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[quote]
Yeah, well you can say that about any school. But it is very obvious that attending an ivy=greater chance of success, overall. Stop playing devil's advocate. As arrogant as the ivy league is, you have a better chance of employment and greater salary most likely then a state school, etc.
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<p>It's a corollary more than a causal relationship. What kind of people get into Ivys? People who are high achievers. What type of people are most likely to succeed? High achievers. Attending any Ivy League is primarily validation. The brand may give you an extra tiny boost, but really, that's not what determines your success.</p>
<p>So to restate:</p>
<p>People aren't successful because they go to Ivys, they go to Ivys because they're successful.</p>
Well of course it doesn't definitively and that's not at all what I'm talking about. I am saying, as a general rule of thumb, you'll be looked at more favorly graduating from an ivy league in terms of starting position in a company and base salary. It's harder to advance to the highest positions in a company without your fancy ivy league certificate, but it's not impossible.</p>
<p>This is about prestige>fit, don't forget. I think it should be fair for people to value prestige over fit in a college, and you shouldn't have a problem with that. If they want that, let 'em have it. Why does it bother you?</p>
<p>Wasn't it better than Harvard last year? This site is probably biased...
I don't see how Columbia, Penn, MIT, Caltech, and chicago are above Princeton.</p>
<p>That is one of the worst lists I have ever seen. UPenn and Columbia are better than Princeton? CIT, MIT, and Chicago are as well? Cornell is better than Stanford? Duke is better than Stanford and next to Princeton? I'll let Yale and Harvard go, but Princeton should not be lower than #3 on any United States list or #4 in the world. I'm having a hard time deciding on whether Harvard or Princeton is better. I prefer Princeton in almost all aspects, but for some reason it seems that Harvard is the consensus #1. Also, it has a much larger endowment. I want to major in Economics, so Princeton would be the better University for that. But as a whole, which one is better and why?</p>
<p>^ thats like arguing which rolex would make you look the most rich, the white gold or the platinum? Once you get past a certain point, it become pretty much the same thing, there is no discernible "prestige" difference between princeton, harvard, and yale in 99.9999999% of the country, and for that matter there is no discernible difference between the prestige of Harvard and Brown/Cornell to 99.999% of the country. If there is someone out there that is genuinely impressed by college pedigrees, then they would probably be impressed just as much by a Cornell grad as they would by a columbia, dmouth, or Harvard grad. If you are really worried about that .0001% of the country that gets all weak in the knees when they read the USNWR rankings, you have bigger problems on your hands. BUT, if you are concerned about who recruits at your school, then there is a notable difference between the schools, but it is still difficult to rank them because you base your ranking on what company you would want to be recruited by. BUT also you can pick out schools that are the "top" in their fields within the ivy league, like Cornell at engineering (undisputed), princeton at math (undisputed) yale at fine arts crap (undisupted), penn at business junk, or harvard at making Dbags (undisputed) :)</p>
<p>This is a pretty accurate world list. If I'm not mistaken, its not too different from the just out US News World ranking of universities. Now I know that US News uses different criteria for its world ranking and American national university rankings, but I would still think that the US universities would fall pretty much in the same order as they do in the national ranking. So I was just as "shocked" as a lot of people that a university like Cornell was ranked before Stanford in the US News World ranking. To suggest that one university is inherently superior over the other, though, is another thing.</p>
<p>I agree with Tboonepickens. All of these rankings have a method. Every method values different things, leading to different rankings. And this is the whole reason one college can be a fit for one person and terrible for another. The idea that colleges can be absolutely ranked is dumb and that's why no one should get caught up in rankings.</p>
<p>For example, look at sports rankings. Everybody thinks their team should be ranked better than it is (unless your team is ranked number 1). Rankings always cause disagreement. But with sports rankings, people accept their impermanence and fickleness because athletic contest always decide things for certain. And regardless of whether a good team had a bad day and lost or vice-versa, the result is accepted.</p>
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[QUOTE]
As for the above, I think judging a school's prestige or ranking based on acceptance rate is such ********. School's like Dartmouth will obviously receive fewer apps because of its location versus Columbia, which...to be perfectly honest, is only that low of a % because people go: "Oh sweet, an ivy in the city? I can go shopping everyday!!!"
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umm isn't columbia much larger than dartmouth though? does columbia have a larger amount of students they accept for first year? </p>
<p>you could argue that should also make dartmouth acceptance rate go waaay done. since they have a smaller class, they are rejecting more students </p>
<p>IMO
hahvaad
yale
princeton
columbia
penn
brown
dartmouth
cornell</p>
<p>Rankings and reputations often put harvard as the best, but again, I'd be careful about making those kinds of statements. Are they only the best because their endowment's the largest and they're the oldest with the most prestige? Why do you think Harvard is the best? Do you think it's somewhat of a curse to go to Harvard for undergrad since Harvard's grad program is so strong?</p>
<p>hey hcvops, your post made no sense. Fewer apps for fewer slots would be at most a wash against something like Columbia, where it's a LOT more apps versus slightly more slots.</p>
<p>The QS ranks are for RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES - i.e. GRAD SCHOOL. In the US college and grad school are very different. Dartmouth and Rice barely have grad schools, so yes BU is better for grad school since Rice and Dartmouth have so few programs!</p>
<p>For undergrad education, Princeton is definitely numero uno, although Yale ranks up there too. However, world rankings always put Harvard and Yale up there, since there are undeniable advantages, even in college, of having strong graduate resources are your disposal. </p>
<p>Because Princeton doesn't have much of this, it is not as well-known outside of the United States. My relatives in Europe have never heard of Princeton, but they do get very excited when people mention H, Y, S, even Penn. Penn has actually built itself quite an international reputation in recent years. And in Asia, Harvard reigns supreme in the minds of ordinary people, followed closely by Yale and MIT, then Stanford.</p>
<p>I didn't bother applying to Harvard. Stanford is my safety at this point, since I got in SCEA, but Princeton or Yale might be the choice I take. I just hate Harvard. End of story.</p>
<p>I dislike these ranking opinion threads, but Id like to correct a misunderstanding. </p>
<p>
<p>For undergrad education, Princeton is definitely numero uno, although Yale ranks up there too. However, world rankings always put Harvard and Yale up there, since there are undeniable advantages, even in college, of having strong graduate resources are your disposal. </p>
<p>Because Princeton doesn't have much of this, it is not as well-known outside of the United States. My relatives in Europe have never heard of Princeton, but they do get very excited when people mention H, Y, S, even Penn.
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<p>Ill have to disagree with you here, Yalerose. </p>
<p>Ive also spent time in Europe and Asia both when I was young and as an adult and Ive found that while its true that Yale is as well known as Princeton in those places both are less well known than Harvard. Those three along with Stanford and MIT are the only U.S. schools that are almost universally recognized. In Asia, Stanford is slightly better known than Princeton or Yale. In Europe, it is a little less well known. These are my personal experiences but you may have seen something different.</p>
<p>There is also a great deal of difference between general name recognition and respect within the higher education community. Professional schools of law, medicine and business (none of which Princeton has) greatly increase the number of graduates along with name recognition but it is the graduate schools in the arts and sciences, the places where scientific research and scholarly studies in the humanities are performed, that builds the international reputation of a university. </p>
<p>Within the higher education community all five of these schools (and some others) are equally respected. As an example, the international ranking to which you might be referring, the Times Higher Education Supplement/QS World Ranking is a composite ranking. One of the elements in the ranking is the peer review score, essentially, the respect accorded to different institutions by scholars at other institutions. Here are those scores:</p>
<p>Top U.S. Peer Review Score (40% of total score)</p>
<p>Another score that the THES/QS World Ranking compiled was for faculty citations, essentially, how frequently the work of scholars at a particular university is cited by scholars at other universities. Those scores were as follows:</p>
<p>Top U.S. Faculty Citations Score (5% of total score)</p>
<p>The last time graduate programs in the arts and sciences were evaluated by the National Research Council (about ten years ago), the schools with the largest number of top ten graduate programs were:</p>
<p>Universities with Highest Number of [Ph.D.] Programs in the Top 10</p>
<p>35 Berkeley
31 Stanford<br>
26 Harvard
22 Princeton
20 MIT
19 Cornell
19 Yale
18 Chicago
15 Penn
14 UC San Diego
14 Columbia
14 Michigan
14 Wisconsin</p>
<p>There is a common misunderstanding here, that is, the confusion between professional schools and graduate schools in the arts and sciences. </p>
<p>Princetons graduate programs in the arts and sciences are respected around the world. It is professional schools that Princeton lacks. It was a great many years ago that Princeton's trustees and presidents made the decision that it would remain focused purely on scholarship and would forgo professional schools. There's nothing wrong with the latter. I attended Harvard Law and I certainly don't dismiss their importance.</p>
<p>Finally, I would not definitely say that Princeton is superior to its peers in undergraduate education. I personally chose it over its peers but I believe it's possible to get a first rate education at many different schools (and they're not all in the Ivy League!)</p>