<p>I wouldn't place Emory in that group, but okay.</p>
<p>Interesting thread, hawkette, as always.</p>
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[quote]
However, part of my frustration here on CC and elsewhere is that there is a preoccupation with a handful of top academic schools with long histories and high prestige and little thought/respect paid to other top schools all over the country that can provide a similar level of academics and then so much more.
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</p>
<p>I applaud this effort. However, I don't understand your strategy for accomplishing this. By initiating various threads that focus exclusively on the "top 20" or "Top 25" (all according to USNews) I think you are giving students yet another forum to compare and contrast the same relatively small number of schools. People don't come into the thread and say "hey, all this talk of Columbia reminds me how much I like Sewanee!" Not that I'm giving up hope on that.</p>
<p>Interesting considerations. Maybe I can introduce my own criteria and rank the list I came up with on how I saw "fit." (I did this process back in the stone age, but still):</p>
<p>Criteria:
-- Northeast or Midwest
-- University in or near a city.
-- A geeky student body over a social student body.
-- Strong academics, smart kids who aren't afraid to be smart.</p>
<p>My list in order of preference:
UChicago
Yale
Harvard
Princeton
Tufts
Hopkins
Northwestern
Cornell
(safety state school)</p>
<p>Maybe one of my obvious omissions was Wash U-- because I live on the east coast and I could see no discernible difference (to me) between Tufts and Wash U, I stuck with Tufts (plus, I like Boston more). Also, I didn't choose Columbia because even though it had a core and Chicago is often compared to it, I didn't find the kind of environment that made me comfortable right off the bat. Hopkins and NU felt to me like high school-- I loved my high school, but I also wanted a change of pace for college. I wasn't sure what HYP would have offered me-- I just knew they were generally desirable schools. Cornell was sort of on there to placate family members. I didn't feel a connection with the school.</p>
<p>Keep in mind though, high school students are fickle, and may not, at the time of application mailouts (late Dec.) know whether they want an urban or rural campus, large or small pop. etc. (This may shed light on the Dartmouth/Columbia mystery). Students also may be able to see themselves as very happy at both schools. Just because you would love to go to school in the city, doesn't mean that you wouldn't appreciate the rural setting of Dartmouth too. I think its actualy rather prudent to have varied schools on your list, because they as you visit, you can better sort out what you are looking for in an institution.</p>
<p>Re Emory, it may be conventional wisdom not to include them in a group with schools like Columbia, Penn et al. But is that an accurate conclusion? There is a lot to recommend this school from top-flight students to enormous institutional resources that ranks them in the top 10 nationally to a terrific undergraduate business school. Also, for people in the South, I assure you that Emory has a lot of prestige and very much belongs is considered a peer school to Columbia, U Penn, Brown U Chicago, and Wash U.</p>
<p>Brassmonkey - 100% agree.</p>
<p>I am looking at both schools by a big city, and rural ones(and inbetween). Why? Because I would like to have the convienent access to a big city, as I have never had that. However, I don't go to Detroit all that often(once every few months), and it is only 40 minutes away, so I obviously don't 'need' a big city. And rural schools have an appeal to me, as many of my best memories come from time spent on a rural lake. I'm sure that some people feel very attached to one style of school, however there are certainly people who could love many 'types' of schools.</p>
<p>hoedown,
Re your earlier post about threads and my frequent reference to Top 20 or Top 25 schools as ranked by USNWR, this is a combination of my own interests and what I perceive to be the dominant areas of interest to many on CC. </p>
<p>My own interest is that there are great colleges all over the country and student quality has picked up markedly at many, many schools to the point where the differences between the top 20 schools are increasingly hard to discern. Despite those statistical gains, however, what I perceive as the pecking order (both generally and on CC, eg, in the current thread about "Top 10 Schools in your opinion") has not assimilated the expanded matriculation of student excellence. </p>
<p>My belief is that the low level of public understanding of and appreciation for the increased breadth of student quality is unfortunate for many top students. With only 13,300 spots in the Ivy League and another 1350 at Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore, there just are not enough freshman places to go around at these high profile colleges. Furthermore, and more important to me, is that I believe that there are many other colleges that provide a similar level of academics and then so much more in terms of social alternatives, athletic alternatives, etc and for many students could/would be a better personal fit. </p>
<p>So, my comparisons have mainly dealt with that top band of highly selective schools which are looking to attract the very highest quality students. Perhaps my view should be broadened to incorporate an even larger circle of schools. However, I don't think that there are too many students looking at the Ivies or other very highly ranked schools who are also considering many schools ranked many places below and which don't have nearly as strong a statistical argument for academic comparability.</p>
<p>unalove
I find it interesting that you included both U Chicago and Northwestern on your list. If you were doing the list again today (and undoubtedly knowing more about yourself and the schools), which schools make the cut?</p>
<p>
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and which don't have nearly as strong a statistical argument for academic comparability.
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<p>But haven't you advocated that they <em>are</em> academically compatible (despite "statistical arguments") and deserve to be given the same attention as those ranked higher? </p>
<p>I agree with you that students should be willing look beyond these "Top XX" lists, and I agree that these other schools have a lot to offer.</p>
<p>What in the world is EMORY doing on that list? I just found that to be incredibly hilarious.</p>
<p>aquamarine,
Do you know much about Emory? Would you please be more specific in your objections to its inclusion?</p>
<p>hawkette, look at collegeboard.com</p>
<p>Emory's sat range is like 1270-1430</p>
<p>I think that is enough evidence that it does not belong with schools that have ranges consisting of low 13s to the 15s</p>
<p>^ That's a surprising stat. Tufts is 1340-1480 (and collegeboard is a year old), it really should make it to 20, or at the very least 25 this year, it has been between 20 and 30 since they started the rankings, we'll see.</p>
<p>In Emory's defense... Collegeboard is wrong.... it combined data from Emory College and Oxford College to yield that SAT range (as is indicated by the class size they use for the Emory data). Emory's real SAT range is 1300-1470. More importantly, if SAT ranges mattered that much, Columbiahopeful!, than WashU would be as, if not more, prestigious than Columbia, which is not quite the case.</p>
<p>hawkette, so many lists.....have you ever read or seen High Fidelity? I think you'd like it :).</p>
<p>jkh.. oxford college is part of emory... they have a guaranteed transfer agreement. all the kids in oxford college will eventually be emory students.</p>
<p>and i don't feel like looking up the thread, but someone i think actually logically deduced that those SAT ranges do not, in fact, contain oxford scores.</p>
<p>I'll bite... Emory College and Oxford College are both part of Emory University... that is correct... however, they both have their own separate freshman classes and should thus have their own SAT ranges- as they do in USNWR. </p>
<ol>
<li> Freshman Class @ Emory College: 1340 w/ SAT Range 1300-1470 (<a href="http://www.emory.edu/ADMISSIONS/about/class-profile.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.emory.edu/ADMISSIONS/about/class-profile.htm</a>)</li>
<li> Freshman Class @ Oxford College: 341 w/ SAT Range 1100-1300 (<a href="http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=538&profileId=6%5B/url%5D">http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=538&profileId=6</a>)</li>
</ol>
<p>Collegeboard gives information on Oxford College and Emory University (not Emory College). It lists Emory's freshman class as 1665 (1340 + 341 ~ 1665) and its SAT Range as 1270- 1430 (Avg. 1350). Now do a little math... 1385(1340/1681) + 1200(341/1681) = 1347.5. Any questions elsijfdl? (<a href="http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=539%5B/url%5D">http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=539</a>)</p>
<p>Here is how the schools rank according to their 25/75 SAT ranges</p>
<p>Urban/Semi-Urban Schools with High Prestige
1320-1520 Columbia
1330-1510 U Penn
1350-1530 Brown
1320-1530 U Chicago
1370-1530 Wash U
1270-1430 or 1300-1470 Emory </p>
<p>In this grouping of schools, Emory does appear the clear laggard on SAT scores, even allowing for the measurement of Emory College students. </p>
<p>However, there are other measures where Emory competes very well with this group of schools, eg, total endowment and endowment per capita:</p>
<p>$243,184 Columbia
$224,151 U Penn
$266,663 Brown
$457,382 U Chicago
$387,136 Wash U
$801,980 Emory</p>
<p>Or Top 10% students</p>
<p>83% Columbia
94% U Penn
91% Brown
80% U Chicago
93% Wash U
85% Emory</p>
<p>Or Faculty Resources (as ranked by USNWR and things like student/faculty ratio)</p>
<p>13th, 7/1 Columbia
1st, 6/1 U Penn
18th, 9/1 Brown
6th, 7/1 U Chicago
6th (tie), 7/1 Wash U
12th, 7/1 Emory</p>
<p>Or Alumni Giving</p>
<p>35% Columbia
40% U Penn
38% Brown
33% U Chicago
38% Wash U
36% Emory</p>
<p>As the numbers above demonstrate, Emory is not improperly placed in this group. It may not be as strong for SAT scores and accepts a higher percentage of students, but it is still a terrific school and almost certainly carries more prestige in the Southland than any of these other, also very fine, colleges.</p>
<p>Emory is at the bottom of the group anyways...don't be so pretentious as to say that Emory can't even be mentioned in the same breath or compared at all to Columbia or Brown. Emory is a great school, Brown and Columbia are better, but they all share great qualities.</p>
<p>ok, then maybe the scores posted are a combination of both colleges, but you can't just remove the lowest-performing students in emory's class and say "well... these people don't really count" the point is that the oxford college has guranteed transfer to emory university, meaning they will be held among their graduates, will be taking classes with them, etc. they are part of their school.</p>
<p>I agree. I have never heard of Emory mentioned as a top tier college [comparable to the rest of the colleges on your list] in over 4 years of reading CC.</p>