<p>The Cornell bashing in this topic is ridiculous. I'm thankful now I didn't choose Dartmouth when I had the chance!</p>
<p>SorGirl, your "reality check" sort of makes a moot point.</p>
<p>1) PERCENTAGE, not actual numbers, is actually a better indicator of the strength of a grad school feeder prgram. Obviously, you can't expect, say, Williams to send as many pure numbers of people to a grad school as a quality state school like UMich, so percentage is the only accurate way to compare schools of varying size. OF COURSE Cornell sends more people to grad school, simply because it's 3x the size of Dartmouth.</p>
<p>2) Okay, so Cornell has more kids who don't NEED to apply to graduate school/law school/med school/whatever because they already have career training. Sure. But the list was never intended to indicate that Dartmouth is BETTER in ALL respects simply because it has a stronger grad-feeder-program; it simply means that, if you want to pursue a higher degree after undergrad, then Dartmouth is a more likely the most suitable choice for you - because it's more liberal-artsy, and it does it well. The point about a Dartmouth undergrad education being more suitable to direct entry into elite grad programs still stands.</p>
<p>Conversely, of course, that means that Cornell may be better for students looking for a more applicable-in-the-job-market-without-a-higher-degree education, which is just a difference in the school styles - it doesn't inherently make one better than the other. :)</p>
<p>The nature of that list is that LAC's rank higher. That's not a bias or a faulty assumption; the list just ranks one thing (elite grad school admissions) that Cornell may not be quite as good at for a variety of external factors- its preprofessional programs, the tendency of the students to go to work instead of straight to grad school - but it's not the responsibility of the list to tell us those factors.</p>
<p>xine, I agree with all your points, but I contend the ranking is still dubious because it fails to account for the number of people from each college who apply to these schools. An applied/admitted ranking would be more revealing, no? Since this data is not available, WSJ tried to formulate a list based on total class size, which is rather nearsighted.</p>
<p>"Elite graduate school's appreciate dartmouth graduates much more."</p>
<p>Not really. It was already mentioned, but keep in mind the variety of majors available at Cornell. It's not a fair or valid comparison if you don't. For instance, most Hotel administration majors don't need to go to grad school. The same holds true for ILR, engineering, and architecture. Engineering alone accounts for around 3-4,000 students. The same can be held true for other majors at Cornell such as business (AEM), and the agricultural field. If you want to compare grad school placement rates between the two schools, limit Cornell to only Arts and Sciences. This will give a much more accurate number. I believe arts and sciences has around 4,000 students. Dartmouth doesn't have the large number of professional programs that Cornell does (this isn't a bad thing in any way), it just tends to skew the numbers when you compare the placement of programs to one another. </p>
<p>Xine makes some good points, though i certainly wouldn't use that list as an "end all" indicator of the quality of these two elite colleges.</p>
<p>this thread shouldve died a long time ago</p>
<p>Sure, the list isn't the end-all and be-all. It just points students who truly plan on pursuing a higher degree straight out of college in a couple good directions. The fact remains that Dartmouth is MORE geared towards going to people going directly to grad schools (although many grads find awesome employment), and Cornell has a largER focus on people going directly into a profession (although many grads get into awesome schools). I mean, it just depends on what you want out of a college.</p>
<p>Obviously, it's only one factor in determining which college suits you better.</p>