<p>Why is Stanford under Yale? Why is Caltech above MIT and Princeton? Why is Amherst above Dartmouth?</p>
<p>IMO:</p>
<p>1.Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Yale
4. Princeton
5. MIT
6. Caltech
7. Dartmouth
8. Columbia
9. Brown
10. Amherst</p>
<p>I just had a thought, just based on what school I liked more, I would easily take any one of 1-6 over another, ie Princeton over Harvard would be easy. Similarly, I would do the same (and did) for 7-10, ie Dartmouth over Brown in a second. But switching from 7 (Brown) to 6 (Princeton) would be a much harder choice. That is why I think schools should be clustered so within a range only what type of atmosphere you want should matter. I would put Penn and maybe Duke in the same cluster as 7-10. The next cluster after this would be Chicago, NU, Cornell, and maybe JHU. I.e. I might have as difficult a time choosing Northwestern over Duke, Dartmouth, or Brown just as I would choosing Brown over Princeton.</p>
<p>This thread is quite comical. As much as I despise the US News rankings, I would value their opinion 100x more than a 17 year-old high schooler who knows basically nothing about college. Think about it.</p>
<p>uc_benz is right, but this is still fun hehe</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania
8.Columbia</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
</ol>
<p>I trust a 17 year old looking at colleges more than the money-mongering, good-for-nothing, greedy, unscrupulous US News writers.</p>
<p>I trust neither the 17 years olds...not the USNWR. I trust the honnest opionions of academics and corporate recruiters, who base their accurate estimatations on the quality of the faculty, research, education and students.</p>
<ol>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Amherst</li>
<li>Williams</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Swarthmore</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
</ol>
<p>Those are my 10 favorite schools in the country, in that order. It isn't based on anything except my relative willingness to attend.</p>
<p>my thought (only the nat'l univs <em>undergrad</em>)
1 harvard yale princeton stanford mit
2 other ivies (except cornell) duke caltech
3 northwestern chicago rice wustl
4 virginia berkeley michigan jhu cornell vanderbilt gtown cmu notredame
5 unc ucla w&m usc</p>
<p>i dun understand why some ppl put berkeley, michigan above virginia.. when
considering only the undergrad. i agree that those two are generally better than virginia in terms of grad schools, but at the undergrad level where teaching's generally more valued than research, they are identical.</p>
<p>First group: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech
Second group: Berkeley, Lower Ivies, Duke, Chicago
Third group: Michigan, Northwestern, UVa, Rice, JHU, CMU
Fourth group: UCLA, WUSTL, Notredame, Vanderbilt, etc.</p>
<p>"Why is Stanford under Yale? Why is Caltech above MIT and Princeton? Why is Amherst above Dartmouth?"</p>
<p>Rooster, I agree that MIT is above Caltech, but Princeton is not :)</p>
<p>California1600 Educational Supplemental Rankings - First Edition </p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanfurd</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>MIT </li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>University of Michigan- Ann Arbor</li>
</ol>
<p>(Clicks on this thread are automatically charged to your credit card)</p>
<p>BTW, here is one bad thing about private schools. They are known to baby you too much. Except for Yale, Cornell and University of Chicago. Speaking from experience as an investment banker at a top bulge bracket, a lot of the ivy league students got reputations for being lazy. Berkeley students, who are not babied, were considered to be the best investment bankers when I was working.</p>
<p>Here is a quote from someone on a different board. This person got their BA, MS, and PhD from Rice University in Texas.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In my experience, every student I have met who has gone to Harvard, Yale or Princeton as an undergraduate was a person who was good at projecting their superiority on others. Unfortunately, many of these people also relied on that ability as a crutch in order to further themselves in life. I find preying on people affected by subtle eye contact, appearances, and hinting to be completely despicable. It also makes me hypersensitive to people trying to persuade me about something that I dont believe logically, especially when it comes to self promotion. </p>
<p>Harvard, Yale and priceton really have fallen a notch and I think its because of the difficulty of their admissions problem. They just cant SOLVE the problem: they dont have a good way to get TRULEY strong individuals, so they end up with a lot of posers that seem strong. As the (presumably) top schools we have, its their job to innovate on admissions standards in order to find the strongest, highest achieving applicants, and eliminate the posers, because they are in a unique position: few people ever turn them down.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I have absolutely no respect for anything California1050 has to say. UCB over Princeton? Please.</p>
<p>As far as I'm concerned, only Harvard and Yale are worth leaving California for. I particularly did not like Princeton because the atmosphere is against ethnic activism. But I would have rather attended UCLA over Princeton for that reason alone. So if you notice, I placed princeton above UCLA because I factored in the consideration that not everyone would have put UCLA over Princeton. </p>
<p>Also, I scored above 1600 on the SAT. Please don't lump me in with other average 1600 scorers post 1995. Thank you.</p>
<p>well, california1600
not everyone would have put ucb over princeton, either.
in fact, few, including u, are gonna believe princeton is worse than ucb.</p>
<p>"As far as I'm concerned, only Harvard and Yale are worth leaving California for. I particularly did not like Princeton because the atmosphere is against ethnic activism."</p>
<p>Is that not a ridiculous reason to rank schools? You took the SAT in 1995, how do you know what Princeton is like now? You are also looking at Universities, while we are ranking colleges. UCLA is not above JHU, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, etc. </p>
<p>California1600 SAT score: 1600. Common sense: 0</p>
<p>Sorry for the harshness guys. I have just seen so many ridiculous things said by 1600 in the past that I might jump the gun a little quickly.</p>
<p>I'm sorry but Dartmouth and Brown, I don't wanna diss colleges, but if they are wayy too dependent on the Ivy League status and do not focus on academic excellence enough.</p>
<p>On paper, Dartmouth and Brown are the equivalent of USC, Pomona, Claremont Colleges. But because they have their ivy reputation, they are considered to be better. I have a very high opinion of Cornell. Their sciences and research are world recognized. And their students are top notch. Cornell > Dartmouth and Brown without a doubt.</p>
<p>But I do hope for a return of the liberal arts. Arts and humanities mattered a lot more in the Soviet Union than it ever was in the United States.</p>
<p>I find your opinions to be hilarious. I understand why you think that a LAC/ undergrad college isn't up to the research standards of Cal Berkeley, but you have to understand that for college students this is an asset. Counter to what you believe, going to one of these schools at the undergraduate level provides arguably the best undergraduate education out there, with the exception of Princeton (the best in my opinion). I first went to a top "University" , Columbia, and was stuck with TAs, 300 people classes, and professors who didnt know my name. At Dartmouth there are no TAs in a great majority of classes, incredible thesis advising, and the grants/ opportunities for research are thus given to undergraduates. That plus tremendous recruiting and a very tightknit intellectual student body makes these places top notch. Just because they are not filled with nobel prize winners does not take this away from them. Their focus is on the students. For example, Dartmouth finishes ranked in the top 8 schools in the country for Rhodes and Marshall scholars each year.</p>
<p>^ Slipper thats great that you got all that personal attention. However, I would rather be taught from the forethinkers and the matrix breaking professors. Thats my priority.</p>
<p>BTW the wave of the future is excellent interdisciplinary viewpoints.</p>
<p>meaning, taking #1 Sociology, #1 Chemistry, #1 Math, #1 English, #1 Engineering, #1 History, etc... courses and drawing from your pool of interdisciplinary strengths to form your own thesis, hypothesis, and being a part of the new world, digital age, new economy, etc.</p>
<p>(BTW I apologize if my viewpoints are too advanced for you. To me and other students in Berkeley, what I said is pretty common stuff. But I am sure you are starting to realize the limits other universities place in your future, all subconsciously and unintentionally, no doubt.)</p>
<p>Dude, Dartmouth is a great school. What are you talking about? In fact, after getting accepted to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and MIT, the only two colleges I narrowed my choices to were Stanford and Dartmouth. And trust me, it was a hard decision. </p>
<p>Big research universities like Berkeley and UCLA are not good for undergraduates. It's a sink or swim atmosphere that is not conducive to learning at all. I'd go to Berkeley over Dartmouth for grad school in a second (other than Tuck Business), but definitely not for undergrad. Dartmouth's focus on undergraduates makes it a MUCH more attractive school than Berkeley ever could be.</p>