<p>2Daswell, leaving aside that the whole premise of this thread is silly, I feel compelled to step in to point out that your comparative analysis on admit rates is fundamentally flawed. </p>
<p>You cannot compare admit rates just by adjusting class size and calculating a proportion based on current applications. The number of people who apply to any school is in large part a function of the perception of the odds of admission. Many B+ students who will decide to give the school with a 40% admit rate a shot, won’t bother with the one with a 20% chance of acceptance and even more will be discouraged from applying to the 10% school. It is called self-selection and it is a major factor in who applies to the schools on your list.</p>
<p>As others may have already pointed out, a school’s selectivity has much less to do with admit rates than the characteristics of its actual student body, which is dependent on the quality of the pool of applicants and the yield.</p>
<p>No objection on the ranking is flawed or ranking ivies is silly. I was to point out that rankings are all flawed especially when admit rate is the only factor used. My example is to show that one can change just one factor and the ranking changed. There is no best way to rank colleges. However, amazing schools are still amazing and kids just need to go with which school is the best fit for them, not which one is more selective.</p>
<p>UMich admittees are deciding between Brandeis, GWU, and Tulane while Princeton admits are deciding between places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, etc. You don’t need a PhD to ascertain which school is more selective.</p>
<p>@dad2 I am interested to hear which Ivys you think aren’t in the same academic league as swarthmore, amherst or Uchicago?</p>
<p>For business:
Harvard, Yale, and Penn are better than swarthmore, amherst and uchicago. Harvard’s business school has long been considered in the top five. Penn’s wharton is conisdered to be the best in the world. Yale is right up there with penn and harvard.
Princeton, Dartmouth, and cornell are equal to, if not better than, Swarthmore, amherst and chicago. Brown and columbia are right behind. Not in anyway is an ivy in lower tiers for business. They all are right around the top.</p>
<p>For science studies, pre-med, dent, nursing.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Penn are stronger than uchicago, amherst, and swarthmore. Yale has approx. 96% med school admit rate, Princeton 94%, penn 85%. On top of that Penn has the most students at Penn med school(#2) not to mention there are also plenty of penn undergrads at harvard, columbia, johns hopkins (280 total penn students get into medical school each year). Yale has the most at Yale med(#7) not to mention many at harvard, penn, jhu. The same goes for Harvard and columbia. Princeton is the only ivy wihtout a med school, but still many out perform amherst, swarthmore, and chicago.
Brown, cornell, and dartmouth are a little lower but on par with Amherst, swarthmore, and chicago.</p>
<p>I just don’t see where ivy students are far below the students from some schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>Academics =/= Business and Science, Pre-med and whatever else you listed. You’re just being silly. Cornell has a higher acceptance rate than UChicago, Amherst, and Swarthmore and probably lower scores. UChicago has top medical school(#10), business school(#4), Economics(#1), and law school (#5) and 7 other top 10 departments for graduate programs and an undergrad student body probably stronger than Cornell, Dartmouth, and comparable to UPenn and Brown and maybe Columbia, in my opinion. Academically I would say UChicago and Swarthmore are more academically focused than most of the Ivies, meaning course work is the top priority of every student. UChicago, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, (Duke) are all comparable to or greater than some of the Ivies in some ways.</p>
<p>Admission rates have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of a school. You have to look at the individual programs at each place. Cornell is clearly the Ivy school for engineering - if you are compelled to go to an Ivy and want engineering. Cornell also is more balanced politically in terms of its student body. My S said it feels 50/50, which is reflective of the nation as a whole. Brown and Columbia are 2 who couldn’t make that claim. None of this matters once you’re busy and in school, so forget the rankings! If it feels right and a school has what you want to study, you will have a great experience.</p>
<p>^Swimmer: in this never-ending and supremely inane thread, for every post like yours with careful advice, about fifteen rabid USNWR infused 16 year olds will tell us their opinion of why X is better than Y – as if they had attended both. I frankly wish an admin would lock this thread. Or even better, delete it.</p>
<p>I’m glad careful advice simply means rankings don’t matter. I am not a dimwitted 16 year old obsessed with rankings, it is really rude for you to have said that. I was proving the point that many schools are at the same level as Ivies, so the Ivy name should not be a magic halo that these schools hide behind. UChicago is clearly on par with the Ivies, and I was using rankings and admit rates to prove that, since there are not many other ways to. None of the non-Ivy top schools should be thrown under the bus when they are comparable academically, as you have proven by saying rankings are bogus. Also, admit rate sure separates institutions when they admit rates are off by 10% or greater but likely not much of a difference between all the top schools except variation in the types of students schools admit and that matriculate there. All of these schools have a different student body with a different feel and students should choose to apply and attend these schools based on fit, not on ranking of course! I would never imply rankings as the end-all when determing where to go for college! Was that a “careful” enough response?</p>
<p>@pagrok I was not saying uchicago was far below the ivies, I was responding to a post that said “besides harvard, yale, princeton, the ivies are a league below uchicago, amherst, and swartmore.” </p>
<p>I think overall Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Penn are better than uchicago, amherst, and swarthmore. If not better they are at least very similar in academic strength. Dartmouth, Brown, and cornell are right behind them…My orginal point is that none of the ivies are a tier or league below uchicago but rather equal to, if not better than. These schools are so similar in academic quality that it is asinine to say that swarthmore is a league above dartmouth. I don’t see it and I don’t think many people would.</p>
<p>PAGrok: my remark wasn’t directed at your thoughtful and clear examination of the whole thing. In fact, I’m in agreement w/you. It’s the “ranking the 8 ivies” think that rankles me – precisely b/c it omits many other great colleges and for anyone to quantify X over Y seems rather ridiculous when the top basket of schools are uniformly excellent and no student attending will ever partake fully any of those schools’ great offerings in terms of culture, acadmics and resources.</p>
<p>Oh gotcha! I was believing that it was directed towards me cause I used the rankings to justify UChicago’s prowess. But ya, this thread is to be taken lightly though. It was just a game for me when I posted my order for the Ivies.</p>
<p>I think for UNDERGRADUATE education it is laughable to think that Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and Penn are of any higher quality than Dartmouth, Princeton or Brown --where professors are actually paid to teach undergrads, since grad programs are relatively small…Show me one survey (student or otherwise) where Brown, Dartmouth or Princeton are rated lower for undergraduate teaching than the other Ivies. Columbia has the school of General Studies (which has thousands of students beyond the “Columbia College”) plus very large professional and graduate programs; Harvard, Penn and Cornell also have very significant graduate and professional programs, and frankly, very mixed reviews on undergraduate education.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard (because it’s just #1 I guess)
2.Yale (could be tied w/ Princeton, but I think Yale is a bit better)
3.Princeton (it’s in HYP)
4.Columbia (low acceptance rate and it’s just the next most respectable school)
5.Penn (somehow gets more respect on CC)
6.Dartmouth (because it’s better than Brown and Cornell)
7.Brown (Brown is considered the doormat of the Ivies
8.Cornell (Because it accepts the most people)</li>
</ol>
<p>Disclaimer: I’ve already passed through the whole application process, and after some intense research (including other incredible colleges, such as Stanford and MIT,) I decided to join Harvard’s class of 2017.</p>
<p>“I have no real reason to think this but nonetheless I’m going to tell you about it” or “here are some questionably relevant statistics that I can draw unfounded conclusions from” on and on and on…</p>
<p>All of these places are great. At any of them you will get out what you put in. And they all have too many components to be able to realistically assign a single number for a ranking. Better things to worry about.</p>