Which school is stronger in Humanities & Social Science, for undergraduate?
They are all outstanding. Go to the one that feels like the best fit.
Want rural? then Dartmouth
Want urban? then Penn
Want open curriculum? then Brown
etc.
Overall? none…
…and there are easily 50 other colleges and universities who are not in that particular sports league that are at least as good in “Humanities & Social Sciences” as any of those 3, and for any particular aspect of H&SS there are ones that are better.
For example, if you are looking at International Relations, I would look at Georgetown, JHU and Tufts before I would look at any of those 3. If you are looking at Creative Writing I would look at UIa, NU, Kenyon or Emory before Dartmouth or Brown. If I wanted a strong Core curriculum across the Humanities I would look at Columbia or UChic before Brown. And so on.
If you are thinking that these schools are the “easier” way to get the “Ivy” label please re-think the whole thing.
Collegemom3717. Seems you are a very active contributor in this forum, but you absolutely do not know what I am thinking. Also none of your business whether I am thinking the “easier” or “ harder” way to go to the Ivy
Note that the sentence started with IF. I don’t pretend to know what you- or any other poster- is thinking.
@leex3637 Wow, are you having a bad day? Your response “you don’t know what I am thinking” and “none of your business” indicate you might not be reading @collegemom3717 's post correctly. She said absolutely nothing wrong. And when I re-read it, I don’t think she indicated knowing what your were thinking or minding your business, IMO.
People obsessed with the Ivy League athletic conference tend to be a bit defensive when it’s suggested other schools might be a better fit for them.
@Muad_dib That’s true today. I have three Ivy degrees and one other degree from a non-Ivy but comment worthy school. ( I say this because it’s rare for someone not to comment on my education which I find odd, at best). I attended an Ivy as an undergrad because they had the most libraries of schools I had been accepted to. Never even tought of anything other than learning. Today it’s a status symbol. So sad. My kids are not allowed to apply to the same schools as me and my spouse. We want them to find their own path. It’s no wonder that kids have such a hard time getting accepted to schools. They have no idea why they want to attend.
There is often something of an anti-Ivy League view on this site.
Please address further comments to the OPs question.
In general, Penn will be the choice for those Hum/SocSci subjects that benefit the most from an urban mindset: the newer, industrial-focused areas of study such as Economics, Political Science and Sociology.
Dartmouth has pockets of strength - in International Relations in particular - but overall it lags behind the other two. It’s essentially a small liberal arts college that is best compared to Amherst, Williams and Bowdoin. While Dartmouth has a good graduate business school from which you might be able to take a course or two, Penn is the obvious choice for anyone focused on Economics.
Brown is generally stronger the further you get from the modern, industrial world: Classics, early American History, Anthropology. For Psychology as well, Brown is probably best of the three.
As to Literature, Philosophy and History, they’re all solid.
For Linguistics, Penn is clearly the best.
Nb. If your interests involve anything related to computational linguistics, Brown is perhaps the best choice and Dartmouth is also very good. They’re all strong in computer science, with Brown especially strong in applied math and graphics-related algorithms.
Hope that helps.
Note that these are very different schools. Penn is the Big City and a huge research complex. Dartmouth is a LAC. Brown is something of a hybrid of the two.
Ask yourself whether you want to be with a more urban, feet-on-the-ground, pre-professional crowd (Penn), somewhat more laid-back types who like to ski and drink before they head off to Wall Street or grad school (Dartmouth), or wealthy, happy liberals who fall in between the two (Brown).
LAC, Slack or Urban Attack. Your choice.
There are schools better in individual subjects - Rutgers in philosophy, for example - but overall Brown and Penn have a breadth and depth in the humanities rivaled by VERY few colleges. Dartmouth is not quite as well-rounded as either, but it is a solid option for the humanities as well.
Brown is excellent in those areas, but Penn is as well. Penn is stronger in anthropology than Brown and has some amazing resources like its world-renowned anthropology/archaeology museum. (The Haffenreffer and the ancient galleries of the RISD museum are nice, but they’re not on the same level.) Penn is at least as strong in Classics as well, and it’s arguably stronger in related fields like Egyptology and Mesopotamian studies, though I highly doubt any undergraduate would notice a difference academically between the two schools.
I agree that the two are more or less interchangeable for English, history, art history, etc.
At the undergraduate level, they are likely indistinguishable from each other.
@collegemom3717 What is “Ula”? NU is Northwestern, correct?
In the context of creative writing, UIa almost certainly represents the University of Iowa, @OhioDadof4.
https://www.flavorwire.com/409437/the-25-most-literary-colleges-in-america
https://contently.net/2014/11/06/resources/tools/training/10-best-colleges-creative-writers/
@merc81 Thanks. Brain fart. Was reading that as a lowercase L. painfully obvious.
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humanities and social science are pretty broad fields, if humanities to you means English or history then I’d go Brown, Dartmouth, Penn.
If social science means econ, govt, poly sci, I’d go Penn, Dartmouth, Brown.
By faculty publishing in economics, these schools place, narrowly, in the order of Brown, Penn, Dartmouth.