<p>I've been reading up a bit and many say that Notre Dame is overrated. What do you all think?</p>
<p>You could specify what you think is overrated about it and why.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think it is. Many very good schools are underrated, given the skewed view of the Ivy League Sports Conference many have as the “Alpha and Omega” of college education.</p>
<p>Luckily, most of the anti-Catholic sentiment that caused the founding of so many Catholic schools has passed, so that’s not something that needs to be dealt with. Still, there are remnants of it, in how schools are regarded by some.</p>
<p>A lot of people are biased toward the religious nature, Conservatism that isn’t present at other t20 schools and it’s lack of diversity.</p>
<p>The real world loves ND kids and their post graduate job rates are extremely high as are their median incomes. That’s why you go to school right?</p>
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I’d imagine there are enclaves elsewhere. Most of those schools (Notre Dame included) seem to me to be pretty welcoming, whether people are libertarian, conservative, liberal, or socialist. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from talking to students at several of then (Notre Dame included).</p>
<p>
Not sure if this is a joke or not, though I suppose a lot of people do go to school for money, which is kind of sad.</p>
<p>And I still don’t know what the OP means. Personally, I think Notre Dame is less overrated than a great deal of schools “ranked” above it.</p>
<p>^ yeah it was kind of a joke, kind of not. A lot of people look to a school to get them a high paying and nice career, and ND ranks toward the top at this.</p>
<p>Also, OP I don’t know how a school that has one of this highest ACT composite averages can be “overrated”. </p>
<p>ACT Averages 2009-2010</p>
<p>33.5 - Yale
33.0 - Princeton
32.5 - Notre Dame
32.5 - Harvard
32.5 - Columbia
32.0 - Dartmouth
32.0 - Stanford
32.0 - U of Penn
32.0 - U of Chicago
31.0 - Brown
31.0 - Cornell</p>
<p>I’m not saying that Notre Dame is overrated, but just that I’ve heard from people that it is and wanted to know what some of you thought. And that ACT ranking is very impressive… could it be because the majority of students at Notre Dame use the ACT, but at most of the other schools, the SAT is much more popular?</p>
<p>About half submit the SAT and about half submit the ACT, so yes, more than the average for most of the other scores listed. Still, SAT scores range into the high 700s in all subjects as well.</p>
<p>Further, colleges are often “rated” on selectivity; in this, a Catholic school has a disadvantage. While many of the top students from around the country apply to Harvard (largely because of name recognition and reputation), it is usually the top Catholic students from around the country that apply to Notre Dame (though a significant portion of applicants and students are not Catholic). As Catholics are 1/4 of the US population (and not all of it) and include many groups that tend to poverty (thus decreasing chances of producing top college applicants), it can be surmised that the Notre Dame applicant pool base is smaller than what its academic quality would merit.</p>
<p>I could, of course, be glaringly wrong, as I couldn’t find the number of applicants Notre Dame received last year. If it is also around 35,000 or so, then ignore what I just said.</p>
<p>About 14K…</p>
<p>There are 16,500 applicants this year.</p>
<p>@OP, your really gonna ask this on the Notre Dame forum?? what kind of answers do you think your gonna get? ask on the college admissions forum for a less biased opinion. </p>
<p>I think Notre Dame has a smaller applicant pool but the quality of that applicant pool is probably top 15 in the nation. However, Notre Dame’s catholic tradition and that stuff do turn off a lot of applicants. Still Notre Dame has #1 undergrad biz school, has applicants whose stats are stellar, and provides a great community. Notre Dame is one of those schools that you really need the “fit” to go to, like, CalTech or a small liberal arts school.
(I’m just a notre dame applicant for 2015, not a notre dame student so i’m not that biased, but notre dame is awesome (go irish) so I am.) At the very least though, Notre Dame has one of the most spirited student bodies in the countries. From what I hear, the people who go to ND really, really love it there.</p>
<p>IMO the source of conflict about Notre Dame is due to split between the quality level of its undergraduate school and graduate school. The 2010 USNWR has Notre Dame No. 20 among National Universities. The yardstick used for rating undergraduate education among National Universities has Notre Dame much higher than No. 20.
Average freshman retention rate: No. 10
Undergraduate Teaching at National Universities No. 8
Highest 4-year graduation rates No. 1
(Graduation rates are for National Universities.)</p>
<p>Graduate school rakings for Notre Dame are much lower than No. 20.
Psychology No. 74
Chemistry No. 67
Computer Science No. 63
Engineering No. 51
Business School No. 31
Law No. 22</p>
<p>The high ranking undergraduate school has High School counselors giving Notre Dame a rating of 4.6 out of 5.0. High School counselors also give Northwestern 4.6 out 5.0. The low ranking graduate school leads to Peer Assessment score of 3.9 out of 5.0. While Northwestern gets Peer Assessment score of 4.4 out of 5.0.</p>
<p>Is there another school with a bigger split between undergraduate and graduate rankings?</p>
<p>Among the national universities: Boston college, tufts, georgetown,
william & mary, WashU, UVa, dartmouth, brown, duke, Rice…</p>
<p>These schools have “relatively” weak graduate programs compared to their undergraduates.</p>
<p>It is also hard to look at an entire university as far as rankings go. It may be best to look at individual areas or schools within the university. For example, a university may have a very strong engineering program but a less well-regarded business program. Some schools also have strong graduate programs with no corresponding undergrad programs (for example, business at Vandy and Duke.) Some schools, especially major research ones, don’t do as well with undergrad because professors are more focused on research than teaching freshmen. You can look at rankings to see which are the highly-regarded schools, but you have to look further to see which ones do well in your area of interest.</p>