<p>“I felt that WashU, Chicago, JHop, etc. were more academically focused (and in Chicago and JHop’s cases, grad-focused) than the Ivies, who put a lot into student life and athletics as well.”</p>
<p>WashU is supposed to have one of the HIGHEST quality of life ratings out of all those top universities. They place a huge emphasis on student life (including dorms, dining, smoke-free campus), and combined with their renowned academic advising, the school is definitely one of the top undergraduate focused institutions, along with the ivies.</p>
<p>I think LogicWarrior was referring to campus culture, not to academic excellence or reputation. If that is the case, then I agree that JHU and Chicago have a different feel from some of the Ivies. But LogicWarrior, Columbia has more in common with Chicago and JHU than it has with Cornell or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Yes… there are schools that have science and humanities research departments that can blow Dartmouth and Brown right out of the water rank wise.</p>
<p>I guess Dartmouth and Brown are in the “middle” between research type universities and LAC in terms of how they are structured and modeled…</p>
<p>Very interesting set up… their departments aren’t necessarily the highest in therankings… but I have no doubts that the departments and their facilities provide an excellent environment for students at Dartmouth and Brown… in terms of lecturers at the undergraduate level… probably among the best in the country.</p>
<p>Asking which colleges have “Ivy League standards” is a completely different question than which colleges have the “prestige, ranking, academics, and overall reputation” of Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology 1470 1580
Harvey Mudd College 1430 1560
Harvard University 1400 1590
Yale University 1390 1580
Princeton University 1390 1580
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1380 1560
Pomona College 1380 1530
Washington University in St Louis 1370 1530
Dartmouth College 1350 1550
Swarthmore College 1360 1540
Stanford University 1340 1550
Columbia University in the City of New York 1330 1540
Duke University 1330 1540
Cornell - Arts & Sci and Engineering 1335 1525
Amherst College 1330 1530
Brown University 1330 1530
University of Chicago 1320 1530
University of Pennsylvania 1330 1520
Williams College 1320 1520
Tufts University 1340 1490
Northwestern University 1320 1500
Rice University 1310 1510
University of Notre Dame 1300 1510
Claremont McKenna College 1300 1500
Carleton College 1310 1490
Cornell University 1290 1500
Georgetown University 1300 1490
Wellesley College 1300 1480
Reed College 1310 1470
Carnegie Mellon University 1290 1490
Haverford College 1290 1490
Vanderbilt University 1300 1480
Wesleyan University 1290 1480
Emory University 1300 1470
Bowdoin College 1300 1470
Johns Hopkins University 1280 1490
Washington and Lee University 1310 1460
Vassar College 1300 1450
Middlebury College 1270 1480</p>
<p>Why oh why has it taken so long for someone on CC to realize this is precisely the intention of the “university-college” model at Brown? Even in 1908 ([7292_Fowler_Which.pdf](<a href=“File sharing and storage made simple”>http://www.mediafire.com/?taho0yubj5m)</a>), outside reviewers recognized this feature at Brown whose spirit has been maintained to this day. We take pride in calling ourselves the “university-college” and in the unique environment that creates.</p>
<p>There is a handful of universities outside the Ivy League that have similar standards. However, some of them are in locations you may consider relatively undesirable, or they lack a certain panache (sports teams, etc) that is part of the Ivy League draw, or they are public “flagships” that may be OOS for you. If you are o.k. with a smaller school, look among Liberal Arts Colleges to expand your options for prestigious, high quality schools in attractive settings. Start with the New England (“NESCAC”) schools and the traditionally Quaker colleges. However, these schools are not necessarily less selective than most of the Ivies.</p>
<p>Your options expand even more if by “Ivy League Standards” you mean high quality academics, more or less regardless of prestige or geographic location. Consider the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (Grinnell, Carleton etc) or an honors program at any number of public universities.</p>
<p>Importan post, UCB. I think that those PA numbers are the most critical in the mix that make up rankings. While organizations that rank can change their formulae, and have, in fact, in the past, PA numbers generally do not vary by more than a tenth of a percent from one year to the next. To use my most familiar example, Hopkins over many, many years has come in at 4.5-4.6…virtually no variance. We need to keep in mind that universities are first academic institutions, charged with the job of education.
After that, a potential student can and should look at the things that are most important to her or him…the things that will make college life enjoyable from her point-of-view.</p>
<p>I really think that Bowdoin has kinda been shafted a bit on this thread. It is more selective than many of the schools that are repeatedly being mentioned. </p>
<p>I think that all of the top LACs, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Swathmore are just as good as the Ivies, they just don’t have the brand name recognition so therefore don’t draw the same attention and volume of applications that the larger schools do.</p>