Interesting school results

One of the students at my S’s HS decided to do an experiment for leadership class. The results by an overwhelming margin was HSPMY instead of the typical HYPSM we are all accustomed to. Yale has really fallen in the eyes of this generation while Stanford has risen near the top quickly. Results were based off a survey of 203 students. Harvard tallied 78 first place votes…Stanford 53…Princeton 46…MIT…22 and Yale 4.

I don’t know if 203 students can speak for “this generation.”

About as accurate as recent election polls.

Sample of one school?

True…but at least at his school it was overwhelming and when I asked him he replied it’s pretty common knowledge among peers.

you know…these schools are pretty equal in many ways. I can’t see a huge difference in putting one in front of the others…and really…likely regional. We live in New England…and Stanford gets a high mark only because it has nicer weather.

Alert the media about “common knowledge among peers”.
Today’s factoid.

I agree with @marvin100 that one sample from one HS is not determinative.

I also question the assumption that HYPSM is a ranking that “we are all accustomed to”, especially given that Princeton is consistently ranked #1.

Ask 203 kids in Boston, 203 in Provo, Utah, and 203 in Marin County what’s the top school and you’ll get different results.

So out of curiosity what would you consider it to be today? Do you think they are wrong or are you just harping? Seems pretty accurate based on current CC posts(maybe Stanford being 1 now a days).

Ranking the best colleges is a fool’s errand.

@sherpa I don’t believe they were ranking the schools per say…more of today’s name recognition vs value(ranking).

@blossom Yes “common knowledge among peers” is a thing. Just as you probably have no idea about Counter Strike but most teenagers do.

I guess I should amend the OP to …Yale has really fallen in the eyes of this generation(at this school) if that makes you feel better lol.

Big.
Whoop.

Trying to determine how exactly HYPSM/HSMPY/PSHYM rank in relationship to each other in various people’s eyes seems to me to be as fatuous an exercise as trying to determine how many angels could dance on the head of a needle (the last is my ordering, BTW–at least as of now; I may reorder them again in 5 minutes depending on mood).

And shocking as it may seem to some, some people even have one or several other schools ranked above these five.

I’ll give you a sample of one to demonstrate how it works in the real world. DS was athletically recruited by HPS, Columbia, Penn, Brown, and others. He could have gone off the USNews rankings, surveyed his peers, or asked 203 kids at a random HS. But he did his own research and chose the best school FOR HIM. In the end I think his ranking was PSH and down from there, but this shouldn’t matter at all, except to him.

@PurpleTitan Lol…seemed like a pretty innocuous experiment to get a gauge of HS kids thinking. Sorry you got offended.

Yale has no shortage of applicants! Neither do any of these other schools you are mentioning.

My comment…who cares?

You sound like a bunch of 4 year olds whining. No one said this was a ground breaking study or had any significant meaning other than what it is. Oh look blue, red, green and orange were chosen by kindergarteners. Hey what about purple? What no pink. There are other colors besides those you know who some consider better. Good golly people.

Not offended at all. I just don’t consider it a big deal.

BTW, back in the stone ages when I when to HS, while H was always seen as the top and MIT the top in STEM and S was special because of where it was in Silicon Valley, I (and other people) didn’t hold this idea that Yale or Princeton were any special level above UChicago/Northwestern/Duke/JHU/Rice. BTW, if you ever hung around old school U of C people, you would get the definite impression that they considered the U of C the pinnacle of academia (and the various Ivies, Northwestern, etc., were just glorified finishing schools).

Never said it was a big deal. @thumper1 than why comment?