<p>I am in at ND, BC(Honors Program), and Georgetown U.(the College). Like 'em all. Which would you choose and why?</p>
<p>All I know is that someone on the ND admitted student board referred to these three schools as the "Catholic School Triumvirate."</p>
<p>That being said; I love BC, I really do, it's a great school and all that. And I've never visited (or been interested) in Georgetown. But I can tell you that if you are looking for a incredibly strong community, where you can truly be considered part of a family, while getting an awesome education and experiencing the total depth and breadth of tradition, ND is thae place for you .</p>
<p>BC and Gtown are very good schools, I went to none of the 3 schools you mentioned, so good for you. My school was not as highly ranked as these 3, just so you know my perspective.</p>
<p>However, there is no comparison. ND is by far and away the overall best school and carries more weight around the US and world than the other two by a far margin</p>
<p>Do you think that ND carries that much more prestige than Georgetown? Just playing devil's advocate.</p>
<p>66472,</p>
<p>most people will argue the exact opposite of what you've said. Georgetown is more nationally/internationally reknown, and probably offers a better over all education to boot.</p>
<p>But I will agree that ND is way ahead of bc at least with regards to prestige.</p>
<p>"Georgetown is more nationally/internationally reknown, and probably offers a better over all education to boot."</p>
<p>Now this I STRONGLY disagree with. Reknown is one thing, I don't really know and I am biased anyways, but I don't think you can say a better education overall. First of all ND is ranked higher, so that argues against it. Also, I am of the opinion that you get a strong education at any of the top universities, it is more about what you put into it. That being said, I don't think you could get a better education at Georgetown than at ND. There is just nothing I have seen that supports this, not even the rankings.</p>
<p>From an outsider's perspective, Georgetown and Notre Dame are pretty equally "prestigious." (I'd definitely disagree witht he poster that said ND "wins" hands down in this category).</p>
<p>What's your planned career/major? Georgetown is known for its political science and pre-law (and really, other social sciences) because of the vast opportunities offered by its location in Washington, DC. ND is known for being pretty well-rounded...it all depends on what you want.</p>
<p>Also - don't let the rankings or "prestige" factor deter you if you really like Boston College the best. It's a great school, and, as others have said, any education has more to do with what you make out it.</p>
<p>I agree with live-, Notre Dame and Georgetown have roughly equal prestige and academic quality. BC, although a good school, doesn't quite measure up to the other two (the Honors Program may be a plus- but I don't know much about it). Irish, I would disagree with you that the rankings matter all that much- all sorts of biases come into play with those rankings and quality cannot be determined by a spot on a ranking list. In any case, you have to look at individual factors that could influence your decision, for instance, Notre Dame is much more undergraduate-focused than Georgetown and is known to hold truer to Catholic faith and values. Location should also be a consideration: Washington D.C. vs. South Bend...Anyway, I'd say you should choose Notre Dame or Georgetown, depending on which type of environment appeals to you more. You can't go wrong with any of the three. Good luck!</p>
<p>I actually agree with you with the rankings, I don't like them and I don't think they are worth much. However, sometimes you have to use whatever you can get your hands on when debating academic strength. I wouldn't use them to judge between schools, but I do think you can use them to prove that Georgetown isn't far superior to ND academically.</p>
<p>Irish,</p>
<p>Using the US rankings you would probably have to go with the peer assessment and Georgetown has a 4.0 rating and ND a 3.9. BC is 3.5. However, I would also point out that all of the Catholic colleges seem to have lower ratings in the peer assessment section than the other schools.</p>
<p>It really comes down to fit for the student. It looks like another visit to all of the schools is in order.</p>
<p>I disagree with that because if you look at past years, Creighton has a peer assessment of 4.0. I have no idea where this number comes from but I can tell you that while Creighton is a good school, it is not nearly on the level of Georgetown, ND or even BC. Because of that I would not use peer assessment either. The ratings are flawed, but all ratings are, and they at least give people an idea which is important.</p>
<p>I agree, however, that it really just depends on fit. You can get a good education at all three schools (well, maybe not BC....just kidding) so you just have to find out what school you like the best and fits you the best. </p>
<p>I would not use the US News rankings for anything more than finding peer schools, but I would refer to these three as peer schools. That being said, as long as you don't quibble about the difference between 13 and 18 or something like that, I do think that the US News rankings can be helpful. Let's be honest, you can go to any school from 1-25 and get a good education; what will define your college experience is the fit of the college and what you put into it!</p>
<p>Irish,</p>
<p>Peer assessment is done within the group of schools within which a school is classified. In other words, they are being compared to Xavier, Valpo, Drake, Bradley, etc. Not ND, Georgetown and BC. They are classified Universities-Masters in US News.</p>
<p>My other point is that the Catholic schools seem to suffer in peer assessment compared to other schools similarly ranked by US News. This is true for most religiously based schools, i.e. Yeshiva University, Wake Forest, etc.</p>
<p>Fair enough, that makes sense. Why would you trust that score, even given the bias you just named, and the the rankings as a whole though? Again, I just use them for general information such as peer groups, so I don't give them too much credit, but it sounds like you like the peer review score.</p>
<p>EDIT: I am not really trying to challenge but rather learn if this is something I should be looking at</p>
<p>I have no preference for peer assessment. However, it is how schools tend to view each other. Considering that peer assessment is 25% of a schools overall rating USNews considers it important. If you take out peer assessment all 3 of the Catholic colleges under discussion would rise in the rankings (along with WF and Yeshiva 2.9 what is up with that).</p>
<p>What I would like to see in US News is the ability to weight the criterea as a student sees fit and have it produce a dynamic ranking for that student. Going a bit further I would like to see it include a weighting based upon the intended major of the student. Right now you only have that for the undergrad professional schools, i.e. engineering. Those rankings are done completely based upon peer assessment.</p>
<p>What you are describing is a very cool idea. If you have an idea as to how to pull it off, your profile says you are in the computer industry and I have some web programming experience and have a computer second major (though I still think it is kind of a joke major). Perhaps we should try to pull something like this together, if we are brave, and see what happens? Perhaps I am crazy, but I think what you are describing would be very cool and very valuable.</p>
<p>Irish,</p>
<p>Yeah . . . but you would need the API to the USNews data or work as a sub-contractor to USNews . . . unless you want to do a lot of screen-scraping. As far as I know US News has no such API.</p>
<p>Of course we can make a request of them . . . and then you can go in and offer your services to solve their problem!</p>
<p>I don't know, I don't think that US News would be all that receptive to our request as I am sure they like their rankings just the way they are since they make a lot of money off of them as it is. I think someone would have to create a new set of rankings but then the problem of where to get all the stats comes in. You couldn't just steal them from another site, obviously, you would have to get them from the schools somehow. I guess they are all on the websites, right? Anyways, that would be a lot of work!</p>