<p>that was really mature and such an insightful argument EPlayer007 [/sarcasm]</p>
<p>EPlayer007,</p>
<p>
[quote]
By the way, I don't have a hidden agenda, I'm in the process of deciding between Notre Dame and Northwestern right now.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Looks like you are not a very good liar. Your statement about ND winning 70% of the cross-admit seems to be a BS. I hope you'd learn to be more ethical in your required religious classes at ND. </p>
<p>By the way, some people even give up their lives for their religion. I wouldn't be suprised if many people choose ND over others because of Catholism.</p>
<p>ND is nationally renowned for football. I will give you that. But I am not sure what else it's nationally renowned as far as academics goes.</p>
<p>The whole "unique collegiate experience" has nothing to do with academic reputation. Your seem to have trouble to think critically and confuse the two.</p>
<p>notre dame is higher in revealed preference than northwestern, but all religious schools are ranked disproportionately high, ie: byu, georgetown, etc.</p>
<p>That is why NU has higher sat scores even though it is larger (more spots to fill make it harder to fill class with higher scores), has a HIGHer peer assessment score, and has better recruitment, and has ALWAYS been ranked higher.</p>
<p>You guys are right. I have extreme trouble thinking critically, and I'm not an intellectual.</p>
<p>I mean, I got a 35 on the ACT, and a 2360 on the SAT without a calculator.</p>
<p>You got me, you called me out. The 70% thing wasn't BS....That is from Dan Saracino, director of admissions at Notre Dame....prejudiced...ya....but how can that statistic be skewed?</p>
<p>I was in the process of deciding when I posted my original comment. Now that I've decided ND, I just thought I'd let the Northwestern schoolkids know how I felt about the whining and complaining I'm seeing on the wall.</p>
<p>What the hell do mature, insightful, and intellectual arguments even accomplish on online message boards like this? I've read this whole post, and I've seen about 100 mature, insightful, and intellectual arguments, and none of them have swayed anyone's opinion at all. </p>
<p>All I'm saying is you can't use rankings to say that you are better than ND, and conveniently forget them when comparing yourselves to Duke.</p>
<p>(By the way---where does the peer assessment score come from? US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT DUMBASSES.</p>
<p>NU is a great school, it's got a lot of stuff going for it, but some of it's students and grads (read: this board) are delusional and clearly pretty angry about going to such a socially and athletically inferior school.</p>
<p>So, I'm officially leaving the board. Once more, I'll say GO IRISH, and for all the Northwestern people.....don't worry guys you are as good as Duke. Actually, you're as good as Harvard. What the hell, NU and Oxford can be considered peer institutions can't they?</p>
<p>The only thing that is for certain is that Notre Dame is not a peer of any of those schools you listed.</p>
<p>EPlayer, you seem like the one suffering most from some kind of complex. You're right in that the best thing for you to do is leave... </p>
<p>I concede though neither Northwestern nor Notre Dame is superior to the other. Northwestern does better in rankings, but that only makes a limited statement about the undergraduate experience. Both are great schools of the Midwest hehe.</p>
<p>Eplayer007:</p>
<p>Your post was totally uncalled for. Most people on this thread are not stating that ND is worse or far behind NU. They are stating that the two schools are simply very different schools to begin with, one being a religiously-affiliated institution while the other being a non-sectarian institution; hence their reputations and target "audience" differ from one another as well.
I have a feeling you'll probably be back to read this thread so let me just mention a few things: ND is considered and recognized as, by far, the best catholic school in the nation, no doubt. However, this explains the 70% cross admit rate claimed by your "dean"; those who apply to ND are undoubtedly aware of, if not, prompted to apply to ND in the first place due to its heavy emphasis on catholic values and education. Certainly non-Catholics would not consider going to a school where they are "required" to take courses on Catholicism and theology and attend mass. That narrows down the applicant pool and this explains why more people would choose ND over NU when cross-admitted. I'm sure many Catholics apply to NU as well, but since NU has no religious affiliation, it's applicant pool is far more diverse. The truth of the matter is they are both GREAT schools, but ND is, by no means, "more nationally renowned" nor "virtually identical." In fact, some people don't base their judgment of colleges on sports, so you may want to take that in to consideration when discussing "prestige" too.
I certainly don't see any reason for you to be bashing on NU to that extent of using cuss words if you had "no hidden agenda" as you claimed in your previous post. Based on your first outburst post, I'm guessing you already made the commitment to ND by that point. If you made the choice to go to ND, congratulations; I'm sure you made the right choice for yourself so I hope you can feel that way too. ND is a great school so there's no need for you to constantly claim that ND is "more nationally renowned" than NU. Be confident in the choice you made.</p>
<p>And now, a public service anouncement:</p>
<p>Please don't feed the trolls.</p>
<p>EPlayer, just stop trolling on this forum and go back to your ND buddies to whine. No one is saying NU is as good as Harvard and Oxford, and I don't know how the hell you can assume that. By the way, NU is refered to as the Harvard of the midwest, which means it is the best school in the midwest. Do you know which other school is in the midwest? ND. ND is a good school and no one was denying that, but from your behavior, I have gained a worse image of the school because its students seem to be very insecure. Also the peer assessment score comes from THE COLLEGES, not from US News. US News just averages the score each college gets from all the other colleges. NU has a higher peer score, meaning that other admisitraters at other colleges see NU as a better school than ND.</p>
<p>Many of the peers who assess other schools know nothing about half of the colleges they have to rate.</p>
<p>I don't think religion is as prominent at Notre Dame or Georgetown than it is at a school like BYU. They don't force you to go to church. Catholics are over-represented, but they are still under 50%. There is some religious diversity.
2006 statistics: Catholic 48%, Protestant 30%, Other 5%, Unknown/Chose not to state 14.1%</p>
<p>The biggest draw to ND is the school spirit and academics. It's not as sheltered and homogenous as environment as you think it is.</p>
<p>I'm just gonna go ahead and say no. Here's why, in your own words:</p>
<p>
[quote]
2006 statistics: Catholic 48%, Protestant 30%, Other 5%, Unknown/Chose not to state 14.1%
[/quote]
That is DEFINITELY homogenous. </p>
<p>
[quote=<a href="http://equity.nd.edu/statistics/StudentStatistics.shtml">http://equity.nd.edu/statistics/StudentStatistics.shtml</a>]
* Among the 8332 undergraduates enrolled, the percentage who are women is 46.84%.
* Among the 8332 undergraduates enrolled, the percentage who identify as White is 78.19%.
* The percentage who identify as Hispanic is 8.19%. Asians comprise 5.38%; Blacks comprise 3.70%; Native Americans comprise 0.68%, and Non-Resident Aliens comprise 3.86%.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The University is VERY white, VERY catholic, and even more overwhelmingly Christian. Georgetown is much more diverse than that. </p>
<p>I can't speak as to the religious presence on campus, but from what I've heard, its somewhat more than Georgetown. </p>
<p>For comparison of diversity, here is NU's stats:</p>
<p>Profile of First-year Class (Fall 2006)
Gender
Male 47.2%
Female 52.8%
Ethnic identity
White 59.4%
Asian American 17.2%
Hispanic 7.1%
African American 5.9%
Native American 0.1%
Multiracial 1.6%
Foreign citizens 5.1%
Other and unknown 3.6%</p>
<p>At least 16-20% of NU is Jewish, and it can be assumed with the high asian population that the number of Christians (or at least Catholics) is somewhat reduced as well. And NU isn't even particularly diverse.</p>
<p>well, homogeneity is relative. Someone stated that a non-Catholic would never go to a school like Notre Dame. Exactly half of the students are non-Catholic. </p>
<p>I don't know about what religion Asians are. Religion is banned in China, so there may be a lot of atheists. Koreans are most often Christian, as are a lot of other Asian ethnicities. According to 2001 U.S. census on wikipedia, 80% of the U.S. is Christian. So the fact that Notre Dame is 80% Christian does not signify anything.</p>
<p>In the U.S., 3.9% are non-Christian and 15% are agnostic/atheist. Catholics account for 26% of Americans. So my guess is any school will have a high proportion of Christians. </p>
<p>My guess is that most people would not rule out Notre Dame even if they were agnostics. It might be a little weird to be Jewish and go there, though.</p>
<p>Just to nitpick: That's not US census data. "Public Law 94-521 prohibits the census from asking a question on religious affiliation on a mandatory basis; therefore, the Bureau of the Census is not the source for information on religion." It's from the CUNY graduate center.</p>
<p>And as for the "the US is ___, so the fact that my college is better than that in terms of diversity means its good!". No, in fact, thats not true. I'm not a great believer in diversity as a benefit, but I definitely believe more diversity than is present in the US is a good.</p>
<p>whoops, I looked at the wrong line. it is a "Self-Described Religious Identification of U.S. Adult Population: 1990 and 2001 "</p>
<h2>And as for the "the US is ___, so the fact that my college is better than that in terms of diversity means its good!". </h2>
<p>I wasn't saying that. I don't even go to Notre Dame. But I think people are representing Notre Dame in an inaccurate way. People who are Christian, Catholic, or agnostic would consider going there just because of the school spirit aspect as well as the strong academics. ]</p>
<p>People were trying to draw conclusions about the college culture based on the fact that it's 80% Christian when in fact that directly reflects the percentages in the U.S. Obviously this is not valid reasoning.</p>
<p>Ah, well said, thanks for clarifying.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Duke...seems to attract better math people.
[/quote]
[quote]
If I wanted to study...math I might be more inclined to choose Duke.
[/quote]
collegealum,
Why did you say Duke is better in math? I also thought NU has a great math department, every bit as good if not better than Duke's. Is that something about Duke's math department I should know about?</p>
<p>Duke's math department isn't that well-ranked. He's probably thinking about Duke's performance at Putnam. But one needs to realize Putnam is hardly a reflection of the quality of math department. If you are clever and have taken APs, you have enough math background to participate (i.e. without taking math in your college). Schools don't necessarily have the most talented group to place well in that contest but what they must have is a good coach. WashU won it all three times between mid-70s to mid-80s when it was pretty easy to get in and continued to do well through mid-90s. They had a great coach from the physics department and when I was there, there were flyers advertising the training sessions. Most schools don't have someone who is not only good at coaching students for Putnam but also willing to volunteer his/her free time to coach. I'd never seen anything about training session at NU.</p>