CU has those 1/4 type apartments and there are also some apartment buildings that are run that way close to campus.
Thanks for all of this great information. Yes, seems like the big state schools especially house mostly freshman on campus and everyone else ends up moving off.
CU Boulder an elite college?
I am sure it is a great school and in all candor I don’t know much about it.
The term elite however when applied to colleges suggest both exclusivity and selectivity. An approx 70% acceptance rate and middle of the road average test scores contradicts this definition.
Good/Great school based on other subjective criteria sure but elite it is not.
@Nocreativity1 I see your point but you can’t look at acceptance rates and test scores for schools like CU Boulder and make blanket decisions.
The state flagships, generally speaking, often have amazing pre-professional programs or colleges within the universities that vary in selectivity and prestige. Perfect example is the Kelley School of Business at Indiana…and many others. If you look at the acceptance rate and test scores for Indiana as a whole, they are significantly lower than the students that are accepted to the Kelley School of Business. And so on.
I know I am stating the obvious here and most people on these boards of course know this to be true. But I think now more than ever the flagships are really picking up speed and many of their programs are top notch. And nothing wrong with the liberal arts programs at many of the schools, either. I think students can get an elite-like education at the state flagships if they take the right classes and stay focused, and take advantage of the many academic/research opportunities on campus.
I know a student that just turned down MIT engineering for Colorado engineering (masters, aerospace).
I also think now more than ever some top students are not interested in the smaller Ivy League or LAC environment as they are looking for a different overall college experience. And many students from these “less elite” schools are killing it in the real world.
Did anyone see that woman who just got promoted at 41 to some really elite board at Goldman? Stephanie Cohen, I believe. It was in the news and I was curious so I looked her up…she went to U of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Not even sure she got her MBA (based on the dates they discuss in her career path, seems like she didn’t…but maybe I missed something.) Anyway, she’s the youngest woman ever to get so far in banking…or something like that. Enough of an accomplishment that it was in the news.
Collegemomjam I am not disputing whether CU provides a great education, produces successful graduates or is a viable alternative to the most selective of schools. I have no idea but take you at your word.
The term “elite” however can be determined by statistics (in fact stats and reputation are what define elite). If you are suggesting that some schools within the CU complex are more selective please enlighten me, but in general 25%+ acceptance rate school’s are not elite (think UVA as an elite state school). Over 50% is hardly elite. If you have greater odds of getting accepted at the school then you do of winning a coin flip the term elite shouldn’t be applied unless the underlying stats suggest an extremely over qualified applicant pool.
Otherwise the term elite is meaningless.
@Nocreativity1, no I was commenting more on the academic opportunities and stating that I think you can get an “elite like” education at a school like CU Boulder if you want to. And that there are likely some students there that could have gotten into an “elite” school (or possibly did) but chose Boulder for various reasons.
I was also trying to make the point that I think it is risky/misleading to use broad stats like acceptance rates and test scores for schools like Colorado because they really don’t tell the whole story. You really need to look at the various programs/honors opportunities at the state flagships to get a solid idea of what they have to offer.
I know a kid with a 34 ACT who didn’t get into CU engineering. He was admitted to A&S, but not engineering. He was on an award winning Robotics team, had some sports EC, had some other good parts to his application, but a 3.1 gpa simply from not taking high school seriously (not handing in homework, missing a lot of classes, not trying in classes he didn’t like (Spanish)). I think CU engineering is very selective, if not elite.
Business school is a tough admit.
Twoinanddone providing one anecdotal example contradicts the notion of elitism. Schools the are truly elite have thousands of kids with 34 ACT scores rejected, not an identifiable individual. Scan the Ivy admit summaries and you will see these school’s have 1,500-4,000 valedictorians apply annually and accept only about 20% of them. Same applies to Chicago,Stamford, Duke, MIT, Vandy, etc… These schools based on the near universal high quality of applicants and the low acceptance rates among these pools embody the term elite.
Students who have “a 3.1 GPA because they simply didn’t take HS seriously” don’t gain admission to elite schools, even through a backdoor. They don’t even get a second look at elite schools because fully academically qualified, engaged, and thoughtful kids routinely get rejected.
Good, yes, elite, no. You could maybe argue that Colorado School of Mines or Colorado College are “elite” but UC-Boulder, not by most people’s definition. In fact if it wasn’t for the great location, big time sports, and laid back attitude you would not get as many OOS students thereby increasing an already high acceptance rate and lowering the overall GPA/test scores for admitted students. I know from my D20 HS that many good, but not great stat students choose UC-Boulder and to a lesser extent Indiana University because they could not get into an Ivy or our state flagships and second tier UC’s. I see the appeal of UC-Boulder, but not because of its “elite” academics for most departments.
When comparing the quality of education between two schools, I think it’s more sensible to look at class sizes, faculty (number in a dept., degrees, awards, office hours, etc.), curriculum, calendar, and majors/courses available than to compare student stats and selectivity. Until the students begin leading lectures, I’ll hold this opinion.
It may well be that, having thus compared CU and UCLA, UCLA would be the winner. But it would be the winner for reasons that actually affect or reflect quality of academics, which selectivity does not – to a great degree, anyway. A lower-stat kid who is involved in the class discussion is a bigger asset to the classroom than a high-stat kid who doesn’t have to ask any questions because he or she has already memorized the applicable text. (grander point: classroom dynamics are made better by the willingness to get involved, not necessarily by knowledge… assuming the participants aren’t asking rhetorical questions, wasting time, etc.
Prezbucky The thread is titled CU Boulder an elite college? Wasn’t asked to compare the quality of education.
According to CBS news the nationwide average college acceptance rate was 65%. The puts CU at average. No where near the single digit elite schools.
Elite means not accessible to many, so CU within that context was answered. While you make a valid point it doesn’t address the question asked.
CU is fine. But I really wouldn’t put much confidence in this site’s rankings. They have William & Mary at #582 !?!
I looked a little into the ranking methodology. Example: Employment after graduation would seem to be a reasonable thing to measure, but this is CWUR’s metric: "Alumni Employment, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size (15%) "
For state flagship universities as I have said in an earlier post, selectivity is directly correlated with population, and like @coloradomama says, you can get a great education in some areas at CU. IMO most elite institutions are sub 10% and correlate with the top 20 universities (BTW no publics meet that criteria for elite), however if you look at specific majors you will find top 20 programs within many public universities. For CU here are a few of them. and they are right there among the “elite” universities (including private universities).
Smead Aerospace: No. 8 public, No. 11 overall
Environmental engineering: No. 7 public, No. 11 overall
Chemical engineering: No. 11 public, No. 17 overall
So, no, CU is not an overall elite university (IMO no publics meet that criteria) but it definitely has some elite programs within the university. Now if you want to compare apples to apples, and eliminate privates from the conversation then for CU you would still have the same argument, not an elite public university, but definitely has many elite programs within.
The quick definition of elite is “a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities”. So the question is how big is that “select part” and the answer is going to be subjective. That said, I think CU would fall outside of most people’s definition of elite. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a very good school or have some top notch programs.
The importance of attending an elite school seems to be less important these days as families look to save money. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. are worth a lot because of the networking you can do.
But beyond that, I think college is what you make of it. You can get an excellent education in many places.
Also, once you graduate from college, where you attended doesn’t come up much. Even if you went to Harvard, if you don’t work it into the conversation, people aren’t going to know. As for resumes, what you achieve after college is more important.
http://time.com/54342/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-go-to-college/
I don’t think hs students in state consider it elite. Many of the best students who stay in state to attend school are Boettcher Scholars and they go all over.
I just checked the Boetcher Scholar list and CU is the school that is picked most often.
@coloradobased “Also, once you graduate from college, where you attended doesn’t come up much. Even if you went to Harvard, if you don’t work it into the conversation, people aren’t going to know.”
IMO, getting an elite education is something that stays with you the rest of your life it’s not just something you do to put on your resume.
But is attending an “elite” school the same as getting an “elite” education? There are multiple ways to experience life and to learn. Focusing too much on which school you attend may interfere with other opportunities that you might pursue. If, for example, you come out of college with so much debt that you take high paying jobs that don’t actually interest you, you might have been happier going to a more affordable school and coming out of the experience with little or no debt.
I think more students and families are realizing there are acceptable trade offs in going somewhere cheaper even if it isn’t as prestigious. Even the community college route is being explored by students with good GPAs and test scores because the schools are so much cheaper and credits can easily be transferred.