<p>According to the US News Best Colleges ranking for 2010, under "Best Colleges: Undergraduate Teaching at National Universities", Harvard would not even be part of the first 20 schools for undergrad teaching. Why is Harvard so desirable then ?
Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News and World Report</p>
<p>“Why is Harvard so desirable then ?”</p>
<p>The preftige.</p>
<p>What fuels the pre’f’tige if not something exceptional about the school?</p>
<p>the beauty of the Charles River and the Godlike quality of the Red Sox.</p>
<p>“According to the US News Best Colleges ranking”</p>
<p>found your problem</p>
<p>I thought people only applied for the chance to meet Domna… but she retired ([Annenberg</a> Gatekeeper Steps Down | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/6/25/annenberg-gatekeeper-steps-down-annenberg-dining/]Annenberg”>Annenberg Gatekeeper Steps Down | News | The Harvard Crimson)) and the numbers didn’t go down…</p>
<p>Harvard is probably an excellent education. It may just not be the best undergrad education from a classroom standpoint. I would note, however, that a lot of teaching in college comes outside the classroom.</p>
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<p>From an earlier thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064183440-post148.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064183440-post148.html</a></p>
<p>Yes Harvard undergraduate is horrific - that’s why its ranked first along with Princeton in the US News undegraduate rankings.</p>
<p>Stop! Harvard is the best college in the world! It is PRESTIGE!!! NOT PREFTIGE. No wonder you didn’t get into harvard- cant spell</p>
<p>during the ben franklin era, f=s</p>
<p>Yup, I wondered when I would see this argument. Any 2015 or even 2014 students cross admitted to Yale and Harvard, choose Yale. Don’t make that mistake at all, Harvard is STRESSFUL!</p>
<p>Why is it ranked so low? Because U.S. News and World Report needs to sell papers as well as ads on their website.</p>
<p>If you think University of Maryland-Baltimore County or St. Thomas or Bowling Green are going to hold as much clout on an application to a graduate school as Harvard, or to getting a job in the workforce, or etc., by all means, go to those places. You’ll open up a spot for the Harvard waiting list.</p>
<p>So is the undergraduate school with the largest endowment in the country (albeit sharing with the grad school), with the name to attract most of the best professors, with the resources to offer great programs in almost any field, really inferior to Bowling Green’s? Or is it possible US News and Report left Harvard off the list in an effort to get people to talk about their rankings and click the link to their website–kinda like we just all did?</p>
<p>No disrespect to Bowling Green, Harvard is more than just the prestige. Harvard is a fantastic school. Is it better than Yale’s Undergrad or Princeton’s Undergrad or Stanford’s Undergrad or MIT’s Undergrad? That’s debatable. But let’s be real here. Bowling Green is a nice school. Its not THAT nice.</p>
<p>Fine, MSauce, take Harvard and stuff her in your mouth. This is what separates us: the fact that you think Harvard’s education is somewhat better than U of Maryland’s. Look at the record for American citiens awarded Rhodes Scholarships, and you’d find that they are Harvard-blind. </p>
<p>Harvard grad and Hometown State University grads would make the same amount when they graduate and get the same job. You make no sense there. Yes, employers tend to be biased and may admit a Harvard grad over someone else, but thats their problem. That STILL does not mean Harvard has a better undergrad experience. </p>
<p>Like you said Harvard has the NAME, not the EDUCATION. Now find a spot and just curl up</p>
<p>Harvard grad and Hometown State University grads would make the same amount when they graduate and have the same job? Are you kidding me? Let’s say you’re interested in business. Is a student with a Harvard Undergraduate Degree not going to get a huge preference over a student from the University of Maryland from a prospective employer? From a top grad school later on?</p>
<p>Let’s say you’re interested in Medicine. You don’t think a student from Harvard is going to have an advantage over a student from a couple of those schools listed? Let’s say you’re interested in Science. University of Maryland, Bowling Green, and St. Thomas combine for a whopping one Nobel Prize winner who attended their undergraduate schools. I guess Harvard only has 11 times that. Would you like to go into Politics? Harvard has had five Presidents attend their undergraduate school. I couldn’t seem to find any that went to Bowling Green.</p>
<p>Look, I can understand the argument that Harvard is overrated and that there are better schools. When those “better schools” are some of the ones US News and World Report has listed, you have to be kidding me. They’re trying to sell something, and leaving off Harvard certainly got our attention–it would never have been posted in this circumstance, at least, if Harvard had been on the list, as one example.</p>
<p>EDIT: Excuse me, wrong University of Maryland. College Park has a Nobel Prize winner–Baltimore County does not. So the three actually combine to produce zero Nobel Prize winners from their undergraduate school, while Harvard alone has produced 11 from the College (in Sciences).</p>
<p>MSauce - Check the list’s methodology before you keep accusing USNews of yellow journalism. I’m not saying the list is accurate (or the methods are good), but it’s not just an arbitrary thing they threw up on the web.</p>
<p>Bulldog - Harvard median starting salary is ~$60k ([Best</a> Ivy League Schools By Salary Potential](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/ivy-league-schools.asp]Best”>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/ivy-league-schools.asp)), non-engineering state schools are lower (although Cal is on the same level - see [Top</a> State Universities By Salary Potential](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-state-universities.asp]Top”>Best Public Colleges | Payscale)). The gap widens as careers go on.</p>
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<p>Not really. Back then they often used a letter that <em>looked</em> like a lower case f for some instances of s but not all. What it really was, was an elongated s with a cross-hatch through the middle. And it was used to designate the letter s when it was pronounced the same as a “z,” usually an interior but not an ending s. When the s was pronounced as an s, the regular letter s was used.</p>
<p>So for example the word “business” was commonly printed as “bufiness” since the first s is pronounced as a z but the last two as s.</p>
<p>^^^ Aww, that’s disappointing. A faux 18th-century spelling of Maffachufettf would have been fun to spell and even more fun to say.</p>
<p>Yes, a Harvard education is wildly abysmal. I don’t know why people keep applying to this place. Get me out of here. I’d pay extra tuition to unlearn everything that I’ve learned here. </p>
<p>And instead, I’d go to Yale, the school where that champ who posted on this thread earlier goes! He sounds like an educated guy! I want to use faulty stats and messy logic in my arguments like he does!</p>
<p>Harvard’s focus is totally on the graduates. Potential employers would prefer a Harvard grad to a Bowling Green grad because Harvard is a more prestigious college. And that prestige only comes from Harvard’s graduate schools. It has nothing to do with the standard of teaching at the colleges. And how do you know a Bowling Green or St. Thomas grad may not be as successful as a Harvard grad if given the same opportunities? It’s the outcome of the teaching that counts.</p>