<p>I'm suprised no one has mentioned Penn yet as being the most overrated school (by rankings only). Without Wharton, they would not be nearly so high up.</p>
<p>jaug1, Penn is an IVY. When you go to Penn you get what you paid for -- an IVY diploma and a great tradition. Moreover, it has an impressive student body, a great law school and top faculty. How over-rated could it be?
Of the IVIES, the only questionable one is Cornell, because it gives a Cornell degree to all it's schools, some of have separate admissions criteria.</p>
<p>ayudel--</p>
<p>My junior son is considering applying to Indiana from out-of-state for business. What don't you like at Indiana?Academics?People ?</p>
<p>i dont think cornell is overrated really. people know that their true strengths lie in engineering and science, but they have solid programs all around i think. i think brown is overrated because it doesnt really have one big area that they excel at the way the other schools do. in some ways dartmouth is the same way, but i dont think dartmouth is put on a pedestal the way brown is.</p>
<p>pilot, I invite you to vote in my "poll", delete and replace the worst IVY, just started.</p>
<p>"i think brown is overrated because it doesnt really have one big area that they excel at the way the other schools do."</p>
<p>That's because it is all-around great.</p>
<p>I understand that Penn is an Ivy. I also believe that it is a great school. I think rankings wise, it is far overrated. It maybe the 10th best school in the country, but not #4. I'm suprised no one has posted that the owner of US World News and Reports was a Penn graduate.</p>
<p>Well, I do agree that it's not #4. Ridiculous. The USNews is a joke.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the education I am receiving here is not worth any of the thousands of dollars I had to give up for it. My classes are pretty much all a big joke. Don't be surprised if your son finds himself learning from photocopied magazine clippings (not scientific journals.) IU suffers from SEVERE grade inflation. A 3.5 won't take much work, and isn't very highly regarded. All the clubs I have joined here have been terribly planned and most ended up drifting completely out of view. I have also had problems with careless professors giving me a very low, incorrect final grades. It took weeks and much greif for my transcript to be fixed, even when I made it clear that I would need my transcript ASAP for the schools I applied to for transfer. All this school wants is money. Try to explain the "$30 Athletics Fee," the un-flexible meal plans, the added fees for service at the Health center (many schools don't have extra fees.) Along other lines, the campus is dry and a lot of students think they're so cool for sneaking around. It's annoying to deal with. Keep in mind, these are only some of my personal experiences here. Being from out of state, this school is definitely not worth the ridiculous tuition. The only good thing that happened to me here, besides my ability to get a ridiculous GPA, is that after they finally let me move out of my old dorm and away from my crazy roommate (took forever), they are letting me live alone in a double room for the normal rate as if I had a roommate. Either way, I can't wait for this year to be over.</p>
<p>Either way, I can't wait for this year to be over.</p>
<p>Can you tranfer to Michigan? You might like it better there and it's affordable compared to many schools that are no better.</p>
<p>its out of state for me. i'm waiting to hear back from Illinois. if not there I have to go to UIC, and if not there then ill end up at some community college.</p>
<p>Berkeley is not overrated. All the ivies have few students, and Berkeley is the first name in the list that has 20,000+ students (counting grads). If you plot a graph, with number of students on the Y axis and school rank on the X axis, Berkeley would be (20,34000), and tower 2x as high as anything with a higher rank. Although an average Berkeley student is worse than an avg. ivy league student, the sheer number or Cal students more than make up for it.
To be more succinct, it's like comparing Russia with Luxembourg. Russia is so big its influence and deserved rank is higher than Luxembourg, where the per-capita is 4x as high.</p>
<p>Who ranks a school based on influence?</p>
<p>I guess HYP would still be the best...</p>
<p>ayudell, are you in the business school? I think the business school (especially if you get direct admit as a freshman) is excellent. Most of the kids I know who are at IU love it. My S is going to apply next year for business. He will also apply to some of the highly selective schools. Even out of state, IU tuition is a lot less than private schools.</p>
<p>aww why the bad comments on uindiana? can you tell me more?</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, and Yale may be overrated to a certain extent -
We are a "Harvard family," with many alums - all of whom, without exception, found the institution to be divisive, stifling, and not conducive to deep friendships or true intellectual development (at the undergraduate level.) The happiest people in my family went to Grinnell, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Bowdoin (or never graduated high school) ; "happy" in the deepest sense - centered, philosophically adept, doing work they love. My Harvard interviewer said that, although she was surrounded by brilliant people, she could not enter into any sort of dialogue with them - classes and campus too large. Similiarly, my Princeton interviewer (a theatre major) claimed that attending his alma mater was the worst thing he could have done in terms of creative development.
The Yale I know are more mixed - some were miserable, some were very happy (although my interviwer claims he wish he had enrolled at Swarthmore.) MY HPY interviewers all claimed the benefits of a LAC education was greater than that of any Ivy - none attempted to "sell" their schools. Princeton and Yale were outright disparaging, while the Harvard interviewer (perhaps because she met her husband, a professor, there) was more mild.
Thus, although many people at HYP are happy, many high school students function under the misconception that attending such a school ensures this happiness. I know, now, that if I am accepted to any of these three, I will not attend.</p>
<p>I am not in the business school. Ok, I didn't want to be mean, but think about it this way. It's a Big Ten school that admits about 88% of its applicants. I want to get ahead, but there's a lot holding me back. If you want a serious education, then I just don't recommend coming here.</p>
<p>Overrated:
All ivies (basically because people think they are the best just because they have the "ivy" name)
Washington U (trying to up their # of applications and turning down qualified applicants in order to get a higher yield thus, moving up the ranks)</p>
<p>Underrated:
University of Michigan (possibly the most well-rounded academic institution in America)
Johns Hopkins (Everyone thinks its all about bio majors and pre-meds when they have superb IR, writing sems, poli sci, engineering, etc...)
Many small LAC's (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Haverford, Carleton, Middlebury, etc... - They just don't have the name recognition as many of the top universities when they offer an unmatched undergraduate experience)</p>
<p>zahra - to an extent, LACs will provide you with most "happiness". But most of the people who go to HYP and such are there for perhaps some kind of professional career afterwards. So, we are talking about people who want to get into Merill Lynch, CSFB, UBS, Citi and etc. If you wanted to get into a big firm (banking,law,etc etc.), HYP will get you there. Most of these firms and such just do not recruit at such small LACs.</p>
<p>what does being a big ten school and admitting 88% of applicants have to do with anything? how can that hold you back?</p>