<p>clever way to correct a spelling error...</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>While yes stats can be (and often are) easily skewed, with no stats, comparing schools is meaningless. With no stats, all people will do is talk about what the person down the street thinks about college X, or how his best friend’s uncle once heard of college Y on television. Such things are ridiculous and worthless to discuss, and often lead nowhere.</p>
<p>Hey, I know like 71 people who picked Brown, Duke, or Dartmouth over Harvard - therefore, Harvard is well past its prime and mostly a regional Northeastern school.</p>
<p>Wait, statistics show that, in fact, about 80-85% of cross admits between these schools choose Harvard.</p>
<p>One of the above statements has no validity, one does (the first statements fictional and the seconds true).</p>
<p>Thethoughtprocess is right...relying completely on artichokes about neighbors' and relatives' offhand comments is not the way to carry on a discussion. They have their place, but are only convincing if backed up by sweeping generalizations, perpetuated stereotypes, and cooked-up statistics.</p>
<p>Sweeping generalizations? Perpetuated stereotypes?</p>
<p>Let’s take a look back at some of Tourguide’s arguments:</p>
<p>“The people in the Northeast truly are skeptical about colleges in the other parts of the country. A LOT of folks in the Northeast would respect a degree from Bates or Colgate at least as much as one from Berkeley or Duke.”</p>
<p>“Another generalized Northeasterner's bias is against state schools (because theirs are usually playing 4th fiddle to the private schools in their states). Also, in many respects "smaller is better"...or at least BIG=LESS EXCLUSIVE. The larger colleges in Boston are BU and Northeastern. It's inconceivable to a lot of people around there that a Colby or a Smith wouldn't smoke a Berkeley or a Michigan for undergrad, due to size, if nothing else.”</p>
<p>“I'd bet most people in the Northeast would overestimate the size of Nortwestern because it's in the Big 10, and it sounds like their big, relatively (compared to Harvard/MIT/Wellesley) mediocre-ish Northeastern U.”</p>
<p>“But since you asked...there IS a Northwestern/Northeastern problem there...maybe not among elite prep school teachers or well-educated suburbanites. But I lived in grubby-but-somewhat-academically ambitious town, there was plenty of confusion.”</p>
<p>“P.S., the Northwestern/Northeastern confusion wasn't such that they thought one was the other. It WASN'T like if you said you were going to Northwestern, people thought you were going to school in Boston. It was just that with names so similar, they often assumed that the schools would be similar as well...maybe even owned by the same organization.”</p>
<p>Lol, manipulated stats? What are you talking about. Why is everyone saying manipulated stats?</p>
<p>The only stats I've seen are pretty straightforward. Northwesterns PA score is much higher than Tufts. Northwestern sends 4% of its students to one of 15 top professional schools, while Tufts only sends 2%. This, even when only 3 of the top 15 professional schools on the survey aren't in the Northeast, whereas Northwestern is in the MidWest. Northwestern is ranked higher on THES and US News (which are each an aggregate of several different categories). Those are all facts. Completely verifiable.</p>
<p>All I'm saying is that when the stats disagree with your opinion, instead of pretending every statistic is "cooked-up" just admit that they are stacked against you.</p>
<p>Saying NU is unknown in the Northeast is ridiculous simply based on NU's overall rank in major US rankings - even if they don't want to apply to NU, they've atleast heard of it. </p>
<p>Overall, the student bodies are very similar in overall strength, but it seems like NU has more weight on rankings, feeding into top professional schools, and a higher rating by peer institutions.</p>
<p>WorldbandDX,
Just because SAT stats are similar doesn't mean their national/international reputation is the same. Just look at Penn; it has better national reputation than a number of schools with similar SAT stats in most places (except maybe those "grubby but somewhat academically motivated little" towns...lol). Reputation of the whole university (undergrad+grad) is often (though not always) a function of number of star programs (often graduate/professional) or published rankings. It's a fact (not cooked stats) that NU has more renowned programs than Tufts. You mentioned how the selectivity these days are so similar but that's the case only in recent few years and people's perception usually lags behind reality. That said, the quality of education for Tufts and Northwestern are likely about the same. With the already improved students, their reputation will improve especially when some of their departments also move up in rankings. They can do that by offering more $$/incentives to lure star profs from the neighboring schools, adding facilities..etc provided they have enough financial power. These may not do much to the quality of undergrad education but that's the game they'd have to play if they want to raise their national reputation. </p>
<p>columbia2007,
As far as "skewed stats" goes, the WSJ one has east-coast bias, as thethoughtprocess just pointed out. :)</p>
<p>Usually I'm about 90% serious in my posts. #164 was just an excuse to bust thethoughtprocess's chops over the "antidote" comment in #159. Note that I said "artichoke" for "anecdote."</p>
<p>Thethoughprocess's righteous indignation in #159 is on target. But unfortunately the way argumentation seems to work (not just here, but in every bar in the world), is that concrete examples are dismissed as mere antidotes (sic), and generalzations are dismissed as stereotypes with plenty of exceptions. Stats are often valuable, but always subject to manipulation. Also, stats are often cited as objective evidence just because they are quantitative. But when the numbers are based on mere opinion (like US News' Peer Assessment), how is it objective?</p>
<p>People are agruing all the time everywhere, and how often does anybody change anybody else's mind? Almost never. It's like baseball managers arguing with umpires...it never gets anybody anywhere. After having studied and taught at 13 different colleges, I came to the conclusion that most of higher education's claims of striving to find the truth are B.S. Grad students get hung up on a particular slant on things, get their doctorates, and spend the rest of their academic careers ducking the truth and defending whatever general slant their dissertation leaned toward. They don't care any more about truth than your local used car salesman. If they did, they would change their minds occasionally. The philosopher Wittgenstein stands out from nearly every other philosopher in that in mid-career he said, "You know what? Everything I've been preaching so far is probably wrong." Who else is that interested in the truth? My grad philosophy advisor at the U of Toronto was a Communist. The fact that nearly all the communist leaders in the world were tossed out on their "collective" a$$e$ (collective--get it?) had zero impact on the guy. He wasn't interested in the truth...he was interested in covering his a$$.</p>
<p>Stats are subject to manipulation, but the stats in the WSJ feeder ranking aren't manipulated. They straight up show you NU is more succesful with the 15 top professional schools. The PA number is based on opinion, but PA objectively shows NU is more highly regarded than Tufts (a difference of .1 or .2 doesn't matter, but I think the gap is higher) by academics around the country. These are but two measures, but important ones.</p>
<p>My point about discussing anecdotes (is that how you spell it?) is that, well, they are unverifiable. And its useless to describe individual examples of what people think when there is better data available. Saying Joe Boston never heard of NU whereas it received above a 4.0 PA score means the story of Joe Boston really doesn't matter when compared to the opinions of top academics around the country. </p>
<p>Now, granted, PA score is skewed to favor schools with large graduate programs, as seen by schools like Mich having higher scores than schools like Dartmouth or Brown. However, it still reflects that NU is well-known and thought of highly by academics. A high PA score doesn't mean the school has a great undergrad, but it does mean its well-recognized in academic circles for atleast something.</p>
<p>Does anyone on this thread realize that the South also has "ancient" universities? Try Georgetown, Virginia or William & Mary. In fact, W&M is the 2nd oldest US college and the most selective American public university. The out-of-state accept rate is an astounding 22% (same as CalTech) and the average SAT score is 1360! US News doesn't know what they're taliking about when they elevate juvenile schools like Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt and Wake into the top 30. What nonsense!</p>
<p>When you have a medical center like Duke or Emory, you are far from juvenile, you are well-established.</p>
<p>Rutgers was established in 1766, I can't believe juvenille schools like University of Chicago (1890) are ranked above it!</p>
<p>If W&M and Rutgers (formerly Queen's College) reverted back to private schools, they'd be able to trade far better on their pedigrees. I'd be willing to dump the Ivy League's 19th century outlier (Cornell) for either of them (or Georgetown). </p>
<p>Now here is a distinguished ranking!
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_colleges%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_colleges</a></p>
<p>The age of a university means very little if you ask me. Why take a look at Stanford for instance, it is definitely one of the best universities in the world and yet was established 1891! Also if age was so important then many many european universities would be ranked higher than all american universities.</p>
<p>Oxford and Cambridge do have higher prestige that Harvard and Yale in most people's minds. So does the Sourbonne in Paris. Why do you think so many people want to be Rhodes scholars?</p>
<p>Speaking of age, HYP are 3 of the 4 oldest US colleges. Is it a coincidence that they are the most prestigious?</p>
<p>Princeton is only fifth oldest.</p>
<p>Harvard: 1636
William & Mary: 1697
Yale: 1701
Penn: 1740
Princeton: 1746</p>
<p>I think it's partially coincidental. 30 years in the 1700's is not what makes Princeton better than Washington & Lee, Rutgers, Union, Brown today. Penn's resurgence over the last decade has nothing to do with being the fourth oldest college and Brown's 1764 founding translated into it being on a par academically with Trinity and Brandeis until the 1970's.</p>
<p>No one actually claims age has anything to do with it. It does influence some factors, though. Being among the only colleges in 179x, many of these schools can claim famous alumni like Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. Many have also been hoarding their endowments since that time. Campus atmosphere is enhanced by the collection of historic buildings, which tell a "story" of university history stretching back centuries- part of which one, as a student, is now participating (I've always lamented the lack of this at Columbia, though, which lost its 18th century campus to uptown moves).</p>
<p>BTW, the claim that Penn is fourth oldest is highly controversial. The institution set up in 1740 was essentially a revival tent for a famous evangelical preacher from England...some very creative historians managed to "discover" Penn's origins in this, though the claim is dubious. In reality I don't think one can claim there to have been a Penn until at earliest 175x.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Princeton is only fifth oldest.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well that is all a matter of perspective. The "founding dates", "chartered dates", etc. have been a point of contention between Princeton and UPenn.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from Wiki:</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is some disagreement about Penn's date of founding. The University of Pennsylvania was established in 1749 as the Academy of Philadelphia (instruction began in 1751), assuming the educational mandate of the Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania. This was part of a 1740 project that had been planned to comprise both a church and school, though due to insufficient funding only the church was built. The church building was conveyed to the Academy of Philadelphia in 1750. Since 1899, Penn has used 1740 as its official date of founding. See also *[3], <a href="Penn">4</a> and <a href="Princeton">5</a> for carefully phrased and nuanced details. To complicate the picture, Princeton can point to the Log College operated by a Presbyterian minister in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1726 until 1746. Although it has been suggested that there is some connection between this school and the College of New Jersey that would enable Princeton to claim a founding date of 1726, Princeton does not officially do so and a Princeton historian says that the "facts do not warrant" such a claim.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Be that as it may, I think it's hardly a coincidence that 7 out of the 9 Colonial era colleges (i.e. chartered in the American Colonies before the American Revolution (1775–1783)) are not only the nation's oldest, but are squarely in the Top 10-15 schools in the nation:</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth</p>
<p>and the other two: William and Mary and Rutgers are the only two public schools from that list of nine Colonial era colleges.</p>
<p>“Many have also been hoarding their endowments since that time.”</p>
<p>-Well, to me, the schools that haven’t been around since the 16 or 1700s, and still have multibillion dollar endowments are doing quite well for themselves… :rolleyes:</p>
<p>In fact, there are more colleges founded after the 17th and 18th century with billion dollar endowments than ones founded during those centurries.</p>
<p>They're called exceptions.</p>