<p>^^^“This should read: Oldest university north of the Rio Grande.”</p>
<p>[First</a> university in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_university_in_the_United_States]First”>First university in the United States - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>Who made that extrapolation?</p>
<p>^^^ “Who made that extrapolation?”</p>
<p>You did.</p>
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<p>You are mistaken. Please quote an instance of my doing so.</p>
<p>First, you made a broad unsupported generalization that Harvard has the most intelligent and talented undergrad student body. When asked if you had data for this, you indicated that Harvard had more US Presidential Scholars than any other school. When I pointed out that this is different that saying it has the most intelligent and talented undergrad student body, you said, “But when you don’t have much data on the matter, what you do have carries more weight.” That’s an extrapolation.</p>
<p>Definition: to project, extend, or expand (known data or experience) into an area not known or experienced so as to arrive at a usually conjectural knowledge of the unknown area.</p>
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<p>:confused: No, I didn’t.</p>
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<p>Thanks, I really needed that. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>OK, my apologies…you didn’t make the broad generalization that Harvard generally has the most intelligent and talented undergrad student body. That statement was made by lesdiablesbleus. You merely cited a datum on the comparative number of US Presidential Scholars at Harvard in support of lesdiablesbleus’ generalization.</p>
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<p>That is correct. I distinguish between “in support of” and “in an attempt to prove conclusively.” The latter would indeed be an unfounded extrapolation.</p>
<p>I believe Harvard gained most of, if not all of, its reputability and prestige from the [Enron</a> scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal]Enron”>Enron scandal - Wikipedia). At least thats one of the brighter moments in Harvard’s history that I can think of.</p>
<p>The question was how Harvard gained its reputation for excellence. It surely wasn’t by the SAT scores of its incoming freshmen, as Harvard’s reputation was well established long before there were anything even remotely resembling SAT scores.</p>
<p>Yes, some prestige attends being the oldest university in the U.S., and certainly the financial muscle to buy what it wants in the way of facilities and academic talent doesn’t hurt. But I’d cite a couple of transformative moments in Harvard’s history. First was the appointment in 1708 of its first President who was not a clergyman, John Leverett. Arguably this set Harvard on the road toward intellectual independence from the church and its roots as a small, sleepy, backwater Puritan seminary. </p>
<p>Next was the takeover by the Unitarians in 1805 which secularized the college and was an integral part of the formation of the Boston Brahmin financial-social-political-intellectual elite, with which Harvard has been intimately enmeshed ever since. This elite had a voracious appetite for new ideas and a need to reproduce itself by educating its young, both of which Harvard supplied in exchange for generous financial support. Building on that successful model, Harvard gradually expanded its sphere of influence outward, to local elites throughout New England, the Northeast corridor, and the nation.</p>
<p>Third was the presidency of Charles W. Eliot who revitalized the Law, Medical, and Business Schools as well as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, transforming the little college into something resembling a modern university.</p>
<p>Finally, James B. Conant (President 1933-1953) reinvented Harvard as a meritocracy, emphasizing the University’s research mission, spending freely to bring in top academic talent and build world-class libraries and research facilities, elevating tenure standards, and transforming the student body by opening admissions to Jews, Catholics, and more generally the talented and ambitious sons and daughters of the middle class, and not merely the Anglo-Saxon social elite. Conant was also the first to allow women into Harvard classrooms through an agreement with Radcliffe, though their full admission to Harvard College would not come until later.</p>
<p>All these moves strengthened Harvard at key moments in its history, propelling it past slower-moving rivals. All were controversial in their time because they were innovative and unconventional, and they ruffled a lot of feathers. But when Harvard acted, it did so decisively and full throttle, and in so doing made itself a leader by pushing itself forward in single-minded pursuit of excellence. It now has ample intellectual, financial, and physical capital to maintain that lead against all challengers so long as it is well managed (which it sometimes is, and sometimes isn’t). In short, Harvard gained a reputation for excellence by making itself excellent, often being the first to have the vision and foresight to transform itself, sometimes simply by following a broader trend but employing all its ample resources to do it better than anyone else. But let’s be clear: the reputation followed the excellence, and the students with stellar SAT scores followed the reputation—not vice versa.</p>
<p>Age. Money. President/ famous WASP alumni.</p>
<p>Surviving the Columbia challenge in the two decades of the 1930s to 1940s when Columiba had four members of the Supreme Court, the intellectual leader of the Manhattan project (Fermi), both Presidential nominees in 1944, its President being elected US President in 1952, FDR of the Law class of 07 runing the nation, the brain trust running the New Deal, cultural icons like Merton, Barzun, Kerouac, Van Doren etc. on the faculty or as alumni, popular culture icons with names like Cagney and Gehrig dominating sports and movies etc. Columbia was becomming the most influential university at that time before its long fall came in the mid 1950s as Harvard out hustled, out fund raised and out-Kennedyed Columbia into the ground.</p>
<p>Thurston Howell III had a LOT to do with it.</p>
<p>yeah and also george burroughs</p>
<p>I think we’d all agree that a college can get at least some notariety from being merely larger than other colleges. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that 100-150 yrs ago, what are now the Ivies were some of the bigger colleges in the country. I have a World Book encyclopedia from 1965 that lists the total enrollment (grad and undergrad) of all colleges in the US. Here are some examples:</p>
<p>Harvard 12,413
Yale 8,364
Columbia 24,000
Penn 18,347
Cornell 12,687</p>
<p>Texas A&M 8,100
UMass-Amherst 7,223
Kansas 11,434
Georgia 12,247
Florida 13,826 </p>
<p>Now keep in mind that this is in 1965, AFTER the state schools ballooned after WWII. So pre-WWII, there were probably few state schools in the country that had as many students as the larger Ivies…meaning that not only weren’t there any schools that could match the [future] Ivy schools’ history and wealth, there weren’t many that could even match them for sheer size.</p>
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<p>There may have been some earlier warning signs, but Columbia’s fall was pretty precipitous by university standards. The student takeover of Low Library in April, 1968 and subsequent pictures of bloodied students parading past television cameras, not to mention the very public humiliation of Clark Kerr, a higher education icon, even made the New York tabloids, something the Ivy League rarely did in those days. I agree that a more astute and nimble administration might have seen the danger signs. But, if it hadn’t happened at Columbia it would have happened somewhere else eventually; university heads became younger, hipper and a lot more “consumer” oriented as a result of the Columbia riots.</p>
<p>If you think about it, it’s probably got the greatest brand-name cachet in the Western world. And, in fact, The President and Fellows of Harvard College is the oldest corporate entity in the Western world.</p>
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<p>I think we’d all agree to that only if you include negative publicity in your definition of “notoriety.” A school being big is more typically viewed as a disadvantage. If size gets you prestige, why aren’t mondo schools like Arizona State pegging the needle on the prestige-o-meter?</p>
<p>You’re looking at it through 2010 eyes. If you go back 120 years and the best colleges ARE the biggest colleges, being big has a different connotation. Plus, they are the ones big enough to have numerous specialties and do research in a multitude of fields.</p>
<p>Also, say what you want about ASU, at least everybody has heard of it (as opposed to Caltech, Williams, etc.)</p>
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<p>Everyone has heard of Coney Island too. I’d rather vacation at Kennebunkport, though it’s typically known by a smaller, more selective crowd.</p>