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Stanford is one of the Top 5 universities in the US. So no argument there. But I'd be interested in hearing which Ivies you believe to be inferior to WashU.
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<p>Hmmm. Not Yale, Princeton, or Harvard for sure. </p>
<p>The rest? Brown, UPenn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia. So I would say probably Dartmouth and Cornell.</p>
<p>Now that you mention it, those three (WashU, Dartmouth, and Cornell) are probably all about the same.</p>
<p>I'll let slipper take this one.</p>
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those three (WashU, Dartmouth, and Cornell) are probably all about the same.
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<p>Funny that this comment seems to coincide with the US News ranking...</p>
<p>:) I pretty much trust US News. It's reliable.</p>
<p>Well, I don't. It isn't reliable.</p>
<p>... but that's just what I think, so it doesn't matter much.</p>
<p>Cue slipper.</p>
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Duke or U Virginia or Notre Dame or UC Berkeley or Rice or
literally any of these schools and you wont hear a lot of folks pining to be in Ithaca or Providence or Philadelphia
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<p>I can't speak for the other students, but I can say that there are quite a few disgruntled undergrads at Berkeley who absolutely wish they could have gone elsewhere. </p>
<p>I don't want to enumerate all of the problems of Berkeley here - as one can search through my old posts where I discuss them at length - but essentially, Berkeley is a good school only for those students who do well. But what if you don't do well (and there are a lot of students who don't do well)? Then Berkeley becomes an unredeemingly cold and unforgiving place. </p>
<p>To give you just a taste of what I am talking about, consider what I call the 'major trap' in which students who do poorly in a particularly major can't get out of that major *and are thus forced to continue to suffer. I know one guy who entered the Berkeley EECS program and performed very poorly. That's hardly unusual because the EECS program is (with ChemE) arguably the most difficult program at Berkeley. But because he was getting poor grades, *he couldn't leave EECS. Why? Because no other major at any of the colleges at Berkeley wanted to take him. You would think that somebody who is performing poorly in EECS would be the ones who should be allowed to leave. Yet the very opposite occurred: those EECS students who are doing poorly are precisely the ones who are forced to stay. Unsurprisingly, he ended up flunking out of Berkeley entirely as his continuing GPA dropped below 2.0. He ended up having to take a job hauling boxes at the Oakland FedEx warehouse.</p>
<p>It's not as if this guy was a poor student overall. He did quite well in the humanities and social science courses he took as electives. He just did very poorly in EECS. So why not just let him switch over to one of the humanities/soc-sciences? But Berkeley wouldn't let him do it. What is even more ironic is that there were other students who were admitted as humanities/soc-science students but who decided that they wanted to switch into EECS. So they took the EECS prereqs and did fairly well, but still weren't allowed to switch in, because EECS will only take a small number of students who are trying to switch in from other majors. Hence, you have a EECS student who wants to switch to humanities/soc-sci, and you have a student in humanities/soc-sci who wants to switch into EECS, and both of them are prevented from doing so. </p>
<p>Why? Why not just let these 2 guys swap places? That would be a classic win-win situation where everybody gains. Instead, you end up with a lose-lose situation. Two students end up being forced into majors that they don't want, and like I said, one of them ended up flunking out completely. </p>
<p>Frankly, that guy would have been far better off if he had just gone to another school, including a school like Brown. Presumably at Brown, at least you don't have the issue of engineering students actually being prevented from switching majors to the humanities/soc-sciences. If he had gone to Brown, I'm certain he would have graduated. As it stands now, he ended up with no degree at all. {Note: I suspect Cornell and UPenn have some of the same ridiculous policies, so I don't include them in the discussion.} </p>
<p>But the bottom line is that Berkeley is not a school for everybody. It has many excellent features, i.e. vast research resources, numerous majors and courses from which to choose, highly prominent faculty, a quintessential college town environment, to name just a few. But it also has numerous negatives, particularly its conspicuous cruelty towards those students who are doing poorly. Bottom line: Berkeley is indeed a terrific school for those who do well. But what about those who don't do well?</p>
<p>^ Oh geez, that really sucks for that guy, Berkeley should really think about changing that retarded policy. </p>
<p>I'm not applying to Berkeley, so I dont have to worry about that..i love those schools where changing majors is easy, because what sortof demented school would force a student to go through a major he hates?</p>
<p>if you had the choice, would you choose WashU or Cornell? for prestige, academics, anything.</p>
<p>I'd go to Cornell over WashU in a heartbeat</p>
<p>WashU versus Cornell? Actually, it depends. If I got into WashU's University Scholars Program, WashU would beat out Cornell, for example.</p>
<p>I think I would only choose Washington U over Cornell if I lived within commuting distance of Washington U and could save lots of $$$$ by commuting to Wash U.</p>
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Bottom line: Berkeley is indeed a terrific school for those who do well. But what about those who don't do well?
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<p>They shouldn't be at Berkeley... :D</p>
<p>Why does everyone who gets into college have to "do well"? Coddling is for the privates.</p>
<p>you guys are making it seem that Wash U is an inferior school compared to Cornell. Perhaps, 30 years ago, that was the case. Today, it is arguably harder to get into Wash U than Cornell. Wash U has an average SAT that is at least 50-60 points above that of Cornell!</p>
<p>The only thing I have to complain about WUSTL is their admissions policy. Waitlisting everyone to up their yield (and subsequently, their rank) is sort of extreme. I wonder if they accept only people with high stats just to appear more selective. WUSTL isn't really inferior to Cornell, in the sense that their academics are probably on the same level. It's just that Cornell's name is currently more prestigious than that of WUSTL's.</p>
<p>When people say 'lower Ivies', do they just mean the 5 non-HYP ones?</p>
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I think I would only choose Washington U over Cornell if I lived within commuting distance of Washington U and could save lots of $$$$ by commuting to Wash U.
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<p>Even then, if I (or my family) could afford it, I'd go to Cornell... same thing for Dartmouth. Nothing against WashU, which is a fine school, just think that Cornell and Dartmouth are better.</p>
<p>Those or Cornell and the "easier to get into" ivies. all of which are difficult to get into...</p>
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When people say 'lower Ivies', do they just mean the 5 non-HYP ones?
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<p>Its like poor billionaire or dumb genius. Its a clever way of trying to discredit 5 of the best universities in the world by defining / measuring them vs. HYP (arguably THE 3 best universities in the world) instead of measuring them by their collective or individual strengths. A measuring stick that every other single university falls at least a little short when compared to them (save, perhaps, Stanford or MIT -- hence, HYPSM).</p>
<p>It's akin to calling Yale or Princeton "lower HYP" or every other university in the world the "lower non-HYPSM" colleges. Basically, its an exercise in idiocy.</p>
<p>^ Are all of you kidding me? I would go to Washington University in a heartbeat over Cornell...unless Cornell offered me a full scholarship (which they would never do), then I MIGHT choose Cornell over WUSTL.</p>
<p>This is based more so out of personal preference however, but personally Cornell to me seems rather pathetic, in comparison to great schools like WUSTL. Emory over Cornell as well? Def. UMich over Cornell? Possibly.</p>
<p>This is also out of personal bias against Cornell, which is justifiied.</p>