<p>overrated: all state flagships, especially Ohio State, Penn State, Berkeley, and Michigan
underrated: amherst/williams/swat, military academies, non-HYP ivy league schools </p>
<p>I just don’t think big schools offer such great opportunities. Someone earlier in this thread was listing some big names in business that went to OSU. However, OSU graduates 10,000 students a year. Those success stories are major outliers. In contrast, my dad graduated from Wharton and went straight to Wall Street. Wharton graduates about 5% as many undergrads as OSU and yet its list of top business alums is infinitely better. My mom went to Princeton and also went straight to a Wall Street firm. </p>
<p>In deciding to go to Wharton, I considered how well the AVERAGE graduate ends up doing in life. This is where small schools become valuable. Many people don’t know about places like Williams/Amherst and yet their tiny alumni bases have managed to permeate business, academia and the legal/medical professions. I can also vouch for Dartmouth and the military academies.</p>
<p>Overrated: Wharton and Wall Street greed
Underrated: Military academies and genuine service/sacrifice/dedication</p>
<p>Tennessee!</p>
<p>Over: Vanderbilt. I have heard nothing good from actual students. In fact, two actually ended up transferring to UTK because they hated it so much. Apparently freshmen are very segregated from the other classes, and everyone’s rather pretentious.
Under: Sewanee and ETSU.</p>
<p>CT:</p>
<p>Overrated: Probably Yale. It’s fabulous, but New Haven is awful. I know from friends who go there that it’s a fabulous school, but I feel like the education isn’t that much better than any other Top 20 school - it’s just the fact that it’s an Ivy and really selective, so it’s a self-feeding prophecy. Haha.</p>
<p>Underrated: UConn’s honors program, which is actually a phenomenal program with a lot of benefits (not to mention exponentially cheaper than most other schools). I really considered it when I was worried about financial aid.</p>
<p>VA</p>
<p>Overrated: VCU, UofR, ODU
Underrated: UVA (i live in the captial of my state so… people are scared of UVA, too dumb to apply, & are unaware how presitigious UVA is and VCU is in the capital and thats all these fools like/ know of.</p>
<p>In these parts, UVA is very appreciated, very admired.</p>
<p>That you would place Ohio State in the same sentence as Michigan and Berkeley just proves to me that you UNDERRATE the top publics.</p>
<p>CT:</p>
<p>Overrated: UConn
Underrated: Trinity College and Connecticut College.</p>
<p>MA</p>
<p>Overrated: Hahhvahd (this comes from a cousin who both studied there and was a member of the faculty): students aren’t given much academic support, don’t necessarily have contact with professors, and, when confronted with the fact that they are no longer the top of their class, very, very stressed out. This only applies to undergrad though–I’d be ecstatic to go to Harvard for grad school.
BC, BU
Underrated: Williams/Amherst/Smith, NU, Holy Cross</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think it’s fair to judge a school if you aren’t a student there yourself. I live in Illinois, and everyone so far has said that UIUC is the most overrated school. I think it’s fair to say it’s the most popular school and the hardest IL state school to get in. But how does that make it overrated?</p>
<p>“I just don’t think big schools offer such great opportunities.”</p>
<p>I disagree. Being at a large public university, I see myself as having more opportunities since there are more resources available to me than at a smaller private school. You just have to be proactive and seek them out yourself. Nobody is going to spoon feed you. There are so many student organizations, study abroad, lots of co-op and internship opportunities. At Clemson, there is a program called Creative Inquiry where there are a list of projects professors are working on and if you contact them you can get involved in research as early as your freshman year. There are so many opportunities to build your resume and get ahead, it’s just a matter of whether you choose to seek these opportunities out or not. There are very successful graduates from public universities.</p>
<p>The difference I think between public and elite private universities is that the student body is made up of people. You are surrounded by different people at each schools. At the elite schools, you are going to be surrounded by smart people and people driven to succeed while less so at a large public university (with the exception of the top schools). If you are self-motivated, you can succeed anywhere.</p>
<p>Illinois</p>
<p>Overrated: Northwestern, Univ of Chicago</p>
<p>Underrated: UIUC, Illinois State</p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I hope that both have student bodies made up of people. :p</p>
<p>I think the main difference between public and elite private is funding - the elite privates have not only larger endowments, but tend to raise much more in donations from loyal alumni, are more likely to garner federal and private grants for research, etc. These financial resources beget all kinds of advantages: they can build better facilities, so they can attract stronger faculty (with higher pay), which raises their prestige, so they attract more students, get them to attend with better financial aid, become more selective, and thus attract even stronger students, etc. and they’re able to throw money at their undergrads for study abroad, projects, activities, etc. For better or for worse money talks - and money in a roundabout way determines prestige.</p>
<p>That said, beyond the elite privates (say top 20 or so, not counting LACs), public schools tend to be much better-funded, since they receive state grants while the non-elite privates with smaller endowments don’t. And the elite public schools are sometimes better-funded than some of the elite privates.</p>
<p>But it’s def. not true that the large public schools don’t offer great opportunities.</p>
<p>^haha I was tired and kinda just ranted but it should say “different people”</p>
<p>My state is Wisconsin:</p>
<p>Overrated: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>UW-La Crosse: It’s a drinking school in a drinking town. Obviously, that’s why all the kids want to go there, but then I heard some kid saying that it was on par with UMinn-Twin Cities academically, which isn’t sensible.</p></li>
<li><p>UW-Milwaukee: Unlucky because it will always be the second state university. It doesn’t get the funding that Madison does. The campus is in a horrible part of Milwaukee (my opinion). </p></li>
<li><p>UW-Green Bay: The city of Green Bay is four houses and a football stadium. Don’t go there. I don’t even know how the academics are, but there is nothing to do in Green Bay. Lol</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Underrated: (I’m speaking from a national perspective now)</p>
<ul>
<li><p>UW-Madison (University of Wisconsin to those who are unfamiliar with our system): Despite being a public ivy and ranked in the top 10 for federal and state-funded research, ivy-bound students would rather apply to UIUC or Michigan as a match/safety. Unlike those schools, it’s located in a mid-sized city and capital. It consistently has successful sports teams in basketball, football and hockey. I guess I prefer it this way since I’m applying there this fall. On second thought, it’s waaaay overrated. ;P</p></li>
<li><p>Marquette University: It has a really loyal alumni network in Wisconsin. Anybody who’s anybody in Milwaukee went there as have plenty of wealthy businessmen and politicians throughout the state. It gets shafted because Loyola (a fellow Jesuit school) is so close and people would rather live in Chicago than Milwaukee. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Marquette has a decent basketball team and they might get some coverage on the national level for that, but otherwise nobody has every heard of it.</p></li>
<li><p>MSOE (Milwaukee School of Engineering): I hadn’t even heard of this place before HS. Apparently, it is one of the better engineering schools in the Midwest. If all the bigshots in Milwaukee go to Marquette, their underlings went here. I always thought that was interesting.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, there ya go. There’s really only two “world universities” in Wisconsin (Madison and Marquette) but both of them are underrated in terms of what they offer to OOSers.</p>
<p>Overrated: Michigan State University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Purdue University</p>
<p>Underrated: University of Iowa, University of Illinois- UC, University of Wisconsin- Madison, Ohio State University</p>
<p>We think highly of Univ. of Wisconsin @ Madison, out here in these parts (the Left Coast).</p>
<p>Well, since some posters can’t follow simple instructions and since he started it:</p>
<p>Overrated: The University of Iowa. </p>
<p>Way overrated: The University of Iowa</p>
<p>hehe</p>
<p>MA</p>
<p>Overrated: Harvard and BC</p>
<p>Underrated: UMass (Amherst for biz and engineering and Lowell for Engineering), WPI, Northeastern</p>
<p>North Carolina. I’m posting these as far as people’s opinions IN MY STATE</p>
<p>Overrated: UNC, Duke, Wake Forest. OH yeah, NCSU.</p>
<p>Underrated: Pretty much all the other UNC’s. Nobody here really notices them because of those 4’s Name Brand… it’s sad.</p>