<p>I'm afraid you need to add a little complexity to your world. This thread is threadbare and tiresome - been there done that by many others as already alluded to above. But, given that it plays deeply into the anxiety and fear that dominates the college admissions process out there, Ill tread where the previous posters refused and answer. </p>
<p>The Ivy League is an athletic conference. It happens to be filled with very strong academic institutions. All the other schools you've mentioned (and many not mentioned) have similarly strong academic opportunities to present. They are certainly not any ones "runner-up" in fields as broad as engineering, music, journalism, education, theater, computer science, communications, and business (to name a few), all better represented outside the Ivys. </p>
<p>Beyond academics, try to drag a Stanford undergrad out from under his palm tree to sit in the snow this time of year under a leafless East Coast maple. Try to convince someone at Duke that he should be watching a Columbia-Harvard game instead of a Blue Devils-Tar Heels match-up. Try to convince someone at Northwestern or Chicago to give up the Second City for Hanover, NH or Ithaca, NY. I dont think so. There are a lot more than 8 great schools out there. And you dont have to look very far to find them. Lose the blinders.</p>
<p>Exactly right wbwa. I believe there are as many as 50 schools better for undergrad educ than the Ivies, including the Little Three, several of the Seven Sisters, Main Line Sweatmore and Haverford, MIT, and Cal Tech, St John's College and Reed, the Ohio elite, Oberlin and Kenyon, and last and still granola, Grinnell, etc., etc.</p>
<p>Let's rest this thread and move on. W/ hybrids now no one carries a 2-iron anymore anyway!</p>
<p>I am proud to say I can hit a 2-Iron better than I can hit a hybrid...though I am impressive with neither.</p>
<p>Hmmm...I figured a thread like this would be old news, but I've been reading these boards for a good six months and I never saw a thread like this. Odd.</p>
<p>Take a ranking, take out the Ivy League ones, and list the 8 top schools. This thread pops up a lot but its still always fun to read peoples posts.</p>
<p>Based on US News the 8 would be:
Stanford, Duke, Chicago, MIT, CIT, Wash U, and JHU I think. I'd argue that all of them are intermixed with the Ivies.</p>
<p>Ivy League does not mean good, its just a stupid sports league that was made early on to band together good athletes in the region, morons.</p>
<p>'Ivy League' runups? What kind of retarded name is that? MIT beats half the ivy league hands down, and so thus its not a runner up.</p>
<p>The Ivy League is very geographically oriented - a simple look at any of the ivy statistics will show you that the overwhelming majortiy come from the East Coast. The Ivy League carries little prestige in the west coast, where Stanford pretty much dominates your petty souls.</p>
<p>AND the ivy league was FILLED WITH RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION! Harvard and Yale were Christian-Evanglical breeding grounds and anyone not a christian was to be thrown out and trampled. The Divinity Schools still train Christian preachers across the country, but they dont treat muslim/jewish/hindu priests.</p>
<p>Thus, your criteria/premises are inherently wrong and thus this thread is meaningless, and thus, your question cannot be answered because it simply makes no sense.</p>
<p>
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for undergrad educ than the Ivies, including the Little Three, several of the Seven Sisters, Main Line Sweatmore and Haverford, MIT, and Cal Tech
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</p>
<p>MIT and Caltech are actually better for undergrad education than the Ivies? I don't know about that.</p>
<p>As a case in point, my brother went to Caltech and he loved it, but he also freely admits that the actual education he received at Caltech was often times quite mediocre. A lot of Caltech professors, while brilliant researchers, are just bad teachers, to the point that my brother often times felt that he learned more by just sitting in his room reading the book than by actually going to class. Furthermore, a lot of Caltech profs are far more interested in their research and their grad students than in the undergrads. Caltech has more grad students than undergrads, and faculty members are often times far more focused on the grad students, with the undergrads simply being an afterthought.</p>
<p>What my brother liked about Caltech was that the resources per capita were truly vast. He could start a research agenda on day one and obtain access to nearly any resource that he wanted. He also greatly enjoyed the strong feeling of community of being near a number of kindred spirits consisting of a bunch of workaholic techno-geniuses. He loved that. But the quality of the actual undergraduate education was, in his words, rather uneven. </p>
<p>MIT has the same problem. Again, MIT has more grad students than undergrads. MIT has plenty of professors who are bad teachers and who are far more focused on their research and grad students than on undergrads. Again, MIT also has a powerful undergrad technological spirit and excellent research opportunities. But high quality of the actual undergraduate education itself? That's questionable. Heck, even the MIT Museum has an exhibit on the 2nd floor that displays the history of MIT and its evolution into a research powerhouse, as well as the fact that the undergrads became increasingly marginalized as that evolution occurred. </p>
<p>I would frankly say that certain Ivies probably do a better job of actually teaching undergrads than do Caltech and MIT. Princeton seems to come to mind. Dartmouth and Brown probably too. As far as the other Ivies (i.e. Harvard), they seem to suffer from the same problems as MIT and Caltech: too many grad students and too much pressure to research and publish resulting in the neglect of undergrad education.</p>
<p>Infinite Truth speaks the truth, but let me correct the record. Princeton was a Presbyterian Seminary before it was a university. It still retains its Presbyterian character, though it is officially non-sectarian (meaning not specific to a particular faith.) Brown was a Baptist school at one time. Harvard and Yale were Congregationalist, I believe. Yale Divinity School to this day is widely regarded as the most prestigious in the country. Dartmouth was established by a Congregationalist preacher. Columbia was previously called King's College and was founded by the Church of England. Penn also has Church of England heritage, though it was officially non sectarian and oddly its mascot namesake is "the Quakers." . These seven schools were all founded before the United States during the colonial period. Only Cornell, founded in 1865, has state support and is a completely non sectarian school.</p>
<p>But they were not welcoming to Catholics and excluded them from "the League."</p>
<p>Personally I'd say that simply if you're looking for the next 8 universities (That offer Phds) that seem 'as' prestigious as the ivy league in terms of view by students and prospective students, then I'd say the next 8 are;</p>
<p>Stanford
MIT
Cal-Tech
Duke
UChicago
JHU
WUSTL
NYU (in my opinion)</p>
<p>
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I do live there (almost right next to the university) by the way.
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</p>
<p>That's why.</p>
<p>I live near UCLA, and I think it's vastly overrated. People in nor Cal think Berkeley's overrated. People in Cambridge think Harvard's overrated. And I'm sure many in Evanston think NU is overrated. =p</p>