<p>" ^Yeah, man, I bet USNEWS was like, “Yo, bro, Emory’s not top 20 college but we’ll put it in there anyway LOL to confuse people!” "</p>
<p>best post in thread</p>
<p>Coolbreeze,</p>
<p>I specifically acknowledged your post as not being a regurgitation of USNWR… you misunderstood me.</p>
<p>^You guys are hilarious.</p>
<p>I’ll throw in my opinion even though I’m sure people will disagree with some of my rankings.</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT/UChicago</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>UPenn</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>UC Berkley</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>WashU</li>
<li>Brown </li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>NYU </li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon </li>
<li>UMichigan Anne Arbor</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill</li>
<li>Emory</li>
</ol>
<p>If LACs were included then Amherst, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Williams would all be in the top 15.</p>
<p>
You may as well include them. After all, Berkeley, Michigan, and and UNC Chapel Hill are apparently now private universities.</p>
<p>^ Well the OP said not to include LACs because they are hard to compare to universities. College rankings include private and public universities on the same list, so I say public universities are fair game. Besides, I can’t think of any other university that I would like to include in my top twenty-five list.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LOL says a future UChicago student…</p>
<p>Well, he’s had UChicago as his top choice for quite a while, so he obviously has a pretty high opinion of the school. If I had a pick, I would say:</p>
<ol>
<li>UChicago/MIT/Caltech</li>
</ol>
<p>Those were the only three places I applied. I picked them for a reason, primarily because I thought they were the best universities in the nation. I still do, and if you go into academic circles, you’ll see that a lot of people apply to only these three schools and a safety, for the same reason.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Caltech and MIT are breeding grounds for nerds who are geniuses. UChicago is a breeding ground for nerds who THINK they’re geniuses.</p>
<p>
Here are what the “geniuses” think about the best schools. Each year, the Intel Talent Search finalists were asked which two schools they would like to attend. Here are the schools mentioned from this year’s finalists:</p>
<h1>of times, School</h1>
<hr>
<p>19, MIT
12, Harvard
10, Stanford</p>
<p>5, Princeton
5, Yale
3, Caltech
3, Columbia
3, Cornell
2, Penn
2, WashU
1, Chicago
1, Duke,
1, Northwestern
1, Texas
1, Emory
1, Cambridge
1, Oxford
1, Alabama</p>
<p>Guess that those “geniuses” have great desire to go to Alabama as to Chicago, and Caltech is no different from Columbia and Cornell. Almost half of the finalists had MIT on their list, and a quarter of them had Stanford and Harvard on their list.</p>
<p>i’m surprised chicago even has one given that it has no engineering program.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Intel Talent Search contestants are predominantly from the East Coast. Certain regions (or school districts within regions) of the country prioritize this competition over others. Many parts of the country do not even know or recognize this competition. For example, the number of finalists from Long Island, NY alone exceeded those for the entire state of California.</p>
<p>So if anything, the interest in Stanford and Caltech by “nerds who are geniuses” is probably understated by the Intel list.</p>
<p>All of this, of course, fully supports my claim that MIT is known as a breeding ground for “nerds who are geniuses.” And that it is silly to equate UChicago with MIT, as both Robespierre21 and phuriku tried to (unsuccessfully) do.</p>
<p>what everyone fails to realize is that there will be a skew towards those with engineering programs. in any case, i’m much more impressed with the accolades and honors that students produce (think nobel, rhodes, etc.) while attending college than the accolades they bring with them to college. this list is silly at best…</p>
<p>Most Intel projects are not oriented towards engineering research. In fact, the Intel competition includes research in the SOCIAL sciences, which is one of UChicago’s primary strengths.</p>
<p>This is not to say, however, that the Intel Talent Search is the last word on “nerds who are geniuses.”</p>
<p>That’s some pretty strong comments there. You sure you have some evidence to back up your claim?</p>
<p>I think Caltech, MIT, and Chicago students are all pretty socially dysfunctional. But hey, there are somethings where I can just say, it’s probably true correct?</p>
<p>Meangirl and Ewho, the title of the tread is “In YOUR opinion, what are the top 25 private universities?” Well, in MY opinion UChicago and MIT are the best universities. By expressing my opinion I am not claiming that what I believe is definite or should be the opinion of everyone. If you don’t think that UChicago is the best university then good for you. </p>
<p>And I have some problems with your [Meangirl’s] statements concerning the Intel Talent Search: You said that the talent search is dominated by east coast students, so why may I ask is UChicago’s support not understated while Stanford’s and Caltech’s is? I’m from Long Island and only 2 students out of my class of over 700 are applying to UChicago. Obviously UChicago isn’t a widely popular school on the east coast. You also claim that the Intel Talent Search includes social science research. If the talent search does indeed contain social science research, I’m sure it constitutes less than 1% of the competition considering the fact that the contest is judged by professional scientists and is meant for scientific (not social scientific) and engineering research. Lastly, ~99% of students attending top twenty schools did not participate in the Intel Talent Search, so the competition has no reflection on whether or not a school is for “geniuses.”</p>
<p>this is the millionth thread like this. =)</p>
<p>@Robespierre21, I never said that those Intel finalists were geniuses, I put the geniuses in the quotation marks, though half of them may have perfect SAT scores and they are as good as any students at Chicago. I also never said anything bad about Chicago, just I don’t like the school as I don’t like the city. I used to pass the city every two weeks, it brings back a lot of bad memories just by mentioning Chicago. It is personal.</p>
<p>Here are the answers from 200 Intel Talent Search finalists from the years 2006 to 2010, usually two schools were named from each finalist:</p>
<h1>of Times Mentioned, School</h1>
<hr>
<p>80, Harvard
75, MIT
36, Stanford
31, Princeton
22, Yale
17, Caltech
13, Cornell
12, Columbia
9, Brown
5, Penn</p>
<p>Chicago was mentioned twice.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Regarding Caltech, to be fair, you should probably scale the numbers by the population of the undergraduate program. Caltech is a tiny school - being 1/7 the size of Columbia and 1/14 the size of Cornell - so the fact that they can draw an equal absolute number of interested parties is actually highly impressive.</p>
<p>but the size of a school is not proportional to the popularity of a school though</p>