<p>Pennalum- Penn Doesn’t have higher avg SAT scores than Dartmouth/</p>
<p>Penn (25%-75%)
1350-1540</p>
<p>Dartmouth (25%-75%)
1340-1550</p>
<p>Not that it matters. Your comment just made it seem like Penn was ahead, when the reality is that Dartmouth actually holds a negligible advantage.</p>
<p>I think I was using not the most current data, so I apologize, but in any event difference is negligible, and that will suffice to make my point: there is no difference in quality between the average student at Penn, or Dartmouth, or Brown, or Columbia, or…</p>
<p>I totally agree. Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth and Brown are pretty much interchangeable. Among these I would 100% all the time pick the one that was the best fit. The student quality at all of them is basically equal, and after graduation success indicators in almost every case puts them at about equal.</p>
<p>@poste: OMG, I wish I want to the university of USWN because they ranked it sooo high.</p>
<p>@pennalum: But, again, whose judgment are you trusting here? The answer: some reporters that have a bunch of statistics and a magazine that tries to sell these rankings as if they were the bible . Are these really the experts on whom YOU’re relying to judge the quality of an institution?
In the 90s Brown was ranked number 2 or something like that. Do you think Brown lost its quality or the other colleges got that much better? Of course not. One day, probably a Harvard or Pennalum called and said, hey, why aren’t we better ranked and then they changed the methodology and Brown and some other great institutions dropped.
We all know Penn has a better grad school than Brown. However, it is ridiculous to cite publications as an argument against Brown as Brown is almost as undergrad focused as Dartmouth. Maybe we should all focus a little bit more on the Undergraduate Teaching ranking. After all this is college and not grad school. </p>
<p>@sam: I’m in my early twenties, I worked already and I have a sense of the real world. NW is better recruited because NW has Kellogg and I suppose there might be more people that want to go into that field. If you had any stats that showed that NW has a comparable Grad School placement in med,law and business, then we can talk. As far as I know Brown is in grad school placement better than penn. Wouldn’t that be a better indicator than USWN. Don’t grad schools have a better grasp on undergrad education than some tabloid?</p>
<p>…I’d sooner trust an objective measure of a school’s academic output like citations per faculty (remember, it’s a ratio, not an absolute number, so that partially mitigates bias against smaller universities like Brown and Dartmouth) than the caprices of a seventeen-year-old, his mom, and his guidance counselor in comparing universities’ academic bona fides. So, in short, yes I will hazard trusting statistics (and not necessarily those from USNWR) over vague suburbanites’ imaginings.</p>
<p>But, really, what you’re arguing is that the quality/judgment of a university’s undergraduates is commensurate with the quality of the university as a whole. If this is the case, why are we ranking LACs and universities separately? I argue that the quality of a university (i.e., not a liberal arts college) is more related to what the university contributes to our fund of knowledge, adjusting for the size of the institution. The students that come out of a university are a factor there in the long run, but in most cases it will be through other institutions at which they find themselves later in life. Teaching certainly is a factor, but again, it cannot and probably should not be the only factor; one can be a very good teacher, but not much of a scholar (and, as we all know, very much vice-versa).</p>
<p>So, shouldn’t the composite picture of a university take into account all of these variables? The answer, I think many would agree, is yes. How to weight them is a matter of debate; clearly I favor the research/academic work done at the university. So? prefers how many students choose to go there (not a particularly valid measure) and student:faculty ratio (a more valid measure). If his argument is not based solely on student:faculty ratio (he doesn’t specify), this would imply some vague notion that the faculty members at smaller universities are better teachers than those at larger universities independently of class size. I would think this a valid measure if it were actually quantifiable and verifiably true. All lectures at Penn, as at Brown/Dartmouth/etc., are given by faculty members, and recitation sections in lower-level courses tend to be lead by TAs (generally considered a marker of a lesser quality of teaching, even though (a) graduate students are often excellent teachers and, more importantly for the sake of this discussion, (b) is it any different at Brown, Dartmouth, or Princeton?), while upper-level sections by faculty members. At Penn, over 70% of classes are comprised of 25 students or fewer. Maybe it’s higher at Dartmouth, but it makes the point that Penn is, for the vast majority of courses, not merely anonymous amphitheater lectures.</p>
<p>And please don’t seriously try to argue that somebody who graduates from Brown is verifiably more likely to contribute to human knowledge than is somebody who graduates from Penn, Cornell, or Northwestern. Or vice-versa.</p>
<p>
There is absolutely no credible evidence of this. The Wall Street Journal “feeder” ranking from a few years ago was deeply flawed, e.g.:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>it didn’t include Penn Medical School–undeniably a top school which, per the WSJ, had “the highest percentage of Penn undergrads in six years;”</p></li>
<li><p>it utilized a graduating class size for Penn of 2,785 when calculating placement percentages, when Penn’s graduating class size is actually around 2,400;</p></li>
<li><p>it failed to account for the excellent undergraduate career placement–and resultant lower interest in grad school–of Penn’s Wharton and Nursing undergrads; a better, more apples-to-apples comparison of Penn’s grad-school-placement with that of a school like Brown would utilize only Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences, which has a graduating class of only 1,600.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Even with all these flaws, the WSJ ranking still had Penn’s percentage at 5.49% compared to Brown’s 6.51%–hardly a significant difference. The bottom line is that Penn and Brown are quite comparable when it comes to grad school placement, and any attempt to characterize one as better than the other in that regard is without merit.</p>
<p>For the record, here are the WSJ ranking and story:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf</a></p>
<p>[The</a> Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition](<a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights)</p>
<p>Well pennalum I don’t think we will agree on that issue. I’d give publications and other contributions to enriching human knowledge a minor factor in a COLLEGE ranking. This matters for (many) grad schools but most undergraduates won’t benefit too much. The undergraduate teaching might even suffer from research obsessed professors. If you see a COLLEGE as a factory for research I can’t help you. The quality of the education at least is imo only marginally related to it. Brown and Dartmouth can’t compete with major research universities like Harvard- period. But you failed so far to explain why a Penn undergrad receives a better education than a Brown or Dartmouth undergrad only because some phds publicize a hundred more articles. That is ridiculous. College education should be measured by the mediated knowledge and a lot of other soft factors one could hardly rank.</p>
<p>But luckily I’m not alone. Apparently most people think that way, otherwise Brown wouldn’t be better than Penn in cross admission stats and Brown wouldn’t have a higher (or if you say so-the same) Graduate school placement ranking.
And please don’t seriously try to argue that Penn is better than any of its Ivy peers. The only institutions that have some superiority in reputation, selectivity etc. is HYP</p>
<p>SoWhat,</p>
<p>I am not aware of any stats showing Brown has better grad schools placement. The closer one I’d seen is the outdated WSJ feeder ranking which apply only to professional schools (don’t confuse them with academic grad schools); in that survey, 12 (or 13?) of the selected prof schools are located in the NE. Furthermore, it doesn’t say anything about #applying vs #admitted. NU has 5 specialty schools with students less likely going into M/L/B schools than their peers majoring in liberal arts. I like how WSJ purposely excluded Kellogg while NU grads are most represented there. 45 Percenter summed up the flaws better than I do now (post #46).
Brown students do have the edge from enjoying the massive grade inflation. The average GPA is 3.6+ which is BS. Grad schools aren’t gonna treat students from Brown any different from Penn or Northwestern, if they have the same credentials/stats. If anything, Brown is viewed as an easier school and since less profs are leaders in the fields, research experiences/recommendations may even carrry less weight. Grads from say, Penn’s top ranked bioengineering/accounting programs or NU’s top ranked mat sci/chemistry programs, are likely gonna have better chance in getting into top PhD programs in those fields than Brown’s peers when they have the same numbers (GPA/GRE).</p>
<p>
Again, there is absolutely no publicly available credible evidence that this is currently the case. For all we know, Penn currently may enroll more cross-admits than Brown.</p>
<p>In general, though, I agree with the point you’re trying to make: Penn and Brown (and Columbia, Dartmouth, etc.) are quite comparable, and choices among them should be made based on personal preference and fit, and not based on some mythical overall superiority of one over the other (with the exception, perhaps, of some specifically eminent program such as Wharton).</p>
<p>You just need to be careful about throwing around hearsay generalizations with no basis in fact. :)</p>
<p>
Most people want to get high GPAs with less effort and less competition. Why would anyone want 3.3 if they can get 3.6 by just being average? Most people would like to have the option to avoid courses in any areas they are not good at. I agree with you that “most people think that way”. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>45 Percenter, we can certainly agree on that.
The stats I cited are published by magazines- so is USWN. Their methodology might be flawed like every other ranking’s. Just another reason why people that make their decision based on newspaper publications should be careful what they base their arguments on.</p>
<p>I don’t reckon Penn is better than Brown for undergraduate teaching (but I didn’t go to Brown, so I can’t say from personal experience. Did you attend both?). Clearly you didn’t read my above post: “…there is no difference in quality between the average student at Penn, or Dartmouth, or Brown, or Columbia, or…”</p>
<p>On the other hand, it’s important to remember that an undergraduate education is not merely an inordinately expensive extension of high school–that is, meant simply for more passive absorption of facts. Whether one attends a university or a liberal arts college, everyone can benefit from scholarly work in his/her field, whether it be at the bench in a biochemistry lab or at the rare books library. When the quality of the researchers at a particular institution is high, then students affirmatively do benefit by being able to take part in the consequently fascinating, novel, enlightening types of research that are done there. I know that I learned more from working at the bench in a lab for four years than I would have merely by attending classes alone, regardless of the extent of material covered. (And, in my opinion, I learned more from working and hypothesizing and troubleshooting in the lab than I did in my classes, period.) </p>
<p>So, maybe Brown or Dartmouth has 90% of classes with fewer than 25 students or have lower student:faculty ratios (if that’s what you consider to be the principal determinants of the quality of an education received at these schools), but do the research opportunities they provide stack up to those available at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, or Penn? Of course any top university or college will offer these kinds of incredible opportunities to those who seek them out; there’s no big-school monopoly. But, at the same time, any top university or college will also offer amazing teachers and classroom experiences as well; there’s no small-school monopoly. You see, it’s all about balancing different factors. Life, tradeoffs, gray zones, you get the gist. </p>
<p>So, really, I don’t understand what you mean when you suggest that Brown undergraduates, for example, receive a higher quality of education. What exactly is it about Brown that makes them (factual inaccuracies notwithstanding) better able to achieve after college than Penn students (in your…curious…opinion)? Again, are you suggesting that the professors at Brown are better at communicating material to students than professors at Penn or Cornell or any university whose undergraduate student body exceeds whatever arbitrary cutoff you’ve envisioned? Of what does this ethereal “undergraduate focus” consist? </p>
<p>And yet you’re also still harping on this cross-admissions red herring (which, as saliently pointed out above, is not necessarily even true at this point…if it weren’t, would you suddenly reverse your opinion entirely?). This is especially circular logic: the percentage of kids who want to go to a school is a major factor in establishing the quality of a school…which in turn implants in the wise, infallible seventeen-year-old brain the “correct” decision on where to attend college (although at least we evidently managed to coax you down from your initial offering, the bit about how the school’s acceptance rate is the clearest expression of the quality of education it offers). The fact alone that you adhere to this idea so doggedly should discourage me from trying to reason with you.</p>
<p>I read your post and while you speak from the quality of students that do not differ between Ivys I agree with 45 Percenter that the education quality is very comparable, if not the same too. </p>
<p>Feel free not to reason with me. Or you can understand the argument that application quantity doesn’t make a school a top quality school but that it reflects its quality. Once again, I’d like to compare this to a market example. In the housing market, is a fancy mansion a “top quality” house because of the price? No, the price reflects the quality of the house and the demand for it. And I STILL think that the people are a BETTER indicator of quality than some reporters and their stats. What do you say about the former rankings before USWN changed the methodology? Do you think they reflected the true quality? If so a lot must have changed at Brown within a year…</p>
<p>I think barely anybody attended Brown AND Penn to have a qualified reason to judge the other. However, I strongly reject the notion that Brown, Dartmouth or any other university that is not research focused has automatically a worse education only because US World News says so. I would say that Brown students in general are very self determined and that this quality is fostered by our open curriculum. Everybody gets a unique education which I consider a big plus. If you read my posts you’d know I believe quality education can’t be expressed in a statistic. I elaborated on that before. What makes a good professor a good professor. How often he was cited in the economist or natural science weekly? Or how well he teaches his students? </p>
<p>P.S. You can ask me for faculty ratios all you want, I don’t know them but I’m sure they are good and comparable to other top schools. Brown is ranked 6 in undergrad teaching and that probably has a reason.</p>
<p>Ohhh this is fun!</p>
<p>I’m late to the party so I’ll just throw in my own thoughts on arguments long past:</p>
<p>1) Penn’s campus is unique and I take heart in knowing that most ugly 60 buildings will be demolished and replaced within the next 20-30 years (yes, PennConnects DOES call for demolishing the horrendous social sciences quad…it’s just towards the lattermost stages of the plan)</p>
<p>2) Brown sucks. So does Columbia. 
2a) corollary to 2) if you disagree with me, you are wrong. And ugly.</p>
<p>
<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer;
<p>21 from Brown and only 14 from Penn at Yale Law, even though Penn is 3 times bigger than Brown.
Again don’t forget that Penn is the easiest Ivy to get into.</p>
<p>^ He’s baaaaaaaaaaack. :p</p>
<p>Aw how I missed you gugupo!</p>
<p>Look, some more data! Let me help you paint a broader picture.</p>
<p>Harvard Law
Harvard 241
Yale 113
Stanford 79
Penn 57
Princeton 54
Brown 48
Columbia 46
Cornell 45
Duke 41
Dartmouth 35
Chicago 13</p>
<p>Average LSAT
166 Harvard
165 Princeton / Yale
164 Stanford
163 Penn / Columbia / Dartmouth / Duke / MIT / Brown</p>
<p>The top-ten medical school I attend:</p>
<p>Harvard (75)
Yale (49)
Princeton (33)
Penn (24)
Stanford (21)
Brown (17)</p>
<p>Cmon Penn at 5 makes no sense. You can deny it but you arent fooling anyone.</p>
<p>It should be:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Yale (Why the frick does Princeton trump Yale in the rankings everytime?)</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT/Caltech</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>U chicago</li>
<li>Upenn</li>
</ol>
<p>Now THIS looks like a list which does not insinuate that USWNR turned to a group of statisticians and their Sunday booze in Texas to formulate the rankings.</p>