<p>Okay, so Stanford, MIT, and Duke as well as Caltech and UChicago are all in the top 10 and are not ivy league schools. People still confuse these places with ivy leagues or think they are not as good since they aren't ivy leagues. All of them are ranked higher than 3 or more ivies, and are generally respected just as much.</p>
<p>I don't usually care too much about this, but when someone considers a school like Brown more prestigious than Stanford it does make me wonder whether simply missing the "ivy label"--a label only used to describe an athletic league of old schools--is a disadvantage for these schools.</p>
<p>I got accepted into some ivies and ultimately chose Duke. Didn't apply to Stanford simply because I didn't want to go too far for undergrad., but it is most definitely a great place.</p>
<p>You started a thread almost exactly like this about three weeks ago. What is the source of your fascination with the Ivies and rankings? Take it from an Ivy League graduate, the people that matter (graduate and professional schools, employers, etc.) know that all of the universities you mentioned and many others offer first class educations comparable to the Ivies. What the rest of the world thinks is unimportant.</p>
<p>Actually, most people where I live have never heard of Brown and Columbia, think Penn is a state school, and are convinced that Stanford is an Ivy.</p>
<p>Haha I agree with soxfan. I had someone tell me to go to Stanford over Dartmouth because I should want that Ivy League prestige. :P</p>
<p>Yeah. My friend thought that Ivy League was a distinction given to any school whose average SAT scores were high enough.</p>
<p>But, going back to what the OP said, I have never gotten any vibe from anyone that Stanford is looked down upon academically by anyone. Saying that MIT and Stanford are not as well-respected as the Ivies is, frankly, ridiculous. I have never heard anyone say that. I’d like to know where the OP is from. Neptune?</p>
<p>I didn’t say that any of the top 10 nonivy schools like Duke, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and UChicago are not well respected. All I said was that if they did have the ivy label they could gain some in applications and in prestige, even more than they already have.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll concede that Duke and UChicago could do with a little bump. Most people I know see Duke as a basketball school and not as an academic school at all, and most of these same people have never heard of Chicago. But I completely disagree with your statement when it comes to Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. For Stanford, I’ll just tell you to look at the staggering number of applications they got this year, and let you compare and contrast that with those of the Ivies. Also, Stanford pounded every Ivy but Harvard in yield this year. Caltech is seen as second in math and science only to MIT by even the most uneducated caveman. I’m pretty sure they’re both on the upper echelon alongside the Ivies in the minds of even the most ignorant.</p>
<p>Again, I am only saying that sometimes lacking the ivy status can hurt some schools. Look at Johns Hopkins and WashU–certainly they are ivy caliber, too. </p>
<p>Good point, though.</p>
<p>I do agree with that; I myself had never heard of WashU until I started looking into colleges. So yes, there are some places that are disadvantaged by the clear pro-Ivy slant in our country.
However, as an interesting and pertinent aside, I just ran into a junior at my school today who wanted to ask me some questions about college applications. I soon discovered that he thought UChicago was an Ivy, and that he had never heard of either Dartmouth or Brown. I didn’t bother trying to set him straight; I’m sure Chicago can use whatever boost they get from this. But it was nonetheless kinda funny : )</p>
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<p>Certainly not by the general public, which ranks Stanford higher than most of the Ivy League colleges. </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Number One University in Eyes of Public](<a href=“Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public”>Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public)</p>
<p>@soxfan,</p>
<p>I know someone who thought CalTech was a community college. As in California Technical Community College. Sad, but true. Most underrated school in the nation for sure.</p>
<p>IVY LEAGUE is an athletic conference! - they play each other in football. The Ivy designation has no direct correlation to SAT or other objective metrics. </p>
<p>As it happens it includes some really good schools with long histories of quality education.</p>
<p>bluebubbles- that’s sad, but it made me laugh</p>
<p>@OP- Yes, it’s kinda a disadvantage… if you want to be president of the United States…</p>