"Least Prestigious" Ivy League School?

<p>cmbuns you are COMPLETELY incorrect. Dartmouth and Princeton get much more grads into Goldman than Columbia.</p>

<p>So Goldman is the measuring stick now? Pathetic.</p>

<p>Booyakasha - you literally have NO IDEA what you’re talking about.</p>

<p>I’m going to systematically destroy most of your points, which are based on nonsense.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>No, Penn >>> Yale.
Penn Med is top 3, and is considered one of the best medical schools in the world. Its faculty has won many Nobel, Wolf and Lasker prizes (these three being the most prestigious in medicine), performs a TREMENDOUS amount of research, and is generally on par with schools like: Wash U, Harvard, Stanford and Hopkins.</p>

<p>Yale is top 15. It’s good - as good as Northwestern or Cornell - but not as truly excellent as Penn or Hopkins or Harvard, schools that spend nearly all of their research dollars at their medical schools. So, yes, I am afraid that
Penn>>> Yale for medicine.</p>

<p>

Nope, Penn>=Yale.
Penn is ranked higher than Yale in academic/research-related architecture:
[The</a> USA’s best architecture schools in research: 2009 | archsoc.com](<a href=“http://www.archsoc.com/kcas/researchschool4.html]The”>The USA's best architecture schools in research: 2009/13)
Penn is 5th, Yale is 6th.
In design, Yale is ranked slightly higher. The last rankings I found put Yale tied for 1st, with Penn the next rank down. Hardly “>>>”.</p>

<p>

Penn doesn’t have an official drama program (MFA); thus this is incomparable, and incorrect.</p>

<p>

In the last national departmental music rankings (admittedly old, but what else can you go by?), Yale is 5th, Penn is 7th ( [NRC</a> Rankings in Music](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area8.html]NRC”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area8.html) ). They were separated by 0.05 out of 5.00; again, hardly “>>>”.</p>

<p>

Yale is 2nd, Penn is 4th.</p>

<p>

AGAIN, both are top 10 although Yale’s is slightly better (though insignificantly, especially on a national scale!!!). I’m too tired to keep refuting your silliness!</p>

<p>Your ideas are almost totally incorrect or grossly exaggerated. Your usage of “>>>” doesn’t make any sense. If for business, Yale to Wharton is “>>”, than “>>>” should mean about 17 notches apart - which obviously isn’t true for English, for example, which is 2 notches apart.</p>

<p>You also fail to look at other important areas where Yale lags behind Penn - religion, linguistics, anthropology, and a number of others.</p>

<p>In other words: EPIC FAIL. Yes, Yale is a marginally better undergraduate program and is better known, but this has no bearing on Penn’s research status and departmental rankings which are, indeed, on par or better than Yale’s. Admittedly, a few are not, but in general any contemporary academic would admit that Penn is on par with Yale, better in a number of instances, and worse in others.</p>

<p>Finally, if you analyze academic prowess most simply, by looking at the number of Nobels won per school in the current decade, you get (for Ivies):

  1. Columbia/Harvard (9)
  2. Penn (6)
  3. and so on… (the point is, not Yale. Or did you get that?)</p>

<p>So, you can debate all you like, but Penn is excellent both from an undergraduate and research standpoint, and hardly the least prestigious Ivy (which I would say goes to Brown, Dartmouth or Cornell, depending).</p>

<p>Icing on the cake: recent article in the New York Times about valedictorians from the NYC area. 2 are headed to Harvard, 1 to Yale, and 1 to Penn. None to any other Ivies. Notably, the Penn valedictorian had a higher SAT score than did one of the Harvardians, helping to illustrate that at this level, it’s really a crapshoot more than anything:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/nyregion/28valedictorians.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/nyregion/28valedictorians.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Every time I show people how incredible Penn is, I fall in love with it all over again. <em>Sigh</em>.</p>

<p>I can’t wait until 10 years from now, when its new-found prestige will have solidified and these ridiculous squabbles can be resolved - or better yet, ignored.</p>

<p>I have to say, after just having spent an intensive three weeks with Penn people on a trip, muerteapablo is still the least impressive student I’ve read/heard speak from Penn. Utterly mediocre and unimpressive.</p>

<p>FWIW, it’s hilarious that someone from Penn accused Browns students as being academic drones. Considering that Wharton for UG is four times the size of our largest concentration (less than twice the students at Penn), I’ve seen first hand how pervasive business the business and pre-professional thoughtworld exists at UPenn. The people I was with were great people, but every single one of them would admit that Penn is tremendously pre-professional and that Wharton has a huge effect on their culture. Unquestionably, this factor had a homogenizing effect on the way these students thought-- not in a bad way, but certainly in a recognizable way.</p>

<p>At Brown, there is nothing close to a singular experience and everyone I’ve met has a drastically different perspective because of how varied our course loads, extracurriculars, and life goals are. Certainly this still exists to a large extent at Penn and any school, however, amongst the 36 of us on a three week intensive learning experience together, these overall differences were apparent very quickly to all of us. Again, not for better or worse, but that was reality.</p>

<p>So essentially, muertapablo-- cheerleading is fun, but stop getting into a *<strong><em>ing match over a question that is so utterly stupid, because even if you win, you’re still involved in a *</em></strong>ing match.</p>

<p>modestmelody, you are Brown’s true hero… hope you are going to be around for awhile longer!</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>muerteapablo,
That ranking pertains to “musicology”. Penn isn’t remotely close to Yale in the music world.</p>

<p>^different schools have different specialties, and it doesn’t reflect on overall prestige or quality (two different things)</p>

<p>For anyone who is spouting that one is better than the other – know this: people choose brown not because it’s prestigious, but because it’s quality. Yes, prestige is a factor because it follows quality. But quality does not always follow prestige in such a direct manner. However, because each Ivy League posesses a different character and in many cases different strengths, you can easily seperate out the idiots as those who pick Harvard “because it’s harvard” instead of “because I like…about Harvard.” So forget prestige. It doesn’t ultimately matter. Those who know, know quality beyond US News and publicity. So in other words, this thread is stupid.</p>

<p>Booyaksha- you are completely wrong about me and my background. I have spent maybe a cumulative of three days total at Penn and about a week at Yale. My cousin did his undergrad at Penn in the 90s and is now an assistant prof at Harvard Medical School. My younger sister went to Yale and recently graduated. She’s at medical school now (to maintain her anonymity, I’d rather not say where). I’m a first year grad student in the bay area.</p>

<p>Columbia was recently the #2 most recruited US school for the NY, London and HK offices at Goldman Sachs (after UPenn). I know that because I went to the GS milk round presentation at Oxford in 2004; in the UK recruiting PPT, they listed a class profile for US, EMEA & Asia IBD analysts and associates. This includes associate figures which massively skewed results, but even excluding those, Wharton was tops with a big drop off at #2. Columbia has a lot of Chinese nationals, especially in SEAS, who are very well represented in the Hong Kong office. A friend of mine went to London bankings days a couple years ago and relayed a similar placement.</p>

<p>Oh yeah, I also worked in the industry for three years, and if I can’t get a position in academia, would like to return to a bank or fund. </p>

<p>I don’t mean to bash any school- it goes without saying that any US university at this elite level is incredible. But typical British humour is to argue for the sake of arguing. Football clubs are the topic in basically any pub. The posters on CC are very smart and witty, and could well be arguing about anything but choose to hash it out about schools. No offense is meant to be taken personally. </p>

<p>p.s. one rather minor point: Yale is not “>>>” than Penn in math. Penn has Kirillov, Shaneson, Wilf, Epstein, Florian Pop among others. This is a world class group of senior researchers. Penn has had some trouble attracting and retaining mid career faculty but the same could be said for other universities as well.</p>

<p>Muertapueblo:</p>

<p>OHHHHH MMMMYYYY GODDDDDDDDD!!! lol lol lol</p>

<p>Muertapueblo, the entire point of my post was that this is all subjective crap. The only reason that I used “>>>” so liberally is because it is all subjective. I did it only if an argument could be made that it is “>>>,” not necessarily if I truly believed it. And a smart person can make an argument about almost anything. But YOU FELL FOR IT… YOU ARE SO INSECURE YOU ACTUALLY TRIED TO ATTACK MY POST ONE BY ONE. Hahahahahaha you’re lame.</p>

<p>You really made me laugh muertapueba. At least the Brown students on this thread are sensible. Enjoy Penn; I’m glad I’m not your peer.</p>

<p>Cmburns:</p>

<p>I don’t hold anything against you as a person. My only point was that you were essentially INVENTING who was 1 vs who was 2 etc for specific banks based on a limited viewpoint. And, although US News etc are all subjective, at the very least they have a much more holistic approach when they do rankings and they combine many different statisticians thoughts… you were rather arbitrarily making up ranks of 1, 2, 3, 4 etc without a strong statistical foundation. Anecdotal evidence is insufficient, and one ranking by GS of matriculants is also insufficient to give specific rankings. Maybe tiers are okay, but specific rankings are downright silly based on your information. Or at least state that this is all just “my personal opinion.”</p>

<p>Great that you have spent time in the industry, although I wonder why you’re still on these boards given your background.</p>

<p>P.S.</p>

<p>Also, you can disagree with me about math, but I said that I just created the “>>>” to exaggerate things that I could potentially argue. On the US News Math Grad ranking ([Rankings</a> - Math - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings)), Yale is tied with Caltech for 7th; Penn is 18th.</p>

<p>Thoughtful post Booyaksha- you probably got the meaning of my screen name, it’s from the Simpsons and is indeed a famous Yale alum afterall haha… yeah a 1,2,3,4 ranking is a bit off though if you want to do quant/hedge funds, I still think MIT is the best place to go. And it’s tough to land a job on the Street but as a high schooler, going to Wharton is probably your best bet indeed if investment banking is your raison d’</p>

<p>Cmburns, I strongly suspect that your GS numbers include graduate students and MBAs as well, which Columbia has about 3-4X the overall population of Dartmouth and Princeton. My older brother worked at Goldman and he said in his analyst class Dartmouth and Princeton dominated.</p>

<p>Cornell - Veterinary Medicine. Undergraduate business? -Cornell. The other Ivies don’t even have accredited programs in this area. Nobel Prizes - University of Chicago. Which is the most prestigious athlete? Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, or LeBron James? How many angels are dancing on the head of that pin? Overall prestige is a nebulous concept with little intrinsic value.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>That was an immature way of accepting defeat, Booyakasha. I won’t hold it against you, though - you don’t strike me as very bright.</p>

<p>And at modestmelody:

</p>

<p>Are you sure? I’m one of the best writers that I know. What in my posts struck you as mediocre? Perhaps one of my peripheral interests - college rankings - appears to you as banal and “mediocre,” but nothing that I’ve ever posted on this entire forum is remotely as ridiculous as the pablum I read from others all the time.</p>

<p>Some examples from this thread:
May:

</p>

<p>Oooh, that one really added a lot, didn’t it? Well, maybe not, it seemed like a pretty uninspired, meaningless post… dare I say, mediocre?</p>

<p>Booyakasha:

</p>

<p>Quite a literary flair!</p>

<p>Yes, modestmelody: I would have to disagree with your conception of “mediocre” altogether. Unless you’ve confused the term with “witty”?</p>

<p>ahh, I crack myself up at pointing out your silliness.</p>

<p>Septiambre- you actually I think accidentally are highlighting a huge issue few understand. ITs not about the individual rank at all. Cornell might have an undergrad business program, but Dartmouth, Columbia, and Penn do much much better when it comes to placement at top banks and consulting firms (the most desired business jobs). Why? Because recruiters don’t care about specific program rank, they look at overall prestige.</p>

<p>Slipper, It is not prestige; it is actually self perpetuating and self-aggrandizing alumni networks.</p>

<p>This thread is HILARIOUS!!! =D</p>

<p>muerteapablo,
“I’m one of the best writers that I know.”</p>

<p>Cocky there aren’t you.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>How many writers DO you know?</p>

<p>muerteapablo,</p>

<p>I’ve never read your writing so I’m not going to question your literary merit. What I will question, however, is your arguments; they are HILARIOUS. As you’ve noted, you are certainly “witted”… dimwitted.</p>

<p>Your resident mediocritist,
Booyaksha</p>

<p>(Yes I know mediocritist is not in a dictionary!)</p>