Post #19, I don’t know where you get your information but UCSD is one of the top universities that receives federal research money.
UCSD ranks 5 and UCLA ranks 8.
In terms of research papers published that in the top 1%, it’s outranked UCLA by a mile, only second to UCB.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/uc_san_diego_again_ranks_5th_in_nation_for_federal_rd_dollars
In fact, it has the only Sloan research fellow in the entire UC.
@DrGoogle, that leveling process is well underway, as there are (and I personally know) many students at UCSD who were also admitted to UCLA and/or UCB.
Post #21, from my research, 6% who were admitted to all 3 schools(UCSD, UCLA, UCB) chose UCSD. I’m not surprised at all from reading all the CCers comment regarding prestige.
Post #22, what about those who were admitted only to UCLA?
(The golfers in this forum may be interested to know that just off to the right of the area shown in the aerial photograph of UCSD in the second link in post #20 is the world famous Torrey Pines, with two 18 hole public courses. Beautiful beaches and great surfing are right below. What a place to go to college! If I were 17 again, …)
Post #23, I don’t know the specific to just admitted to UCLA but my information came from UCSD portal regarding the statistics including both UCB and UCLA. I found the 6% in that document while I was searching for something else.
@SlackerMomMD It’s true. I have omitted the all-women colleges. I have nothing against them at all, it was due to my ignorance on the matter! To be honest, I don’t know too much about them.
Re: “cutthroat”
Probably has more to do with whether one takes curve-graded classes where many students have grade-focused incentives (e.g. classes with lots of pre-med and pre-top-14-law students for whom A = acceptable, B = bad, C = catastrophic, D = disastrous, F = forget it), rather than the school as a whole.
For example, schools like JHU and UCSD may have lots of pre-meds, but if you choose classes and major with few or no pre-meds, you may not see the pre-med associated “cutthroatism” at those schools.
Also, “cutthroat” is different from simply having difficult courses. I have not heard of Caltech being particularly “cutthroat”, although it does certainly have a reputation of having extremely difficult courses that go beyond what courses on similar subjects at other schools cover.
Why is being private an important criterion? What about small public schools like University of Minnesota - Morris, New College of Florida, University of North Carolina - Asheville, or South Dakota School of Mines and Technology? Note that these are not too expensive even for out-of-state students.
However, small may have downsides in terms of course offerings at the junior and senior level (and graduate level for undergraduates advanced enough to want to take graduate courses). Not all students will find that to be a problem, just as not all students will find large frosh and soph level class sizes are large schools to be a problem. School size and its derived characteristics are where fit to the individual student can matter a lot.
Huh? Seems like you really meant something else here…
On this subject, some of the schools you listed have very “wet” reputations, perhaps due to being small and in rural areas with fewer other activities available. Not sure if you consider that conducive to personal growth and mental wellness.
Higher prestige → popularity among applicants → higher admissions selectivity → higher prestige → popularity among applicants → higher admissions selectivity → …
That tends to be in general, not just limited to how UC campuses are perceived.
UCB, I don’t think the prestige I was referring to related to college admission alone. The academic reputation of these schools will decline in the long run, despite the beautiful buildings.
@DrGoogle What makes you think that?
The US has 60 or so elite colleges and universities. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale are, in my opinion slightly better than the remaining 50 or so colleges and universities. Ranking them is pointless. Compartmentalizing or rating them makes much more sense.
Private Research Universities:
California Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
Northwestern University
Rice University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
Washington University-St Louis
Public Research Universities
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles
University of California-San Diego
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quasi LACs
Boston College
Brown University
College of William & Mary
Dartmouth College
Emory University
Georgetown University
Tufts University
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Wake Forest University
Liberal Arts Colleges
Amherst College
Barnard College
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Claremont McKenna College
Colby College
Colgate University
Colorado College
Davidson College
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Grinnell College
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
New College of Florida
Oberlin College
Pomona College
Reed College
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
Smith College
Swarthmore College
United States Air Force Academy
United States Military Academy
United States Naval Academy
Vassar College
Washington & Lee University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
There are obviously differences in quality within each compartment. For example Chicago or Columbia are probably stronger than NYU or USC. Cal and Michigan are likely stronger than UIUC or UDub. Brown and Dartmouth are likely stronger than BC or Wake Forest. Etc…But in the end, all those colleges and universities are stellar.
This is a really good list. It’s a list where - if you HAD to just be randomly assigned to one of these schools - there’s little to critique.
Alexandre,
I agree that your list is good and is a more realistic measure of the high quality, academic options this country offers. It seems we have been stuck in a ‘top 10’ or ‘top25’ mold for too long. Such limited numbers made sense thirty or forty years ago when the world’s population was billions fewer! Now, with that many more people, it is logical to put forth that there is a proportionate number of individuals that can handle more demanding academics, hence the ‘rise’ of a good number of colleges to meet that societal need.
A list of 60 (or even more) “elite colleges” is not to be dismissed as wishful thinking – it is a fact.
Just out of curiosity … how many freshman seats are there in those 60 taken as a whole, and how does that compare to the # of graduating seniors in the US? Let’s forget international for the moment.
How would students think of a random choice between Oberlin, Washington and Lee, and USMA?
“How would students think of a random choice between Oberlin, Washington and Lee, and USMA?”
Isn’t this a qualitative ‘preference’ rather than a ‘hierarchy’? If so, can they not be considered peers?
Nice range of choices. What’s not to like?
You forgot Hamilton in your list of LACs
Mount Holyoke, Connecticut College?