<p>Guys, all these "are X school's students smarter than Y school's studnets" threads are dumb. It should be obvious which school has the smartest students:</p>
<p>Bob Jones University.</p>
<p>This should be obvious, since everyone who goes anywhere else is likely to sin and thus go to hell.</p>
<p>Geez guys... I was asking about Northwestern v. Vanderbilt, and the thread has digressed into a Stanford v. Caltech... Thank you for everyone who contributed, but really no thanks to out-of-topic discussions</p>
<p>You are quite right Kowloon. I appologize for my hand in the digression. </p>
<p>To your point, I recommend you visit NU and Vanderbilt to establish if there is a school you prefer significantly more than the other. Assuming you don't have a major preference, I would recommend NU over Vanderbilt. NU is a slightly better university overall and its Economics department is truly awesome (definitely top 10 in the US).</p>
<p>kowloon,</p>
<p>Rereading your original post leads me to believe you may want to add both of these schools to your list. In that case, I believe they are both worth adding.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt will be a bit easier to gain admission to, although a 30% rise in applications this year will probably leave it with a somewhat lower admission rate and higher stats profile than has been the case in the past.</p>
<p>I don't know if you are an international already residing in the U.S., or if you are applying from overseas. If the latter, visiting all of the campuses on your list may be very difficult. I note that your list contains very (very) rural and isolated schools, as well as some urban campuses. There is not a lot of resemblance between Williams and either NU or Vanderbilt on that score. Are you sure it doesn't matter?</p>
<p>Williams and NU or Vanderbilt are indeed very different, but not nearly as different as Williams and Cal! LOL!</p>
<p>^I'm applying overseas, which is why it is impossible for me to visit :(
Also, since I'm living overseas, I care little about geographical factors in college selection...</p>
<p>PS: I decided not to consider Cal Berk, since I found out that finaid was virtually impossible to get, even when it is the best public univ in the U.S.</p>
<p>good performance in college fed challenge is a strong sign of quality undergrad program. </p>
<p>college fed challenge started 4 years ago and northwestern team won the national champ 3 times in a row before placing 3rd this year.<br>
Fed</a> Challenge Team Places Third in National Competition , NewsCenter, Northwestern University</p>
<p>Sam Lee, I am the first to admit that Northwestern has an excellent Econ department. I would say on par with Columbia, Penn and Yale. However, I don't think the college fed challenge is telling. Do you really think SUNY-Geneseo has the second best undergraduate Economics department in the nation?</p>
<p>I didn't say it's a direct measure; I was just saying it's a good sign on top of their top-10 graduate ranking and I just realized I wasn't clear on that. There's really no accurate measure of undergrad programs out there. Graduate ranking, recruitment...etc are all signs. As far as SUNY-Geneseo goes, it's not second but they probably do have a better undergrad program than most people would think. At least it probably shows that if you are a top student there, you can compete with others from any school. Also, NU's performance has been consistently good; it's not like it was a one-time thing and they just happened to have a good year; they beat uchicago team 4 times in a row. It's probably more than just knowledge in economics; coaching may be an important factor (but then that may indicate the department is supportive for undergrads?); presentation and communication skills were probably important factors during the competition also.</p>
<p>speaking of Penn, why don't you apply there? It gets a lot of overlap with northwestern</p>
<p>
[quote]
I decided not to consider Cal Berk, since I found out that finaid was virtually impossible to get
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, it's not. It's difficult, yes, but it's as difficult as the other schools you're applying to. I know of a few internationals currently attending Berkeley who wouldn't be able to if Berkeley hadn't given them tons of aid.</p>
<p>An international student I know got a Regent scholarship last year. If I recall, he got $25k/year.</p>
<p>i think most if not all of the schools you listed are going to be difficult to get aid as an international. </p>
<p>northwestern, for example, i know provides aid to international students, but they don't do such admissions need-blindly, so, if you are an international student requiring lots of aid, you are going to have to be a very strong candidate in order to gain admission.</p>
<p>
[quote]
NU econ is good, but as for "just below Stanford, harvard, uchicago, MIT," i think it is safe to assume that honor would sooner go to Princeton, Berkeley, Penn, Columbia, Yale...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I apologize for not taking the trouble to include schools like Princeton (and a couple of others) in my initial reference. But nonetheless, NU Econ is generally ranked in the 6-9 range (just behind the 1st set of schools).</p>
<p>Happy now?</p>
<p>other than NRC and US News, there's also ranking from econphd.net:
[url=<a href="http://www.econphd.net/rankings.htm%5DRankings%5B/url">http://www.econphd.net/rankings.htm]Rankings[/url</a>]</p>
<p>1 Harvard U
2 U Chicago
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
4 U California - Berkeley
5 Princeton U
6 Stanford U<br>
7 Northwestern U
8 U Pennsylvania
9 Yale U
10 New York U</p>
<p>Tbh, I don't really draw distinctions among the top 10. I wouldn't say Harvard's econ > NU's, or Berkeley's > Stanford's.</p>
<p>From the original post for this thread:</p>
<p>
[quote]
double major in Econ/Psych
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I gather there aren't too many psych majors on cc, since nobody has spoken up about the psych departments at the two schools Kowloon is asking about.</p>
<p>Kowloon, if you are still with us, is there a particular overlap between these two fields that interests you? I know nothing about psych at either school (other than the fact that my son is currently taking a psych course at Vanderbilt that happens to be double-listed with computer science), but I am curious if these are just two fields that interest you, or if you have a particular career trajectory in mind.</p>
<p>(I have a reason for asking, but I'm waiting for your answer first.)</p>