Most overrated/underrated school on the USNWR?

College Search & Selection
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<p>@Bescraze, and a lot of other people on CC</p>

<p>I don't think you consider regional strengths in very well. My family knows many business employers, and, as they are located in the south, they hold household southern U graduates in just as much esteem as any top 10 school. </p>

<p>This would apply to any region and their respective strong schools.</p>

<p>I think to the average CCer, it would come as a surprise that the average American will only recognize these schools: their regional universities, HPY, and good football schools.</p>

<p>And I think to employers, a school is a school and their rank is their rank. I really doubt powerful employers go around trying to figure out if Emory is overrated or if Georgetown is underrated, or spend time thinking about the stereotypes of top 20 universities. An Ivy League graduate holds a great deal of power, and their diploma would look great anywhere, but in many places an Ivy diploma is emulated by strong regional universities and the connections that come with it.</p>

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<p>You'd be surprised by how little recognition any regional state school from the Northeast will get- in many cases, they're seen as a joke compared to the privates that crowd them out. The SUNY system, for instance, is a failure in many, many ways, to the point where comparing it to most regional privates (and think about the privates in the NE!) is ludicrous.</p>

<p>Of course there are exceptions, but State School == loser school mentality is a strong regional bias... from the NE.</p>

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<p>And out here in the midwest, there is a lot of regard / respect for many of the Big 10 state schools as providing excellent education at a good price. And yk something? They are correct. Plenty of incredibly successful people out here with Wisconsin or Iowa or Indiana or Illinois flagship credentials. Bescraze doesn't understand it because he has the NE mentality (even though I believe he lives in Florida?), but it's true.</p>

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<p>@arbiter213</p>

<p>Well, but in the NE's case Harvard would be a strong regional school (please no one start a semantics argument with me... you get my point lol) as well as a nationally-regarded school. <em>shrug</em> So yeah it varies, but that's the point of using the word 'regionalism' I guess.</p>

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The SUNY system, for instance, is a failure in many, many ways, to the point where comparing it to most regional privates (and think about the privates in the NE!) is ludicrous.

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<p>Give me a break. Places like Geneseo, Binghamton, Stony Brook, and ESF are very much in demand by employers. Even kids coming out with good grades and ECs out of SUNY-Buffalo are not looked over.</p>

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<p>"Give me a break. Places like Geneseo, Binghamton, Stony Brook, and ESF are very much in demand by employers. Even kids coming out with good grades and ECs out of SUNY-Buffalo are not looked over."</p>

<p>NORTHEAST employers, which is the whole point. Those schools mean absolutely nothing out here in the midwest. Which is not to say they aren't fine schools - they may very well be. But once again ... prestige is regional.</p>

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<p>No see, I'm saying that- some of those are NOT. Honest- and I'm not saying you can't get a job with a degree from them! But hey, you listed some great, shining stars of the SUNY system- Binghamton is even starting to get a national reputation (my cousin from Chicagoland is going to Binghamton (warranted with his father's NYS residence getting him in state tuition)). But the SUNY system is MASSIVE. The rest of the schools are a bit of a joke if you're looking for high end careers in the area. It's an unfortunate reality, underscored by the plethora of excellent privates in the Northeast Corridor. </p>

<p>I'm sure they're fine schools- I know graduates of a smattering of them, and they're good people. But you're not going to draw much respect just for having attended most of them, not like you would in, for example, the Big Ten states.</p>

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There are two schools that, for whatever reason, I just feel are extraordinarily overrated. First, the University of Chicago. I feel that the U of C trades in name recognition

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<p>If anything, I would argue that UChicago is actually underrated, for it is simply laughable to find so many ostensibly highly educated and successful people who have never heard of it and think it's just a regional, unremarkable, city school like the University of Houston or the University of San Diego. In fact, I would argue that Chicago has arguably one of the the largest deltas in terms of actual quality to publicly perceived quality. {The University of Pennsylvania also suffers from this problem; too many people simply assume that it's just an unremarkable state school.}</p>

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Let me address the latter issue first. Chicago students are undercultured? Have you visited the University of Chicago? Admittedly, most students here are a bit disengaged from society and overworked, but why should that be evidence that Chicago is overrated? If anything, it should be evidence that we deserve our spot at #8. The fact is, and I think that you'll at least partially agree with me, that most Ivy League schools nowadays are academically pathetic -- it doesn't take much hard work to graduate from them, and after you matriculate, you just ride on the prestige of your school to get you whatever job you want. Intelligence is neither sought-after nor necessary at some Ivies, and it's similar at many other schools you're comparing Chicago to.

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Yes, it serves as evidence as such, and I see no problem with that. Students are uninterested in the University of Chicago because it is a lot of work. They want to go somewhere else, like Northwestern, where you can get drunk 4 nights a week and still maintain a 3.5 GPA. This is just further evidence that Chicago has better academics than our peer schools: people are actually afraid to apply. But if you're so seriously opposed to ranking the 'hardcore academic' universities highly, maybe you should take the same argument with Caltech.

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<p>Yeah, but you're saying that like it's a knock against those other schools and a tribute to Chicago. I would argue just the opposite, if sadly: that it's actually good that those other schools are less rigorous, for the sad truth is that employers and grad schools don't really seem to care that much about rigor. They say they care, but they don't really care. You said it yourself: people view other schools as a way to ride prestige to the job they want. But isn't that entirely rational? Why work hard if you don't have to? If a certain set of schools offers an easy path to reach your career goals, why wouldn't you prefer those schools? Why make things harder for yourself if you don't have to? </p>

<p>The real problem I see with Chicago and schools like it (including, yes, Caltech, which you mentioned) is that they suffer from low graduation rates (relative to its peers). That begs the question of why? Why does Chicago admit so many people who aren't going to graduate? Or, seen another way, why would you want to go to a school in which you are less likely to graduate at all, if you can go elsewhere where you are more likely to graduate? Let's face facts. In this day and age, whether we like it or not, if you want a decent career, then barring certain unusual tracks such as entrepreneurship or professional sports/entertainer, you basically need a college degree. It doesn't really matter that much what you majored in or even what your grades were, what really matters is that you have a degree. If you don't, nobody is going to ask why. All they will see is that you don't have a degree. Sad but true. Hence, the downside risk of going to Chicago - in that you may not even graduate at all - is a serious detriment. </p>

<p>Since you mentioned Caltech as a comparable example, let's talk about that. My brother went to Caltech and he did very well, graduating with honors. But he's also said that Caltech is a great school only for those students who do well. But not everybody there does well. What happens to them? He freely agrees that those students, especially those who flunked out, would have been better off if they had chosen some other school. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten top grades there, but at least they would have graduated.</p>

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"Give me a break. Places like Geneseo, Binghamton, Stony Brook, and ESF are very much in demand by employers. Even kids coming out with good grades and ECs out of SUNY-Buffalo are not looked over."</p>

<p>NORTHEAST employers, which is the whole point. Those schools mean absolutely nothing out here in the midwest. Which is not to say they aren't fine schools - they may very well be. But once again ... prestige is regional.

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<p>And that was the point of my post... when compared to regional privates, like Ithaca College or Canisius or Siena or Fordham or Villanova, the top SUNY schools are not looked over by employers. </p>

<p>I also don't disagree that the Midwestern flagships are head and shoulders about the SUNY system -- but they represent national universities among the top 50 in students and research in the nation. I was comparing the SUNYs to the regional privates in New York State.</p>

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You've really confounded my statements here. All I'm saying is that it's pretty obvious that more people in the USA know where the University of Chicago is located than know where Northwestern University or Rice University are located, and that this might play a role in perceived prestige. Duh

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<p>Obviously most people know where the University of Chicago is, as the location is in its very name, but I don't see how that really contributes to its perceived prestige. If anything, it contributes to its perceived lack of prestige, for as I've said before, many people wrongly think that the UChicago is just a nondescript city school of little repute (just like UPenn is constantly mistaken for a regular state school). </p>

<p>On the other hand, a lack of geographic detail often times contributes to the mystique of a school. For example, countless people outside of the Northeast have great difficulty in placing exactly where Yale and Princeton are, and have trouble even with Harvard in that they tend to think it's in Boston, when all of Harvard except for the business school and the athletic facilities are actually in Cambridge. Many Easterners similarly have trouble locating Stanford and Caltech, as they often times seem to think that the Bay Area and Southern California are right next to each other when they are hundreds of miles apart. But the most egregious example of all would probably be Berkeley. For example, when I recently once wore my Cal cap to a party that was populated with mostly PhD economics students from Harvard and MIT, nobody recognized it even when I explained that the term 'Cal' was actually short for the "University of California at Berkeley", despite the fact that everybody there had obviously had at least heard of the state of California and Berkeley is clearly a top 5 economics school. If my cap had just said "Berkeley", surely everybody would have recognized the school despite probably none of them knowing where Berkeley was located on a map. But when they saw "Cal" and heard the full name of "University of California at Berkeley", they just assumed that it was a mediocre state school.</p>

<p>The point is, (geographic) familiarity tends to breed contempt. There's a big difference between knowing where a school is geographically and thinking that that school is prestigious. UChicago unfortunately suffers from a yawning prestige deficit that is almost laughable.</p>

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<p>sakky--</p>

<p>Interesting to read your posts about Chicago.</p>

<p>Re: Graduation Rate.</p>

<p>The graduation rates (I have no data in front of me, I'll take you at your word that Chicago and CalTech are significantly below the Ivies in 4 and 6-year rates) are a bit mystifying to me. From the way I see it, as long as your parents are financially on board with paying what they're asked to pay, simply coming here and getting a degree is not that difficult. Lots of my friends and I can graduate in less than 4 years, and I can graduate in 3, with nothing more than the fact that we have some bonus credits from AP exams and we haven't switched majors.</p>

<p>As long as students manage not to act irresponsibly, I don't imagine walking across that stage to receive a diploma is that challenging. At this point, it's a little less challenging than getting in.</p>

<p>Speaking of which, I'd like to know how old the graduation rate data is, because the more selective the admissions process becomes, the less likely Chicago is going to admit a student who can't find his or her way to graduation. Once upon a time, I think the school had a difficult time finding applicants who wanted to do what the core then asked of them, because the students who were right for this challenge were often compelled to go to other schools, and Chicago had upwards of a 70% acceptance rate. Nowadays, I don't think that's the issue. Our acceptance rate hovers around 25-30%, and it seems to me there are plenty of smart, capable, motivated applicants who didn't make it in this year. Now, I'm more sympathetic to the students who weren't admitted than the students who can't find a way to get a diploma.</p>

<p>But say that a student admitted at Chicago needed a diploma for the resume's sake. It would not be difficult for that person to find another institution on which he or she could breeze through on the route to a degree. Maybe not a fancypants degree, but a degree nonetheless.</p>

<p>Re: Name brand awareness.</p>

<p>One of the things that attracted me to Chicago was the relative lack of awareness. I don't feel uncomfortable telling a crowd of people that it's where I go to school-- if they haven't heard of it, they probably don't care that much about elite colleges to begin with and won't think much of it, and if they do care about elite colleges, then they'll be aware of it. I don't need to trumpet around the fact that the SAT midrange of students at my school is so-and-so and the ACT midrange is such-and-such. Really. Spare me. I'd rather wear my "Where Fun Comes to Die" sweatshirt twenty times over than be labeled as "elitist" or "snobby" based on my "elite" school.</p>

<p>Here's one of those CC attitudes that just BUGS me--that people SHOULD to know about elite schools, or else they're "simple" or "uninformed." Honestly, people can be very smart and just might not be very aware, depending on where they live, their financial background, their educational background, and the ages and abilities of their children about a Brown or an Amherst or a Pomona. If were were on a baseball forum, perhaps it would be a shame if I didn't know about how the Pittsburgh Pirates are doing, but you wouldn't think twice if I couldn't name at least four colleges in and around Pittsburgh (CMU, UPitt, Chatham, Point Park). Now, because we're a college forum, you care about how much I know about the Pittsburgh schools and not the Pittsburgh sports teams. I don't think having the US News ranks memorized is any more a part of a responsible adult's education than I do having the NL and AL regional standings memorized.</p>

<p>I also think that the lack of awareness can work in my favor on job applications. When my mom wanted to change jobs, she had the hardest time getting hired, despite the fact that she had two degrees from two different Ivies on her resume. (I'll let the readers at home guess which ones). My mom thought herself as quite the application "catch" due to her academic experience, but many prospective employers passed over her because they didn't want somebody "above" them. </p>

<p>A headhunter suggested that she play down the degrees, and play up some other things that sounded more simple, and the job offers started coming in. At her current job, she's the only Ivy degreed one around, and I think she sometimes feels like the office resents her for it when she speaks up in meetings, as if she is automatically power-hungry and overly ambitious because of her degrees.</p>

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<p>Certain schools are known and highly respected nationally regardless if you are in a different region of the country. When you are applying to top businesses(I mean like GS, Merril Lynch, JP Morgan, top Hedgefunds), top techs (apply, google, Microsoft), top law firms and top established medical practices certain schools are invariably held in higher regard than others. Does that mean you can't get the job from a less known school, absolutely not. It means that coming from a top schools gives you an advantage(2 kids may go to GS from UW, but maybe 60 will come from Upenn).These schools with the strongest national recognitions in this regard are Stanford+MIT+Cal Tech(engineering), the Ivies, and Duke. Those right now are undeniably the most nationally prestigious schools where top employers are concerned. You can maybe add a few more schools in, but this list pretty much demonstrates the consensus. So stop giving me this ******** on regional biases, which obviously exist, but they do not supersede the recognition of these schools for most who need to know. If you want to work in a regional practice, like at a local bank or hospital than sure any regional school is fine, but if you aspire to the next level than the more prestigious school matters.</p>

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The graduation rates (I have no data in front of me, I'll take you at your word that Chicago and CalTech are significantly below the Ivies in 4 and 6-year rates) are a bit mystifying to me. From the way I see it, as long as your parents are financially on board with paying what they're asked to pay, simply coming here and getting a degree is not that difficult. Lots of my friends and I can graduate in less than 4 years, and I can graduate in 3, with nothing more than the fact that we have some bonus credits from AP exams and we haven't switched majors...</p>

<p>Speaking of which, I'd like to know how old the graduation rate data is,

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<p>You can see for yourself here: </p>

<p>College</a> Navigator - University of Chicago</p>

<p>The data is completely up-to-date, as it comes from the entering class of 2001, which is obviously the most recent year from which you can measure a 6-year graduation rate. UChicago has a significantly lower 6-year graduation rate than even Cornell, which is clearly the worst of the Ivies when it comes to graduation. </p>

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But say that a student admitted at Chicago needed a diploma for the resume's sake. It would not be difficult for that person to find another institution on which he or she could breeze through on the route to a degree. Maybe not a fancypants degree, but a degree nonetheless.

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<p>But that's precisely the point. Sure, I can agree that those who can't make it to graduation from UChicago will probably still be able to get a degree from another school, although not (as you put it) a fancypants degree. But that's exactly what I'm talking about: given the ex-ante choice of Chicago or a"fancypants" school (i.e. an Ivy, Stanford), the rationally risk-averse choice is the latter. Let's face it. Most people are risk averse. Most people will choose a guaranteed $400k rather than a 50% chance of getting a million (but also a 50% chance of getting nothing). Which gets back to the question I posed before: why should people take chances if they don't have to? </p>

<p>Now, where I could agree with you is that there probably are some people who could get into Chicago but not into one of those other top-flight schools. Then, those people should choose Chicago because it's the best they can do. But what I'm saying is, if you have such a choice, then given risk-aversion, why would you choose Chicago? </p>

<p>Ultimately, I think the real problem is that Chicago should simply stop admitting students who won't graduate. Why admit students who aren't going to make it? You say that people should have little difficulty in graduating, but at the end of the day, for whatever reason, a full 10% of the entering class will not have graduated in 6 years. Why did Chicago admit these people? Whether they transferred out or flunked out or whatever, it probably would have been better for everybody if they had never been admitted in the first place. </p>

<p>The second recommendation is that Chicago should be doing more to help those students who are struggling to actually graduate. Personally, I think all schools should do this, but especially those like Chicago who suffer from low graduation rates (relative to their peers). Since Chicago did admit these students, Chicago should take some responsibility for helping them actually succeed by granting them degrees. Why not? Both George Bush and John Kerry have both admitted to being extremely lazy and irresponsible college students, yet Yale still allowed them to graduate and move on with their lives. Both of them got mediocre grades (with Kerry even getting 6 D's), but they still graduated. </p>

<p>But given that Chicago, for whatever reason, refuses to enact these recommendations, the risk-averse choice as a prospective student is still probably not to go to Chicago, unless you don't have a comparable choice. Sad but true. Yes, I know that's harsh, but just think about it from the perspective of that prospective student. Why should he choose Chicago if he has a safer choice with comparable/better prestige? I think you would agree that that's a difficult argument to win. </p>

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One of the things that attracted me to Chicago was the relative lack of awareness. I don't feel uncomfortable telling a crowd of people that it's where I go to school-- if they haven't heard of it, they probably don't care that much about elite colleges to begin with and won't think much of it, and if they do care about elite colleges, then they'll be aware of it. I don't need to trumpet around the fact that the SAT midrange of students at my school is so-and-so and the ACT midrange is such-and-such. Really. Spare me. I'd rather wear my "Where Fun Comes to Die" sweatshirt twenty times over than be labeled as "elitist" or "snobby" based on my "elite" school.

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<p>Yeah, but I would argue that you're getting the worst of both worlds. Sorry if that's harsh, but it's probably true. You end up with the vast majority of regular people who have never heard of UChicago and just think it's a mediocre school. You then also have those people who have heard of it and do think it's quite elitist and arrogant (i.e. "UChicago, isn't that where Barack Obama used to teach constitutional law, well, aren't you the fancypants, etc. etc.") Hence, you're getting slammed both ways. </p>

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A headhunter suggested that she play down the degrees, and play up some other things that sounded more simple, and the job offers started coming in. At her current job, she's the only Ivy degreed one around, and I think she sometimes feels like the office resents her for it when she speaks up in meetings, as if she is automatically power-hungry and overly ambitious because of her degrees.

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<p>Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you need to play down your degrees because they're too powerful. Harvard graduates, in particular, have made it quite the artform to deliberately conceal where they went to school, lest they be accused of 'dropping the H-bomb'. Hence, often times, if you went to one of these 'fancypants' schools, the best thing to do is simply not mention it at all, or to mention it only in passing: i.e. at the very end of your resume. Nobody says that you have to mention where you went to school. You can just list that you have a college degree and not say where it came from. Heck, you don't even have to list it at all.</p>

<p>But the difference is that you have the choice. Some employers, i.e. the most elite ones, absolutely love elite degrees. Others, not so much. With an elite degree, you have the choice regarding whether, where and how to utilize its prestige. With a non-elite degree, you don't have that choice.</p>

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<p>


SUNY-Buffalo is the supposed flagship of the system. It is arguably the worst flagship university of any state that is top-10 in population.</p>

<p>And you'd really compare those schools you listed to the privates in New York? Schools like Columbia, Cornell, Rochester, Syracuse, Hamilton, Colgate, Rensslaer, Vassar, Union, etc etc etc? Come off it! </p>

<p>The best state university systems maintain a comparable or better reputation to their in-state private counterparts. Flagship universities like Berkeley, UVA, UMich, Wisconsin, UNC-CH, et cetera have no counterpart in the SUNY system, which is pathetic.</p>

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Isn't that the very definition of being "uninformed?"


I'm sure they do. Things like these make me feel completely warranted in labelling the ignorant as such. I will not hesitate to call a spade a spade.</p>

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You think it's that easy? That the U of C can simply take a stack of applications, pull one out at random, and know whether or not that person will graduate?</p>

<p>


Has it ever occurred to you that they may have been fully able to graduate but CHOSE to transfer away?</p>

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<p>^ Did you not comprehend the point of the discussion? We were comparing the prospects of students attending regional private schools in New York to the SUNYs. Not the prospects of students attending national private schools in New York to the SUNYs. And I was suggesting that employers will not significantly favor a kid coming out of IC or Siena or Hobart or RIT vs. SUNY-Binghamton.</p>

<p>Perhaps you didn't see my other post:</p>

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And that was the point of my post... when compared to regional privates, like Ithaca College or Canisius or Siena or Fordham or Villanova, the top SUNY schools are not looked over by employers.</p>

<p>I also don't disagree that the Midwestern flagships are head and shoulders about the SUNY system -- but they represent national universities among the top 50 in students and research in the nation. I was comparing the SUNYs to the regional privates in New York State.

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<p>I would also agree that it is pathetic that New York State doesn't have a stronger system of public higher education at the research university level. It's community colleges and four-year colleges are quite good. But knowing the history of higher education in New York State, one could argue that the state's private universities can help to fulfill the role, and that in many ways Cornell acts as a quas-public flagship campus.</p>

<p>At least New York has a better university system than Massachusetts and Connecticut.</p>

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The data is completely up-to-date, as it comes from the entering class of 2001, which is obviously the most recent year from which you can measure a 6-year graduation rate. UChicago has a significantly lower 6-year graduation rate than even Cornell, which is clearly the worst of the Ivies when it comes to graduation.

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<p>Whoa there, let's not draw conclusions when there are none. Chicago stands at 90%, Cornell at 92%, and Dartmouth at 93%. Do you consider Chicago to be significantly lower than Cornell or Dartmouth? Do you consider Cornell to be 'worse' than Dartmouth even though Cornell has a lot of confounding factors that might affect its graduation rate (e.g. more diverse socio-economic background, some unique five-year programs, lower academic qualifications in some of the niche majors (e.g. agriculture))?</p>

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<p>


Admittedly, I hadn't seen your other post when I replied. </p>

<p>But I take umbrage with how you seem to limit the term "regional privates" to schools that for whatever reason aren't the most prestigious. I could take that same logic and say that UC-Berkeley is more prestigious than a "regional" school like Santa Clara. Do you see the flaw there? </p>

<p>The fact is that most of the private schools I mentioned in my post are recognized as more prestigious by people living in the New York region than any of New York's publics.</p>

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But I take umbrage with how you seem to limit the term "regional privates" to schools that for whatever reason aren't the most prestigious. I could take that same logic and say that UC-Berkeley is more prestigious than a "regional" school like Santa Clara. Do you see the flaw there?

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<p>No. There are certain schools that draw applicants from a national population. There are other schools that draw applicants from a regional population. This has nothing to do with 'prestige', a term that is so ephemeral when it comes to college admissions it is hard to place a finger on. If I get into Emory because my parents paid for a private education and SAT tutoring, is that prestigious? If I get into the University of Buffalo Honors Program on a full scholarship is that prestigious?</p>