“I really do not like Duke’s faux olde campus.” This part’s curious to me. Do you feel the same about, say, Yale and Princeton, whose most prominent buildings/quads are maybe 20 years older than the Duke Chapel and main West Campus? Is it the specific fake old that references Oxford, or do you also not like Georgian buildings outside of Charlottesville, like the Morehead Planetarium? The Old Well was based on something at Versailles. So that’s fake old, too.
In any event, it’s not like Duke’s the only school with a campus layout or architecture meant to invoke something that came before it - Collegiate Gothic is the predominant style at U.S. universities and colleges in general. To each their own, of course, but that’s a lot of schools to really not like! Or is it the preponderance of it in Durham, or any one place (which, to bring us back on topic, could lead one to not be particularly enamored of Elon’s campus)?
My daughter’s friend went to Elon and had a great 4 years. It was not her first choice but it worked out nicely for her. She joined a sorority, had great internships, etc and went on to grad school. She thought the campus was beautiful, but if I recall correctly she felt it was a little isolated.
Elon isn’t for everybody, but it does seem to be a nice school for the right students.
Has Elon reacted in any formal manner to dropping from 89 to 133 in the USNews rankings? Nothing changed there one day to the next, but 44 spots is sort of staggering. In the short term it shouldn’t make any difference, I would think. Their focus on a more personalized educational experience where the school’s directly looking out for the future of its students has become pretty widely known, and won’t change. The business model of providing a well-run private university at a substantially more reasonable price than some of its direct competitors won’t change. But for a school that’s just started to create a national brand, could a drop like that in a bogus but unfortunately incredibly influential ranking, if they stay there for 5 years or so, contribute to a perception that Elon’s not, in fact, “hot” anymore?
Kind of ironic that one could be tops in undergrad teaching but drop so hard. The things Elon excels in-small classes, personal attention- were discounted by USNWR.I am sure it will hurt, but maybe the methodology will change again-seriously, isnt undergrad teaching the whole point.?
For sure. Perhaps the most analogous is Denver, which fell from 105 to 124 (but had been as high as 80 just four years ago, so I suspect something else is happening in addition to just methodology effects). But whereas schools like Gonzaga, Fordham, SMU, Pepperdine, Tulane, Villanova, etc. have older and more established brands (and in most cases, athletics teams that keep their name in the public), my fear for Elon is that this could have an outsized impact compared to those other places. Right when it was starting to become a name that doesn’t produce quizzical looks even out of people who’ve had kids go through the college selection process.
I share your concerns. D24 loved Elon when she visited this summer. However, when she saw that it had dropped all the way to 133 I could see her questioning whether she still would be happy to go there. It didn’t help that it’s now tied with another school we toured (Chapman) that we all found underwhelming. I reminded her that nothing had changed over night. She should trust what she saw and experienced. I’m not sure we would have visited had it been ranked 133. Really a shame that undergrad teaching isn’t one of the most important factors in the rankings.
Don’t let USNWR decide what YOU think is important in a school. Would you use the same methodology if you were rating schools? S23 currently attends a school ranked below 100, but if you ask anyone in his field, it’s in the top 10, more likely 4. And for his happiness, it was by far #1.
I won’t but a little harder for my impressionable 17 year old. Thankfully she has seen her sister living her best life academically and socially at a below top 100 school so that helps a lot (a school she chose over much higher ranked schools).
Formally they are happy about being highly ranked in a number of categories and on a short list for excellence in undergraduate teaching that includes colleges like Princeton and Dartmouth.
On subjective vs objective characterization of beauty and lovely campuses. Indeed our opinions and experiences are subjective. These campus visits are snapshots and vibe checks. Chapel Hill are Elon are both great colleges. No need to get petty over someone sharing their impression. The depressed, run down feeling of certain spaces and facilities was not mentioned to be snobby or elitist. It was part of an impression that student life and well being didn’t seem to be a high priority if this was how living and community space was maintained. The student union with the sad bagel place with empty drink fridge and no other options just added to the impression that something felt amiss.
There are students who value beautiful colleges, and that’s ok.
There are students who do not, and that’s ok too.
I posted about my daughter’s friend who went to Elon. It was her “safety” school and not her first choice, but she had an unbelievable four years and is doing incredibly well. She loved it.
My own daughter attended UNC and chose the ugliest dorm on campus (it was new, but had the reputation for being ugly). She liked the location and was happy. She never cared about aesthetics- there are other things she cared about a lot more. That being said, parts of UNC are gorgeous, and parts are run down. Some care, others do not. My daughter wasn’t phased by it and might not have even noticed.
Given Elon’s strength in undergraduate teaching, it seems crazy that it dropped. It’s still the same school so it really doesn’t matter.
I researched what’s going on. It’s not about Elon specifically – the methodology changed (yet again) and now emphasizes different things. Things which don’t necessarily matter at all to an undergrad’s 4-year experience.
“the methodologies change frequently enough to render year-to-year comparisons meaningless”
Even at 17, your daughter can read the above article and decide whether the supposed “drop” actually matters to her. Probably not, once she sees what USNWR is up to. Either way, it will be good practice in the critical evaluation of information vs succumbing to headlines.
They curved and sanded the steps down at Duke on the faux olde buildings built in the 1930s to make them look like they’d been worn down over the centuries. By contrast Nassau Hall on Princeton’s campus was actually built in 1756 and Old East on UNC Chapel Hill’s campus was built in 1793.
Elon’s oldest building is West Hall dorm built in 1907. It escaped the 1923 fire. While Elon’s campus doesn’t float my boat aesthetically I appreciate that they aren’t trying to make the buildings seem older than they actually are.
I doubt if the USNews rankings will hurt Elon appreciably. I think that students who are looking for what Elon offers — that personalized experience, robust career and internship help, etc, will still be attracted to the school.
Yes, we’ve all (sadly) spent way too much time learning about and discussing those tweaks to the formula on another thread.
Bottom line, though, is that (a) a lot of private universities dropped 15-20 spots (Wake, Villanova, Pepperdine, Fordham) and a number fell appreciably but less than 10 slots (Tufts, WashU, Vandy, TCU) but 89 to 133 is an outlier drop, (b) as mentioned upthread, most of those other impacted schools have had a longer period to establish their brand, so to speak, by appearing on the lists for decades before Elon made its debut (hence the thread topic here). They also didn’t fall out of the top hundred. Silly and indicative of uncritical consumerism as it is, there will probably be tens of thousands of target applicants every year who will now never even hear of Elon as long as it lingers in the 130’s on a rankings list by a for profit former print magazine that has outsized influence.
FWIW, it wasn’t my kid considering Elon and worried about its ranking. Mine was a '23 high school grad so is already out of the house. I think that was malsandhuskies.
Or is it the preponderance of it in Durham, or any one place (which, to bring us back on topic, could lead one to not be particularly enamored of Elon’s campus)?