My kid got into Northwestern University and Vanderbilt.

College Search & Selection
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@RattaNoodles : That is a stupid academic comparison. You are likely comparing your freshman year at Emory where you perhaps intentionally chose easy courses and instructors or only had access to such instructors and courses due to class standing, versus your work in a more advanced year at Penn. Don’t think it is a fair comparison. The prestige (though you sounded very snobbish using that as the number 1 factor) is valid, but the other stuff hardly made sense. Your academic effort difference can also be partially explained by differences in departmental strengths. Like if you took courses in traditionally weaker departments at Emory (for example, it would be ridiculous for a pre-business freshman or sophomore at Emory to compare their courses to Wharton as the pre-business student at Emory is likely to choose and take courses that enhance their record for GBS admissions. Usually the plight of pre-business folks at Emory is easy in part because the pre-reqs for GBS are easy…then GBS hits. And interestingly enough, some publications rate GBS UG program at higher academic quality than Wharton and no one would deny that peer UG business programs of Wharton are of similar intensity, even if their reputation will never be as big), then you will of course notice a difference (dept stronger at Penn and taking more advanced classes). For example, if I majored in chemistry. Penn and Emory’s course work would be similar (I guarentee you that if a person transferred to Emory from Penn and then signed up for someone like Dr. Weinschenk and Dr. Eisen in the same semester, they will feel as if they are working harder or as hard at Emory…so these comparisons need context), and both would be better than Vanderbilt and Northwestern would be a bit better than all of them. If I looked at economics, Penn kills, Emory and Vanderbilt similar (though I suspect, Emory is a little more rigorous with intermediate and upperlevel courses, neither school’s econ. department is known for intensity), NU in between. And this comes from me actually seeing some of the course materials. Life sciences (neuroscience and biology), Penn and NU similar, Emory in the middle, and Vanderbilt a tad lower (at the undergraduate level, the other 3 excel quite a bit more here and the curriculum structure and co-curricular opps. through said departments are much better at the others). Outside of that, Emory and Vanderbilt are similar caliber wise but there are hardly no similarities in social and intellectual environment nor departmental strengths/academic choices of students (both have economics in the top 5 for example, but really nothing else overlaps).

Also, your perception of Vanderbilt vs. Emory’s placement in high finance or business related careers is false. They place about the same on Wall Street (not particularly well) or high paying business related jobs and in fact Emory may have a slight edge due to GBS. Emory also performs similarly in other outcome related metrics which is awfully strange since Emory’s scores have traditionally been lower and are now MUCH lower. Yet, interestingly enough, we still have more Fulbrights and were the one to have a Rhodes and Beineke Scholar this cycle (they had neither). Northwestern, now that is a cut above both (despite its stats being lower than Vanderbilt’s). I am trying to figure out where you prestige whores get your often misguided if not wrong perceptions. A student transferring to Vanderbilt would basically only get more school spirit out of it unless they are choosing a major only offered there. A person transferring to NU may get a bump in quality, placement, and spirit.

I suspect the USNews rankings (easily gamed by selectivity metrics among other things) leads to some strange conclusions when evaluating or estimating academic quality and even success when it comes to outcomes.

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@bernie12, I completely agree.

I think that people go by USNews rankings too much because actually evaluating course rigor is hard work (and not everyone is capable of judging rigor) as is simply looking at outcomes, evidently.

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@PurpleTitan : I suspect that many of us as prospective students and undergraduates are/were really naive…the existence of this thread kind of demonstrates it. I still don’t understand why prospective students don’t actually attempt to sit in any of the classes they envision taking at each school (this isn’t that difficult and most schools offer ways of doing so formally. Also, as large as some courses are, doing so informally is not particularly difficult. You simply join a cohort of students in a lecture hall). They may indeed discover some differences in teaching culture and philosophy in their area(s) of interest (you can also meet and observe students in an academic setting). I know, as a URM invited to Emory’s Essence program, that was an opportunity I took very seriously. I get the feeling many or even most folks on a tour only aim to find out the following things:
a) ethnic diversity
b) rah rah school pride
c) Niceness of amenities and campus layout
d)prestige

Lots of feelgood and eyecandy…like an amusement park!

None of which have to do with undergraduate program strength. This exactly how universities can essentially fool students, even elites. Just distract them and maybe they won’t seriously investigate. And hopefully they won’t care about anything beyond those 3 or 4 in the first place. When the smoke clears, if they realize they did care more about other things and realize they aren’t a fit…they should blame themselves…but this thread is something much sillier.

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@bernie12 any links / rankings?

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@ClarinetDad16: You can look at Fulbright Producers for example: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/top-producing-institutions for example:

Emory compete’s fairly well, even today despite being much less selective than peers other than say, Berkeley (where the two are about equal stats wise).

If you want to look at some stuff regarding undergraduate rankings of business schools, placement, or “feeder schools”(MBA) from them, Poets and Quants covers such stuff pretty thoroughly and often even uses other publications to support their analysis.

One thing I would be interested in seeing is how Emory’s overall feeder school performance is holding up. I saw a ranking from 2008 where it was slightly ahead of WUSTL (we were at 32 or something) and VU was not on there, but I cannot find it. I only found this more recent one from WSJ (maybe they always did it): http://hubpages.com/education/Wall-Street-Journal-College-Rankings-The-Full-List-and-Rating-Criteria

It is about in the same position.

If you want evidence from coursework and stuff, I would have to regather it (had a lot more stuff on other computer which tanked), but in terms of my concern about these stats heavy places versus their academics or ability to predict academic rigor (I usually choose STEM because they are known to be very rigorous at elite institutions, private or public), I’ve done such comparisons with say, Emory, Harvard, Vanderbilt, and Berkeley elsewhere, much to some people’s chagrin (some people really hate it when you demonstrate that their school may not be as “hard” as they thought it would be, especially if it is more selective than places it is being compared to). But I may have done it several times. I could do it again, but it would involving me stealing from course hero.

Either way, some schools, including Vanderbilt and Emory, don’t seem to particularly outperform each other nor other elite schools (even with Wall street, VU was at 27 and Emory at 32 in a power-ranking, so my bad, they are marginally better, but ultimately that makes both of them essentially irrelevant).

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http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/wso-rankings-for-investment-banks-university-power-rankings-part-10-of-10

Even then, it appears most students go to different firms altogether between the two and since business isn’t my thing, I can’t say which set of firms targeting each is more prestigious or whether that even matters.

However, I seriously doubt this ranking methodology considering the positioning of places like Stanford and Chicago

But the point is, there are some schools performing in outcome based metrics as well as you’d expect and those that are clearly underperforming once you consider student body “talent”…Emory manages to over-perform somehow because when it comes to the admissions arms race, it is essentially Japan (disarmed, demilitarized, irrelevant) in comparison to its academic peers and schools which it has lots of applicant overlap, yet it still manages to keep up with some of them when it comes to outcomes. In that sense I consider it a “Stanford-lite” (and literally no other sense- I am not delusional such that I would compare academics at the two…really no point). Stanford’s scores lag behind its near peers some (despite being excellent) and yet generally it performs as well and often outperforms in some cases so it has managed an admissions scheme that is stats heavy enough to ensure academic success of students in the level of curriculum they want to pitch (and like most other schools, it does not require a near 1500/1600 SAT as they and the non-HYPMCt schools know it doesn’t) while also being holistic enough to select other qualities to ensure outcomes rival “near peers” (HYPM). Difference is, our near peers are not places like HYPM