<p>thats good to know. this thread is really turning into something nasty regarding prestige and rankings. btw, congrats on your acceptance i think you were one of the people whos essay ive commented on.</p>
<p>Thanks dude! Yes, you read several of my essays, thanks again for that. I think you called my Why Columbia esssay boring and generic (which is true btw, :D). But tbh, I think essays were the only reason why I made it into Ivies (since my main essay was pretty good, even you said that, ^^).
How did you applications go? You wanted to transfer right?</p>
<p>Thanks for your comments zerocool920. Much appreciated.
I wanted to provide the bloggers on this site with some background information sources, both for my earlier post and for your own purposes. I hope you'll find it provides facts for your own educational pursuits, promotes a more enlightened discussion here, and - as mentioned in a prior post - relieves some of the "pressure" building on the site.
1) For endowments and 20-year average endowment growth figures:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_colleges_and_universities_by_endowment%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_colleges_and_universities_by_endowment</a></p>
<p>2) For very interesting pure information from a source that does a fact-based (as opposed to reputation based USNews-type) university ranking check:
<a href="http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf</a></p>
<p>3) Lots of people like to quote numbers of Nobel laureates. A far more telling set of stats is the number of National Academy members. The NA membership reflects a much larger range of academic pursuits, is a better indicator of the current impact of professors' research impact and is ultimately more reflective of a university's intellectual standing. If you check the pdf above, Harvard #1, Stanford #2, Columbia #7 and Penn #8.</p>
<p>4) Selectivity/desirability - all the top schools have unprecedented admission rates. Penn, Columbia, NYU and Harvard all have seen big rises in demand due to the interest in schooling in big cities. That?s on top of huge rises in demand for elite schools overall. And for the Columbia boosters here's a news clip for you: "Chuck Hughes, president and founder of Road to College and a former Harvard admissions official, said he was impressed with Penn's steadily declining acceptance rate - as recent as five years ago, the rate was at 25 percent - and expected it to continue to drop. "The reality is that Penn is going through the most decisive decrease" of all the Ivy League schools, he said."
Just for the record, to address one of the more punitive bloggers (truazn8948532), </p>
<ul>
<li>Columbia Manhattanville (17 acres) << Penn's eastward expansion (42 acres) << Harvard's Allston expansion (~250 acres) <<< Stanford potential growth (300+ acres)</li>
<li>$4 billion endowment growth-- you meant $4 billion capital campaign, equal to Cornell ($4 bn), less then Stanford ($4.3 bn), and lower than the rumored campaigns for Penn (launching in October, $1 billion committed as of last fall) and Harvard (God knows how much)</li>
<li>for actual endowment growth, see the wiki link above</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, -- "And don't kid yourself--- from a global perspective, Penn does not nearly have the reputation/prestige/academic caliber that Columbia has."
All I have to say is look at other peoples' post re international recognition, check the US News rankings for what they're worth, look at the # of apps ad admit rates, yields, research funding, etc. You may not like it, but the truth is pretty evident. You are welcome to present whatever data you can find that can materially alter the rankings which I've devised. Your move :-)</p>
<p>All I have to say is that Penn has just hired Kal Penn (of "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" and "Van Wilder: Rise of Taj" fame) as an adjunct professor. If this fact alone wasn't enough, I opened the Spec this morning to this headline: "Penn hires Penn".</p>
<p>
[quote]
Penn and Duke both took notice and have manipulated their class sizes to boost themselves, without ever changing their average.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wait, so let me get this straight. Penn and Duke reduced class sizes, thereby arguably improving undergraduate education, and this still counts as manipulation?</p>
<p>If only all university students were so fortunate to have such "manipulation" wrought upon them!</p>
<p>JohnnyK-
Wow, you missed the whole point. US News set arbitrary #s for class size. Penn and Duke did reduce their class sizes, but just enough so that they're right within range for a favorable US News ranking.</p>
<p>Check the US News stats. It's measured by %, not gradients of "favorable range" vs "unfavorable range."</p>
<p>yes i'm still waiting for my hopeful admissions packet[s] :) I did not apply to columbia, however.</p>
<p>I never said anything about a gradient. ???? And the favorable range for a class is <20 students, while the unfavorable range is >=50 students, both arbitrary numbers set by US News, and exactly what the site says if you read the headings.
<a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/t1natudoc_brief.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/t1natudoc_brief.php</a></p>
<p>All this means is that if Penn had a class with 20 students, they could have just made the class 1 student smaller so it would have 19 students and therefore increase its percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students. It doesn't mean they reduced the student:teacher ratio, or their overall class size, just that they evened their numbers, so that the system would work in their favor. It's not the complicated.</p>
<p>Haha, wth, my hyperlink didn't work</p>
<p>And do you have any proof of this nefarious intent?</p>
<p>Call me crazy but I think it may have more to do with the university increasing faculty size significantly from 1995-2005...</p>
<p>Red & Blue...more on Nobel's....Columbia University Faculty have won many Nobel prizes in the last 10 years and they are still doing research (except Vickrey), e. g. Horst Stormer (Physics) Richard Axel (Medicine), Edmund Phelps (Economics), Joseph Stiglitz (economics-although he just came to Columbia), Orhan Pamuk (literature-new Faculty addition in SIPA), Eric Kandel (Medicine), William Vickrey (Economics-awarded 1996 now deceased), RObert Merton (SEAS grade-Economics 1997/I know this is not fair, but it's a recent one), RObert Mundell (Economics-1999), Richard Hamilton (foundation for Poincare Proof-over 40, but would have received Fields Medal otherwise with Pearlman), wow....Columbia University is def slipping...lol. What is wrong with playing of the fact that Columbia is located in NYC (the greatest city by an objective measure in the US and maybe, just maybe the world)? Part of the college experience is gaining real-world (read internship) knowledge while in college to apply to various fields. While it is true any IVY will allow one to be competitive for a Wall-Street position, most other industries require work experience prior to the entry level job, e.g. Journalism, TV, Marketing, Fashion, etc. Perhaps all students want to go to Wall Street? Also, the Columbia area has improved (due to gentrification) by leaps and bounds. The endowment investment returns have finally started growing competitive to Columbia's peer schools, e.g. 18% last year. Renovations to labs and facilities throughout campus etc...I am tired of writing, but I await your response ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
All I have to say is that Penn has just hired Kal Penn (of "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" and "Van Wilder: Rise of Taj" fame) as an adjunct professor. If this fact alone wasn't enough, I opened the Spec this morning to this headline: "Penn hires Penn".
[/quote]
seriously? In my mind, that's a plus. I friggen love that movie. :)</p>
<p>edit: Cornell also hired John Cleese as an adjunct. now there's a class i'd want to go to!</p>
<p>Next up: I bet Yale is planning on hiring Chris Rock for a seminar in comedic studies.</p>
<p>But John Cleese plays Q in the Bond movies, so he's surely qualified to teach engineering classes...</p>
<p>except i think he's teaching some business/econ thing. I dunno, Google it. :)</p>
<p>I love Kal Penn. The kid is hilarious and pretty smart, too. I wish they would get the Lost crew to teach some theatre classes, ^^.</p>
<p>Hausdorff thanks for your post. You add very good points about Columbia, but I think you are misinterpreting the nature of my remarks. This thread (and other Columbia-related sites) often bash Cornell and other schools in an attempt to justify a mysterious HYP/C combination. Penn seems to be a top target for CU fans for unfair bashing. That I ( as a very loyal Penn grad) can't allow that to go unchallenged.</p>
<p>Columbia is (and has always been) a premier intellectual and educational resource in America. MY point re a decline is that Columbia used to (1) be in a league only with Harvard re financial endowment, and (2) stand at the highest levels of intellectual creativity and scholarship. </p>
<p>Now - and these facts can't be disputed - the top class of wealthy private schools starts at $10 BN and includes Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton.<br>
For academic firepower, the US is fortunate to be blessed with even more superstar faculty groupings than ever. Columbia's RELATIVE standing has weakened. The top schools are HYP AND Stanford AND the big research Ivies (Penn, Columbia, Cornell) AND Chicago AND Duke AND Michigan, etc. Columbia is superb, but it's in the pack, not at the head. </p>
<p>Columbia fans point to Nobel #s, admissions stats, total endowment. That's a game of cherry picking stats to explain why CU is a full-on peer to Yale or Harvard. Sorry but NOT!!! - in terms of in overall academic quality, prestige or endowment. Worse, CU fans allege dark schemes to manipulate the USNews rankings formula (which all schools do BTW to some extent w/o being foolish b/c USN tries to filter out that kind of noise). CU grads also like to engage in wholesale dismissals of other schools which is only shows how uninformed CU boosters are about the claims they make. </p>
<p>The other subtexts in my posts were about relative momentum of schools. I can not find any stats that would lead me to believe that -- in comparing the institutions in entirety to each other -- there are material degrees of difference between Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Duke. They are all extraordinary academically, well rounded organizations, conduct huge amounts of (primarily biomedical) research and brilliantly educate the next generation of leaders. </p>
<p>However, Penn (and to a lesser extent, Duke) has shown tremendous progress in the last 25 years (increasing academic firepower, endowment, selectivity, faculty awards, image). Few other schools have come up so far so fast (with Stanford as the indisputable rocketship of the higher ed sector).</p>
<p>Lastly, the American establishment has been East Coast oriented for centuries. That blue blood stock has looked to three schools for educating their young - H, Y and P. Columbia was a fine school, with great grad programs. Cornell and Penn were deeply respected, primarily for their grad programs and research. Duke was a small southern college and Stanford...Stanford didn't matter. Now all that has changed. There was NEVER an HYPC, and from the looks of things there never will be. </p>
<p>For my money - the next 15 years will see StHYMPrPeColDuCor (for the private schools).</p>
<p>Sorry Red & Blue...no ill will :) I agree with a lot of your last post...my nobel list was because Nobel prize winners seem to be the easiest way to define academic excellence for the general populace, specifically high school students. There are many other metrics, of course, that can be used for the same purpose. I suppose....I am just lazy, hence the repeated posts ;) ;)</p>
<p>laziness is something we can all agree on <3</p>