t encountered alot of the recent student body. Whenever we get into these discussions at school I am the one that has to explain to people that going to Yale is no different than going to Berkley (which if you couldn’t tell, I think is a very fine institution).</p>
<p>Dbate, you are just digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole, and in the process giving a not only poor impression of Yale students, but a terrible impression of Texas students.</p>
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What the heck does that even mean? What is “lay prestige”? Some function of football, basketball, and mentions in movies or TV shows?</p>
<p>As it happens, Cornell’s law school is probably not on a par with its other top programs.</p>
<p>The historical source of Cornell’s somewhat low reputation relative to HYP relates to the fact that it was never patrician like HYP, and didn’t ever mean to be. Its was larger (and therefore had lower selectivity), it admitted women long before the others did, it admitted racial minorities, Catholics, and Jews in meaningful numbers long before the others did, its land-grant colleges admitted lower-income students long before that became fashionable, and it offered specialized, career-oriented educational options in addition to the more gentlemanly liberal-arts approach. None of which looks the least bit wrong in retrospect. It also invented the “major” and the “elective”, two pretty significant aspects of modern undergraduate education. Cornell was really the first of the wave of great universities founded in the second half of the 19th Century; it inspired and served as a model for all of them, and that includes Chicago, Stanford, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and Duke (which existed as a small college prior to Cornell, but was completely transformed later), and they in turn effectively forced reform on the rest of what is now the Ivy League.</p>
<p>As a Cornell grad I take no offense at the cheer from the Yale crowd … I think it is pretty funny … and can be heard at tons of college games across the country (Harvard-Cornell, BC-BU, Stanford-USC, etc).</p>
<p>Ultimately I’m not bothered by the cheer becasue my guess is the Yale crowd resorted to the “safety school” chant in response to to a “scoreboard” chant from the Cornell crowd since we killed them twice. </p>
<p>The ECAC hockey tournament should be a fun one for these fans as Yale and Cornell go into the tournament #1 and #2 … and actually may make some taunting chants at each other.</p>
<p>dbate: as others have said, probably good to drop the matter. I think you’re aware that wjb, JHS and I are older alum and a little more travelled, if not more worn and weary. I think I would speak for them in that a casual diminishing of another school, especially one of such vigor as NWU (despite the fact you’ve not heard of its or UChicago’s prestige) is, as I stated earlier, off base. I would have been very honored to go to NWU.</p>
<p>“That’s all right, that’s OK, you’re going to work for us someday!” "</p>
<p>This chant is as old as the hills, I first heard it identified, 30 years ago at least, as the U Chicago fight song.</p>
<p>“Safety school”
No need to feel bad, this taunt is fair game. Cornell fans use it to, where they can, it was certainly flying around during the Cornell-BU hockey game. Things were a little more fun in my day though, when Penn was indisputably wallowing in the bottom. Then mostly we heard “old Mcdonald’s farm” played, not “safety school” so much, IIRC.</p>
<p>Fortunately I missed out someplace on my school’s “low reputation”, and remain, blissfully ignorant, under the delusion that it’s actually pretty darned good. I’m pretty sure lots of others there are also deluded. Yale is harder to get into though, no question, and for some there Cornell probably was a safety. Them’s the breaks.</p>
<p>Well these days may be something different, but in my day- the valedictorian of my high school class had Yale as his first choice, and Cornell actually WAS his safety !
****ed me right off, since I was just hoping against hope I’d get into Cornell. </p>
<p>And, though I don’t recall any erstwhile elis, I do recall a number of classmates at Cornell who’d been rejected at Harvard, Stanford or MIT. No shock to me, those schools were (yet) harder to get into. That’s just how it was. And is. There were six zillion schools that were easier to get into, as well. Nobody there was slouching.</p>
<p>No, honey. That’s what stupid people use when deciding where to apply for college. Who is so insecure that they need other people to say “wow”? Why would they substitute other people’s judgment and opinions for their own? </p>
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<p>Since you like to be a rankings whore, are you aware that NU is ranked #12, above (gasp) an Ivy? Are you seriously suggesting that you don’t think a school that is ranked #12 should be considered an excellent school? Are you seriously suggesting that it’s ridiculous to think that an NU grad will ever have other people working for him or her? What DO you think happens to NU grads, Dbate? Do they all just stay at entry level positions forever and forever?</p>
<p>The Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. kids on the other side of the stadium were bright enough to get that it was all in good-humored fun; they knew their teams would beat NU hands-down (especially in the 80’s) and we all had fun afterwards anyway. They were bright enough to get this even though they went to (gasp) state schools. Will wonders never cease?</p>
<p>I don’t know stay in the midwest so nobody every learns about how “prestigious” Northwestern is?</p>
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<p>I’d be a whore for a lot of things but rankings aren’t one of them. The rankings mean ziltch. I don’t even read them, the last time I checked we were like number three and come on, really? Princeton better than Yale well that is just a laugh.</p>
<p>(Totally said in sarcasm, everybody knows if!(Princeton==Yale)
{
then!(world==exist)
}</p>
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<p>I doubt it. Stupid people are not smart enough to get into Yale regardless of whether they are making decisions based on the “wow” factor or not.</p>
<p>At some point Dbate may have some of the same experiences I’ve had, over the years. Where you get to a job, and you find that some of the other people doing the exact same job as you went to “lesser” schools. And some of the people, who went to these
lesser" schools, were actually better at this job than you are. And you wind up working for some people who went to these “lesser” schools. And turns out, some of them are clearly smarter than you are. After that happens you get off your high horse a good bit. Hopefully. If it has to take that long.</p>
<p>Oh I know there are people who are smarter than I am at “lesser” schools. I don’t believe there are any lesser schools academically speaking. My brother goes to Sam Houston State University and when he was admitted I was as proud of him as I was when I got admitted.</p>
<p>Moreover I was ranked only 10 in my class in high school whereas our Val and Sal both went on to the University of Texas at Austin, both of these individuals are smarter than I am.</p>
<p>There are, however, differences in prestige that are tangible. Only really prestigious schools can boast (and even though they can they shouldn’t) that other individuals will one day be working for them. Yale has that prestige, but I would never in a million years every say that to some one. Northwestern doesn’t have that prestige. Academically there is no difference between Northwestern and Yale or Yale and UCLA, but there is a conspicuous difference in prestige that–although some may disagree–makes Yale and other calibers different than Northwestern. This difference has nothing to do with the quality of the student body, the expertise of professors, or the intensity of the academics but everything to do with the age and marketing of Yale.</p>
<p>for whatever reason you seem to have a different impression of Northwestern than a lot of people on this thread do, I personally think it’s a pretty darned prestigious school.</p>
<p>Granted they might not want to pull this taunt out while they are playing Yale.</p>
<p>To a certain extent it may have to do with geography, but northwestern is not generally considered a prestige school to the people I know. But then again neither was Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, or the University of Chicago until college admissions started up. And by people I know, I mean me. </p>
<p>If I had to make a ranking of the 15 most prestigious colleges it would be something like this:</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Columbia
Brown
Duke
University of Pennsylvania
Cornell
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Emory
Berkely
UCLA</p>
I won’t be making any snide cheers though.</p>