Brown Rankings

@findmoreifo - yes, you actually did talk about ranking (shanghairanking.com). And frankly, I don’t want to check the student profiles on the ASEE site - it is not important to me. As I said before, that is one (very small) piece of what makes a school great.

wrenwu, That’s fine that you won’t check them on ASEE, I can tell you they are all lower on Math, CR, and even W. Berkeley didn’t report but you can find data from other place and their three areas are lower than UIUC and Michigan. I didn’t talk about engineering ranking; shanghairanking.com was to link for academics and publications, not engineering ranking.

“that is one (very small) piece of what makes a school great”
And that’s why each schools have to post their stats, and ASEE went through all trouble to get the data for separating a college out!!! Wow.

findmoreinfo - I’m not sure why you have a need to defend Cornell so vigorously (especially on a post about Brown by someone who didn’t even have Cornell on his/her list), but it seems to me that your priorities are misplaced.

^ Cornell is on my daughter’s list and my family all know, from data, that it is hard to get in - even when she is top of her 500 junior class. It is incredible to hear other school’s student without enough knowledge to comment on it is easier to get into.

you’re old enough to have a 17 year old child?! Good lord. I’ve never heard anyone over 17 years old harp this much about the importance of SAT scores and school rankings.

^ You proved that you can’t refute or analyze anything; the only thing you can do is personal attack. Good grief!

findmoreinfo - I know this process is a stressful one and it is very easy to get caught up, but perhaps your focus should not be on rankings or which school is “harder to get in”, but on where your daughter would have the best experience and be happy.

^ She already knows which schools she is going to apply. She is a risk-taker so she is not going to go with an easy school or happy school. She will go with a place with high caliber peers and enjoy the challenge.

Oh my goodness! I think you are totally missing my point! Of course she should be challenged! But of course she should be happy too! They are not mutually exclusive. A happy, collaborative, non-competitive campus does not mean it’s easy or easy to get into or won’t have the highest caliber of peers. What I’ve been hearing from you is that only rank and stats matter. In my opinion, those things aren’t helpful when deciding on fit. I would argue location, size, scale of competitiveness, caliber of teaching, ratio of teacher to students, and most importantly gut feeling, are all more important.

Let me get this straight.

Your daughter (not you) has applied, or plans to apply to Cornell among other schools. You see in the forum of another school, Brown, that Brown has a lower acceptance rate than Cornell. This causes you to engage in vituperative and self-defensive colloquy with strangers…none of whom were responsible for posting the truthful statement that apparently has vexed you.

In a fit of reasonableness and amity you state that you will not say any more on the subject (#51) and then come back with a rapid-fire flurry of about a half-dozen posts…where no one except you is talking about the merits of acceptance rates or rankings.

Do I have this right?

If wrenwu, Iwannabe_Brown, RenaissanceMom, jonri, and I all acknowledge that Cornell is “hard to get in”, as you say, and is a great school, would that satisfy you enough to declare victory and move on?

Oh wait, we already have…

So this seems like the place to ask: is full pay at Brown worth the cost over, say, a full tuition scholarship at Fordham? Assume for purposes of this question that paying for Brown would be a financial hardship involving loans, credit line extension on the house, etc…

If the total loan for 4 years is “considerably” higher than what you get for Stafford loan (around 27K). IMO, it’s not worth it.

@2018dad Thanks I tend to agree. D certainly prefers Brown. It’s hard to get my head around just how much better she might be educated there, or what better opportunities Brown might provide, that would justify the debt.

Maybe she should look at Cornell.

Seriously, I trust you have run the numbers, but you are saying that full pay at Brown will result in financial hardship? I always thought Brown was more generous than that.

(I think this subject is off-topic here, but who cares?)

@vistajay‌ Congratulations on the scholarship! Fordham’s a great choice to have.

There is a mom here active on CC whose daughter turned down UPenn for Fordham, and I know she is successful and happy at Fordham.

My daughter and I visited Fordham LC and were most impressed. I would like to visit Rose Hill with my son - I hear it’s a great campus.

Have you seen this blog post:

http://www.thecollegiateblog.org/2013/07/24/student-stories/

I take it as a compliment to Brown and the Brown forum that people come here to discuss the merits of schools such as Cornell and Fordham.

Pull up a seat y’all, and post away. I, for one, am happy to learn about other schools here.

@fenwaypark , we fall into the “not so sweet spot” of not qualifying for FA (even at Brown) but still not having $240,000 in liquid assets for college. Plus we have other kids who expect to go to college some day (and who may not have the same scholarship opportunities as their big sis). But the reason I posted this here is to find out from the Brown folks why Brown is worth it.

I am glad you posted, especially since it has to do with Brown.

I did not fully appreciate that there was a spot where financial hardship would result for a family that falls in the full-pay category at Brown.

Memo to Alumni, Parents, Friends Out There:

All the more reason to step up those contributions…and not just to the Annual Fund.

wrenwu you said,
“What I’ve been hearing from you is that ONLY rank and stats matter.”

No, that’s a lie. If you CAN read, I said it in my previous posts twice: I didn’t talk about rank – the mention of shanghairanking.com was to point people to highly cited researchers, publications, papers published in Nature and Science… (and PCP) when a poster wondered about academic status of schools in post #30. (this link provides scores in each areas)

But I (and my daughter) do care about the SAT/ACT scores of student body – because that is the most objective indicator of the caliber of students! And she will certainly enjoy a strong peer group.

I saw some Brown parents, students, alumni here who couldn’t take hard questions and truth. When I was on Cornell board asking them about hard grading, grading curve, wrong system… THEY REPLIED WITH GRACE. Standford board was the same on earthquake questions. Princeton board was the same on strength of engineering questions.

fenwaypark you said,
“If wrenwu, Iwannabe_Brown, RenaissanceMom, jonri, and I all acknowledge that Cornell is “hard to get in”, as you say, and is a great school, would that satisfy you enough to declare victory and move on? Oh wait, we already have…”

No, so far none of you said Cornell Engineering is hard to get in. However, a comment of ‘hard to get in’ wasn’t what I was looking for.

I was unimpressed with the overall attitude of REJECTING FACTS and being UNTRUTHFUL. And you just proved it that you fall in that group since your “Oh wait, we already have… “ statement was UNTRUE. (or show me where it is among the four of you posted exact quote ‘Cornell is “hard to get in” ‘)

“you state that you will not say any more on the subject (#51)”

No. That was to iwanttobebrown. I didn’t post any new analysis to iwanttobebrown after #51, only explanations when he couldn’t understand it in post #53. These others who couldn’t take truth wanted to go around from the ‘happy’ angle and engaged in new questions to me in #52 and brought up rankings that I never discussed here (especially ranking of other non-Brown schools to try to degrade Cornell)… haha, then I wasn’t hesitate to answer questions with facts.

Let see, so far no one could rebuke any data and analysis I posted – because they are facts that will stand.


I feel sorry that my daughter doesn’t have Brown on her list and I was the one who thought Brown may be of interest to her and that’s why I came here in the first place. But I am not going to suggest her to consider to apply anymore. This should benefit anyone who is interested in Brown. ha. Since I won’t make the suggestion to her, it WON’T WORTH my time here any further. :-)

I do not know a lot of people associated with Cornell. But based on the few I have known, I think the type of invective quoted above is not reflective of their hearts or demeanor.

The author is not a student or alumnus of Cornell (as far as we know). His only connection to the school, we are told, is that his daughter plans to apply there. So I hope readers do not make any judgments–for better or worse–about Cornell or Cornell people based on his posts.

Most people on CC go to the Cornell forum to learn about Cornell, so truth to tell, any associative impact between the poster and Cornell–for better or worse–should be minimized.

I wish your daughter well. Maybe Brown would have been a good fit for her, maybe not. Anyway, I am sure both your daughter and Brown will prosper, even if not together.