<p>
[quote]
The only thing that matters is that you/your child are happy where you are.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, this is the truth!!</p>
<p>For UG -</p>
<p>Big research U's = Overrated</p>
<p>For Grad</p>
<p>Big Research U's = studly</p>
<p>^ Hmmm...I say it depends on your major. For engineering in particular, a big research U is not overrated for UG.</p>
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Most overrated: Yale, UC Berkely, and possibly Standford.
Underrated: UCI
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***Stanford</p>
<p>
[quote]
Quote:
Most overrated: Yale, UC Berkely, and possibly Standford.
Underrated: UCI </p>
<p>***Stanford
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</p>
<p><em>**Stanfurd
*</em>*Berkeley</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>
[quote]
Most overrated: Yale, UC Berkely, and possibly Standford.
Underrated: UCI
[/quote]
</p>
<p>***Berkeley</p>
<p>(I'm not sure I can take seriously those who can't even spell the names of the institutions right, unless they're doing that on purpose.)</p>
<p>Edit: Aw, UCBChemEGrad, you beat me to it. =p</p>
<p>UCB - fair enough, big school engineering probably makes sense.</p>
<p>But as most undergraduate programs are teaching proven, little changing material, so if a school is spending money on research, it isn't going towards you.</p>
<p>Over:Any Ivy
Under: Villanova</p>
<p>temple=underrated</p>
<p>^^^^ Yeah mayne</p>
<p>Underrated: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=4831862%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=4831862</a></p>
<p>If you can't get in - Harvard is overrated!</p>
<p>Or, if you can.</p>
<p>This thread just seems like a vehicle for people to bash schools of which they have little knowledge, or schools they don't like for other arbitrary reasons (one of them being that they didn't gain admission).</p>
<p>^^^ What if I named my own school?</p>
<p>^^^ To amend my statment: ...Or to promote the college or university that the person attends.</p>
<p>wake forest wake forest</p>
<p>Actually, Tokyo, I meant for overrated.</p>
<p>How to pick an undergraduate school?</p>
<p>Of course it's a highly subjective process, and in any given situation there will be many right answers and perhaps very few wrong ones.</p>
<p>On balance, however, much of what I observe is at odds with how I would go about making the decision.</p>
<p>Rather than telling you what to do, I'm going to make a list of things which I find are USUALLY overrated and underrated.</p>
<p>That's an important distinction. For example, you'll notice that I think US News is "underrated." This doesn't mean that you should follow it blindly. This means that most people I've seen ought to weight it more than they do -- they ought to pay more attention to it. Of course, if you're currently blindly following USN, then you're overrating it.</p>
<hr>
<p>Overrated: A "good" city.
Underrated: Good sports.</p>
<p>What exactly is a "good" city? It means you have a healthy dose of bars and clubs along with some cultural events like art museums and dance troupes. With some exceptions -- if you're planning an acting career, for example -- this is not a particularly crucial part of your college experience.</p>
<p>Every college will have parties on site. Every college will give you a chance to meet friends. In fact, many campuses have tighter bonding among the student body and better social interaction with a more diverse socioeconomic class. (After all, a "good city" is often code for a neighborhood filled with rich people.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, sports provide an instant alumni connection as a unifying campus phenomenon. I'm in a graduate school filled with very awkward people who are going to have to learn how to socialize, and many of them have decided to learn as much as they can about local sports to help "lubricate" the conversation with people from the area. College sports work the same way. I don't care how old we are, how long ago we were at Duke, what we majored in, or what we're doing now -- I have an instant connection with other Duke alums that's strengthened because we know we have something in common.</p>
<p>This kind of branching is invaluable. It means that my boss's son specifically requests Duke jerseys and posters because, well, his mother is a Duke alum. It means the admissions director at my school laughs and jokes with the Duke students here because he feels comfortable with us. Kids from, say, Harvard or NYU don't feel the same bond.</p>
<p>Often overrated: Columbia, Harvard, NYU, BC, BU.
Often underrated: Duke, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago, State Universities.</p>
<hr>
<p>Overrated: Prestige.
Underrated: US News.</p>
<p>This seems like an odd pair, but bear with me.</p>
<p>Invariably, whenever the new US News comes out, people attack it viciously. Their answers usually have to do with their preconceived biases, many of which are geographic in nature.</p>
<p>I grew up in California, and among my friends, Stanford was the holy grail school. It was, hands down, the best school in the country. They were invariably offended whenever US News would rank them fourth or fifth. My conversations with people in the Northeast, however, invariably thought that while Stanford was an excellent school, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard simply played in a different league.</p>
<p>I often hear the same thing. People in North Carolina tend to overrate Duke and UNC. People whose parents are from Notre Dame tend to overrate Notre Dame. Hilariously, Chinese people tend to overrate Cornell because some Chinese person went there back in the 1930s. (I'm Chinese American, by the way.)</p>
<p>The point is this. USN is a very, very flawed metric. It is subject to arbitrariness and biases, but at least they are somebody else's arbitrary biases and can provide a useful counterpoint to yours. Just because your mom grew up in San Francisco doesn't mean UC Berkeley is the best school in the country -- but it might make you think so.</p>
<p>Beyond that, US News tends to be a little ahead of the curve -- if only because its prophecies are self-fulfilling.</p>
<p>Overrated: Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Stanford, local schools, family legacy.
Underrated: Penn, Duke, Washington University.</p>
<hr>
<p>Overrated: Tuition.
Underrated: Financial Aid.</p>
<p>This seems pretty obvious to me, but it's something that most people don't seem to consider as much as they should: Tuition doesn't matter if you don't have to pay all of it.</p>
<p>Of course the details will vary, but I have one story. One of my friends has a father who's a computer engineer and a mother who's a nurse -- a dual income family, and not low-paying jobs at that. This family is paying much less money to send their daughter to an Ivy League than they are to send their son to the local state university.</p>
<p>What can it hurt to apply? If the package isn't to your liking, then you can go back to your default plan anyway.</p>
<p>Often overrated: State universities.
Often underrated: Ivy Leagues.</p>
<hr>
<p>Overrated: Staying near home.
Underrated: Gaining new exposure.</p>
<p>Of course it's nice to be near home, but that's a culture -- a part of the country -- you're already familiar with. For future networking but mostly for personal growth, it's better for you to be farther away: you get to see a new place, get exposed to different kinds of people, and be more independent from your parents and start building your own life.</p>
<p>Overrated: Well, schools near home.
Underrated: Schools farther away.</p>
<hr>
<p>Overrated: Faculty.
Underrated: Student body.</p>
<p>How much interaction does an undergrad have with really great faculty, anyway? And "great faculty" tend to be measured in terms of research output, not teaching skills. So it's really the other students you'll be learning from, gaining motivation from, and studying with. Nobel Prizes don't matter. SAT scores do.</p>
<p>Overrated: Berkeley, Chicago.
Underrated: Penn, Duke, Brown.</p>
<p>^^^^ Very, very well put. I would put music scene as something that's underrated as well.</p>