<p>It doesn't matter how much money a school has, it's how much they SPEND and HOW. If a school spends merely on graduate students, then the large endowment is meaningless for undergraduates. MIT, for example, has been known to do this.</p>
<p>That's why Princeton is unique. Funny, I was talking yesterday to a woman who's two daughters have or will have gone to Yale and Brown. She was very clear that P offers the best undergraduate education in the country. Hmm.</p>
<p>Excuse me? We are now grading anecdotes? Heaven forbid. The day may come when no one may open their mouth without judges holding up the cards with numbers on them but I can tell you from where I sit.</p>
<p>Hasn't happened yet.</p>
<p>Princeton is a great school. But to say that it is the "best" undergraduate school in the country is like saying dole bannanas are the "best" fruit on the market. There is not "best" undergraduate program. There are good ones, and there are better ones. </p>
<p>You can attain a superlative education at several institutions. It all depends on what you want.</p>
<p>Prepster's point, while pretentiously argued ("You are 0 for 2 so far") is right on the ball. Stanford's undergraduate education is comparable to Princeton's, offers a more diverse environment, superior research opportunities, more diverse offerings and none of the eating-club pretensions attached to the education. </p>
<p>It's hard to measure undergraduate EDUCATION. Most of the programs are same across HSYP, unless you're doing a specialized program. Most of the differences lie in the other stuff outside of the classroom. I'm sure that if you took a Princeton student from a say, intermediate economics class and made him/her spend a week in H's Y's and S's, they would find THE CLASS ITSELF more or less the same.</p>
<p>You're assuming. The truth is you really don't know.</p>
<p>Prepster, when one has differences you have with someone, it is best to address them respectfully. Take the advice, kid, it'll help you in life.</p>
<p>perpster is right in stating that alumother's anecdotes serve little purpose. I doubt that prospective Princeton applicants are very interested in what the anonymous mother of two thinks about the university and the quality of education it provides.</p>
<p>It doesn't matter if his end point is right or not, the way he presents it does matter.</p>
<p>I should explain. The "anonymous" mother is an educator herself, having founded a highly regarded private school which sends many kids on to the most selective colleges. And inuendo, in my experience kids who are applying to a college are interested in anything even tangentially related to their search.</p>
<p>You all do bring up a larger question that's worth addressing: How should critical decisions be made? Based solely on quantitative data? Or with some reliance on "anecdotes" and qualitative data. If you read the HBR, CEO studies will tell you that the most successful executives study the data, question every assumption in the data, absorb it, and then go ahead and decide based on their gut anyway. As you look at colleges, keep that process in mind.</p>
<p>As would Malcolm Gladwell's extremely well researched book "Blink."</p>
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The "anonymous" mother is an educator herself, having founded a highly regarded private school which sends many kids on to the most selective colleges.
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<p>It must have been aggravating for her, that neither of her daughters was accepted inot P (no doubt she convinced them that the best would be just good enough for them)</p>
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How should critical decisions be made? Based solely on quantitative data? Or with some reliance on "anecdotes" and qualitative data. If you read the HBR, CEO studies will tell you that the most successful executives study the data, question every assumption in the data, absorb it, and then go ahead and decide based on their gut anyway.
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<p>While regularly reading the HBR, I don't know which article specifically you allude to, but at least at HBS the kind of "gut feel" they teach is insight based on thorough analysis and discussion. It's more to do with the head than the gut, really. But granted, a lot of decisive information is often non-quantitative in nature. You may want to let us know occasionaly what sort of qualitative information was behind the anecdote of a mother acknowledging that her daughters had failed to attend the best college there is.</p>
<p>I am puzzled as to why this board has developed into a battle over which is "the best" and over whose "expertise" is the most valid. To me the value of CC has always been to hear individuals' many experiences and share these, when they seem pertinent, with my kids. There is no "best college." And if I thought only "experts" were worth listening to I would have stuck to reading the colleges' admissions websites and U.S. News, and paid a college counselor.</p>
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She was very clear that P offers the best undergraduate education in the country.(alumother)
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I am puzzled as to why this board has developed into a battle over which is "the best" and over whose "expertise" is the most valid. (...) There is no "best college." (aparent5)
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There is not "best" undergraduate program. There are good ones, and there are better ones. (prepster)
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<p>Where "better" ones are, there is at least one "best". This is a matter of simple logic (best = no other one being "better"). Several can tie for "best" in this regard though. Of course the criteria may differ for individuals: what is best for many may not be best for an individual (and vice versa). Nothing wrong with going after the "best": everyone is doing it all the time. Only our criteria differ. :)</p>
<p>Ah, beware of "simple logic." Sometimes it's foolish! What is "best" for one student is not "best" for another, as you clearly state in your own last sentence. For a student who wants an urban environment and a core curriculum, it's hard to beat Columbia. For a close-knit, rural campus, small classes, and a topnotch record of fellowship wins, I'd pick Williams. Colleges and universities are not butterlies in amber; they are living communities with their own particular struggles and strengths and characters. My own d chose to apply to P over H because she liked the campus and because it offered more in her EC area; did she think it was objectively "better" than H? I don't think so. She chose to apply to P over Williams because she didn't want to be quite so rural and did want a bigger student body. She wouldn't consider a women's college. And so on. As you say yourself, we all have different criteria. Efforts to name an objective "best" school are just silly.</p>
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Efforts to name an objective "best" school are just silly (aparent)
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<p>The mother whom alumother quoted (anonymously) was probably the only one to claim so. However let's not completely discuss away quality differences and preferences. The core topic this thread revolves around is, why H is unarguably the first choice of the majority of highly intelligent and achieved high school seniors and what the rivals can do not "get their socks beat off" (Prof. Katz, Princeton). I would probably make choices like your d - considering the aspects that matter most to me, weighing the pros and cons from a very subjective perspective. This does not prevent me from acknowledging what goes on around me though.</p>
<p>Yes there is "best" in certain areas. It is silly to want to overlook that. What you are talking about is personal fit. </p>
<p>PS: People who don't observe "simple logic" and make inconsistent statements are "objectively" wrong. Beware of their messages! ;)</p>
<p>Playfair, more people eat at the McDonald's in my town every day than at the (cheap) organic cafe. It is all about marketing and the development of a "name brand," to use Katz's term, and it is the same way we elect Presidents. :( If marketing is the topic that interests you, so be it. However, I would never confound a determination of marketing preferences with that which is "best." Furthermore I could tell you some pretty funny stories about kids around here who received a letter from Cambridge telling them they "might be Harvard material." Harvard's deliberate policy of increasing its selectivity by sending out these letters has been documented on CC for years. For a young achiever, it has come to the point where it actually becomes an act of courage not to succumb to the "It's more selective and famous so it must be better and it is the prize I deserve" way of thinking.</p>
<p>I don't think anyone has demonstrated that "H is unarguably the first choice of the majority of highly intelligent and achieved high school seniors." Good grief. Some 75 percent of those who apply to Harvard and another school do choose Harvard; that is true, but you are ignoring the reality that many highly intelligent and high-achieving students are happily choosing to apply early to schools other than Harvard, thus eliminating their chance to apply to Harvard. </p>
<p>It is true that some statements can be objectively wrong. Let me give you two examples: "Harvard is the best school in the United States." "Princeton is the best school in the United States."</p>
<p>Re "fit" vs. "best," a school (be it Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or you name it) may have a particular department that is widely acknowledged as world-class, with famous professors, etc. This does not necessarily imply anything about the quality of instruction or the experiences of individual undergraduates. Even Princeton itself is sending out a fancy brochure telling students they may well have a better experience majoring in German or art history rather than in their well-known economics department.</p>
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I don't think anyone has demonstrated that "H is unarguably the first choice of the majority of highly intelligent and achieved high school seniors." Good grief. (aparent)
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<p>Before you "think" noone has, how about familiarizing yourself with some basic literature...? :)</p>
<p>Um, I consider "basic" literature to be the Odyssey and the Iliad, Shakespeare, etc. ;) But I did look at the study you posted, albeit briefly as I am on my way to a meeting. It is extremely interesting and I plan to spend more time with it when I can. It explains to me why Princeton's administration has been behaving lately in ways that often seem strange to me and to many other people, reiterating that certain things about P need to be changed, i.e., the eating clubs, which they say are the biggest turn-off to prospective applicants, and the grading system, which they say does not distinguish sufficiently among those at the very top. Furthermore, something I did neglect to mention in my previous post, P is now planning to market heavily along the lines of H, btw. Many students worry that the university is trying to attract a geekier type of kid; right now it is a place where high achievers who are also well-rounded, sociable people really thrive, and that was and is very appealing to my d. </p>
<p>However, the fact remains that P is loaded with amazing students and incredible opportunities. The report still does not say that one school is "better" or "best." Au contraire. I would like to highlight the last two sentences of the study you posted: We close by reminding readers that measures of revealed preference are just that: measures of desirability based on students and families making college choices. They do not correspond to educational quality. Amen.</p>
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It explains to me why Princeton's administration has been behaving lately in ways that often seem strange to me and to many other people
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<p>Let's not kid ourselves: higher education is a market like every other one: students compete for good education and universities compete for smart (and maybe also "well-rounded") students and stellar professors. P consciously takes part in that race and states as a mission:</p>
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"Princeton simultaneously strives to be one of the leading research universities and the most outstanding undergraduate college in the world."
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<p>Big words. You ought to acknowledge that the P administration dooes nothing less but think in "best" categories - whatever that means to them. </p>
<p>The most interesting aspect of the discussion has never been continued: How does (small) P continue to race among the top elites? I found Byerly's hypothesis intriguing that in the long run, the GRADUATE school should gain more weight in order for the college to remain competitive. I agree with him - ultimately this is what McCosh had done with the respectable college already in the 19th century. Harvard's global preeminence in academia is relatively new (post WWII I would guess). It is owed not the least to an early "diversification" into several graduate areas. Growth not only takes money, but also time.</p>
<p>I think Playfair is Byerly.</p>