Comparative quality: Ivies and beyond

College Search & Selection
1

<p>An interesting read (posted in another thread):</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I found this sentence to be particularly interesting:</p>

<p>"Could you not do away with rank ordering and overall scores, thus admitting that the method is not nearly that precise and that the difference between #1 and #2 - indeed, between #1 and #10 - may be statistically insignificant?"</p>

<p>So, I want your opinion. How different to you are, say, Stanford and Harvard, in terms of quality? Or Cornell and UCLA? Berkeley and Yale? Ignore the rankings you've read. Go by what you've seen yourself.</p>

<p>Are they really too different? I know some random state college probably isn't as good as Dartmouth or Rice or UVa. But of the top universities, can one really justifiably say that one is definitely superior to another?</p>

<p>You can extrapolate on this idea, even applying it to liberal arts colleges and tier 2 schools, whatever you like. I realize that colleges just fit certain people better, but let's consider this without too much "personalization."</p>

<p>Perhaps thoughts like these would break people's Ivy fetish. :P</p>

2

<p>Going by what I've seen, I would tier the top schools into 4 groups:</p>

<p>Tier 1: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton
Tier 2: Columbia, Caltech, Cornell, Chicago
Tier 3: Penn, Duke, Brown, Northwestern, Dartmouth
Tier 4: Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Rice</p>

<p>That's just my opinion though... :)</p>

3

<p>according to: <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/state-most-colleges-universities.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/state-most-colleges-universities.html&lt;/a> there are 4200 degree granting schools in the US. Even if that is high, say there are 3000.</p>

<p>College #1 is better than 99.97% of US colleges.
College #50 is better than 98.33% of US colleges.</p>

<p>If you use 4200, the numbers are 99.98% and 98.81% respectively.</p>

<p>Ask yourself if that difference matters that much to you.</p>

<p>fit is still the most important factor in choosing a school. Obviously fit considers academics too, but people who apply to all or almost all of the Ivies are stupid and have not fully researched the schools. They are very different schools.</p>

4

<p>haha....Fahood I like how you put all the universities starting with C in tier 2.</p>

5

<p>soccerguy makes a good point. You are blessed if you go to any top 50 school. Quite frankly, once you set foot on campus for your first class and make your first new friends, you will quickly realize how silly it was to get stressed out about the college search and admissions process in the first place.</p>

<p>It is the fit that matters most. When I was applying, I had my heart set on MIT. My world was shattered when I wasn't admitted. I now go to RPI, and I couldn't be happier. Looking back on it all now, I realize that while the schools are inherently similar, there were subtle things about MIT's environment wouldn't have made it a really good match for me anyway. I probably would have been unhappy from the outset had I gone there. At RPI, I'm getting good grades, making lots of friends, having lots of fun and I've already landed a nice summer research job.</p>

<p>The moral of the story is this (and you've all heard it countless times): Do your research and apply to a range of schools that you would be <em>happy</em> at. Don't just pick the top 10 in USNews and say "of course I'll be happy! How could you not like a top 10 school?!" Take a few giant steps back and realize that in the grand scheme of things, the difference in quality between #1 and #50 isn't really that great. You may have to work a little harder and in different ways depending on where you go, but you will always be capable of reaching your final goal.</p>

6

<p>My favorite passage in Dr. Casper's article </p>

<p>"I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university - any more than the quality of a magazine - can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method. Let me offer as prima facie evidence two great public universities: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of California-Berkeley. These clearly are among the very best universities in America - one could make a strong argument for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News formula has assigned them ranks that lead many readers to infer that they are second rate: Michigan 21-24-24, and Berkeley 23-26-27."</p>

<p>Truer words were never written. Casper's sentiments about the USNWR undergraduate rankings are shared by most academe, which explains the huge gaps between the Peer Assessment score and the USNWR forumal.</p>

7

<p>Mhm. It's really interesting that Casper would commend Berkeley like that when Stanford and Berkeley are like ... enemies. :P But he does point out the shortcomings, and really eloquently, too. If only that letter <em>were</em> published, perhaps people would stop using USNWR as their yard stick for college search.</p>

8

<p>"Tier 1: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton
Tier 2: Columbia, Caltech, Cornell, Chicago
Tier 3: Penn, Duke, Brown, Northwestern, Dartmouth
Tier 4: Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Rice"</p>

<p>See, that's the point I'm trying to make. That's the traditional idea -- that even within the top-tier schools, you've got a few more tiers. But really, there's no real difference; they're too different to be compared, and in the end, they all have basically the same quality (which may be different from person to person -- different fits, etc.).</p>

9

<p>This is the main reason I find guidebooks like Fiske and Princeton Review more useful than USNWR. As the linked letter points out, there is no universal formula to judge college quality, but you can assume any top 25 or top 50 school will give you a fantastic education. USNWR only differentiates this group based on numbers and statistics, which don't capture the feel of a campus. The advantage of Fiske and PR is that they give a you a decent idea of what makes each college unique.</p>

10

<p>It seems like there is a lot of agreement that the academic strength of the schools ranked 5-20 is nearly indistinguishable. Yet, despite this, the Ivy schools almost never get ranked below # 15. Is it inertia, is it fear of being criticized for challenging the status quo, is it a reflection of the desires of many Ivy wannabees/graduates who frequent CC, is it a reflection that these schools are just better? I think that kyledavid is on to something when describing the similarities in strength among these schools and the differences being more related to "fit" than anything else. FWIW, here is my attempt at this ranking business:</p>

<p>1-5: HYPSM
6-10 tier: Duke, Dartmouth, Rice, Columbia, Chicago
11-15 tier: Penn, WashU, Northwestern, CalTech, Emory
16-20 tier: Brown, Vanderbilt, Cornell, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins</p>

11

<p>I feel like I should point out one more thing- A lot of these schools are specialized, so like a bunch of other people said, you can't really compare them.</p>

<p>Hawkette (don't worry- I'm not like, bashing you or anything lol) said that MIT was better than Brown. The problem with that, though, is that MIT may be better than brown at engineering, but I'm positive that Brown has a better english program. And Penn has a better Business program than Harvard. etc. </p>

<p>And no one's mentioned LAC's! </p>

<p>I'm just saying that you can't really rank them because they're all good for different things, and overall, the top 50 are all pretty much comparable. Harvard is at the top of everyone's list, but did you know that most of their classes (or a lot of them, anyway) for undergrads are taught by grad students? So you don't get the genius professors Harvard's actually known for until you're like a senior or something. Of course, it's a great school, but I don't think it's a whole 3 tiers better than Brown or Johns Hopkins or wtvr. Each school has their own claim to fame, and who's to say one's better than the other? Obviously, SUNY Purchase isn't as good as Columbia, but when you're talking about schools that are closer to each other like Duke and Penn (I think Penn's better, btw. Penn's even better than Columbia, I think, and better than Rice, too. Brown is better than Rice, imo.) you can't really rank them like that.</p>

12

<p>The "top 50" rule seems to be a good indicator, but you have to remember the LACs, so it's really like the top 30 universities and the top 20 LACs (maybe one or two of those "master colleges" or whatever they are, also). That makes sense because it's perfectly okay to say Michigan (24) or USC (27) or Colgate (16 lac) are comparable to HYPSM, but if you said that about about Penn State (47) people might start to debate more reasonably.</p>

13

<p>There's no doubt that the difference in overall quality between the top schools is negligible, but that doesn't mean we can't make distinctions. For example, make an analogy to sports: the top players in the NBA are all among the same skill level yet at the end of every season, we still distinguish a MVP.</p>

<p>PurpoisePal makes a good point, though, in that some schools are differently set up. For example, it wouldn't be fair to compare MIT to Brown, but one could compare MIT to Caltech and CMU.</p>

<p>Certainly, though, even after you come up with a general ranking, that would not be the ultimate list for any prospective college student to look at because the list would have to be broad-based rather than specific to fit for that particulr student. For example, while Harvard maybe the overall best school in the country, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Cornell and Berkeley would likely seem more logical for an engineering student.</p>

14

<p>There should be specialty rankings. As in, the best for English, the best for Math, etc. </p>

<p>Yeah- about the top 50 colleges- I guess I meant top 30. Penn State is definitely not = to harvard lol. I meant like, the schools considered "good" can be compared to each other.</p>

15

<p>I read the article by Gerhard Casper. He doesn't know what he is talking about. This is a statement of fact, not opinion. He is just another squirming worm administrator trying to avoid accountability. He didn't do his homework and I give him an "F".</p>

<p>The US News rankings were the best thing to happen to consumers of higher education since universities stopped burning heretics at the stake.</p>

<p>Take the concept of "value added" for example. US News does a calculation that predicts what a school's graduation rate should be based on SAT scores, expenditures per student, and (I think) high school rank. It is a very sophisticated and accurate formula based on a statistical technique called multiple regression. There are different formulas for public and private universities. By comparing a school's actual graduation rate with it's predicted graduation rate you get a measure of how well a university does with the caliber of student it admits. This is an ingenious way to assess "value added". Expenditures per student have a negative weight in the formula, I believe. Expenditures are probably a proxy measure of how "techy" the school is. Tech schools have higher expenditures per student and they also have harder curricula (e.g. engineering) so the graduation rates tend to be lower. I also think expenditures increase as the proportion of graduate and professional education increases. So, I think expenditures per student is a way to account for the curriculum difficulty and an emphasis on research rather than teaching undergraduates. This is the way to think about "value added".</p>

<p>Years ago, Caltech had an 85% graduation rate. Now it is higher. Caltech has the smartest student body in the world. No way should 15% drop out. They dropped out because the quality of undergraduate education at Caltech sucked. US News detected this.</p>

<p>Why do the rankings change from one year to the next? One reason is that US News improves its formulas. Another reason is that schools change the way they do their calculations to make themselves look better. Perhaps US News shoould be more specific about how to do the calculations. Sometimes universities make mistakes in reporting data and then make corrections. This is just the way it is when you deal with data. The changes in rankings from year to year do not diminish the overall accuracy and value of the rankings. Gerhard Casper was deliberately trying to undermine confidence in the data and method like the good politician that he is.</p>

<p>Yes, there is a difference between #1 and #2. Fine distinctions can be made mathematically. The distinctions may be small but they are incrementally real. The question is: at what point can you "feel" the difference.</p>

<p>The Ivies are superior to non-Ivies in ways that can make a real difference. It is a matter of degree, of course. The Ivies offer uniformly excellent faculty, fellow students, a great culture and climate, exciting intellectual atmosphere, a high level of instruction and discussion, and so on. The prestige factor in the Ivies is based on underlying quality. It is deserved, not imaginary.</p>

<p>The public Ivies belong where they are in the rankings. For one thing, they are not as selective as the Ivies and top non-Ivies. Student quality at the top publics is inconsistent. I also think the emphasis on spectator sports at top publics is not a good thing, although this is not part of the rankings. The climate at publics is not as good as at the Ivies or top non-Ivies. Big difference in culture.</p>

16

<p>
[quote]

Years ago, Caltech had an 85% graduation rate. Now it is higher. Caltech has the smartest student body in the world. No way should 15% drop out. They dropped out because the quality of undergraduate education at Caltech sucked. US News detected this.

[/quote]

I'm a little uncomfortable with coming to that exact conclusion. I'm sure that other top schools have a 15% (or greater) dropping-out-of-science/engineering rate -- but at, say, Harvard, a student struggling in physics could switch to an easier major, while a struggling Caltech physics student wouldn't have many other options.</p>

17

<p>"I also think the emphasis on spectator sports at top publics is not a good thing, although this is not part of the rankings"</p>

<p>Sorry, but what? Are you talking about athletic recruiting practices or students watching football games on a Friday night?</p>

<p>"The climate at publics is not as good as at the Ivies or top non-Ivies. Big difference in culture."</p>

<p>Such disdain!</p>

18

<p>molliebatmit-
That's a good point about the limited transfer opportunities at Caltech. That probably accounts for some of the lag in graduation rate at Caltech. But, the graduation rate at Caltech increased 5% in ten years, so there was evidently room for improvement. In 1997, MIT had a graduation rate of 97% versus 85% at Caltech. Could transfer opportunities account for such a large difference?</p>

<p>Many of the tech schools suffered from unexpectedly low graduation rates in 1997 but Caltech and RPI were the worst.</p>

<p>Fitter Happier-
I am talking about values and the academic and social climate. There is a difference at elite privates. I don't really have any disdain for any school. But I want to express my thoughts to prospective students who may have little to go on. I don't want them to think that the top 50 or 100 schools are all the same. At the moment, I am watching Maryland beat Purdue on ESPN. Go Terps! I should be working.</p>

19

<p>Harvey Mudd college has a graduation rate of 85 or so percent. And yet, I've never heard of anybody complaining that its undergrad program sucks; complaints of immense difficulty? Yes. Low quality? Absolutely not. </p>

<p>The low graduation rates are because of the lack of grade deflation and the difficulty of the curriculum, not because the "undergrad" program sucks. What, should these schools be like Harvard, handing out honors to 90% of the graduating class?</p>

20

<p>In 1995, the year prior to Gerhard Casper's letter, the graduation rate at Caltech was 80%. So the graduation rate at Caltech has increased 10% in 12 years.</p>

<p>Ray192-
As molliebatmit pointed out about Caltech, Harvey Mudd may offer very few transfer options. Still, Harvey Mudd students should be graduating at a higher rate. Cornell engineering was very demanding but the graduation rate of students who start in engineering and graduate from engineering was about 89-90%. This counts transfers as drop-outs from engineering.</p>