<p>Well, I think that different schools can appeal to different aspects of your personality. If I remember correctly, slipper went to Columbia and transferred to Dartmouth. I really loved Princeton and it came down to a matter of details in the end, although you would probably think that if I loved Columbia I wouldn't be considering Princeton as seriously, but I was.</p>
<p>"So I agree choosing just because a school is Ivy is ridiculous, but liking a majority of them is not."</p>
<p>i agree.</p>
<p>one thing that I usually forget about though is adaptability. There are students that will thrive no matter the school or the size or the location. </p>
<p>Heck, I figured Cornell would be a tough ride - I wanted a small school in an urban location (I was already at a medium sized school in an urban location). I ended up transfering because the perfect program I wanted was at Cornell and not at a small school in a city. I just adapted a little bit and I've had a magnificent time. I assume there are students who can do the same thing and be happy at any ivy ... even if applying to all 8 is a bit of a pretentious move.</p>
<p>I picked Harvard and Dartmouth. Harvard for the great student body and Boston( two reasons out of a whole bunch) and Dartmouth for its liberal arts feel. You should visit and take classes there to get a good feel, never pick them according to USNEWS rankings.</p>
<p>what would be (recognition and program wise) the best ivies for a pre-med track?</p>
<p>I'd argue for HYP (Princeton the best perhaps for the undergrad emphasis), then Dartmouth and Brown, (undergrad emphasis) then Columbia, Penn. Finally Cornell (but only last due to deflation and a larger, less undergrad focused, student body). Of course this comment will insight lots of detractors. But I firmly believe undergrad emphasis + overall UNDERGRAD reputation + grade inflation = the best ticket to med school. Inflation at a top school is a great thing for grad admissions in my opinion.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So i heard that harvard is about business and law, and yale is about english....etc. etc. etc.
How do i choose an ivy?
or in other words, what is the separating factor between the schools?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's why I insist for an individual assessment of programs/departments just like what USNews has done for masters/PhDs'. We all know Harvard is the number one school in the world, but we also know that Harvard does not have the monopoly of the best programs, both for ugrad and grad. For example, MIT/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech are all better schools for engineering than Harvard is. For ugrad, Wharton has the best business program. I have little things heard about Brown and Dartmouth's strengths.</p>
<p>So, which Ivies have the strongest departments in the following areas:</p>
<p>music (piano, theory ... conducting ;-));
languages (especially Romance and Slavic ones);
linguistics?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>You just don't understand. Dartmouth and Brown have the strongest access to the most desired firms, i.e. consulting and banking. And they place grad extrordinarily well. There aren;t too many engineering grads who actually want to work for boeing and GM, and for the ones that want the powerful jobs the Ivies excel.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You just don't understand. Dartmouth and Brown have the strongest access to the most desired firms, i.e. consulting and banking. And they place grad extrordinarily well. There aren;t too many engineering grads who actually want to work for boeing and GM, and for the ones that want the powerful jobs the Ivies excel.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is just an assumption. Not ALL Brown and Dartmouth grads want to work in consulting and banking firms.</p>
<p>"Dartmouth and Brown have the strongest access to the most desired firms, i.e. consulting and banking"</p>
<p>to be fair, I believe both these schools were dropped from the 'core schools' of a few top consulting firms this year. </p>
<p>then again, recruitment for consulting appears to vary widely from year to year. One of my advisors explained this to me. For instance, McKinsey has recruited at Cornell for the past 5 years, though they won't actually be on campus this year ... the same is true for 2 or 3 of the other top-10 firms. There appears to be a bit of a slump of sorts, and we saw this in another thread with this one top firm cutting it's 'core schools' list substantially. The same recruitment issue is also true at the other ivy's, at least according to my friends there who are looking into consulting. </p>
<p>Though, I'm wondering where you get your numbers from, slipper. I've never seen statistics released that pointed to Brown and Dartmouth as being the best. </p>
<p>"There aren;t too many engineering grads who actually want to work for boeing and GM"
but GE is one of the top-5 companies that hires Cornell undergrads. Are you suggesting that all of these students didn't actually want to work as engineers for GE? Perhaps all of them merely settled after they couldn't get jobs at the second highest employer of Cornell grads - Goldman Sachs?</p>
<p>As somebody posted earlier, I think it's important to open your sense of "ivy" to include more than just eight schools. Schools like Stanford, Duke, Pomona, Amherst, UChicago, MIT, Swarthmore, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins etc, etc, etc, are extremely comparable to the ivy league as a whole in that they're prestigious institutions known to give a solid and academic/career foundation.</p>
<p>In my opinion, if saying you recieved an ivy league education is important to you and you can afford the app fee for all 8, go for it.</p>
<p>"to be fair, I believe both these schools were dropped from the 'core schools' of a few top consulting firms this year."</p>
<p>McKinsey dropped Dartmouth as a core schools in 2005, but it still does extremely well at elite consulting with core recruiting at places like Bain, BCG, Monitor, Mercer, etc.</p>
<p><em>Disclaimer - My Personal Opinion</em></p>
<p>I wouldn't apply to all 8 Ivy League schools, because I'm almost certain that adcoms from different schools discuss certain potential candidates. Unless you are an absolute superstar at everything, the Ivies will somehow negotiate their take of prospectives. That means if you really wanted to go to UPenn, but Columbia includes you in their share, then you might get "rejected" from UPenn just because Columbia accepted you. Also I would imagine that if a school like Princeton sees that you are also applying to Harvard and Yale, its adcoms will have less confidence that you will actually matriculate. I understand there are many cases that don't support this idea, but I also believe that this doesn't happen to every candidate.</p>
<p>I don't know if any of this is true, but this was the opinion of my college counselor, and I've seen strange Ivy rejections (accepted at Yale, rejected at Brown), happen more than once.</p>
<p>amykins - that was me, and I certainly approve of all of those top schools. I'm not saying its bad to have prestige as a factor when applying to colleges, because face it: academic prestige exists, and it is very prominent in our global society. I just wouldn't use it to frame your college list. Ivy league schools and the top liberal arts colleges have plenty of counterparts. You may be surprised by what you find.</p>
<p>"McKinsey dropped Dartmouth as a core schools in 2005, but it still does extremely well at elite consulting with core recruiting at places like Bain, BCG, Monitor, Mercer, etc."</p>
<p>same goes for Cornell ... from the last time I checked (last week), the only place you listed that won't be comming to the actual Cornell campus for interviews is Monitor. Anyways, I think you would agree on this, even though a school isn't listed as a 'core' for one year, it is still very well possible to get jobs/inernships at places like these - you just have to take slighly more inintiative since these places won't be comming to campus for interviews. </p>
<p>On a slightly similar note, Mercer is comming twice - once for general Cornell recruitment and again for separate ILR recruitment. Goldman Sachs did the same in the fall with various info sessions for Cornell, and then private ones for students in the ILR school ... I think this is cool, but then I realized that I'd rather have a root canal than work around a bunch of iBankers let alone be an iBanker myself.</p>
<p>Tokyo,</p>
<p>That simply is not true. I went to a school with many applicants and we had more than a few with acceptances at every Ivy they applies to. Personally, as a transfer I got into every school I applied to (3 Ivies plus Duke) except one where I was waitlisted.</p>
<p>Slipper, did you read my disclaimer?</p>
<p>I don't want to use fallacy, but I do not assume that colleges don't talk to one another. It would be in their interest if they did, anyway.</p>
<p>They absolutely don't. My best friend worked in admissions and he said that this was a big myth. You just don't talk to your competitors, it would be like Coke colluding with Pepsi. Might be in their best interest, just isn't going to happen.</p>
<p>I think we give adcoms more credit than they deserve - do you really think they have the time and resources to compare every applicant and compile data of who is applying to which schools? That sounds unnecessary and costly.</p>