Comprehensive Ivy League v. non-Ivy League Thread

College Search & Selection
241

<p>the_prestige,
The numbers above are real and they do matter. They speak directly to the quality of the student body at Wash U, the nature of the classroom experience that they will enjoy at the college and the resources that the school has to draw on. </p>

<p>I concede that Wash U's yields are comparatively poor and I attribute this to the long histories of the Ivies and their longstanding prominence in the MSM. Most top high school students have heard "Ivy League" all their lives and Wash U may enter their field of view very late in the college search game. I suspect that the yield differentials will narrow over time as Wash U becomes more known among this sect of students, but I would agree that they will have a long way to go to reach comparable yield levels. Still, there are other highly selective colleges that also have lower yields, but this seems not to have hurt them in prestige (not to mention their USNWR PA scores). For example, Johns Hopkins has the same yield as Wash U (32% and I have reason to believe that JHU's is an inflated number) and U Chicago is only slightly higher (34%). </p>

<p>Like it or not, there are many colleges that in the last decade have caught up to or passed the student quality level of the non-HYP Ivies. Unfortunately, many Ivy defenders resist this, thinking that acceptance of colleges like Wash U as peers will somehow diminish the product that the non-HYP Ivies offer to top high school students. </p>

<p>Does saying that Wash U (and many other colleges) is a peer really detract from what the non-HYP Ivies have to offer? IMO, it does not. The world has just gotten bigger, there are many, many thousands of great students coming out of high school today, and there are more great college choices than ever before. As a result, the loss by the Ivy League of monopoly status for top students and prestige was inevitable. The upshot is that elite college aspirants now have more great college choices. This is not automatically a bad thing for the non-HYP Ivies and it is definitely a good thing for high school students and their families, not to mention the ultimate benefit to the entire educational system.</p>

242

<p>Hawkette- even agreeing that there are MANY non-Ivies that are equal or even better in "educating" our kids; - based on student preference studies, Wash U doesn't come close in preference to some of the other schools which you hold in dear favor.</p>

<p>All the Ivies fall into the top 15 based on the student preference study ( I am not concluding the study is gospel, but the results seem reasonable and seem to follow "conventional wisdom")</p>

<p>closely following in the 16 to 30 list of preferred schools are-</p>

<p>Georgetown- Rice-Duke-UVA-Northwestern-Berkley-U Chicago-Johns Hopkins- USC (and a few others)</p>

<p>why Wash U falls so much behind in these rankings (# 65) cannot be explained by me! whether it is the St. Louis location or the fact the school is "new" to the prestige list of colleges is not for me to answer.</p>

<p>Sometimes, you just gotta look at the facts and draw your own conclusions!</p>

243

<p>marny1,
I think you make a reasonable point, but the Ivies have long enjoyed a prominence in the MSM that helped create the aura they now enjoy. I think that this halo effect is most legitimate for HYP, but IMO the difference between the non-HYP Ivies and much of the rest of the elite college world has disappeared. It's not that they have gone down-it's that others have caught up and continue to improve their offering and, in many cases, have a better undergraduate experience to offer. It would be interesting to see how/if cross-admit data has evolved over the past 5-10 years. </p>

<p>I think you also make a very valid comment about location. Don't underestimate the impact of geography in evaluating the public perceptions of various colleges both nationally and regionally. For a school like Wash U, being located in St. Louis is a major disadvantage in the national college admissions competition. St. Louis is ranked about 30th nationally among major cities and is quite some distance from any Top 20 city other than Chicago (about 4-5 hours away). I would wager that the vast majority of NE high school students have never even heard of Wash U by the time they enter high school and even fewer have ever been to St. Louis. By contrast, a great many have likely visited Boston or New York or Philadelphia and maybe even Providence and New Haven (but I doubt it :) ) and even more have heard about and know what the Ivy League is (an athletic conference). </p>

<p>Put any of Wash U, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, Carnegie Mellon, USC, etc. in one of these major NE cities or somewhere along the I-95 corridor from Washington to Boston and I suspect that they would see enormous increases in their number of applications, sharp declines in their acceptance rates and very likely, large increases in their yields and their revealed preference ranking (and probably their USNWR PA scores as well). Regardless, these are all still terrific schools and each can make a competitive and compelling comparison to many, if not all, of the non-HYP Ivies. It just depends on what the student is looking for and once you get past the prestige advantage, the academic quality difference is correctly seen as either very narrow or non-existent.</p>

244

<p>well haven't they caught up?? if you look at student preference #'s 10-20, you have</p>

<p>dartmouth 10<br>
U Penn 12
Cornell 15</p>

<p>Georgetown 16
Rice 17
Williams 18
Duke 19
UVA 20
I don't quibble over the distinctions between ranks 10 to 20- they are all pretty damn good.</p>

<p>based on your reasoning of moving the schools to major NE cities, if we moved Cornell out of Ithaca and placed it in a major NE city--
it would then be HYPC(ornell)??? Just wondering</p>

<p>btw what is MSM??</p>

245

<p>
[quote]
All the Ivies fall into the top 15 based on the student preference study...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yes, and the "study" over-sampled NE kids (many of which were full pay)......and THEIR preference, like nearly every other kid is 'close to home', which is also why Stanford also loses cross-admit battles with HYP.</p>

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<p>Cornell may not be located in a major city, but it is definitely part of the NE flow (business and academic worlds) with a large number of its grads in NYC and other major cities, eg, in upstate NY that aren't that far behind St. Louis in population size. I would bet, however, that if you put Cornell in St. Louis or Houston, its revealed preference, student statistical profile and admissions data would drop very sharply. I'm not saying that Cornell isn't a terrific school-my point is that geography and affiliations (eg, with HYP) greatly influence perceptions. </p>

<p>MSM is mainstream media, eg, NYT, major TV networks, major magazines, etc. .</p>

247

<p>blue- Stanford is # 5. The only 2 Ivies scoring higher are H and Y.</p>

<p>you sure they sampled too many NE kids??
The study is linked in an earlier post. So I'm not going to check out other ranking #'s.
again- based on my quick review of the list, it seems to follow general consensus of college applicants based on my NE bias. (just a joke!!)</p>

<p>Hawk--
thanks for the MSM explaination.<br>
the reality is that Location can be a major factor. You can talk to you are blue in the face about how great Wash U is (and it is a great school)- but if kids do not want to spend 4 years in St. Louis (or Ithaca), it ain't going to move up greatly in the rankings. </p>

<p>the bottom line-- A LOT of kids want to be somewhat close to their home. For many kids, a 5 or 6 hour car ride (300 miles or so) is their comfort zone. We are talking about 18 and 19 year old kids afterall.</p>

<p>There is alot of NE prestige bashing going on in many of the discussions. It is often assumed we only want our kids to go to NE elite schools for bragging rights.
that is a bit true for some, but it is also very true that many of the "elite" schools are
only an easy car ride away from the metro NYC/Boston area.</p>

<p>yes! our NE kids do go to Rice and Grinnell and Wash U too, but it is a much further distance from their home.
so if NE people have the choice, they often prefer a NE school as it is closer to friends and family.</p>

248

<ol>
<li>In Arkansas, there is no denial that Wash U is not a great school; people would agree that you would get an equally good education as you would get from any other top school.</li>
<li>The prestige is not catching on because imo it was caused by (as one posted put it) cleave number manipulation and aggressive advertising. At my school at least, it serves as a dream school for second tier wealthy students and backup(not safety) for better students. Everyone seems to want to go elsewhere; you can't say that Arkansans are biased against the south. The argument simply does not work. Most people would rather go to an inferior school like Davidson, Tufts, or Macalister. What is WashU good at except for their medical school? (which imo is inferior to that of JHU and Harvard's, but still demands the highest MCAT score)</li>
</ol>

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<p>I did some college visiting over the summer, and WashU and Cornell were by far my two favorite schools (beating out Brown, Tufts, Amherst). I really wanted to apply ED to one of them, and believe me, if you visit WashU you will be impressed. The buildings were amazing, the kids were great; I was verrrry impressed. However, I applied to Cornell ED because it was about equal in all that impressed me at WashU, and one of their schools was directly alligned with my interests. However, if this school did not exist at Cornell, in all honesty, I liked WashU a bit more.</p>

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<p>marny1,
Agreed on all of your points. Geography matters, both in the college selection process and in the postgraduate job hunt. Unless you are from HYPSM, prestige doesn't carry that far geographically. </p>

<p>Re Wash U, while I have a very high regard for the students that are there, you might realize that I did not include it in my previous list of colleges that offer the best mix of academics, social life and athletic life. It might be the right fit for many students, but my preference is for schools that offer the premier combinations of athletics, social life and athletic life. I fully acknowledge that others may have different interests and priorities and thus properly prefer a school not on my list. Here again is my list:</p>

<ol>
<li> Stanford</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>U Virginia</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>U Michigan</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>U North Carolina</li>
<li>Wake Forest</li>
</ol>

<p>When compared against this group of colleges, I think that Wash U suffers the same fate as the Ivies. Most folks would describe the social life at these colleges as more active and possibly more varied. </p>

<p>For athletic life, these colleges are superior and their athletic scene that accompanies major sports like football and basketball is much, much, much better. Strong athletic life at a college has major benefits for the undergraduate social life and also major benefits to alumni in providing a continuing, highly visible point of contact with the college. </p>

<p>So, when I compare the non-HYP Ivies to the list of colleges above, I see the results as:</p>

<p>Academics: Some slightly better, most about the same, some slightly worse, but all very, very good</p>

<p>Social Life: Most of the 14 above have an edge and some have a substantial advantage. </p>

<p>Athletic Life: Nearly all of the 14 above have an edge and most by a very substantial amount.</p>

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<p>I think it's perfectly plausible to choose a non-Ivy over an Ivy. My first-choice school was a non-Ivy, and though I could have applied to HYP etc. after my EA admission, I chose not to.</p>

<p>I'll do something similar to Hawkette and set up parameters for what I looked for in a school, and I'll compare an Ivy to a "second-string."</p>

<p>Here's what I looked for in a school (criteria from most important to least important):
1) Academic rigor across departments and fields
2) Intellectual student body
3) Neighborhood with eclectic music stores, bookstores, coffeeshops
4) English/journalism/creative writing opportunities
5) Can live on campus all four years/ can have a single first year
6) In/near a city</p>

<p>From these criteria, the best options out of the schools that have been discussed would probably be Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Chicago (where I attend), Northwestern, Hopkins, Rice, </p>

<p>Less preferable would probably be Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, Stanford, WashU, Princeton, etc.</p>

<p>I would probably turn down almost any school from the second category for almost any school from the first, but, then again, I would have to examine each school more carefully to be sure I was making a good decision for me.</p>

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<p>I can turn on the TV when I want to watch college athletics, and walk or run or do other exercise with people inside or outside college, so why does athletics matter as a college selection factor?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I can turn on the TV when I want to watch college athletics, and walk or run or do other exercise with people inside or outside college, so why does athletics matter as a college selection factor?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You've never been to a Big Ten football game have you? You can't compare sitting on your bottom in your living room watching the Big Game to actually sitting in the Big House, with your friends going crazy after a touchdown. You just can't.</p>

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<p>Sure I've been to a Big Ten football game (when I was a kid). But your team won the Little Brown Jug. We have professional football here, so I can live without college football.</p>

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<p>Princeton is probably harder to get into than Yale, as it is so self-selecting
EXPLAIN PLEASE.</p>

<p>Also GoNavyXcyou underestimate MIT, it is the hardest college in the school to get into. They don't care if you are an athlete, legacy, or URM. There's no filler students there unlike at the other ivies. Everyone at MIT deserves to be there based on merit. </p>

<p>Also MIT is more self selecting than almost any school in the county. Only Caltech compares. These two schools have the highest sat and gpa averages. Whereas someone(ignorant person, legacy, urm) throws an app for fun into HYP or other ivies, this doesn't happen at MIT. Prestige means nothing to students when they get an hour of sleep per night. Thus, its acceptance rate is altered.</p>

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<p>Tokenadult,
You call the Vikings professional??....:) :)....just kidding.....</p>

<p>College athletics on TV and college athletics live are vastly different in terms of the experience that they offer (and are also very different from professional events). When you go to the college games, for many people (like me), the game itself is secondary. I care about the outcome, but I am really there for the people, for the tailgates, the pageantry of the event, the excitement that occurs in a big crowd (particularly in a nationally meaningful game). It really is an electric scene that a lot of people really enjoy, sports fan or not. There truly is nothing like attending a major college football game in a packed stadium. </p>

<p>Men’s college basketball (and increasingly women’s as well-yeah!) is also important in the undergraduate experience at many colleges (among the USNWR top 30, I think 6 are in the AP Division I Top 25 men’s rankings and 6 in the women’s rankings). College basketball, too, can act as a glue to tie students to one another and to the school and serve as the catalyst to return to campus in the decades following graduation. </p>

<p>If your only exposure is to the Ivy athletic events, then it is hard to understand the impact that college athletics can have on a college campus, but talk to students or graduates of some of the above-named colleges about their undergraduate experience and it quickly becomes clear that these events frequently spawn lifelong memories and connections and perpetuate lifelong and multi-generational friendships. And perhaps most importantly, they’re FUN!!</p>

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<p>Harvard, Princeton, Yale</p>

<p>Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth</p>

<p>Cornell, UPenn</p>

<p>these are the rough groupings, at least at my school</p>

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<p>

I beg to differ. I know one kid who got into MIT EA because his father is a dean of some department in the school. The kid got like Bs and Cs in his science classes, and is not exactly what I constitute as an excellent student. He says he's going to try other schools, but I doubt he'll get into like harvard or something.</p>

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<p>I know college sports through the Big Ten teams. So you're saying that this thread should really be retitled to "2nd String Big Ten," right? </p>

<p>Big</a> Ten Conference - Official Athletic Site </p>

<p>Big</a> Ten Conference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

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<p>This is another of those endless 'how many angels can fit on the head of a pin" conversations. Who cares? They are all very hard to get into (with the exception of perhaps some specialized schools at Cornell). There is way too much focus on selectivity (as a proxy for quality) and not enough on the quality of undergraduate experience.</p>