<p>a possible explanation is that people are not required to take core classes at brown. they take only what they want, and thus will likely opt not to take what would otherwise be required advanced courses in areas of lesser strength. this means that they end up with higher grades because they take classes in areas that they like and can do well in.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>this could be one explanation, although most classes - whether you like them or not - are demanding in terms of quantity of work, the level of critical and analytical thinking, and the caliber of that work that is required. in particular, one’s writing needs to be top notch in order to get a-grades. </p>
<p>cmburns14 - i can think of a couple areas where brown wins at the grad level over chicago: computer science, geology, spanish and portuguese, and comparative literature, although that’s not saying much. i’d probably pick chicago for any discipline at the doctoral level! it is interesting, though, how both schools have long committed themselves to their distinguished undergraduate educations, yet chicago has also been able to develop such strong graduate and professional schools as well, while brown has seemingly lagged in this respect. my sense is that this comes from the $$$ chicago brings in from its professional schools (having a law, medical, and business school brings in a lot of dough, and cach</p>
<p>@AdOfficer</p>
<p>This is true about the writing, but one doesn’t necessarily need to take a writing course every term. This past fall, the only writing I did was in German and Italian, and at low levels, the standards aren’t too high. If I had needed to take a writing course, I likely would have gotten a B, as writing is not my forte. I’m not actively avoiding writing courses, but I’m not searching them out, either. I’ll write my fair share of essays in 4 years, but this may boost my GPA (which Brown doesn’t calculate) a little bit.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>what you say is accurate of the lower level language courses. my thesis for my language concentration, however, was 60 pages and was dissected mercilessly. if you are interested in going to graduate school, seek out some writing-heavy courses to improve your writing skills (if you feel they aren’t up to par) - your writing matters greatly to graduate schools and the growth you can experience in the area in the writing-heavy courses at brown will help you immensely. try some of the comp lit, american civ, sociology, mcm, or english department offerings - you’ll be writing plenty.</p>
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<p>This explanation, however, seems unlikely since such a high percentage of Brown students cover what other peers would consider distribution requirements (two social science, two humanities, two natural sciences, about 93-95% cover this range). Therefore, even if we were taking more classes we like (we do), our variety of course work is at least matching many peers, so it shouldn’t be drastically different in terms of our ability to match our schedule with our strengths. However, taking more classes me like, even if these varying areas that lay outside and inside of our strengths may lead to higher “buy-in” in courses where we’re naturally more weakly performing leading to higher quality work in those areas.</p>
<p>I would look at the quality of the graduates and their success to truly judge if a university is rigorous and prepares people for whatever comes next. </p>
<p>That said, I would love a pass fail system and some grading leniency. </p>
<p>Columbia 13</p>
<p>Just found this thread. Pleasant yet unsurprising to see that Penn has the most students at Harvard Law on this list (Harvard, Yale and Stanford had more, although Pinderhughs didn’t list them):
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<p>I also did some research into the ridiculous WSJ feeder school ranking, which didn’t look at all top-10 or even top-5 professional schools. Or Penn’s own medical school, which is top-3, and has, I might add, a huge percentage of Penn alums. If anyone quotes it again as a source, I’m going to be VERY dubious of your verity.</p>
<p>muetre-- what is your motivation for bumping this thread and adding essentially nothing to the conversation?</p>
<p>muerte is simply happy that her alma mater is successful - just as you love and defend Brown. Is that so wrong?</p>
<p>Though I do concede that this is bumped up from like 2 months ago.</p>
<p>Well, modestmelody - I just wanted to point out that the WSJ feeder ranking so often touted by Brunonians is statistical claptrap.</p>
<p>Brown’s placement, so often praised, seems no better than any other “middle-Ivy” - especially in light of the following data:</p>
<p>1) Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth and Brown all have the same mean LSAT score (163)
2) Penn has by far the most kids at Harvard than any middle Ivy, and even Princeton.
3) Penn got 9 kids into Yale law last year; Brown had 7 (couldn’t find data for Columbia and Dartmouth, but based on the total number they had at Yale it seems they had 8 and 6, respectively)</p>
<p>You might say argue that Penn is bigger, but the only thing this reflects is the actual application pool - and Penn’s Harvard and Yale acceptances were both well above the national average, about double the true acceptance rate at both of those schools.</p>
<p>So, until a statistically accurate feeder study comes out, you should hold your breath - the studies don’t always tell the truth.</p>
<p>Yet if you read this this thread the context does not involve anyone saying Brown is better than Penn or any other school. All that WSJ poll was used for was refuting the notion that Brown essentially doesn’t matter because it’s not on the map as a feeder school to top graduate schools and firms. That’s not true, and even with all of its flaws (which I noted just today how WSJ unfairly hurts Penn in another thread) WSJ still does an ample job refuting that point.</p>
<p>If someone in this thread was using any of this evidence to prove Brown was better than somewhere else, and this thread was current, that’d be one thing. But this is one of the few threads on here that promoted the quality of one institution without putting down others. In fact, only Pinderhughes really made any points that were comparative and those were using the much discussed Revealed Preferences survey, not WSJ.</p>
<p>So basically, you bumped a thread to combat something that wasn’t being discussed in this thread and you’re essentially being defensive where there is no need.</p>
<p>Sorry modestmelody, this was actually aimed at Pinderhughs. I didn’t mean to denigrate Brown, either! I really do think it is on par with the middle Ivies, and deserves to be ranked as highly as Columbia, Penn and Dartmouth. It has great placement! It’s just not BETTER than those other schools, as the LSAT averages and true law school placement illustrate.</p>
<p>I didn’t utilize the Revealed Preferences Survey to denigrate any schools. I merely used it to refute the notion that Brown is not sufficiently rigorous in its academic offerings to be an effective conduit to outstanding graduate and professional programs. My position was mischaracterized.</p>
<p>The Revealed Preference study has nothing to do with academic rigor, if anything it correlates negatively with rigor. All else equal (selectivity, grad school prospects, prestige, etc), an easier school is more desirable and thus will rise in the rankings. The RP method also rewards self-selection of the applicant pool, and Brown benefited from both effects. </p>
<p>Also, you cited Revealed Preferences to make the claim that Brown is in the same league with MIT, Stanford and Princeton. Whether that’s true or not, Revealed Preference is the last place one would go to support that claim, because the primary finding of the study was the giant separation between HYPSM(C) and all others. Brown was number 7 but came out below 7th place in a majority of the simulations, and was nearly indistinguishable from Columbia.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is particular to the Revealed Preference ratings. Brown is too statistically similar to Columbia to find noticeable differences without statistics-shopping. That is, natural measures by which Brown beats Columbia, but is not itself beaten by non-HYPS(MC) schools such as Upenn or Duke.</p>
<p>I disagree. By your logic, Harvard, which is a leading feeder school for graduate and professional programs is “easier” because it is supposedly less taxing than MIT to get a high GPA. Rigor is a part of this because graduate and professional schools keep a tally on how the graduates from particular programs do in their schools. If graduates from particular schools struggle with a particuluar graduate program enough, then top graduate programs would be far less likely to extend acceptances to other graduates from the same undergraduate programs. Where do you get the notion that Brown came in below most peer schools as far as being in the 7th position vis a vis student cross-admits statistics? In one little considered part of the first draft of the study, the price-considered piece, Brown was higher than 7th, in fact, it leapfrogged MIT. The point is not that the study’s conclusions were methodologically irrefutable, it is that since the colleges closely guard cross-admit data, it is the only study, to my knowledge that attempted, through statistics and raw data, to give some idea as to which elite schools were preferred by a sample of talented high-school graduates.</p>
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<p>Harvard is indeed perceived to be easier than MIT, which improves Harvard’s cross-admit performance against MIT, and worsens MIT’s performance against all schools but Caltech Even so, MIT is a clear #2 in cross-admit matriculation, as it beats all schools except Harvard and (according to Harvard officials’ statements) is Harvard’s strongest cross-admit competitor. It’s interesting that the Revealed Preferences method didn’t catch this, especially considering the self-selection effect which is stronger for MIT than for the Ivy League schools or Stanford.</p>
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<p>Somebody posted the GPA renormalization scale applied in law school admissions, and as one might expect, a larger positive adjustment was made for MIT grades than for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. I don’t believe the acceptance rates for different schools are published; the feeder rankings are based on enrollment, which is of course skewed by the different number and type of applicants. In any event, we were discussing your comments on the Revealed Preference study and whether it has anything to do with “academic rigor”. It doesn’t, except insofar as all rankings correlate with academics. Other than that, more rigor means lower RP ranking, less rigor improves the ranking. </p>
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<p>What I said is that in a majority of the Revealed Preference simulations Brown came out below 7th place. You can read that clearly from the table of “confidence probabilities” (MCMC resampling results) giving the proportion of simulations in which Brown beat Columbia, Amherst etc. Due to the dominance of the top 6 schools, Brown “never” ends up in the top 6 or below number 14, and in 96 percent of the simulations it lands in the 7 to 11 range. Brown’s average rank over all simulations was 9.67, not 7th, and in a majority of the simulations (ie. the 65 percent visible in the table, adjusted downward for some very limited double-counting) it came out below 7th place. The only way the double-counting could work out so that Brown places at 7th more than 50 percent of the time is if the rest of the time it is more than one or two ranks lower, which would mean the Revealed Preference model can’t tell whether in their sample Brown is really 7th or 9-10th. Neither picture supports your claims that Brown is clearly distinguishable from Columbia in cross-admit performance. </p>
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<p>That’s not true in either the first draft (NBER) or the second draft (SSRN) available on the web. There are several variants of the ranking table and in all of them Brown is 7th and Columbia 8th, with some shuffling above and below those ranks. This is further evidence that Brown and Columbia are not statistically distinguishable under any version of the Revealed Preference calculation applied to their sample.</p>
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<p>I already pointed you to the admissions chances site (mychances) that, based on a similar sample size, had Columbia beating Brown 63 to 37 percent. Again, this indicates that Brown is indistinguishable from Columbia by this measure, and there are few other measures where it beats Columbia but is not outranked by other non-HYPS schools.</p>
<p>2 things, and then I’ll go.</p>
<p>1) Harvard is easy. This distinction may vacillate between majors, and it’s true that its undergrad is easily one of the most talented, but rest assured - graduating with honors is the norm for a disproportionate part of the class compared to peer schools, and grade inflation has been documented. There was even an article about the cavalier studying habits of many students due to to these standards in the last Harvard alumni magazine. My dad is an alum, so we get it - it’s not like I read the periodicals of Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>2) The revealed preference study uses information so dated as to make it all but useless. A newer website - mychances . net - collects data in the same method AND maintains it with hundreds (reaching thousands) of contemporary students’ applications.</p>
<p>That site shows Brown losing to Columbia and Penn at 63-37, and tying with Dartmouth at 50-50.</p>
<p>Interestingly, and perhaps most telling of the data’s veracity, is the fact that the schools have non-linear relationships with each other. For example, even though Brown loses to Penn and ties with Dartmouth, Dartmouth beats Penn 60-40 and almost ties with Columbia, 57-43. Penn comes even closer, at 56-44.</p>
<p>Why is this telling or remotely interesting? Because it testifies to the truth of that strata of colleges we often invoke - first HYPSMC, then Col/Penn/Dart/Brown, then the rest. No one of those 4 is better than the other, and there’s no ladder of selectivity or prestige; some appeal to one kind of person, some to another, and that appeal ebbs and flows over the demographic that populates those schools.</p>
<p>A similar indicator, one of student quality, is average LSAT scores by college. Guess what? Columbia, Brown, Penn and Dartmouth are all 163. The only colleges higher than that are Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Harvard.</p>
<p>CONCLUSION - Brown isn’t leapfrogging anywhere. The data will show you what you want to see in hazy, invoked terminology like “preference,” etc, but when you get to the bottom of it, 1) student quality is definitely parable across the 4 middle ivies, and 2) consistently used preference tables reveal the schools to be essentially deadlocked, above most, and below the top 6.</p>
<p>TITCR^^^^</p>
<p>The median GPA at Harvard is a 3.60, the mean a 3.56.</p>
<p>Following the OP’s line of reasoning Harvard is a joke school. And, it probably is. ;)</p>
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<p>And Amherst, Williams, Pomona, and Swarthmore… BUT I DIGRESS!</p>
<p>Calculated below are the average rankings (over all simulations) of the schools in the Revealed Preference study, December 2005 version. For example, Harvard was outranked by Caltech in 30 percent of trials and Yale in 2 percent, so its average rank is 1.32.</p>
<p>From this and the table of confidence “probabilities” in the article, we can conclude the following about the simulations in the study:</p>
<p>-Harvard is never out of the top 3</p>
<p>-In all simulations, either HYPSMC are (in some order) the top 6, or HYPSM are (in some order) the top 5 and some school other than Caltech is number 6. This reflects the fluky nature of Caltech’s inclusion in the top 6. </p>
<p>-There is some bunching in the top 6, reflecting what are basically ties between schools. The bunching would increase if Caltech were properly deflated and some of its points redistributed. Princeton is seen to be in a tie for the 4-5-6 or possibly 3-4-5-6 spots, and is only nominally in sixth place. Other than Harvard it is hard to say that any of the top 6 really outrank each other in the RP model.</p>
<p>-First tier (1-6) and second tier (7+) are quite well separated. </p>
<p>-Brown ranks at the head of its tier (ie., the next after HYPSM(C) ) at least 34 percent of the time.
-However, there is very little mathematical room for Brown to head its tier more than 50 percent of the time. For instance, if Brown always ranks first or second in its tier, it has to come in second 66 percent of the time. Under plausible scenarios Brown heads its tier a bit less than 50 percent of the time; alternatively, it spends a lot of time at ranks 9-10 or below. Either way there isn’t much of a case for Brown to be the clear champion of its group, and little or nothing to separate it from Columbia.</p>
<p>SCHOOL – (RANK) – AVG.RANK.IN.ALL.SIMULATIONS
Harvard (1st) 1.32
Caltech (2nd) 2.60
Yale (3rd) 3.11
MIT (4th) 4.35
Stanford (5th) 4.62
Princeton (6th) 5.04
Brown (7th) 7.65 [not 9.67 as previously reported]
Columbia (8th) 9.21
Amherst (9th) 10.33
Dartmouth (10th) 10.43
UPenn (12th) 11.64</p>