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<p>But I guess that wouldn’t hurt their ego that much as they don’t care Columbia as much as they do H and Y. for the top of the top students, HYPSMC are the way to go, not Columbia. Columbia’s peer schools are UPenn, Duke, Dartmoouth, Chicago, NU, Brown and the like. that’s the simple truth.</p>
<p>What about a beast policy debate student? What school would they aim for?</p>
<p>To EVER say that one school is better then the other just because one was rejected in x school and was accepted to y school is ignorant, when you speak in terms of ivy leagues. Ivy league acceptance is purely luck, even if you have tremendous skills. </p>
<p>But none-the-less, Columbia is better then MIT/Caltech, well even in personal opinion and stats. Columbia is more generally well prepared (though lacking when compared to MIT/Caltech in math and engineering), while MIT/Caltech are more engineering/math prepared then any other schools. That’s why many who apply to HYPC don’t apply to MIT/Caltech.</p>
<p>randy5, i’m not saying columbia is a bad school. I think it’s a great school or one of the greatest in the world. I even applied there. all i’m saying is – it is not in the league of HYPSMC in terms of brand power, that’s why I don’t think the accronym will change as the OP suggested. Truthfully, I may even suspect that Columbia offers better academic teaching than some of the HYPSMC. But that is not what we are talking about. I was talking about the brand power of Columbia’s name, which is not on par with HYPSMC. </p>
<p>As for the math olympiad thing, it was only an example. Of course “beast students” aren’t limitted to those math or physics olympiad kids.</p>
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<p>Who’s to say that they don’t? Columbia may very well have been their first-choice school. You don’t know that and I don’t know that. With these dwindling admission numbers, it is quite possible to have been denied/waitlisted at all other schools except one of HYPMS, and the decision to matriculate there in no way reflects the applicant’s view of any other school.</p>
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<p>In which way is that supported? Endowment numbers? Nobel prize winners? Pulitzer prize winners? CEO’s? Presidents? Because in any of those cases, Columbia certainly trumps the others and is very much on par if not better than HYPSM.</p>
<p>^The HYPSM mystique is supported by two, and only two, metrics: gross endowment size; and College Confidential.</p>
<p>RML adds a lot to this website, and I respect his point of view. I also think, however, that confident young folks make choices based on factors other than “reputation” or “prestige.” After all, it’s four of the most important years of development in one’s life. My boys’ high school has a long and storied history of students picking colleges that don’t follow the HYPMS mantra, or the US News rankings. My younger son was dead set on Columbia. Even the attractive tour guide at Yale was unable to turn his head (although I would have gone with Yale, and I try to convince myself that it’s not due to the cute tour guide…). Stanford felt like his suburban high school community. MIT and Caltech were too “geeky.” Etc. Is it wrong that he applied to Columbia ED, and is ecstatic with his choice, even though his counselors tried to focus him on Harvard and Yale? I don’t think so. He’s chomping at the bit to get back there next week.</p>
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<p>Not really. Columbia has an equal endowment as Penn and Chicago. It has the most Nobel Prize winners, but Chicago is close competition with it. Penn has more CEOs and trumps Columbia in medicine and business. Duke, Chicago and, in the social sciences, Penn closely compete, if not outrank Columbia in every grad school ranking. Penn and Duke are making groundbreaking developments in medicine and bioengineering. Chicago has one of the top pure science programs in the country. </p>
<p>By no metrics is Columbia ‘on par’ with HYPSM. It’s not even close to a competitor.</p>
<p>^Be true to your HYPSM school! Or is it Chicago? Or Penn? Or Duke? Maybe you attend all of the above!</p>
<p>@iCalculus: the beast policy debater would attend an APDA school, because policy debate in college is kind of strange, and is waaay too much like the NFL. If they were to choose an APDA school based on how well they do on the circuit, they’d go with:
Yale (except they have tryouts, and as a team are less chillaxed than most… though it works, I guess)
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Harvard, BU, MIT (because they’re all in Boston, so go to the most tournaments, and have great teams. Adam Goldstein and Kathleen Clark-Adams, anyone?)
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Amherst, NU, Tufts, Brandeis, Brown (all in or near Boston, with decent to OK teams, where a beast debater could do well)
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Hopkins, Princeton, Chicago, Duke, William & Mary, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Stanford, NYU, UMCP, George Washington, Syracuse, etc. (Sorry, I don’t have enough experience with southern schools, being a northern debater myself, to discriminate too much. These all are schools with longer travel distances, so each debater may not be able to compete in as many tournaments. And they’re ordered such that Hopkins = very good, Syracuse = not as good. But within that there could be some serious movement between the schools).</p>
<p>[APDA</a> Web - Home of the American Parliamentary Debate Association | American College Debate Association - Home](<a href=“http://www.apdaweb.org%5DAPDA”>http://www.apdaweb.org)</p>
<p>Guys, RML is just going to continue to project his rigid view of prestige and quality as a view shared by parents and applicants everywhere, so leave him/her in their nonage.</p>
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<p>here are a few metrics where columbia beats at least 2 of the 5:</p>
<p>class sizes
student to faculty ratio
sat scores
% of students in the top 10% of their high school class
ethnic diversity
% international students
% of pell grant recipients (as a measure of socio-economic diversity)
average undergraduate indebtedness at graduation
freshman retention
graduation rates
nobel prize winners</p>
<p>the center for measuring university performance puts columbia first in their research rankings</p>
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Just to get hypertechnical for a moment, Columbia is in the highest tier along with MIT and Stanford, but the order within that tier is alphabetical. :)</p>
<p>I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “HY-P-M-S” may be the perfect acronym.</p>