<p>Harvard is the oldest university in America. it is also the most selective, so getting in literally means that you are the best of the best.</p>
<p>Thanks for the bump on a 5-year old thread and the riveting update Sherlock!!;)</p>
<p>yeah, not sure how i came across it, but i wanted to say something :D</p>
<p>I think they’ve had some time to figure things out.</p>
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<p>There is more than one way to measure selectivity. Using admit rate alone is simplistic. According to the US News selectivity sub-rank, in recent years Cal Tech and Yale have been more selective than Harvard. Deep Springs College probably is too, and Cooper Union may be in some years, but these two are so small and exclusive they tend to go off the charts.
(<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html</a>)</p>
<p>We don’t have any good, reliable metrics for the quality of undergraduate classroom instruction. Perhaps if we did, Harvard would not be #1, maybe not even in the top 5. That’s rather speculative, but there are some rankings that place Harvard surprisingly low overall. Washington Monthly ranks Harvard 11th solely among national universities. stateuniversity.com ranks it 24th (for universities and LACs combined, based on factors including ACT/SAT scores, student retention, faculty salary, and student / faculty ratio, without any subjective Peer Assessment such as US News uses).</p>
<p>Still, IMHO Harvard’s reputation and prestige is well deserved. It ranks very high, often first, by many significant measures (admit rate, faculty awards and salaries, library holdings, age, endowment, wealthy alumni, peer assesment of academic departments, etc.)</p>
<p>Harvard is Harvard. It is, simply put, the most well rounded university on Earth. </p>
<h1>1 Endowment</h1>
<h1>1 Faculty (tied with Cal and Stanford)</h1>
<h1>1 Resources</h1>
<h1>1 Professional programs</h1>
<h1>1 Academic programs (tied with Cal and Stanford)</h1>
<h1>1 Library</h1>
<p>Oldest university in the Americas
Most billionaire alums
Most Scholarship winners (Fullbright, Marshall, Rhodes and Truman)</p>
<p>Nobody comes close really.</p>
<p>I believe if you go back 100 to 150 years, some of what are now the Ivies were among the largest (in enrollment) in the country. So at least some of their prominence came from merely being bigger than most other colleges. I swear I read somewhere that at one point in its history, Dartmouth was something like the second largest college in the country. Almost all of what are now huge state universities were pretty modest in size until WWII. If you check out which schools were national football powers in the 1920’s and 1930’s, you’ll see a lot of the Ivies, U of Chicago, and some colleges that are now obscure LACs.</p>
<p>Consider historical circumstances: if it weren’t for the Civil War, we might well be referring to William & Mary (three presidents and sixteen signers of the Declaration of Independence as alum) in the same reverent terms. For some reason (probably, anti-semitism), in the years following the war, Boston simply became the place where eastern gentry sent their children to college, eclipsing such local favorites as Penn, Columbia and Brown. It also didn’t hurt that with the help of local Irish “ringers”, Harvard was able to dominate the emerging college sport known as football.</p>
<p>Age.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly John Harvard had no ambitions of creating a rival (and eventual superior) to Cambridge and Oxford. He was creating a seminary/training school for religious ministers.</p>
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Also, it generally has the most intelligent and talented undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>I am not an expert on the history of Harvard, but my vague impression was that in the 1920’s and 30’s Harvard was undergoing something of a decline - an obsolete approach to education (compared to research focused places like U Chicago and Hopkins, and tech oriented places like MIT) a fading metro area (compared to Columbia taking advantage of ties to NY’s intellectual life) and the antisemitic quotas (leaving intellectual leadership in some areas to City College in NY). This was turned around by President Conant, who, in the years after world war 2, took advantage of all the strengths Harvard still had to refocus it and to strengthen science, research, etc, to eliminate the quotas, and in general to redynamize the sleepy institution. </p>
<p>Once that was done, the virtuous cycle of prestige-donations-money-faculty-students-prestige took over.</p>
<h1>1 Endowment</h1>
<h1>1 Faculty (tied with Cal and Stanford)</h1>
<h1>1 Resources</h1>
<h1>1 Professional programs</h1>
<h1>1 Academic programs (tied with Cal and Stanford)</h1>
<h1>1 Full of themselves</h1>
<h1>1 Library</h1>
<p>Oldest university in the Americas
Most billionaire alums
Most Scholarship winners (Fullbright, Marshall, Rhodes and Truman)</p>
<p>The numbers don’t lie.</p>
<p>flavian-
i think it’s widely accepted in law circles that Yale is #1 law school in the country.</p>
<p>“Also, it generally has the most intelligent and talented undergraduate student body.”</p>
<p>You have comparative data on intelligence and talent??</p>
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<p>While not conclusive, the fact that Harvard gets more than twice as many Presidential Scholars (who are undeniably both intelligent and talented) as any other school is indicative of something.</p>
<p>^^^ Far from conclusive…
Saying Harvard has the most Presidential Scholars is very different than saying it has the most intelligent and talented undergrad student body.</p>
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<p>I believe that I acknowledged that. But when you don’t have much data on the matter, what you do have carries more weight. And what I cited is not meaningless.</p>
<p>^^^ It’s indicative that Harvard admits a number of very intelligent and talented students, but it a huge unwarranted extrapolation to say that Harvard has the most intelligent and talented undergrad student body.</p>
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<p>This should read: Oldest university north of the Rio Grande. ;)</p>
<p>How did Harvard gain its reputation and prestige?</p>
<p>Movies and TV shows!!!</p>
<p>Harvard is often mentioned in movies and tv shows or tv series wherenever an elite college has to be mentioned.</p>