<p>^ Well put, Alex! :)</p>
<p>My School: the University of Chicago</p>
<p>Respected Peers: Reed College, St. John’s College</p>
<p>(And many others, but I mention these 2 in particular because I think, like Chicago, they are academically excellent schools that have engaged in significant community discussion about the aims of education, have made principled choices based on their aims, and have tried hard to resist public pressure to divert from them. ModestMelody’s contributions lately have brought me around to the view that Brown is another such place. I’m sure there are others that I’m just not well-informed enough to cite).</p>
<p>School: University of Michigan
Respected Peers: Berkeley, UIUC</p>
<p>In my opinion, UIUC is underrated on CC.</p>
<p>I agree. Fantastic engineering there. UIUC was my second choice out of the schools where I was accepted. Too bad they didn’t offer better financial aid.</p>
<p>Schools I respect: Princeton, HMC, Cooper Union, WUStL, Notre Dame, Caltech</p>
<p>My School: St. John’s College
Respected peers: Reed, U Chicago, Marlboro</p>
<p>Wisconsin
Respected Peers: Duke, Michigan, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Vandy, Notre Dame, Columbia, Stanford</p>
<p>My school: Wesleyan</p>
<p>Respect: Swarthmore, Chicago, Carleton, Macalester, Haverford, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Brandeis, Brown</p>
<p>my school: Hogwarts</p>
<p>peers i respect
- Beauxbatons Academy
- Durmstrang Institute</p>
<p>My schools: UT-Austin, USF-Tampa, Rice
Respected UT-Austin peers: Michigan, USC (for the combination of exellent academics and athletics)
Respected USF-Tampa peers: Pitt, Rutgers (for being great metropolitan research schools serving the needs of also non-traditional students)
Respected Rice peers: Stanford, Duke</p>
<p>I (Brown) respect: (in no particular order)</p>
<p>Princeton
Dartmouth
UChicago
Amherst
Wesleyan
Georgetown
Yale
Stanford
etc.</p>
<p>(schools that focus on the undergraduate education and the undergraduate student; schools that are good for languages and linguistics; schools where students are cool)</p>
<p>Based purely on strength of academic programs across the board, UM is actually more “prestigious” than Penn (according to the NRC).</p>
<p>But “prestige” to many college applicants (and their parents) usually means SAT scores/strength of student body, admit rates and an Ivy League affiliation to boot and Penn has the advantage here.</p>
<p>Really, these 2 are two distinct things and people should really stop arguing about them for the umpteenth time.</p>
<p>
It actually depends on how you look at it. Of the 32 areas in which they were both ranked, Penn ranked higher in 19 and Michigan ranked higher in 13. Also, Penn was ranked in the top 10 in 15 areas and in the top 20 in 10 areas, whereas Michigan was ranked in the top 10 in 14 areas and in the top 20 in 15 areas.</p>
<p>[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html]NRC”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html)</p>
<p>They’re really quite close in terms of the overall academic reputations of their departments, as their current US News Peer Assessment scores (Penn-4.5, Michigan-4.4) reflect.</p>
<p>Of course, when you factor in the academic reputations of their big 3 professional schools, Penn has the clear edge in medicine and business, and it’s pretty much of a toss-up in law.</p>
<p>Respected: MIT, Chicago, Princeton</p>
<p>^^Graduate school programs have more bearing on undergrad experience than professional schools (tho, rankings of prof. schools seem to have a disproportional impact on reputation/prestige of the underlying school).</p>
<p>“Of course, when you factor in the academic reputations of their big 3 professional schools, Penn has the clear edge in medicine and business, and it’s pretty much of a toss-up in law.”</p>
<p>What happened to Engineering? I would say there are the “big 4 professional” schools, and in terms of actual reputation, it is more of a 1-1-2 senario, where Penn has the edge in Business (also Ross is just one notch below Wharton), Michigan has the edge in Engineering and they are roughly the same in Law and Medicine. The only reason why Penn is ranked higher than Michigan in Medicine is because of their larger research spending in that domain. In terms of their peer ratings in medicine, they are roughly the same.</p>
<p>In the traditional disciplines, the two schools are roughly equal. </p>
<p>Overall, those two universities, along with Cornell, have a lot in common. They are big, they are strong in the traditional disciplines and in professional fields and their campuses are lively and fun.</p>
<p>People are sooooo slow to change their minds on colleges, and if they grow up with a certain paradigm, it takes not only evidence but time for them to change their minds. Schools that have risen over the last couple decades (eg WashU, USC, BC, and Duke) get singled out in endless “overrated” threads.</p>
<p>While there seems to be no conclusive evidence that Penn is overall a “better” institution than Michigan is, a lot of people here can’t get past the fact that Michigan is (1) public, (2) in the Midwest, (3)large, and (4) good in sports. Heck, people even have trouble accepting the concept of the [Midwestern] U of Chicago being on par with the Ivies (even though it’s private, about the same size as the Ivies, and has crappy sports like the Ivies).</p>
<p>I remember a while back some poster was asking for suggestions of schools that had a similar vibe as Penn, and I suggested Michigan. Somebody tore into me saying that Penn had a much more intellectual and serious atmosphere, and I shook my head.</p>
<p>Me: NYU</p>
<p>Respected Peers: Chicago, Penn, BU, GWU, New School</p>
<p>My school: Wesleyan</p>
<p>Respected Peers:
Penn
Harvard
Yale
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Tufts
Columbia
Williams
Pomona</p>
<p>School: princeton
Respect: mit, columbia, oxford, cornell, uva ;), pomona, swat</p>
<p>^^actually there are many people who don’t even know penn is an ivy</p>
<p>^^You mean Penn State? lolz.
But seriously, Penn and Ann Arbor are peers. They have equal, albeit different, strengths and weaknesses, and are both good schools with highly respected programs.</p>