NEWS BULLETIN: Ohio Teen to Attend Harvard Summer School !!!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>I think you miss the point, which is that such stories disproportionately involve local kids having been admitted to <em>Harvard</em> vs. having been admitted to any other college or university. </p>

<p>This case was interesting in that it represented the extreme: a local kid who was not even admitted as an undergraduate, but to a Harvard Summer School program for high school students.</p>

<p>By way of comparison, here's another story from the big-city Cincinnati Enquirer (same region) about a local girl having been admitted to Harvard.
<a href="http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/NEWS0102/505150418/1058/NEWS01%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/NEWS0102/505150418/1058/NEWS01&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>What intrigues me (naturally) is the impact of the Harvard name not only in small towns and big cities in this country, but - uniquely - in all four corners of the earth.</p>

<hr>

<p>Further you seem to have leapt to unjustified conclusions about this Harvard Summer School girl's school district - also headquartered in Cincinnati, by the way - which is one of the largest in Ohio, with 9,000 students.</p>

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<p>What exactly does it prove that Harvard's name is better known than that of any other university? If we were using that as a measure of a school's excellence, than wouldn't we also have to conclude that no LAC is "better" than any Ivy League school, Georgetown, Duke, Emory, UVA, UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, JHU, or any other better known, competitive college?</p>

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<p>I agree that there is such a trend in favor of more local news, but the current readership and circulation of the Cincinnati Enquirer vastly exceeds that of the Batavia local Community Press. The population of people outside of Batavia reading this story is minimal, except for now that you've linked it! But that still doesn't make it especially significant.</p>

<p>The 21st largest of 607 districts in Ohio sounds special, but 9000 students and only 2 high schools isn't really all that substantial. With two high schools, there are probably less than half a dozen students with even a shot at Harvard every year.</p>

<p>And while we're at it, Cincinnati isn't that large a city anyway. It's not like a girl getting to spend a summer at Harvard is big news in Chicago or anything.</p>

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<p>I don't understand YOUR thesis at all.</p>

<p>Here is my thesis:</p>

<p>Harvard is unique in this country and in all corners of the earth in that people are intensly interested in what happens there. Why? Because they almost universally understand it to be (whether you agree or not is irrelevant) the world's best college. </p>

<p>If a local kid get in there - whether we are talking rural Kentucky, the Texas oil lands, Northern Minnesota, Singapore, South Korea, Argentina, or the upper East Side of Manhattan - its a feel-good story.</p>

<p>That you may feel resentful, or be of the mind thate these rubes and dim foreigners are bamboozled by stupid notions of meaningless "prestige" tells us a helluva lot more about YOUR hangups than about the accuracy of their perceptions.</p>

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<p>My contentions in this thread can be summed as follows:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Harvard is not so far and above better than every other university. It has peers in terms of educational quality as well as local and international opinion. There is not a universal consensus, as you claim, that it is "the world's best college". </p></li>
<li><p>There appears to be a difference in opinion between the well-educated and those who are not. Among those who have had less access to education, Harvard commands greater prestige than among those who know enough about other schools to make a fair comparison. I do think that speaks very well of Harvard's image-making/marketing, but I don't think it's important. I'm not resentful or hung up about the perceptions of others, however, I do not believe the opinion of someone without collegiate experience is relevant in assessing a college.</p></li>
<li><p>A story about personal success is indeed wonderful in any situation. But being accepted to the Harvard Summer School is not a significant accomplishment.</p></li>
<li><p>Batavia is a tiny community, and I believe that explains the relative rarity of even a summer school attendee, which is what made the story seem newsworthy.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Finally, I do resent your implication of xenophobia or elitism on my part. I pass no judgement on people who view Harvard as 'the one and only' except to note that collegiate experience tends to prove otherwise for many.</p>

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<p>Sour grapes, I'd say!</p>

<p>So smart people (like you, I assume) are less likely to see Harvard as the world's best university than the great unwashed?</p>

<p>Interesting thesis, but at odds with any survey I've seen, including that by the snooty Times of London.</p>

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<p>I believe I confused the two threads where Batavia was being discussed. My apologies. Point two addresses the last few posts in this thread:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=69465&page=2%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=69465&page=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The thesis you condescendingly translate into an abuse of "the great unwashed" was posited not by me or by a survey, but by the posts of several individuals based on their experiences. That is, they observed that Harvard was more widely recognized among undereducated populations; I then contended that the discrepany stems from experiencing college and realizing that Harvard is no longer so unique.</p>

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<p>"There is not a universal consensus, as you claim, that it is "the world's best college". "</p>

<p>Ummm, actually there is. Harvard is hands-down the world's best university...period. </p>

<p>"I would agree that it is to some degree "harder" to get into Harvard, with its 9% selectivity, than Columbia (with about 12% after you factor in the ED advantage...this has been discussed in other threads), or Penn (21%)."</p>

<p>Did you not read what I wrote about admissions percentages being misleading? Next time, read a post BEFORE writing a response to it.</p>

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<p>Kinda off topic, but if you live in England, they would say that Oxford is better than Harvard. But personally I like Harvard better.</p>

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<p>The London Times ranks Harvard higher.</p>

<p>The Times 2004 rankings:</p>

<p>1 Harvard University US 1000.0 (points out of 1000 max.)
2 University of California, Berkeley US 880.2
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 788.9
4 California Institute of Technology US 236 738.9
5 Oxford University UK 731.8
6 Cambridge University UK 725.4
7 Stanford University US 688.0
8 Yale University US 582.8
9 Princeton University US 557.5
10 ETH Zurich Switzerland 553.7</p>

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<p>As reported in the Sunday Times, September, 2004:</p>

<h2>Rank School Total score</h2>

<p>1 Harvard 100.0
2 Stanford 77.2
3 Cambridge 76.2
4 Berkeley, California 74.2
5 Massachusetts IT 72.4
6 California IT 69.0
7 Princeton 63.6
8 Oxford 61.4
9 Columbia 61.2
10 Chicago 60.5</p>

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<p>eyez: I read your post, but you didn't substantiate the statement that selectivity is misleading, except to claim that the applicant pool is stronger at Harvard. I disagree. Allowing for ED gives Columbia a more useful selectivity percentage, but it still indicates that the school is a peer of Harvard in terms of difficulty of getting in. There's no point arguing subjective opinions about the usefulness of selectivity as a measure unless there's something objective to back it up. More to the point, you haven't given a solid reason why "the percentage of applicants accepted" is a misleading measure of "how difficult it is to get in". Don't be ridiculous.</p>

<p>That said, objective measures don't fully encapsulate something as normative as evaluating colleges. Byerly is citing rankings surveys and I'm citing selectivity percentages. Neither provides a comprehensive picture of how a school is perceived, but they give an idea.</p>

<p>We could debate endlessly whether or not we think "Harvard is hands-down the world's best university...period." The fact is, not everyone agrees with that statement.</p>

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<p>When one refers to a "consensus view" one acknowledges that such may not be the view of every man, woman and child - including abc etc.!</p>

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<p>It appears as though I misunderstood what you intended with this thread Byerly. </p>

<p>I agree that the reason this story made it to print was because the girl got into Harvard, albeit Harvard SSP. There is no doubt, in my mind at least, that Harvard's image is above any other academic institution in the world and merely dropping the name in conversation, anywhere, is likely to turn heads and get attention. </p>

<p>This does not mean that I endorse the view that it is the best institution in the world, particularly for undergraduate studies, but that is discussion for another thread. </p>

<p>To "sophmore," having studied in a British high school, I can tell you with quite some confidence that the majority of young Britons feel that Oxbridge is not comparable with top US universities. In addition, Cambridge is currently considered to be the premier university, not Oxford.</p>

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<p>You're absolutely right! However, when one refers to a "universal consensus", one avers a lack of dissent.</p>

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<p>One avers nothing of the sort.</p>

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<p>Gentlemen, please. Please stop the sophisticated formal talk, its sickening. Whatever happened to educated, colloquial english? Thats beside the point, however, it can be agreed that rankings are influenced by populations worldwide. Many associations may consider Cambridge to exceed Oxford, but in terms of what people think, Oxford is better than Cambridge. The same applies to Harvard, albeit Harvard is recognized as the #1 in the world. Many people may state "Ohh Harvard is similar to Yale, Princeton etc" and will try to show errors in Harvard and bring highlights to said universities. Nevertheless, the point of the matter is that Harvard is better by far. Double the endowment of Yale, better faculty, a greater number of succesful alumni, and it is recognized because it is the oldest in the United States. Most of us can agree that the best country in the world (please dont shift this argument to a arrogant concensus of some republican), should also have the best University in the world. In addition, Shanghai University is a piece of crap. There is no way Stanford is 2nd.</p>

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<p>The Shanghai ratings, which are based on certain quantifiable distinctions earned by alumni or staff, are so faulty as to be close to worthless, especially in considering undergraduate education. </p>

<p>1) The study includes those who earned masters or doctorate degrees at an institution as alumni of a school. This clearly favors those schools with larger graduate programs, and is irrelevent in considering undergraduate education. Presumably, the same standard is used in evaluating the achievements of faculty.</p>

<p>2)The five main criteria are based on total number of awards or honors recieved, and are not normalized by size. Instead, Shanghai includes a sixth category, worth only ten percent of a college's total score, that considers all of the previous categories in relation to the respective sizes of the institution.</p>

<p>3) If we are to even partially accept Byerly's oft-repeated inference that qualitiy of student reflects on the quality of the school, which I think most of us do, than it is hard to explain how a valid study would rank Brown lower than nearly all of the UCs, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Arizona, Michigan State, Purdue, Penn State, Rutgers, and many other schools widely seen as less desirable or prestigious within the US. I don't think Dartmouth even cracks the top 100.</p>

<p>Even the normalized category seems to pain a fairly skewed picture, but, for what its worth, the top ten in relation to size are:</p>

<p>1) Caltech (100)
2)Cambridge (73.2)
3)Stanford (68.1)
4)Princeton (67.3)
5)Harvard (60.6)
7)Oxford (59.0)
8)Yale (50.4)
9)Tokyo University (49.8)
10) UC- San Fransisco (48.8)</p>

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<p>What I disagree with is that eyezonharvard (who has my wish that he or she does not get into harvard because he or she is pretentious) said that other universities that are not HYP are simply not as good. He or she needs to learn that this is not true, and that good students apply to many different schools based on what they like. So I chose Columbia over Princeton and Yale and Harvard, and applied early. This does not make ME an inferior applicant. Kids like me get into HYP all the time. Since I didn't even apply to HYP I can't boast of that. However, my friend chose Columbia over ALL 3 HYP. Please look into other schools, eyezonharvard, because they're also good.</p>

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<p>Harvard is thought of as the best school in the word. I think it would be hard to make a compelling argument against that. But does that mean it actually is the "best" school in the world? I'm of the opinion that there really isn't one "best" school, because there are too many variables at play. Every person will react different to different environments, teachers, food, climate, class size, stress, whatever. Some people hate to be cold, so maybe a school on the west coast would be "best" for them. Shy students might feel more comfortable at a larger school where they can feel more anonymous, rather than knowing everyone on campus. Its the individual student who decides which is "best" for them, not some ranking or the opinion of a bunch of kids on the internet.</p>