How would YOU rank these colleges?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm looking into colleges that I should apply to, and just wanted to get a feel on how CCers rank these top universities. Based on academics, where would you place these colleges? What order would they be in?</p>

<p>I live in MD, and I'm leaning towards a major in Econ and then eventually becoming a lawyer. The field of law is undecided but maybe either Corporate or Immigration. </p>

<p>Georgetown
UVA
UMD
U Chicago
Princeton
Yale
Harvard
Stanford
GW
USC
MIT
NYU</p>

2

<p>I’m not sure if you mean colleges overall or just that list but, assuming you just mean that list:</p>

<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and some may even argue UChicago are all academically elite schools. It really comes down to what you want to do.</p>

<p>I’d say Georgetown, UVA, USC, NYU are roughly around the same area.</p>

<p>UMD and GW would probably be the “worst” of that list.</p>

<p>Truthfully, IDK how accurate I am cause I’m kind of just doing this based off of what I’ve heard and what I feel.</p>

3

<p>Based on academics, perhaps:</p>

<p>HYPSM
Chicago<br>
NYU
UVa, Georgetown
UMD, GW, USC</p>

4

<p>For pre-law purposes, you may want to check to see which schools have the most grade inflation relative to their admissions selectivity.</p>

<p>[url=&lt;a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5DNational”&gt;http://www.gradeinflation.com]National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities<a href=“see%20school%20list%20at%20the%20bottom”>/url</a></p>

5

<p>Chicago is known for having the best Econ department. I don’t know how well Chicago grads do in terms of law school placement, though.</p>

6

<p>Harvard
Yale = Princeton = Stanford = MIT
U Chicago
Georgetown
USC = NYU = UVA
GW
UMD</p>

7

<p>I’m interested to hear why you ranked Harvard above YPSM?</p>

8

<p>For undergraduate academics, overall but especially in the social sciences?
My #1 would be the University of Chicago (for small class sizes & decent access to top faculty; well-designed undergraduate curriculum; well-defined, well-practiced approach to undergraduate teaching; possibly the best research library facilities in North America; outstanding economics department, which has fielded more Nobel laureates and John Bates Clark medalists in economics than any other university in the world; affiliation with NORC, an important resource for social science data).</p>

<p>However, you need to think about “fit” issues and costs. UMCP may well be the one to beat for a middle class Maryland resident.</p>

9

<p>I don’t see how pre-law at MIT makes any sense unless you want to major in a hard science or engineering and then do patent law.</p>

10

<p>tk21769 you just captured exactly why I really want to go to Chicago.</p>

11

<p>I disagree with many of the above posters. If you look at placement stats into top law schools (such as Harvard or Yale law) you see strong “undergrad” focused schools doing exceptionally well. Schools with great advising, smaller classes, and less “weed out” courses. Georgetown for example is being lower ranked by the posters above, yet if you look at law school placement stats its up there next to the Ivies. </p>

<p>Harvard/ Yale/ Princeton/ Stanford
Georgetown
MIT/ UChicago
UVA
USC
GW/ NYU
UMD</p>

12

<p>

</p>

<p>i’m not sure what you mean by “undergraduate focused,” but Harvard is notoriously bad at teaching. I’ve also heard about students complaining about getting letters of rec from busy professors, and so on. Here’s a teaching anecdote:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p><a href=“Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research - The New York Times”>Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research - The New York Times;

<p>In fact, the only “undergrad focused” university i see in your first tier is Princeton (although Yale and Stanford don’t do too bad of a job.)</p>

<p>As a second point, granted the OP asks for your opinion, but there’s basically no one anywhere who would rank Georgetown above Chicago or MIT. It’s a solid notch below both of those schools: its endowment is a fraction of the other two, it’s virtually ranked lower in any ranking i’ve seen, and so on. It’s still a great school though. Rice for example, is a great school too. But it’s not better than Columbia, and no one tries to claim that it is.</p>

13

<p>Econ? University of Chicago for sure. You might want to add Northwestern too.</p>

<p>There have been several other threads on this subject–some are a few years old but they might be worth a look.</p>

14

<p>“Undergraduate Focused” would be a good LAC, none of the above.</p>

15

<p>USC as in Southern Cal or South Carolina?</p>

16

<p>OP, to be frank, you would probably be better off researching for yourself, instead of asking a bunch of CC’ers.</p>

17

<p>For what you want (econ/pre law) I would say</p>

<p>Harvard/Stanford/Princeton/Yale/Chicago
MIT
Georgetown/UVA
NYU/USC
UMD/GW</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>To rationally compare law school admissions by baccalaureate origins, you’d need to know:

  1. the ratio of admission offers to applications from each college
  2. the average GPAs and LSAT scores of applicants from each college</p>

<p>I suspect that if you controlled for LSAT scores and GPAs (adjusted for grade inflation/deflation) you wouldn’t find much if any difference in the law school admission rates for applicants from these colleges. </p>

<p>Remember, you’re not going to find equal numbers of students with the best grades and the highest scores applying to every top law school from every college.</p>

19

<p>

Class size is the only one of these factors for which good data exists. By that measure, here’s how I’d grade these schools *:</p>

<p>Grade… School(s) … (% < 20, % >=50)
3.7 Chicago (77.8%, 4.7%)
3.6 Harvard (79.5%, 7.8%), Yale (75.8%, 7%)
3.5 Georgetown (61%, 5.1%)
3.4 Princeton (71.3%, 11.2%), Stanford (70.4%, 12.7%)
3.3 GW (55.3%, 9.7%), USC (62.9%, 11.1%), NYU (59.4%, 12.1%), MIT (62.6%, 12.9%)
3.1 UVA (51.9%, 16.1%)
2.9 Maryland (35.2%, 16%)</p>

<p>Source of class size percentages: USNWR</p>

<ul>
<li>Grading Formula: ((1- (pct of classes >= 50))*3) + ((pct of classes < 20) * 1)
So, a school gets a 3.0 (a “B”) just for having zero classes larger than 49 students;
a school with 100% of classes under 20 would get the maximum grade (4.0).
This formula assigns more weight to the percentage of large classes than to the percentage of small classes. For the rationale behind this, see the many posts by bclintonk on this subject.</li>
</ul>

<p>According to the same grading formula, for comparison, here’s how I’d grade the USNWR top 10 national LACs:
3.8 CMK, Haverford, Swarthmore (better than all the OP’s universities for class size)
3.7 Amherst, Carleton, Pomona, Williams, Wellesley
3.6 Middlebury, Bowdoin </p>

<p>Here are some national LACs outside the top 10 that also get high grades for class size:
3.7 Colorado College, Kenyon, Earlham, Rhodes
3.6 Barnard, Bates, St. Mary’s College of Md. (Public)
3.5 Whitman</p>

<p>For a different weighting (and rank) see:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size-4.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;