@Alexandre: Again, I think your argument has merits; Rhodes success is not everything. On the other hand, if we are willing to consider the following: Wouldn’t Rhodes success over 100 years add to a university prestige? If Rhodes success adds no prestige to students and universities, why would so many universities spend time, money, and efforts to help and endorse their own applicants? Also, what are the reasons that Williams has been able to produce so many more Scholars given its small size for such a long sample period? I think Williams has something very interesting.
The list that I posted earlier:
Harvard, Yale, MIT
Princeton, Stanford
Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams
was based on the actual school choice/preference from the top 1-2% students of my local HS. Many of these top performers are my university colleague’s kids. I think it reflects a little bit of New England fondness toward Williams.
Purple titan, yes Michigan & MSU were regularly visiting Evanston since before most of us were born, which makes the Michiganders’ obliviousness even more stunning. Don’t get me wrong…when strangers find out my kid is a Wildcat, some of them are impressed; but a TON have no idea …they assume we mean Northwood University (decent business-oriented college in Michigan) or Western Michigan U, or some other college somewhere that has “north” and/or “west,” in the name. My kid eventually started responding to “where do u go to school?” with “Northwestern – in CHICAGO.”
It’s like some sort of experiment to study perception… You say “Northwestern” as clearly as possible, & people hear whatever they want to hear. Reminds me of all the anecdotes on cc where somebody says they go to The University of Pennsylvania (no doubt pronounced clearly and distinctly) and they get “Penn State? Great!” in return.
@PurpleTitan “@Penn95 not that it matters, career-wise, but more “average people” in the US would know of Duke because of its basketball and confuse Penn with PSU.”
In some cases that is true that they may be more likely to know Duke basketball, but most of those people don’t know it is a good school or anything about it. They just now it is a basketball school. If sports success translated into lay prestige, Michigan State would be very high with very good teams in both basketball and football.
@Much2learn, the folks who follow college sports generally know that Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, (and ND), etc. are good schools because the broadcasters almost always elude to their academic bonafides when announcing their games.
@purpletitan lol. No they don’t. They have no idea about it. They do know the mascots though!
Yes, they sometimes mention it, but it is not of interest for them, and not a relevant part of their world. People who already knew that notice the comment, but the rest don’t.
For graduates of the “prestigious” schools, “lay prestige” may be the most irrelevant possible metric. The people hiring those schools’ grads have knowledge beyond that of a layperson.
@Much2learn, hmm. I frequent (well, more so in the past) college sports sites, and people typically see Stanford/Duke/Northwestern as good schools. If anything, they tend to be more inclusive than CC people are when it comes to tiering (Tulane is a good school; Baylor is a good school–at least according to one guy). Then again, the most rabid college fans (outside of certain states like KY/NE/AL/etc.) also tend to be alums and thus college-educated.
NU has two unique business certificate programs for undergrads through Kellogg and it’s technically open to all students to apply. Yet, out of the 108 undergrads that enrolled in the program in fall 2015, only 1 student was in the specialty school (communication in this case), ALL OTHERS were from the school of engineering or arts & sciences.
The business schools you have served must be relatively cheap if bunch of musicians living paycheck to paycheck can apply. But unfortunately, the MBA programs you brought up are among the most expensive in the country. According to NU exit survey, the grads out of the four specialty (communications, music, education, and journalism) schools earn less than those from arts & sciences and engineering. They are at a disadvantage financially to make elite MBA programs affordable to themselves.
As for Tuck, why would NU grads be interested in a school in the middle of nowhere after experiencing Chicago for 4 years and there are already two better programs in Chicago itself (Kellogg and Booth). If any of them want to go to elite programs in the east coast, there are Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. Heck, even Stern looks way more desirable for me (a city person). But for a Williams grad, it’s no problem. One must either love the country or be extremely flexible about location in order to go to Williams at the first place. And Hanover, may actually be a slight upgrade from Williamstown.
prof2dad, I did not mean to take anything away from Williams. It is an exceptional college (on par with the best universities in the country). The Rhodes scholarship count certainly adds to a university’s profile, or universities would not bother listing it among its accomplishments. I would include other important scholarships too, such as Churchill, Fulbright, Marshall and Truman. Relative to its size, Williams does very well across all scholarships.
@IWannaHelp: “The business schools you have served must be relatively cheap if bunch of musicians living paycheck to paycheck can apply.”
Yes, the state flagship universities that I have served charge less on MBA tuition and fees. My current one is about $12,000 less a year relative to elite private MBAs.
I think you misunderstood about the reason Why MBAs admitted quite a few musicians. There is respectful presence of musicians in state MBAs, private MBAs, and also medical schools. The reason why the MBA committees that I have served took particular notice on musicians is similar to why we are fond of athletes so long as they present reasonably good GPA and GMAT score. These activities are not only meaningful but also “sustained.” A musician often starts to learn her instrument when she is like 5 or 6. By the time she applies to an MBA or medical school, she has committed about 20 years of her time on something (mostly likely) meaningful to her. We like this kind of personal quality. We know that this attribute has a good chance leading to future success.
Actually, there are so many high quality musicians in Harvard medical school and nearby hospitals, they are able to form a high quality orchestra, called Longwood. I believe there is also at least another local orchestra, called Merccury (its conductor is an MD, if my memory serves me correct), has many medical professionals in it. Similar organization(s) are also present at Yale.
