<p>definitely Northwestern. I didn’t apply to WashU. some programs at WashU might be better, but overall, Northwestern is more prestigious. and i’m not saying that just because i got into NU either.</p>
<p>Academic Prestige: Northwestern > WUSTL</p>
<p>Prestige is probably good if you want to go for a competitive job, or if you want to work internationally (so the companies might like you better because you are an alumnus of a competitive and well known school).
There are other reasons that prestige is good is well but I don’t think going to a school for prestige alone is a great idea. It may be one of the good things about the college if you are deciding between a few, but going to a school because of how famous it is could make your four years miserable.</p>
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<p>So you concede that Northwestern is not as “hard to get in” or as “appealing” as the other schools with higher (yield/admit) ratios.</p>
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<p>I could and I did because prestige and selectivity are closely correlated.</p>
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<p>Until now, I’ve actually never heard of NU mentioned in the “same breath” as Harvard, but whatever.</p>
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<p>Please provide a source for your unsubstantiated claim. And even if you could do so, are you seriously suggesting that the non-HYP ivies, Caltech and Chicago do not share greater overlap of applicant pools with HYPSM than Northwestern? </p>
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<p>No, I know exactly what you and the others are saying. I just disagree.</p>
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<p>You still have made no legitimate argument why this “silly” ratio is not a fair and reasonable ESTIMATION (other than possibly your implicit claim that because Northwestern has a relatively low ratio, it cannot possibly be right).</p>
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<p>I never said that the yield/admit ratio has “PHYSICAL meaning” because neither it nor what it measures are “physical” entities.</p>
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<p>Just so you know, sarcasm without wit isn’t usually very effective. But I admire your attempt.</p>
<p>Please provide a source for your unsubstantiated claim.</p>
<p>Please try to “unsubstantiate” it first.</p>
<p>ladies first.</p>
<p>Your primitive attitude about gender does not reflect well upon the NU student body.</p>
<p>your primitive attitude towards life does not reflect well on the MIT student body.</p>
<p>Polly wants a cracker.</p>
<p>this discussion seems to have no purpose
please terminate it immediately</p>
<p>^hahaha thanks for the fun dimsum. 
yea this thread needs to be terminated.</p>
<p>OK so I was just looking through the Northwestern forum because I had considered applying there and I can’t help but say that some of the claims that many people have made on here are kind of ridiculous… </p>
<p>Firstly, Penn is definitely not near the same level as Dartmouth. On the US news rankings itself, it stands at number 4. But more importantly, Dartmouth is nowhere near as prestigious as Penn in the international community. I know this from firsthand experience, because I am an international student… And yes, I think it is definitely much more important to think about how universities stand internationally because in the globalized world we are living in, people of our generation our more likely than ever to live abroad and get jobs in places outside of their hometown.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of people think that Ivies are much more prestigious than other top schools, but they have to realize that being an Ivy doesn’t necessarily make a college better than other equally competitive ones. After all, the Ivy league was just created as a group of universities that played SPORTS together… of course a lot of Ivies are amazing academically but that doesn’t mean all Ivies are better than other colleges.</p>
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I completely agree with this. All three of the Ivy schools you mentioned aren’t as well known internationally as most people would think. Hmm or actually, Cornell is pretty well known but most people recognize it because they’ve heard it’s a school with a high suicide rate.</p>
<p>I’d say that Northwestern has a decent standing internationally. The other US colleges that are pretty well known across the world are: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Penn, Columbia, Duke, Carnegie Mellon for engineering and UC Berkeley for engineering as well as possible social studies [Although Berkeley is excellent in many fields because it’s ranked at the top 5 or higher for every single academic field (University</a> of california berkeley).] | Top Universities](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/university/84/university-of-california--berkeley).%5D%5DUniversity”>http://www.topuniversities.com/university/84/university-of-california--berkeley).)</p>
<p>That being said, of course it would be wrong to go to a university that you don’t really like for the prestige factor alone. There are many other things that determine how successful you will be in life, and at the end of the day what matters is what YOU make of the college experience. If you have the capability to be successful, you will be successful no matter where you go to college.</p>
<p>@aabbcc1789: haha sorry I only saw your comment after I had posted mine. I just felt like what I was writing really needed to be said on here so I got very into writing my comment.</p>
<p>ooh prestige fight rawrrr</p>
<p>"All three of the Ivy schools you mentioned aren’t as well known internationally as most people would think. "</p>
<p>My favorite part of these arguments is when somebody gets to be the first to say Americans don’t give a crap what foreigners think. It’s sort of the collegeconfidential version of who gets to eat the wishbone meat at the Thanksgiving table. So, please, allow me: </p>
<p>“Look, nobody here cares what colleges are famous in Bumf***istan.”</p>
<p>To the OP: you are putting way too much faith in the minor differences in US News rankings and in the opinions of people here. In other words, it’s impossible that any sane person ever saw Northwestern on a resume and said, “Oh, Northwestern. Too bad he couldn’t have gotten into a GOOD school.”</p>
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<p>OK this is exactly the kind of arrogant attitude that gives Americans a bad name in a lot of places (no I’m not saying that all Americans are arrogant. I have tons of American friends and I am completely against people who think that all Americans are ignorant but people like you really do give them a reason to think things like that.)</p>
<p>And, sorry to break it to you, but I live in the UK. You know the country that existed much before America was even founded? Yeah that one. So I can sure as heck say that I know how American colleges are looked at in big nations around the world.</p>
<p>Also, I never say anywhere that Americans don’t give about what foreigners think. I’m just saying that a lot of Ivies are looked at differently outside of the US, and people just need to keep that in mind.</p>
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Between 2000 and 2005, the yield ranged from 39.2% to 42.7%. It’s so easy to look it up with internet; a 5th-grader can do that, so I hope you don’t need help on this. NU competes with some of the best state Us like UMich/UWisc/UIllinois that have strength in similar programs like engineering; NU isn’t known for being particularly generous with its FA and gives no merit-based scholarships. There are a lot of factors at play and prestige is only one of them; weather is another one and finances these days seem to be the biggest factor. Until you have a detailed breakdown of the cross-admit battles and actual reasons behind those choices, your little claim holds no water. </p>
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<p>Well, you have Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame on the list, don’t you? According to your logic, Chicago is less prestigious than Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame. Why didn’t you emphasize that as well? I personally think Chicago is more prestigious than those. Looks like you have an axe to grind here.</p>
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Oh dear, it’s so obvious; it’s your opinion that “yield/admit rate is the estimation of prestige”. It’s your our own little definition, not some kind of proven theory. Let me help you here. yield/admit rate = (#enrolled * #applied) / #admit^2. You see #admit^2? lol. Next thing I know, you may be dividing another admit rate…lol. If you can’t do a simple breakdown of components like I just did, you have no business in pretending you can do math modeling.</p>
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You made up a ratio and claimed it meant something; the burden of providing “legitimate argument” is on you, not us, especially when you give us weird things like “square of #admits”.</p>