<p>" You mean USNWR rankings can be manipulated?"</p>
<p>yes, you can have a loose definition of "faculty" thus giving a higher # than in actuality, therefore improving several numbers on the US news chart helping out rank. </p>
<p>"Gomestar, you can exchange books to other universities libraries at any school, some do charge a fee others not. My S borrowed books from Carnegie and MIT and as you said before, it took only two days."</p>
<p>I know these inter-library loan things do exist, my point was the Ivy League schools limit their exchange policy to only other Ivies thus adding to the "it's more than just a sports league" type of notion.</p>
<p>SorGirl - I don't know the rankings since 1981 or whenever, but the lowest I've ever seen WashU was in the low 20s. Maybe that is wrong, but that's what I've found: if someone has evidence to the contrary, please let me know. So if Penn, which has only recently made its way into the top 10, has always been a good school, why is WashU so bad for doing the same thing? Does a spot in the top 25 instead of the top 10 really make a school worse than Cornell? Yet G-town is ranked #23 and I think you will have a hard time convincing people that it should not even be mentioned in the same sentence as Cornell. Even if you were able to push WashU back down to its previous ranking area, it would still be ranked with great schools like Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, etc. Do you really think these places are that much worse, if at all, than Cornell? I don't.</p>
<p>The OP, that's me, can tell you that this is not about rankings in the US News sense. We couldn't care less about statistics on SAT scores, acceptance rates, etc. It really comes down to which school will provide the best overall academic experience, in terms of both the specific field of interest but also more broadly.</p>
<p>In the 50's penn wasn't ranked so high, true. </p>
<p>Now they are ranked high, but the schools placement into top programs and individual program ranks are on par with the school's ranking. WUSL's is not. If you look at the table provided on the university's website, you'd wonder how on earth it made it to the top-10 above schools like Cornell, Brown, NU, etc. This is why I believe the school is overranked and should be compared to schools in the high 20's and 30's. Still an excellent school, no doubt, but the ability of the school to place its graduates into solid grad programs severely lacks when compared to the other schools in the top 15. I wonder if WUSL attracts top students less by its reputation and more by mass spamming and throwing big scholarships at its top prospects (something 8 of the top 15 cannot do due to contract). </p>
<p>The only thing on US news can reflect this is in the peer assessment score where WUSL does lag in comparison to other top schools.</p>
<p>I am not too familiar with WashU's placement overall, only in the area that interests me: law. HLS and YLS make their data available and I have found that WashU had 10 students enroll at HLS and 3 enroll at YLS, which is certainly not bad for the school's size, though I was a bit disappointed by those numbers. Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia, etc. have considerably higher numbers, while other peers like NU (20), JHU (3), Rice (18) have similar numbers. By this measure alone (HLS placement), WashU either isn't that amazing at placing students into top law or it doesn't have as many students pursuing a law degree (as is the case at schools like JHU, MIT, etc.)</p>
<p>I know what you mean; Qdad, and I can explain why my S had chosen to enroll at Wash U and not at Cornell. He is a very bright student, wonderful test taker with an amazing memory to remember every page of the books he had read in his entire life, but he needs to work in small groups, he is not the big lecture class kid because I know he would skip all the classes and learn nothing from them. Knowing the prestige of the engineering program at Cornell besides it is a very nice school, he had a hard time deciding and he was convinced only after attending several classes at both schools and contacting people who did research in them. He liked more Wash U. His passions besides engineering are photography and Asian Studies and he can do all at Wash U. It is not easy, he is working very hard and losing a few nights of sleep, but he is very happy and he has grown becoming a responsible adult in just few months.
The best thing to do is attend some classes and talk with the professors not about the college but about the classes you are interested in taking. Check how the registration for classes works, some school didn't offer the courses my S liked to the freshman class, others since they were limited to a number of students, were hard to get them having few or not credits before.
And as gomestar said, if your kid comes from a large school, he would do great in a large university, if not, try better a smaller one.</p>
<p>Gomestar, the number of Wash U's merit scholarships is very small, one full tuition for business and four full tuition for engineering and you need to apply for them separately doing more essays and having more recommendations letters; not everyone applies to them.
Cornell do have merit scholarships, as a matter of fact my S was given one for engineering and when he visit Cornell he had a special tour with the dean for those that were receiving merit scholarships.
About mailings, we received as much mail from Wash U as from Cornell, and in my D's case, she hardly received from Wash U (maybe because her brother was already there) but a lot of mail from Cornell, and two invitations all expenses paid during fall. And of course, tons of mail from other colleges even those overseas.</p>
<p>No Gomestar, we didn't apply for financial aid, there are Dean's Merit scholarship check those out in the Cornell forum.
I understand what you said, I just told you how it was at home, we weren't lucky to have that amount of Wash U's mailings.;)</p>
<p>Gomestar, I have the letter! it says:
March 31, 2006
Dear xxxxx
xxxx ave
xx city
Dearxxx:
Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that our Engineering Admissions Committee has selected you as a John McMullen Dean's Scholar. This award, the most prestigious available form the College of Engineering, recognizes your oustanding achievements inside and outside the classroom, and indicates our confidence that you have an exceptionally bright future at Cornell."
and continues...</p>
<p>Cressmom, you are quickly losing credibility here. From Cornell's financial aid FAQs:</p>
<ol>
<li>Does Cornell offer merit aid?
Cornell University offers financial aid solely on the basis of demonstrated financial need. We do not offer merit awards based on academic, athletic, musical or other talent.</li>
</ol>
<p>The programs discussed below carry a financial award that is included in the financial aid package. For students who apply for financial aid and are determined to have sufficient need, the award will reduce the loan and work portion of their financial aid package. Students who do not apply for or do not qualify for financial aid will receive an award to pay for books.</p>
<p>SorGirl - "I guess concepts have to be spoon-fed to you, one morsel at a time." I suppose that is the case - coming from someobe that makes a profound statement like WashU and Cornell should not be considered in the same breath - what else could I expect. </p>
<p>In my opinion, having looked into both schools - they are both great schools. Different personalities, size, location and atmosphere. I don't think any outsider can say which is the best choice for any individual. The only way to decide is to visit both campuses - spending overnights in a dorm - attend classes - talk to people on campus and see which one feels like the best fit. Nobody should base such an important decision entirely on other peoples opinions. Because lets be real, all of our opinions reflect our bias - be it good, bad or indifferent. That is all they are - our opinions.</p>
<p>"Students who do not apply for or do not qualify for financial aid will receive an award to pay for books."
How you call that?It's a $600 merit scholarship that you don't even have to apply for to attract the best students.</p>
<p>Instead of telling someone that is losing her credibility, listen what they said.</p>
<p>Yeah, I would be jumping all over that $600 award at a school with tuition over $30k. If you want to call that a merit award to placate your ego, go for it. The point is, the merit scholarship programs at WashU and Cornell are not even remotely comparable, with the former being much more generous.</p>
<p>I believe Qdad mentioned, at the beginning of the thread, that his student intended to major in Judaic/Near Eastern studies? I hope it is not too un-PC to ask if the student is Jewish? and if Jewish presence on campus matters to your son/daughter? This matters to my D, so she is trying to evaluate Hillels and Jewish life for undergrads at various places, including Cornell. She thinks Cornell looks promising. My mother was from St. Louis, as was a friend. Both characterized it as a more Catholic city, culturally, than anything else. As my friend said, St. Louis was the only city that ever banned the satiric play, "Sister Ignatius Explains it All to You".</p>
<p>...at WashUStL...but no help to our household. D was waitlisted, as was nearly everyone she knows. May be a common phenomenon at the school this year, from posts here, D's school (prep school). Good luck to all who are considering the school, though. Seems like a great place.</p>
<p>Art, if you don't apply to financial aid it is because you can afford the cost of tuition and other expenses, so any merit scholarship is welcomed as a recognition of you hard work. And fortunately, Cornell has those nice awards for the people they recognized as the best of its applicants' pool. Money isn't all in life; the most important things are priceless</p>
<p>In reading this thread from the beginning, this strikes me as a classic case of the newcomer college upsetting the old established status quo and those with the historical power will fight this to their dying breadth. Personally, I am delighted to see schools like WashU (Duke before it) rise from lower ranks to be considered the equal or superior of some in the old guard. People around the country, and particularly those outside of the Northeast, have known for years that there are incredibly smart students and exceptional schools and faculty to be found throughout the country. The Education Establishment stifles the recognition of the outsiders and it is time for that to change. </p>
<p>Things seem to change everywhere in our society except in colleges, but the fact is that knowledge and excellence have devolved throughout the country. If you believe in Tom Friedman’s thesis in The World is Flat, that the individual in Bangalore or Guangdong or Krakow, has nearly the same access to information as the individual in New York or London or Tokyo, then the structural advantages that America and Europe and Japan have long enjoyed are being quickly washed away. With a huge helping hand from the internet, the same thing is happening in America with huge ramifications for American college education. Students working in Norman, OK or Oxford, MS or Provo, UT or Seattle, WA will have nearly the same access to information as those in Ithaca or Princeton or New Haven. Mega volume libraries will become obsolete as digital access to these materials will become ubiquitous. What this means is that educational power is shifting from the institutions to the individual consumer. The schools-all schools-will have to compete more and their old, perhaps outdated reputations, won’t be able to dominate the decision-making of so many people. Schools will rise and fall more quickly and thus be more reflective of their current student, faculty and placement quality and not how they were back in the 70s or 80s (and you could extend this to mean 1870/1880 or 1970/1980). In my view, this is a very good thing. </p>
<p>How does this relate to the debate over Cornell and WashU? It is important because too often on forums like CC, students feel pressure to go for the prestige of the Ivy League because it is the safe historical choice and not necessarily because it is the right institutional choice for the student. One benefit of this increased consumer power is that students will be more able to choose a school based on fit and not based on prestige. Cornell. WashU. I don’t know which is better and we’ll never settle that. But I do know that more and more students are realizing that there are excellent options outside of the Ivy League and throughout the country. Wash U is one of those colleges and if the OP decides that it is the better fit, then I hope he will have the courage to choose that school.</p>
<p>cressmom - to be exact, that's not really a "cornell scholarship". There are many similar scholarships like that out there, Jack Kent Cooke being one of the big ones. </p>
<p>Basically, that guy wanted a sholarship in his name. He provides the funds, not Cornell. He chose to give the money to students at Cornell. Sometimes, people choose more than one school. I'm not sure, but the scholarship your son has may also be available at a school like MIT or WUSL. Each school usually has a few of these and some schools share the same scholarship from the same person. One thing in common - it costs a huuuuuge amount of money to offer a scholarship like this.</p>